The water was pleasantly warm. They had not had a bathe for some time, and here it seemed the perfection of bathing. There was no surf; the water was as smooth as glass, and gave the quiet of a lake with the salt water of the sea. Phil was the best swimmer of them all, and struck out boldly to cross the cove. The others followed. On reaching the middle, Phil turned off in another direction, to a point on the shore where he saw a curious rock that looked like a cave.
“Boys,” he cried, “there’s a cave; let’s go and see it.”
He swam on, and the others followed. They soon reached the place, and climbed up over the rough rock, to see what they supposed to be the cave. To their disappointment, it was not a cave at all, but only a slight recess of no depth in particular.
“I thought we might find some traces of the buccaneers,” said Phil, in a tone of vexation. “We’re not in luck to-day.”
“O, yes, we are,” said Tom, cheerfully. “The discovery of that mound is a good deal.”
“Yes; but then there’s that public road,” said Bruce.
“O, we’ll work it yet. Only wait till we get our tent up.”
Once more the boys plunged in the water, and played, and sported, and dived, and floated, and swam this way and that way; now on their backs, and again in their natural positions. At length they began to feel tired, and directed their course towards the shore.
Tom was last, swimming along leisurely enough, and thinking about the mound and its hidden treasure,—as were all the other boys,—when suddenly he became aware of a movement in the water behind him, as of some living thing swimming. It was not any of the boys. They were all ahead; and it could not be Turnbull. It was not a man at all.
In an instant a terrible thought came to him, that sent a pang of dreadful anguish through his inmost soul.