“Why, it’s shallow enough to drop anchor right here, Mr. Seaton. Then, as soon as it grows the least bit dark, we boys could keep our searchlight turned on the drab boat so that you and Hepton could see every movement on her decks. From a quarter of a mile off you could see anyone swimming ashore and run to stop him. There’s no difficulty about it, sir, except the risk.”
“Hepton, I must talk that over with you,” cried Powell Seaton. “I don’t feel that I have any right to run you into too certain danger.” 135
But Hepton smiled again in a way to show his white teeth.
“Don’t worry ’bout me, Mr. Seaton. I feel big ’nough to take care of myself, and I enlisted for the whole game, anyway.”
“You could keep watch right from this deck,” Halstead added. “But then, if anyone slipped ashore from the Drab, you couldn’t get on shore fast enough to follow through the woods. You’d lose the trail right after the start.”
“Even if I were on shore, and Dalton walked right by me, what could I do?” pondered Powell Seaton. “Of course, I know the sheriff of the county would take him, for going aboard this boat and breaking it loose from the dock the other night. A United States marshal might arrest Dalton, on my request, for piracy in sailing away with the boat. But would I have a right to seize Dalton and hold him—even if able?”
“You can follow him until you do run Dalton into one of the law’s officers,” proposed Halstead.
“I believe I’m going ashore, anyway, to see what happens,” announced Mr. Seaton, after giving the matter a little more thought.
“But let me go ashore, first, on the other bank,” begged Hepton. “Then you can take second chance, sir.” 136
“Very good, then,” agreed the charter-man.