But what happened next was more extraordinary than before. The man suddenly sprang up, gave one glance about on all sides, then picked up the box on the seat before him and dumped it overboard. He resumed his seat, seized the oars, and began rowing furiously down the harbour. At a point some way below where he had first appeared, he ran the boat in to shore, sprang out, left the boat without tying it or dragging it up on the beach, and started off, running desperately.
“That’s a crazy man,” said Little Tim to himself—and again spoke not far from the truth, unwittingly.
“Hang the joke!” cried Tim, finally. “I wish I hadn’t done it now. It don’t seem so funny after waiting all this time. I’m going to bed, too. I guess I will catch it, just as Joe said I would.”
He went below, in the cabin of the Viking. His companions were aboard the Surprise.
Morning came, and Little Tim awoke with something disturbing his mind. Oh, yes; now that he was wide awake, he knew. It was that joke. He wished he hadn’t played it. He wished so more and more when Joe Hinman awoke and found that Jack and Henry Burns had not put in an appearance.
“You’ve made a nice mess of it, Tim,” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t be in your shoes, when Jack gets you. Like as not they’ve come down in sight of shore and seen that the yacht was gone, and have given out an alarm. The best thing we can do is to go up into the town and find them, and try to square things.”
Little Tim, looking very sober, scampered off, followed soon by the others. More puzzling than ever it became, when a search through the town failed to yield any trace of the missing yachtsmen. The boys returned to the yachts, and waited.
Somewhere near eleven o’clock there was a curious coincidence. Joe Hinman, looking off on the water, suddenly uttered an exclamation of surprise and pointed to a sailboat that was coming in.
“That’s Captain Sam’s old tub,” he said. “I know her as far as I can see her.”
But they received a greater surprise, the next moment. A man in some sort of uniform, passing along by the wharves, also uttered an exclamation and stopped short.