The effect of his efforts was apparent upon Miss Baldwin. She seemed to dread each meeting with him, yet she sat beneath his spell in a state of fascination. So I cursed poor Chanler. Had he been the man Miss Baldwin had hoped she would have had no attention for Brack.
Near dusk on the third day after changing our course we sighted land over our bows, a tiny gray smudge on the horizon. Our speed was cut down to a crawl at once. The captain, after studying the land through his glasses, ordered our course changed to west by nor’west, and through the thickening darkness we moved at a foot-pace, gradually drawing nearer a harboring, fir-lined coast line.
That night, while most of us slept soundly, we slipped into Kalmut Fiord. The cessation of the yacht’s motion aroused me in the morning, and half awake I dressed and stumbled out on deck to learn the cause.
In the darkness I had a jumbled impression that the Wanderer was lying in a small lake surrounded by a circle of small, craggy mountains. Then, my senses clearing, I realized that I had stepped into the midst of events of sinister portent.
XX
It was still too dark to gather an accurate impression of the yacht’s surroundings, yet light enough to make out what was going on directly before me. A number of sailors were dropping two of the port life-boats into the water. They worked eagerly and cautiously, like men in haste and with a desire for silence. A block, carelessly handled, swung with a clang against one of the davits and a subdued voice cursed the guilty man for his clumsiness.
“Don’t do that again.” Through the darkness and morning fog the whisper sounded like a threat of murder. “Now over with those sea-ladders.”
The voice was Brack’s.
“All right here Foxy,” said another low voice as the second boat was dropped with little noise into the water. “Let ’em come.”
This was a new voice to me. It was not Riordan’s nor Garvin’s, nor Wilson’s, yet it had in it a note of authority which did not belong to any of the sailors. I was further puzzled because I seemed to have heard it somewhere before.