“They don’t seem to be dropping a net,” he observes, “nor engaged about anything. That’s odd!”
Before they came to a stop he heard a murmur of voices, as of speech, a few words, exchanged between them, but too distant for him to distinguish what they had said. Now they are silent, sitting without stir; only a slight movement in the arms of the oarsman to keep the boat in its place.
All this seems strange to him observing: not less when a flood of moonlight brighter than usual falls over the boat, and he can tell by the attitude of the man in the stern, with face turned upward, that he is regarding the structure on the cliff.
He is not himself standing beside it now. Soon as becoming interested by the behaviour of the men in the boat, from its seeming eccentricity, he had glided back behind a bush, and there now crouches, an instinct prompting him to conceal himself.
Soon after he sees the boat moving on, and then for a few seconds it is out of sight, again coming under his view near the upper end of the islet, evidently setting in for the old channel. And while he watches, it enters!
As this is a sort of private way, the eyot itself being an adjunct of the ornamental grounds of Llangorren, he wonders whose boat it can be, and what its business there. By the backwash it must be making for the dock and stair; the men in it, or one of them, for the Court.
While still surprisedly conjecturing, his ears admonish him that the oars are at rest, and another stoppage has taken place. He cannot see the skiff now, as the high bank hinders. Besides, the narrow passage is arcaded over by trees still in thick foliage; and, though the moon is shining brightly above, scarce a ray reaches the surface of the water. But an occasional creak of an oar in its rowlock, and some words spoken in low tone—so low he cannot make them out—tell him that the stoppage is directly opposite the spot where he is crouching—as predatory animal in wait for its prey.
What was at first mere curiosity, and then matter of but slight surprise, is now an object of keen solicitude. For of all places in the world, to him there is none invested with greater interest than that where the boat has been brought to. Why has it stopped there? Why is it staying? For he can tell it is by the silence continuing. Above all, who are the men in it?
He asks these questions of himself, but does not stay to reason out the answers. He will best get them by his eyes; and to obtain sight of the skiff and its occupants, he glides a little way along the cliff, looking out for a convenient spot. Finding one, he drops first to his knees, then upon all fours, and crawls out to its edge. Craning his head over, but cautiously, and with a care it shall be under cover of some fern leaves, he has a view of the water below, with the boat on it—only indistinct on account of the obscurity. He can make out the figures of the two men, though not their faces, nor anything by which he may identify them—if already known. But he sees that which helps to a conjecture, at the same sharpening his apprehensions. The boat once more in motion, not moving off, but up into the little cove, where a dead body late lay! Then, as one of the men strikes a match and sets light to a lamp, lighting up his own face with that of the other opposite, he on the bank above at length recognises both.
But it is no longer a surprise to him. The presence of the skiff there, the movements of the men in it—like his own, evidently under restraint and stealthy—have prepared him for seeing whom he now sees—Captain Ryecroft and the waterman Wingate.