Two or three of the new guards sprang forward to help in this work. Halstead rang for 81 half speed, then threw the wheel over, making a quick start. Once under way, he called for full speed, and the “Restless” went bounding over the waves, which were running much lower than a couple of hours earlier.
During the first half of the run Captain Halstead remained at the wheel. Then Joe came up from below, relieving him. Tom strolled back to take a seat on the deck-house beside Mr. Seaton.
“I’m on tenterhooks to get back,” confessed the charter-man.
“Anxious about your friend, Clodis, of course,” nodded Tom, understandingly.
“Partly that, yes. But there’s another matter that’s bothering me fearfully, too. You remember the packet of papers I took from Clodis’s trunk?” asked Mr. Seaton, lowering his voice.
“Yes,” murmured Tom. “But you have those in an inner pocket.”
“I wish I had!” uttered Powell Seaton. “Halstead, the truth is, after you young men went out, this evening, to patrol about the island, I became a little uneasy about that packet, and took it out and hid it—under some boxes of ammunition in the cupboard where I keep my gun. Then I locked the closet door. When Dawson called me from the porch, in such haste, and I 82 was needed on board with my gun, I clean forgot the packet for the instant.”
“Oh, it will be safe, anyway,” Tom assured his employer. “Even if Dalton had been able to get a boat at once, in this neighborhood, there’s no other craft in these waters capable of reaching Lonely Island earlier than we shall do it.”
“I do hope that packet is safe,” muttered Mr. Seaton, in a voice tense with anxiety. “Halstead, you’ve no notion of the fearful blow it would be to friends and to myself to have it disappear.”
Hearing a slight noise on the opposite side of the deck-house top, Seaton and Tom Halstead turned together. They were just in time to see one of the new guards leaning toward them, one hand out as though to steady himself.