'Gone up Fuller's Creek,' said Chippy to himself, and sculled harder than ever. Fuller's Creek was a wide, deep backwater, never used nowadays for any active purpose, though occasionally an old hulk was towed there, and left to rot. Chippy supposed that his men had pulled up to the very top of the creek, where there was a deserted landing-stage, and he put all the strength of his wiry frame into driving his boat down to the creek and up it as hard as he could go.
He entered the broad, dark water-mouth, for the moon was not yet shining into the creek, and sculled into its shadow. Half-way up, a dark bulk loomed high in his path, and he swung the nose of his craft to port, to pass round the Three Spires, an old barquentine left to rot in Fuller's Creek out of the way of the river traffic.
The Three Spires, named from the three chief churches of the town, whose steeples rose high above the roofs of Bardon, was a broad, roomy old craft, and had carried many a good cargo in her time. But she was now past her work, and, her spars, rigging, and raffle all torn away, her hulk lay abandoned in Fuller's Creek, for the breakers-up did not want her.
It was mere luck that Chippy threw his skiff's nose over to port, for he was bearing straight for the Three Spires as she lay end on, and port or starboard was all one in point of distance as regarded sculling round her. But he threw his bow over to port, and thereby made a striking discovery. For beside the great bulk lay a small bulk, and the latter was a boat swinging to the shattered taffrail of the Three Spires by her painter. Chippy checked his way, and the two boats floated side by side on the quiet, dark backwater, with the hull of the deserted barquentine towering above them against the sky.
Chippy threw out a long breath of immense surprise. 'They ain't gone on to the stage,' he thought. 'They're here. They're on this old un. This is their boat.' He heard movements on board the barquentine, and he sculled a few swift strokes which sent him forward under the thick shadow of her broad stern, where he checked her way again.
The sounds were those of men who scrambled up her forward companion, and at the next moment Chippy's cars told him that they had approached the side of the Teasel, and one was swinging himself into the boat.
'This is the last,' he heard a voice say. 'We'll get it down, and have a look at what you've picked out this time.'
'One knows what's in the bundles; t'other don't,' reflected Chippy. 'They mean to open 'em. That'll keep 'em busy a bit.'
He waited until his ears assured him that the men had gone down the companion again, then sculled back to the point where their boat floated below the port taffrail. This was the only point at which the deck of the vessel could be gained. The Three Spires lay on the mud, heeled over to port, and everywhere else her sides were high, smooth, and unclimbable.
And now Chippy made a mistake—a great scouting mistake: he did too much; and the scout who does too much blunders just as surely as he who does too little. Had Chippy sculled quietly away with the ample information he had already gained, the thieves might have been taken red-handed. But he burned to put, as he thought, a finishing touch to his night's work. He wanted to see what was going on in the forepeak of the Three Spires, and he wanted to see the faces of the men; it was almost certain that he would recognise people so familiar with Quay Flat and Elliotts' warehouse. He took the painter of his tiny craft, and threw two easy half-hitches round the painter of the large boat. He could cast his rope loose in a second, and it would be ample hold to keep his craft from drifting away. He laid the sweep where it would be ready to his hand if he had to make a rush, then swung himself up to the taffrail by the rope which the thieves had fastened there for their own use.