"I'll swim after her," said the Whistler, watching the dory drift slowly off the sands.
Soon Shagarach's eyes opened and his lips muttered indistinctly. Presently he moved his arms. How cool the air was! He had often longed to lie like this on a soft, white sand, and let the shallow water play over him, while he pierced with his gaze the deep blue sky. But the stars were above him now—not pendulous tongues of flame such as throbbed in the oriental heavens of his childhood, but the smoldering embers of the northern night, paling in the moonlight. And whose were those two strange faces thrust darkly over the golden disk?
"Are you better, mister?" It was unmistakably an earthly tone, the voice and accent of the city gamin, but warm with that humaneness of heart which a ragged jacket shelters as often as a velvet one.
"Take my coat, mister. You're shivering," said the Whistler, suiting action to word, so that Shagarach found himself embraced by a garment, not dry by any means, but more grateful than the soaked apparel which was chilling his skin.
"If you can get up, mister, and run around, it'll warm you. Toot'll be here soon with some whisky."
Shagarach gathered his strength to rise, but the effort was fruitless.
"How did I come here?" he gasped.
"You fell over the bridge, right near us. We were fishing for smelts and rowed over and saved you."
"That was fortunate. I thank you," murmured Shagarach.
"Can't yer swim?" asked Turkey in a pitying tone, but Shagarach was preoccupied with his recollections. He had made a mistake of judgment. He should have declined the rendezvous. But who and what was the assailant, the leering oaf he had passed on the pier? Was it some agent of the Arnolds? The anonymous letters pointed to that source. They were all seamed with allusions to the trial of Robert Floyd. And they formed his only clew. Stay, the hat he still clutched in his hand. He raised it feebly—for the mental energies of the lawyer were more elastic than the physical—and his teeth were still chattering though his brain was clear. It was a round, rimless cap of a common pattern.