"What if she should do that?" asked the owner of the stray yacht.
"We are in the dark as to the intentions of her captain; and everything depends upon them," I answered.
"What can his intentions possibly be?" inquired the colonel, knitting his brow, as he recurred once more to the well-worn topic for at least the twentieth time.
"It is quite impossible to conjecture his motives. He has either made a mistake in regard to his instructions, or he means to run away with the Islander."
"What mistake could he have made in regard to his instructions?" demanded the colonel, who had not admitted the possibility for an instant of any mistake. "Last night I wrote his instructions to be ready to sail at seven, and sent them off to him by the young man who was with you."
"Did you write seven this morning, sir?" I asked.
"I think I did, though I should not be willing to swear to it," replied the colonel, looking a little blank at the idea of such a mistake.
"If you simply said seven, he may have taken it to mean seven this evening," I suggested.
"He could not have thought we intended to go down the river and cross the bar in the night."
"I should say not; but Captain Blastblow is a very brilliant man, and has been around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope so many times that he ought to know what he is about," I replied, letting out a little of my pique at the commander of the Islander for his implications against me.