Suddenly, Molly gave a low growl.
“Quiet, little girl!” exclaimed Peter.
But the pup refused to keep still. Clambering up the three broad steps leading from the saloon to the cockpit, she changed her growl to a succession of shrill barks of defiance.
“What’s up, I wonder?” remarked Heavitree, coming back to earth, or rather to his floating home. “Are the others returning?”
“Don’t think so,” replied Peter, preparing to go on deck. “Molly’s welcome is very different from that.”
On gaining the cockpit Craddock stared in bewilderment. It was some moments before he grew accustomed to the change from the well lighted cabin to the faint moonlight. When he did he was all the more puzzled, for, instead of land showing a few hundred yards to starboard, there was nothing but an expanse of sea dotted with the flashing light of numerous buoys. Then he looked to port. There was the land—the low-lying ground to the east of the entrance of Newtown River. He had completely ignored the fact that the Kestrel had swung to the young flood tide.
“What is it, Molly?” he asked.
The pup, crouching with her forepaws planted against the low rail, was barking furiously at a dark object floating in the water at less than ten yards from the yacht’s bows. In the faint moonlight Craddock saw that it was a basket drifting bottom upwards.
“That’s nothing, pup,” declared the lad. “Haven’t you seen a drifting basket before?”
But Molly would not be silenced. She seemed to be fascinated by the derelict wickerwork.