“There’s a rowboat around here,” he whispered. “Lay low.”
They waited in silence and at last they heard the rattle of oars again.
This time the sound was closer.
The rowboat was drawing near.
Fortunately the wind was from the sea and it blew the sounds toward them, at the same time keeping the men in the boat from hearing the muffled murmur of their own craft.
The rattle of oars continued and at last the boys could see the dim shape of the boat through the gloom. Finally they could distinguish the words of the dark figures in the craft. At a sign from Frank Tony cut off the engine for the time being.
But they could not make out complete sentences. The wind would whisk toward them a fragment of speech and then the rest of the words would be drowned.
“—three hundred pounds—” they heard a harsh voice saying, and then the rest of the sentence was lost.
A dull murmur of voices. Finally—
“I don’t know. It’s risky—”