The outside sea sent a vague, almost imperceptible, swell into the lagoon, and as she moved to it she creaked and muttered and groaned, masts, spars, and body timber all finding points of greater and lesser tension and every point a tiny voice.
The rudder shifted now and then slightly, and the rudder chain clicked in response. There were rats on board, and they made themselves audible, and there was a nest of young rats somewhere under the planking, and their thriddy voices came in little bursts now and then, telling of some disturbance in the nest. Floyd pictured to himself the old mother rat suckling them while the father was out on business seeking food, and he philosophized on the idea that even the timbers of a ship may hide all sorts of interests and ambitions, affections and hates.
An hour passed, during which he and Cardon relieved each other at the lookout post several times, and it was during Cardon's watch, some twenty minutes later, that the event occurred.
Suddenly a sound made itself heard that was not a sound born of the ship. A faint splash came from alongside, followed by something quite unmistakable—the sound of an oar shipped and laid along the seats of a boat—incautiously. It had probably slipped from the hand of the rower as he laid it inboard.
Floyd, who had heard the sound also, tipped Cardon's leg with his toe, and Cardon, reaching out with his heel, signaled that he knew.
A few seconds passed, and then Cardon saw a form coming over the side. It was Schumer. He had never seen Schumer, but from Floyd's description he knew that it could not be Luckman. Then, surely enough, came Luckman in all his immensity.
Neither man wore either boots or stockings, and their bare feet, wet with the bilge water of the boat, shone in the starlight. Those glistening feet fascinated Cardon. All the tragedy of the business seemed focused in them, and, strong and brave though he was, they exercised such a powerful psychological effect that for a moment he could have retched.
The two men did not pause for more than a second. Soundless as shadows, they made for the saloon hatch, while Cardon, who thought the moment for action had arrived, moved slightly as if to leave his post.
Then he stopped.
Schumer and his companion, instead of going down below, were bending over the hatch. They were closing it.