aven and myself count on Wing as a friend, or should we find him an
adherent of the strange and curious gang, which, if the truth was to
be faced, literally held not only our liberty, but our lives at its
disposal? For we were in a tight place--of that there was no doubt. Up
to that moment I was not unfavourably impressed by Netherfield Baxter,
and, whether against my better judgment or not, I was rather more than
inclined to believe him innocent of actual share or complicity in the
murders of Noah and Salter Quick. But I could see that he was a queer
mortal; odd, even to eccentricity; vain, candid and frank because of
his very vanity; given, I thought, to talking a good deal about
himself and his doings; probably a megalomaniac. He might treat us
well so long as things went well with him, but supposing any situation
to arise in which our presence, nay, our very existence, became a
danger to him and his plans--what then? He had a laughing lip and a
twinkle of sardonic humour in his eye, but I fancied that the lip
could settle into ruthless resolve if need be and the eye become more
stony than would be pleasant. And--we were at his mercy; the mercy of
a man whose accomplice might be of a worse kidney than himself, and
whose satellites were yellow-skinned slant-eyed Easterns, pirates to a
man, and willing enough to slit a throat at the faintest sign from a
master.

As I stood there, leaning against the side, gloomily staring at the
shore, which was so near, and yet so impossible of access, I reviewed
a point which was of more importance to me than may be imagined--the
point of our geographical situation. I have already said that the yawl
lay at anchor in a sheltered cove. The position of that cove was
peculiar. It was entered from seawards by an extremely narrow inlet,
across the mouth of which stretched a bar--I could realize that much
by watching the breakers rolling over it; it was plain to me, a
landsman, that even a small vessel could only get in or out of the
cove at high water. But once across the bar, and within the narrow
entry, any vessel coming in from the open sea would find itself in a
natural harbour of great advantages; the cove ran inland for a good
mile and was quite another mile in width; its waters were deep, rising
some fifteen to twenty feet over a clear, sandy bottom, and on all
sides, right down to the bar at its entrance, it was sheltered by high
cliffs, covered from the tops of their headlands to