“It’s a chance,” he said, growing quite excited. “Shall we go?”
“Yes.” She did not hesitate. “I’ll bring father’s gun.”
“Gun? Oh, certainly!”
“You know,” she supplemented, “I am really a good shot. And we may need it.” They had reason later to regret not having used it on the offensive instead of on the defensive as they had feared they might be obliged to do.
They went to the island half an hour early. In a narrow space, just wide enough to afford them a place of concealment, jammed between two huge squares of limestone with another as their resting place and a fourth forming a sort of fortification before them, they waited while Curlie’s watch ticked the half hour away.
The night was chill. There was no moon. For all that, a sort of half light reflected from the city’s street lights made it possible for them to see a moving object at some distance.
At exactly the hour of ten an object appeared on the narrow stretch of sand that lay beyond the breakwater.
From Curlie’s position it was impossible for him to tell whether it was a man or some prowling dog. He believed it to be a dog.
The girl had placed a big, blue, long-barreled revolver on the rocks before them. The manner in which her nervous fingers gripped it, together with the rapid beating of her heart which he could feel through her shoulder pressed against his own, told him plainer than words that she believed it to be a man.
Some twenty feet of tumbled rocks lay between them and the sand. Having crossed the sand, the figure proceeded to clamber over the rocks. They lay directly in his path. Curlie drew in a long breath. With her free hand, the girl gripped his arm.