“Badly hurt?” asked Hardrock, as his eyes met the hard gaze of Hughie Dunlevy.
“No. Knee dislocated, I guess; we’ll run him home. Got caught in a line and fell over the engine. You been to St. James already?”
“Yes.” Hardrock’s gray eyes narrowed. “You’ll find news waiting for you. Two of your friends shot up—one dead. Whisky-runners did it, some one said; nobody knows for sure, though.”
Dunlevy looked startled, then waved his hand.
“All right. You been havin’ a good time here, I see. So long. When I come back, you’ll be singin’ another tune.”
“I’ll expect you,” said Hardrock, and smiled.
The engine sputtered into life; the launch was shoved out, circled in a wide arc, and headed south, with Nelly Callahan crouched over the figure of her father. Once she looked back, lifted an arm, waved it in farewell to the man on the shore, as though in token of an unquenched spirit.
“She’s all right,” said Hardrock to himself. “Independent—not afraid of ’em. No need to worry about her; real woman all through!”
He turned to the deserted camp, got the dishes attended to, left everything shipshape, kicked out the fire-embers, and then made his way through the brush along the point of land at this northwest tip of the island. Here, where the bushes thinned out and the land ran out in little islets, he sank down under cover of the greenery, filled and lighted his pipe, and lay motionless, watching the empty waters to north and west and south. Safely tucked away in his pocket was the little black-and-white pennant of painted canvas.
Now, as he watched the sun glinting on the waves between the point and Garden Island, where his motorboat had gone down, he reconstructed in the light of his present knowledge what had taken place there yesterday morning. He was quite certain, now, that he recalled seeing that little pennant of canvas sticking out from the water. Those two recklessly pursuing men from St. James must have seen it also, as they drove down upon him. Then, when he had vanished in the rain to leeward, when after his two shots they probably thought him dead or drowning, they had put back for that fish-trap flag. Why? Not because it marked a fish-trap alone, but because it marked something else of which they knew. And, drawing down upon that little flag, had been a third craft, unsuspected in the obscurity.