"We shall have to wait here until the dawn comes," I remarked. "We can't find our way through the wood in this darkness—I can't even recollect the path, if there was one, by which they brought us down here from the ruins. You had better sit in the boat and make yourself comfortable with those rugs. Considerate of them, at any rate, to provide us with those!"
She got into the boat again and I wrapped one rug round her knees and placed another about her shoulders.
"And you?" she asked.
"I must do a bit of amateur boot-making," I answered. "I'm going to cut this third rug into strips and bind them about my feet—can't walk over stones and thorns and thistles, to say nothing of the moorland track, without some protection."
I got out my pocket-knife and sitting on the side of the boat began my task; for a few minutes she watched me, in silence.
"What does all this mean!" she said at last, suddenly. "Why have they let us go?"
"No idea," I answered. "But—things have happened since Baxter said good-night to us. Listen!" And I went on to tell her of all that had taken place on the yawl since the return of the Frenchman and his Chinese companion. "What does it look like?" I concluded. "Doesn't it seem as if the Chinese intend foul play to those two?"
"Do you mean—that they intend to—to murder them?" she asked in a half-frightened whisper. "Surely not that?"
"I don't see that a man who has lived the life that Baxter has can expect anything but a violent end," I replied callously. "Yes, I suppose that's what I do mean. I think the Chinese mean to get rid of the two others and get away with the swag—cleverly enough, no doubt."
"Horrible!" she murmured.