harmless seaman's rig and inquired at all the yards down
the river. I drew blank at fifteen, but at the
sixteenth--Jacobson's--I learned that the Aurora had been handed over
to them two days ago by a wooden-legged man, with some trivial
directions as to her rudder. 'There ain't naught amiss with her
rudder,' said the foreman. 'There she lies, with the red streaks.' At
that moment who should come down but Mordecai Smith, the missing owner?
He was rather the worse for liquor. I should not, of course, have
known him, but he bellowed out his name and the name of his launch. 'I
want her to-night at eight o'clock,' said he,--'eight o'clock sharp,
mind, for I have two gentlemen who won't be kept waiting.' They had
evidently paid him well, for he was very flush of money, chucking
shillings about to the men. I followed him some distance, but he
subsided into an ale-house: so I went back to the yard, and, happening
to pick up one of my boys on the way, I stationed him as a sentry over
the launch. He is to stand at water's edge and wave his handkerchief
to us when they start. We shall be lying off in the stream, and it
will be a strange thing if we do not take men, treasure, and all."

"You have planned it all very neatly, whether they are the right men or
not," said Jones; "but if the affair were in my hands I should have had
a body of police in Jacobson's Yard, and arrested them when they came
down."

"Which would have been never. This man Small is a pretty shrewd
fellow. He would send a scout on ahead, and if anything made him
suspicious lie snug for another week."

"But you might have stuck to Mordecai Smith, and so been led to their
hiding-place," said I.

"In that case I should have wasted my day. I think that it is a hundred
to one against Smith knowing where they live. As long as he has liquor
and good pay, why should he ask questions? They send him messages what
to do. No, I thought over every possible course, and this is the best."

While this conversation had been proceeding, we had been shooting the
long series of bridges which span the Thames. As we passed the City
the last rays of the sun were gilding the cross upon the summit of St.
Paul's. It was twilight before we reached the Tower.

"That is Jacobson's Yard," said Holmes, pointing to a bristle of masts
and rigging on the Surrey side. "Cruise gently up and down here under
cover of this string of lighters." He took a pair of night-glasses