“You’ve got to take the blame for this, Tim,” said Joe Hinman, as they waited together on deck.
“I’ll do it,” chuckled Tim Reardon. “I like a joke as well as Henry Burns does. He’ll take it all right, too. You see if he don’t.”
They woke the two boys who were sleeping in the cabin of the Surprise—to see the fun. George Baker and Allan Harding came on deck, sleepy and grumbling. Nor did the joke take on a more hilarious aspect, as the time went by and no Jack Harvey and no Henry Burns put in an appearance.
“I’m going to turn in,” said Joe Hinman, at length. “You can have all the fun to yourself, Tim.”
He went below, the two other boys following his example.
Little Tim, himself, began to lose heart in the joke—when, suddenly, in the faint gray of the approaching dawn, he espied a boat coming out from shore toward where the Viking had lain. It was four o’clock. The boat was a small skiff. There was only one person in it. Whoever he was, he was rowing furiously. There seemed to be a box of some sort on the seat in front of him.
Suddenly the man ceased rowing. His head was turned for a moment. Then he sprang to his feet in the small skiff, with a jump that almost upset the craft. He peered wildly about him and seemed to be rubbing his eyes, like a person in a dream or one rudely aroused from sleep. Then he sat down and rowed a way down the harbour—then across to one side—then in toward shore again.
“That isn’t either Jack or Henry Burns,” said Tim Reardon; “and yet he acts as though he had lost something—his head, I guess.”
Little Tim was nearer correct than he knew.
“He looks familiar, too,” thought Tim Reardon. “What man does he look like? I can’t think.”