The wind howled over their heads with increasing velocity and Sidney thought involuntarily of the snugness of Miss Letty’s buggy. Miss Letty was probably almost to Truro now. And Aunt Achsa thought she was with her!
“Is—is the boat tied tight?” asked Pola; and Lav assured her that it was. “The wind could get a lot worse and you’d be as safe out here as in your bed at home.”
After a long while Mart muttered, “What’s that?” The others leaned forward in the blackness of the cabin. They had all felt rather than heard a soft thud as though something had touched the side of the boat. And in a few moments heavy footsteps came straight toward the fo’castle.
“Oh, will they come here?” breathed Pola, shaking. And for answer Sidney caught Pola’s arm with a warning clutch.
For an instant it seemed that the footsteps must descend to the cabin. But at the companionway they halted. A voice came, heavy and thick.
“I tell you it ain’t safe to take it off now. They got a man on Rockman’s and another on Teal’s and no knowin’ how many in the bay! Every constable on the Cape’s here, damn them! And old Davies’s been ’round all day and he ain’t rigged up for any picnic!”
“If we don’t take it off tonight Lav Green may find it—or that girl—”
At that someone laughed, horribly. “Huh—him! Why we could twist every crooked bone in his body until he wouldn’t know ’em. Him—ha, that’s a joke! Why, a look ’ud scare him to a pulp. The girl, too.”
Sidney, reaching her hand out instinctively, caught Lavender’s and held it tight. She felt the writhing of his body.
A new voice broke in above them. “I got a better scheme. Listen. We’ll—” But the voices suddenly died to silence; the footsteps moved away.