“I can’t wait to get in.” Most certainly Jed Starrow, had he been listening, could not have guessed how closely Nemesis pressed upon his heels!
Lavender pulled up alongside of the Arabella and deliberately made the boat fast.
“We got to act as though we haven’t found the knife, y’see,” he warned. “As though we were going just swimming.”
In her eagerness to board the Arabella Sidney stumbled. Lavender had to clutch her to keep her from tumbling into the water.
“Oh!” They both cried in one sound as they clambered to the deck—for the knife was gone!
“Well, that means they’d been on the Arabella. Jed Starrow dropped that knife and he missed it and came back to look for it!”
“Lav, I believe they’ve hidden their treasure on the Arabella!” Sidney still reverted to the more romantic terms of buccaneering. “Let’s look for it now!”
“With ’em watching maybe from the Puritan? I guess not. We got to go ahead and swim the way we always do, Sid. Don’t let’s even appear to be talking about anything. Come on, I’ll beat you in!”
For the space of the few minutes while the water closed about her with delicious coolness Sidney forgot everything in an intoxication of delight. Presently she came back to the Arabella and climbed aboard with a sigh of utter content. “Thank goodness I haven’t any complexes,” she laughed, shaking the salt drops from her bobbed head. “And now what?”
Lavender pulled on the light sweater he had worn over his bathing suit.