“We’ll move right in, between that boat and the shore, and drop anchor, too,” decided Captain Halstead, taking the wheel and reaching for the engine control. He sent the “Restless” slowly forward into place, then shut off headway, ordering:
“Joe, you and Hank get our anchor over. Dalton can’t get anything or anybody ashore, now, without our knowing it.” 152
“But what can his plan be, anchoring on an open coast?” demanded young Dawson, as he came back from heaving the anchor.
“Our job is just to wait and see,” laughed Captain Halstead.
Mr. Seaton came on deck again, to learn what this sudden stopping of the boat meant.
“It’s some trick, and all we can do is to watch it, sir,” reported the young skipper of the “Restless,” pointing to the anchored Drab. “Yet I think the whole situation, sir, points to the necessity for your taking my recent advice and acting on it without the loss of an hour.”
“Either the registered mail, or yourself as a special messenger,” whispered Seaton, hoarsely, in the boy’s ear. “Yes, yes! I’ll fly at the work.”
“Don’t hurry back below, though,” advised Halstead. “Stroll along, as though you were going below for a nap. A night glass on the seventy-footer is undoubtedly watching all our movements.”
As the two boats swung idly at anchor, on that smooth sea, their bows lay some three hundred yards apart. The night air was so still, and voices carried so far, that those on the deck of the “Restless” were obliged to speak very quietly.
Over on the seventy-footer but one human 153 being showed himself to the watchers on the smaller boat. This solitary individual paced the drab boat’s bridge deck, puffing at a short-stemmed pipe.