y.

"There's Nicholas," she exclaimed, "blowing on the conch! They don't
know where I am; I'd better go in."

A small, evident panic took possession of her; the shiver in her voice
swelled.

"No, don't come," she added. "I'll be quicker without you." She made
her way over the wharf to the shore, but there paused, "I suppose
you'll be going soon?"

"Tomorrow probably," he answered.

On the ketch Halvard had gone below for the night. The yacht swayed
slightly to an unseen swell; the riding light moved backward and
forward, its ray flickering over the glassy water. John Woolfolk
brought his bedding from the cabin and, disposing it on deck, lay with
his wakeful dark face set against the far, multitudinous worlds.

V

In the morning Halvard proposed a repainting of the engine.

"The Florida air," he said, "eats metal overnight." And the ketch
remained anchored.

Later in the day Woolfolk sounded the water casks cradled in the
cockpit, and, when they answered hollow, directed his man with regard
to their refilling. They drained a cask. Halvard put it on the tender
and pulled in to the beach. There he shouldered the empty container
and disappeared among the trees.

Woolfolk was forward, preparing a chain hawser for coral anchorages,
when he saw Halvard tramping shortly back over the sand. He entered
the tender and, with a vicious shove, rowed with a powerful,
vindictive sweep toward the ketch. The cask evidently had been left
behind. He made the tender fast and swung aboard with his notable
agility.

"There's a damn idiot in that house," he declared, in a surprising
departure from his customary detached manner.

"Explain yourself," Woolfolk demanded shortly.

"But I'm going back after him," the sailor stubbornly proceeded. "I'll
turn any knife out of his hand." It was evident that he was laboring
under an intense growing excitement and anger.

"The only idiot's not on land," Woolfolk told him. "Where's the water
cask you took ashore?"

"Broken."

"How?"

"I'll tell you fast enough. There was nobody about when I went up to
the house, although there was a chair rocking on the porch as if a
person had just left. I knocked at the door; it was open, and I was
certain that I heard someone inside, but nobody answered. Then after a
bit I went around back. The kitchen was open, too, and no one in
sight. I saw the water cistern and thought I'd fill up, when you could
say something afterward. I did, and w