On this same evening Professor Sanford and I were paired to take the first watch for the patrolling of the beach, and at eight o'clock we set out from the camp in the glade, leaving the other members of our Crusoe company sitting around the dying embers of the cooking fire. Following the regular sentry-go routine, Sanford and I parted at the camp; he was to take the south beach and I the north, and we were to meet at the sandspit in which the island terminated to the eastward. As I tramped along upon my solitary watch round I was sorrier than ever for Van Dyck. All that day he had been going about like a man with a dozen murders on his conscience, and it was plain to be seen that each added day—days in which he was obliged to see some of us actually going hungry because we hadn't been able to gather enough to satisfy eighteen normal and healthy appetites—was crowding him nearer to the brink of the humiliating confession chasm. From advising him not to tell, I was coming around to the opposite point of view and wishing that I hadn't tried to stop him. As matters stood, he was like a man facing a deferred surgical operation. It was true, the operation might prove fatal; but there were opportunities for the dying of any number of anticipatory deaths during the interval of suspense.
Skirting the northern edge of the island without seeing anything to mar the mirror-like surface of the starlit sea, I was first at the sandspit rendezvous by a good half-hour. Since there was no reason for haste, and the sandy cape commanded a wide view of the watery waste in all directions save one, I filled my pipe with the final shakings of my last sack of tobacco, and after poking in the ashes of the neglected signal fire and finding no live coals among them, I lighted the pipe with one of the few precious matches we were hoarding, and sat down on the sands to wait. In due course of time the professor appeared, a dark figure trudging along aimlessly; and when he came nearer I saw that he had his hands clasped behind him and was walking with his head down like a person buried in the deepest thought—the very antitype of an alert coast guardsman on the watch for a sail. When he descried me he came over and sat down beside me, still thoughtfully abstracted.
"I was beginning to wonder what had become of you, Professor," I said, merely to start things going.
"Yes; I was detained. Mr. Van Dyck called me back shortly after you left," he explained half-absently. Then he opened up: "Mr. Preble, I have been listening to a most astounding—er—confession, I suppose you might call it. I wonder if you know what it is?"
"I do," I answered shortly. "Van Dyck has been telling you that a harmless little comedy planned by him to break the monotony of our cruise has turned into a potential tragedy, with all the attendant hardships and horrors."
"You are quite right. He was very manly about it, and he blames himself unsparingly. It was an exceedingly difficult thing for him to do—to tell us of it. He realized fully that the present conditions must make any explanation seem wretchedly inadequate."
"They do," I agreed, and then I asked the one burning question: "The others, Professor Sanford? How did they take it?"
"A-a-hem-hem—h'm; each after his or her kind, Mr. Preble. The women are pretty generally sympathetic. They see only the immense responsibility which Mr. Van Dyck freely acknowledges, and are very humanly and generously sorry for him. I wish I might say as much for the men. Grey and young Grisdale are both loyal, though it was plainly evident that Grey had to fight for his loyalty, since the unhappy outcome involves his wife. Ingerson talked and acted like a surly ruffian, as you would imagine; and Major Terwilliger's language was scarcely less reprehensible. Dupuyster played the man. He rebuked his uncle quite sharply and went across to grip Van Dyck's hand and to say what a manly fellow might say in the circumstances. And Miss Van Tromp—the second Miss Van Tromp—went with him."
"Of course," I said crustily—and made another mark on the score that I meant to settle with one Gerald Dupuyster if we should ever attain to a time when personal scores could be audited and settled. Then I reminded the professor that he had omitted Mr. Holly Barclay.
"I wish to continue omitting him," was the reply, and the professor's tone was a measure of his disgust. "Let it be sufficient to say that he made his daughter blush for very shame with his puerile accusations. He even went so far as to intimate that Mr. Van Dyck was not telling the truth; that the entire affair was a deep-laid plot designed to involve Miss Madeleine in some way."