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A dismal outlook in truth. Moreover it was beginning to rain. Mab sheltered herself under her sunshade and began to laugh. "It's just skittles to what it might be," she said consolingly. But Merefleet did not respond. He knew that the wind was rising with every second, and already the little boat tipped and tossed with perilous buoyancy. Mab still held the rudder-lines.
"Of course," said Riddell, as he and Wyndham strolled down by the river that afternoon, "now that your mystery is all cleared up we are as far off as ever finding out who really cut the rudder-lines." "Yes. My knife is the only clue, and that proves nothing, for I was always leaving it about, or lending it, or losing it. I don't suppose I kept it one entire week in my pocket all the time I had it.
With a slight movement of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rudder-lines, directed the rower to take the backwater. The creeping tide of light gained and gained, and now they could see the colour of the flowers that gemmed the water's edge. 'Clearer and nearer still, cried the Rat joyously. 'Now you must surely hear it! Ah at last I see you do!
The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty, sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband, kept an eager look out.
"Come along here, Mr Vandean," cried the lieutenant from the bow end of the boat; and Mark shudderingly left the coxswain making fast the wrist of the dead black to one of the rudder-lines, and joined his brother officer, easily passing from one to the other of the men as they half lay on the bottom, resting and clinging by one hand to the keel. "Cheer up, my lad!" said the lieutenant.
The Captain rowed; Pixie sat in the stern and pulled the rudder-lines according to instructions, with occasional lapses of memory when she mistook her right hand for her left, and was surprised to find the boat going in an opposite direction from what had been intended; the little girls sat on either side, as yet too mindful of their promises of good behaviour even to splash the water.
"Not exactly!" said Gilks, bitterly; "but I've come round to letting the cad alone. What's the good of bothering?" "And you mean to say you'd let him go on knowing who the fellow is who cut the rudder-lines of our boat, and not make him say who it is?" "I expect that's all stuff about his knowing at all," said Gilks. "Not it! Between you and me, I fancy he's had a tip from somewhere." "He has?
Side-steps were lowered and an immaculate toy boat swung out; a sailor occupied the rowing-thwart, while one of the yachtsmen stepped into the stern and took the rudder-lines. The boat sped straight toward the Barracouta, which grew dingy and mean by contrast. Presently the strangers were near. The yachtsman touched his cap.
Just then Dance the coxswain made his way to Mark, and without a word seized the wrist of the black, and in a low growl bade the young officer rest. "Soon as you can, my lad," he whispered, "reach down and get hold of one of the rudder-lines. I'll make him fast to that." "But his head it must be kept above water," whispered back Mark in a choking voice, for he felt hysterical and strange.
Then there was a quick thrust off by the coxswain, the oars fell on either side with a splash, and the young midshipman stood up, balancing himself on the thwart in the stern-sheets, directing the officer who held the rudder-lines how to steer, for far-away on the moonlit water, when the swell rose high, he could still see the dark head and the rippling made by the swimmer struggling for his life.
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