And all this time Captain Sparkle had been compelled to sit idly by, a spectator of the downfall of his followers. However, when Nick Carter looked toward him he was smiling.
“Well, captain,” said the detective, “what do you think about being free now?”
“I think,” replied the pirate, with a broader smile, “that the moment will have to be postponed because of unavoidable circumstances.”
“Quite right,” said the detective.
The ten men captured by the detective, assisted by Maxwell Kane and Chick, proved to be the entire complement of the pirate crew; they included every man who acted under the orders of Captain Sparkle.
Seven of these comprised the crew of the Shadow and three were those who remained on shore at the strange harbor where she was in the habit of lying by, out of the sight and the ken of the world at large.
And this harbor was a strange one, indeed. It lies considerably to the eastward of Hempstead Bay, and any one of those who read can readily discover the spot if he will take the trouble to journey there.
There is a place where boulders and rocks and reefs jut out of the water at low tide, capped at the outer end of the fringe by one huge one, so that the general appearance of the formation has led the residents along the shore near there to name them the Sow and Pigs. Between these two projections of rocks is a deep and narrow way, through which a vessel built after the model of the Shadow may pass at certain conditions of the tides.
At the base of it, or against the shore, it dips into the bluff somewhat more than a hundred feet, with a high sand-bank on either side; a barren, abrupt, precipitous bank fringed by stunted verdure, which grows down almost to the water’s edge.
It was here that the detective discovered the Shadow to be moored. An excavation had been made in the bank on one side, and within it were found the effects taken from the Goalong and the Harkaway; on board the cruiser, of course, were still all the articles stolen from the Aurora.