"There's a light, sir," he said. "See, there it is again."
"Lay her head for it, and pull!" commanded Jerry, feeling as if he were in a pirate novel. "No noise, mind!"
The light had appeared for an instant some two or three hundred feet up the shore from the point off which the cutter lay rolling. They pulled quietly for the spot, the oars sounding softly, the water lapping the bows of the boat, and the wind bringing to their ears the muffled rote as of a sand beach.
"Let her run," ordered Tab in an undertone. "Can you see the light?"
For a minute they rolled in darkness as before, and then again sighted the signal, this time straight in shore. Jerry felt his heart beat as he gave the order to run in, and a consciousness of romantic adventure, lawless and wild, was like a sweet and exhilarating flavor in his mouth. Such a deed on his native shores would have had an atmosphere of secret villany about it, but here, in alien waters, on a foreign coast, under the darkness of night, the romantic side was intensified a thousand-fold. A whimsical feeling flitted through the back of his head that he ought to be dressed differently for such an occasion; that he should have had a shaggy black beard, a red sash stuck full of pistols, and half a dozen cutlasses disposed promiscuously about his person. He was not without a fleeting consciousness that some time he might at home, to the old crowd of college boys, find a keen joy in telling of this night, and—But the light flashed out again, this time so near that the cutter lay full in the middle of the dark, fire-sprinkled path it illumined; and Jerry's entire mind was called back to the business in hand. He could in the light see the cheeks of the men in front of him as they swayed with their rowing, the brass rowlocks of the cutter, and the dripping blades of the oars. He strained his eyes toward the land, but was blinded by the glare into which he looked; and on the instant a voice, eager but subdued, hailed from the shore some twenty feet away.
"Hallo! Are you there, Mr. Taberman?"
"Here all right," answered Jerry. "Eyes in the boat!" he added sharply to the men, every one of whom except Dave had turned to look ashore. "Three good strokes now: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!... Let her run!"
The nose of the cutter ground on a sand-beach; the bowsman sprang ashore with the painter and held her, while Jerry clambered forward, steadying himself with a hand on the shoulder of the rowers. On leaping to the land, he was confronted by Mr. Wrenmarsh. That gentleman shifted the lantern he held from his right hand to his left, and shook hands with Taberman fervently.
"You're just in time," he said hurriedly. "We haven't a second to lose. The boxes are right here on the edge of the grass. Come on with your men. It'll take four of them for that biggest box."
Jerry called the four men who were nearest, and telling the rest to stand by, he hurried up the beach. In the sand, by the light of the lantern with which the archæologist came after him, he saw the print of wheels leading up to a pile of rude wooden cases. Three of them were of moderate size, but the fourth looked to Tab huge in the semi-darkness.