“Here’s the ladder—right here,” whispered Pierce. I moved the canoe backwards with my hands, and presently held the rope rungs of the ladder in my grasp. I reached up high above my head and gripped a rope rung firmly.
“Now hurry back to Miss Baldwin,” I whispered, and swung myself up.
Pierce did not answer at once.
“Do you hear?” I demanded.
“Oh, sure.”
I was well up the ladder then, but his tone prompted me to turn and look down. Pierce, with his rifle under one arm, was tying the canoe to the ladder. When, looking up, he saw that I had stopped and observed him he started guiltily, then leaped resolutely onto the ladder below me.
“Get off! Go back to the girl!” I commanded.
“I won’t,” said he. And we were hanging so, against the yacht’s sides, when Betty’s voice called softly from the shore beyond the stern:
“Oh, Captain Brack! Quick, please. I’m tired and afraid. Hurry, hurry! Take me aboard at once!”