reason for stopping the
"Restless" in a hurry.

As the young commander bounded forward the steady ray of his own
searchlight showed him that the seventy-footer had also stopped her
headway.

Hank was still at the wheel, but young Dawson was beside him on the
bridge deck.

"There they go--dropping their anchor overboard," cried Joe, pointing.
"The water's shallow along this coast, of course."

"We'll move right in, between that boat and the shore, and drop
anchor, too," decided Captain Halstead, taking the wheel and reaching
for the engine control. He sent the "Restless" slowly forward into
place, then shut off headway, ordering:

"Joe, you and Hank get our anchor over. Dalton can't get anything or
anybody ashore, now, without our knowing it."

"But what can his plan be, anchoring on an open coast?" demanded young
Dawson, as he came back from heaving the anchor.

"Our job is just to wait and see," laughed Captain Halstead.

Mr. Seaton came on deck again, to learn what this sudden stopping of
the boat meant.

"It's some trick, and all we can do is to watch it, sir," reported the
young skipper of the "Restless," pointing to the anchored Drab. "Yet I
think the whole situation, sir, points to the necessity for your
taking my recent advice and acting on it without the loss of an
hour."

"Either the registered mail, or yourself as a special messenger,"
whispered Seaton, hoarsely, in the boy's ear. "Yes, yes! I'll fly at
the work."

"Don't hurry back below, though," advised Halstead. "Stroll along, as
though you were going below for a nap. A night glass on the
seventy-footer is undoubtedly watching all our movements."

As the two boats swung idly at anchor, on that smooth sea, their bows
lay some three hundred yards apart. The night air was so still, and
voices carried so far, that those on the deck of the "Restless" were
obliged to speak very quietly.

Over on the seventy-footer but one human being showed himself to the
watchers on the smaller boat. This solitary individual paced the drab
boat's bridge deck, puffing at a short-stemmed pipe.

"I'd give a lot to be smart enough to guess what their game is,"
whispered Joe, curiously.

"It's a puzzle," sighed Captain Tom Halstead. "It looks, now, as
though Dalton and Lemly are trying to hold us here while someone else
does something on shore."

"Then you think the two who landed on either bank of the river----"

"We know that neither of them was Dalton or