A few hundred yards back Robert came upon them. And now not a minute was lost in setting our little boat in the water. The moon lay a timid light on the bay by the time we had come out of the inlet.
"There!" cried Robert, pointing to the east.
Barely a half mile away we made out an object on the water.
"He's going down the bay," I observed, "not across to the Twin Hills."
"Well, let's keep him in sight," said Norris, "now that we've got our peepers on him at last."
"He'll see us if we go too fast," cautioned Robert.
A camouflage for our boat was suggested. So we hurried to the shore, and six pairs of hands quickly harvested an abundance of reeds and grasses. With this we wove a screen, as for duck-stalking. And with the shore for a background, it would have taken a sharper eye than a human's to distinguish us. Fortunately, the moon, being but a thin, fading crescent, gave a rather imperfect light.
Now we moved at a swift pace down the shore, Norris and Marat at the oars. And so we gained on Duran, who was out nearer the middle of the bay, little thinking that his plans were gaun agley, with his enemies hanging on his tail in spite of all his devices.
Nearly every eye was on that canoe and its paddler, and barely a word spoken till we had navigated almost a mile of the bay.
"Now where is that skunk making for, I wonder?" said Norris, resting on his oar and peering through the screen.