"I don't know. No doubt they thought they did. But we've all been straining our eyes and stirring up the little hope blazes until I think none of us can be really certain of anything any more. I guess there wasn't any ship."
"We needn't be too sure of that," I qualified. "There was a ship of some sort on the southern offing no longer ago than last Friday." And I told him what Conetta and I had seen.
"And you never told us!" he said reproachfully.
"It was only a disappointment, as it turned out, and sharing disappointments doesn't make them any lighter. But you may tell Annette, if you think it will help."
"It will help; I'll go back to camp and do it now. Are you coming along?"
At first I thought I would. Then the remembrance of what Grey had told me—about Van Dyck's newest trouble—came to oppress me, asking for solitude and some better chance of clarifying itself.
"I think I'll stay here and smoke a pipe," I said; and so we parted.
The pipe smoking had progressed no farther than the lighting of the match when I saw some one coming along the beach. I thought it was Grey returning to say something that he had forgotten to say, but when Billy Grisdale's dog came to sniff in friendly fashion at me, I knew that the approaching figure must be Billy.
"Jack Grey told me where I'd be likely to find you," said the infant, coming up to cast himself down upon the sand at my side. "Don't happen to have another pinch of tobacco in your inside pocket, do you?"
I had, and when his need was supplied he rolled a cigarette in a bit of brown paper saved from some of the provision wrappings and lighted it at the glowing dottel of my pipe.