“That’s queer,” he said. “Tim, you take the tender and go aboard, while I hold the Surprise where she is. Don’t be a fool, though, and blow any horn. If they’re as tired as we are, they’ll be mad enough to throw you overboard.”
Tim Reardon made no reply, as he rowed alongside the Viking, but a mischievous twinkle danced in his eyes.
When he had stepped softly aboard, however, and had crept down into the cabin, he darted swiftly on deck again.
“Joe,” he called, “this is great! They’ve gone ashore. And they must be coming back soon. That’s why they’ve left the sail up.”
Then Little Tim Reardon, scampering forward, did a strange thing. Tugging away at the rope, he brought the anchor off from bottom and clear to the surface of the water. Taking a few turns of the rope around the bitts, to secure it, he darted astern, seized the wheel of the Viking, and put her under way.
“Here, you Tim, quit that!” cried Joe Hinman in disgust, from the stern of the Surprise. “You don’t want to be too free with your tomfoolery with Jack and Henry Burns. Just remember whose yacht we’re sailing. They’ll be mad clean through, too. It’s no joke to think you’ve lost a fine yacht.”
Little Tim only chuckled derisively, realizing that his larger companion could not compel obedience from the deck of another boat.
“I’m doing this,” he said. “We don’t get a chance to play a joke like this on Henry Burns every day. Wouldn’t he do it quick, himself, though? Besides, I’m not going far—only up around the end of that long wharf. We can watch from there and see what happens.”
“You’re a meddlesome little monkey; that’s what you are,” exclaimed Joe Hinman, too sleepy and weary to see fun in anything. “You’ll catch it from Jack—and you’ll get what you deserve.”
And yet Joe Hinman, so long as somebody else would smart for it, had just enough interest in the plot to follow along with the Surprise. Together, the two yachts turned in under the lee of a long wharf, less than an eighth of a mile ahead, lowered the sails so they should not be visible, and came to anchor.