Mr. Carleton had stopped abruptly, straining his eyes at the yacht ahead.
“Strange,” he muttered softly, resuming his sculling and watching the yacht more eagerly, “I could have sworn that was a light in the cabin. If ’twas a light, though, it must have been in one of the other boats.”
He proceeded vigorously on his way.
At this very moment, however, there came another surprise to Mr. Carleton, greater than the other.
Henry Burns, going down to the shore and sculling out to the Viking, had found the cabin unlocked, as he had recalled; but everything was safe. It was comfortable aboard the yacht, and he decided to remain, planning to go ashore early in the morning in time for breakfast at the hotel. He sat up for some little time, however, and it was, indeed, his cabin light that Mr. Carleton had seen, the moment before he had extinguished it, to turn in for the night.
Mr. Carleton, sculling on now cautiously toward the Viking, suddenly heard a noise aboard the yacht. He paused again, then seated himself quickly at the stern of the skiff, as a boyish figure emerged from the companionway of the Viking and came out on deck. It was Henry Burns, taking one last look at the anchor-line, and a general look around, before he went off to sleep.
There was nothing within sight to excite Henry Burns’s interest. Everything was all right aboard the Viking. There were the few lights still left, up in the village streets. There were a few yachts anchored at a little distance. There was the dark shore-line, with its tumbling sheds huddled together here and there. And, also, there was the lone figure of a man, seated at the stern of a small skiff, sculling slowly down past, some distance away. It was all clear and serene in Henry Burns’s eyes, and he went below, rolled in on his berth, and went to sleep.
The lone figure that Henry Burns had seen in the skiff had ceased sculling now. He seemed to have no destination in view. The oar was drawn aboard and the skiff drifted with the tide. What the man in the skiff was thinking of—what he contemplated—no one could know but he.
But he resumed his sculling, very softly and slowly, after the lapse of a full half-hour. Noiselessly he described a circle about the yacht, drawing in nearer and nearer. Then he paused irresolutely, once more, and waited. Only he could know what would happen next. Perhaps he, too, was racked with uncertainty and irresolution. For once he seized the oar and worked the skiff up to within twenty feet of the gently swinging yacht. Then he paused again and waited.
Henry Burns’s sleep might, perchance, have been troubled could he have dreamed of the man now, waiting and watching just off the starboard bow of the Viking, while he slept within. But no dreams disturbed his sound slumbers.