would be
quiet. I wonder whether you can be silent in the sight of
night-fishing."

"To be sure," said Oddo, disposed to be angry, and only kept from it by
the thought of last night. He helped to bring the skiff into the shadow
of the overhanging rocks, and only spoke once more, to whisper that the
fishing-boat was drifting down with the tide, and that he thought their
cove lay between them and the fishing-party.

It was so. As the skiff rounded the point of the promontory, Oddo
pointed out what appeared like a mere dark chasm in the high
perpendicular wall of rock that bounded the waters. This chasm still
looked so narrow, on approaching it, that Erica hesitated to push her
skiff into it, till certain that there was no one there. Oddo, however,
was so clear, that she might safely do this, so noiseless was their
rowing, and it was so plain that there was no footing on the rocks by
which he might enter to explore, that in a sort of desperation, and
seeing nothing else to be done, Erica agreed. She wished it had been
summer, when either of them might have learned what they wanted by
swimming. This was now out of the question; and stealthily therefore
she pulled her little craft into the deepest shadow, and crept into the
cove.

At a little distance from the entrance it widened; but it was a wonder
to Erica that even Oddo's eyes should have seen Hund moor his boat here
from the other side of the fiord; though the fiord was not more than a
gunshot over in this part. Oddo himself wondered, till he recalled how
the sun was shining down into the chasm at the time. By starlight the
outline of all that the cove contained might be seen; the outline of the
boat, among other things. There she lay! But there was something about
her which was unpleasant enough. There were three men in her.

What was to be done bow? Here was the very worst danger that Erica had
feared--worse than finding the boat gone--worse than meeting it in the
wide fiord. What was to be done?

There was nothing for it but to do nothing--to lie perfectly still in
the shadow, ready, however, to push out on the first movement of the
boat to leave the cove; for, though the canoe might remain unnoticed at
present, it was impossible that anybody could pass out of the cove
without seeing her. In such a case, there would be nothing for it but a
race--a race for which Erica and Oddo held themselves prepared, without
any mutual explanation; for they dar