“Standing on the firing-step, peering out over the sand-bags, as the soldiers do! But there’s nothing to fire at here! Pretty sure to be a friend, whoever it is!... My s-soul! I do believe it is the--mysterious--seal-hunter!”
“He’s--alone!” whispered Betty.
“Yes--for the first time, except when he passed us on the beach!”
Chug, chug! hiss, hiss! the motor-boat, a trim little launch, was abreast of them now, passing within twenty-five yards, so close to shore that its occupant seemed to have made a bet with the crowing high tide that he could thus skirt the beach without grounding.
He was standing up, amidships, his left hand on the pilot-wheel, narrowly scrutinizing the shore.
Either he saw or did not see two pairs of eyes peering at him, ferret-like, through clumps of beach-grass. With a complacent gesture, satisfied on some score, the fingers of his right hand went up to the comer of his mouth, describing a crescent, a twirling motion, as they thoughtfully fondled the tip of a small, bristling mustache.
It was with a low moan--a strange searching moan--that Sara Davenport fell back, and lifted a long-drawn face to the sky--all madcap flame, petty flame, wilted in her now.
“Bet-ty!” She clutched the other girl’s arm, and pinched it so tight that the Holly, little thorny evergreen, quivered like her namesake of the dunes in a wintry blizzard.
“I do believe it is the--mysterious--seal-hunter.”