eserted barquentine towering above them against the sky.

Chippy threw out a long breath of immense surprise. 'They ain't gone
on to the stage,' he thought. 'They're here. They're on this old un.
This is their boat.' He heard movements on board the barquentine, and
he sculled a few swift strokes which sent him forward under the thick
shadow of her broad stern, where he checked her way again.

The sounds were those of men who scrambled up her forward companion,
and at the next moment Chippy's cars told him that they had approached
the side of the Teasel, and one was swinging himself into the boat.

'This is the last,' he heard a voice say. 'We'll get it down, and have
a look at what you've picked out this time.'

'One knows what's in the bundles; t'other don't,' reflected Chippy.
'They mean to open 'em. That'll keep 'em busy a bit.'

He waited until his ears assured him that the men had gone down the
companion again, then sculled back to the point where their boat
floated below the port taffrail. This was the only point at which the
deck of the vessel could be gained. The _Three Spires_ lay on the mud,
heeled over to port, and everywhere else her sides were high, smooth,
and unclimbable.

And now Chippy made a mistake--a great scouting mistake: he did too
much; and the scout who does too much blunders just as surely as he who
does too little. Had Chippy sculled quietly away with the ample
information he had already gained, the thieves might have been taken
red-handed. But he burned to put, as he thought, a finishing touch to
his night's work. He wanted to see what was going on in the forepeak
of the _Three Spires_, and he wanted to see the faces of the men; it
was almost certain that he would recognise people so familiar with Quay
Flat and Elliotts' warehouse. He took the painter of his tiny craft,
and threw two easy half-hitches round the painter of the large boat.
He could cast his rope loose in a second, and it would be ample hold to
keep his craft from drifting away. He laid the sweep where it would be
ready to his hand if he had to make a rush, then swung himself up to
the taffrail by the rope which the thieves had fastened there for their
own use.

'They're forward,' murmured Chippy to himself, and crept without a
sound along the slanting deck. His stockings were still in his
pockets; his boots he had left in the skiff.

The companion-hatch was broken, and the men had gone up and down
through