They ate as if they hadn’t tasted food for a week, cleaned up, and trooped out to the front door. The squall was over, a light wind was blowing—not enough to ruffle the water—and stars were beginning to shine in a cloudless sky.
The Argo’s sail was raised, and the skipper sent her across the bay to the place where the canoe had upset. Search soon found the canoe rocking in the surf on a sandy beach of the mainland. She was righted and her painter fastened to a cleat at the stern of the sailboat, and the Argo took a course alongshore. Presently, rounding a point, the crew saw a bonfire at Camp Amoussock lighting a stretch of woods.
They all went ashore, and found the Camp just about to start out on a search for the missing boys. The visitors had to stay a while and be entertained by their hosts, and it was not until the moon was high in the sky that the Argo again pushed her nose across the water, a southernly breeze filling her sail.
As they came abreast of the western end of their island another sailboat, looking like a great white moth in the moonlight, went scudding away over the silver sea.
“Hello,” said Ben, “what is she doing here? Poaching on our preserves, it seems to me.”
“The harbor’s free to everyone,” said David. “I don’t suppose even Crusty Christopher objected to people sailing boats on the water, if they didn’t try to land on his shore.”
“Lanky knew there was some old yarn about the Cotterell house,” Ben continued, paying no attention to David’s remark. “And if he knew, why shouldn’t others?”
“Well,” said Tom, “what’s the answer?”
“The answer is that we’re likely to have callers. Not the kind that leave their visiting-cards, but the sort that snoop around when nobody’s home.”
“Thieves?” questioned David.