."

The clerk sighed and anxiously frowned. Skipper George, infected by
this melancholy and regret--for the skipper loved the trim,
fleet-footed, well-found _Black Eagle_--Skipper George sighed, too.

"Time t' turn in, Tommy," said he.

The skipper had done a good stroke of business ashore. Sir Archibald
had indeed ordered him to "drive" the _Black Eagle_.

* * * * *

And in the rising wind of the next day while the _Spot Cash_ lay at
anchor in Tilt Cove and Archie's messages were fleeting over the wire
to St. John's--the _Black Eagle_ was taken to sea. Ashore they advised
her skipper to stick to shelter; but the skipper would have none of
their warnings. Out went the _Black Eagle_ under shortened sail. The
wind rose; a misty rain gathered; fog came in from the far, wide open.
But the _Black Eagle_ sped straight out to sea. Beyond the Pony
Islands--a barren, out-of-the-way little group of rocks--she beat
aimlessly to and fro: now darting away, now approaching. But there was
no eye to observe her peculiar behaviour. Before night fell--driven by
the gale--she found poor shelter in a seaward cove. Here she hung
grimly to her anchorage through the night. Skipper and crew, as
morning approached, felt the wind fall and the sea subside.

Dawn came in a thick fog.

"What do you make of it, Tommy?" the skipper asked.

The clerk stared into the mist. "Pony Islands, skipper, sure enough,"
said he.

"Little Pony or Big?"

In a rift of the mist a stretch of rocky coast lay exposed.

"Little Pony," said the clerk.

"Ay," the skipper agreed: "an' 'twas Little Pony, easterly shore," he
added, his voice dwindling away, "that Tom Tulk advised."

"An' about the tenth o' the month," Tommy Bull added.

CHAPTER XXX

_In Which the Fog Thins and the Crew of the "Spot Cash"
Fall Foul of a Dark Plot_

Morning came to the _Spot Cash_, too--morning with a thick mist:
morning with a slow-heaving sea and a vanished wind. Bill o' Burnt Bay
looked about--stared in every direction from the listed little
schooner--but could find no familiar landmark. They were in some snug
harbour, however, of a desolate and uninhabited coast. There were no
cottages on the hills; there were no fish-flakes and stages by the
waterside. Beyond the tickle--that wide passage through which the
schooner had driven in the dark--the sea was heaving darkly under the
gray mist. Barren, rugged rock fell