Billy Grisdale had kept quiet for five full minutes, which was little less than miraculous.
"Say," he broke in, "I've been hearing something like a file or a saw going out there on the yacht ever since the scrimmage was called off. Listen!"
We did listen, and the sound was unmistakable. Van Dyck clicked the lever of the repeating rifle and sent a shot whistling over the Andromeda's bow. There was a clatter as of hastily dropped tools and the filing noise ceased.
"It'll begin again, just as soon as he's toled us away from here," Goff predicted. "He's got to gnaw himself loose from that anchor, and he knows it."
Van Dyck took the hint.
"We are going to keep as much as we've got," he declared. And then to Grey: "How well do you shoot, Jack?"
"Couldn't hit the side of a barn, not even if it were painted white," confessed the rising young lawyer.
It was at this conjuncture that Jerry Dupuyster surprised us again.
"Me for the bally old pot-shotting. I'm fairly good at the birds, don't you know. Took the blue ribbon over the field at Lord Erpin'am's last fall—what? Give me the gun, and say when and where."