hing be, drifting--and bobbing up and down in the waves? I suppose
it couldn't be a dead _shark_?"

"Hardly in these waters," said Roger Fane. "Besides, a dead shark floats
wrong side up, and his wrong side is white. This thing looks black."

In ordinary circumstances I wouldn't have broken in on a _tete-a-tete_,
but others were extricating themselves from their deck chairs, so I
thought there was no harm in my being the first.

"More like a coffin than a shark," I said, with my elbows beside
Shelagh's on the rail.

At that the whole party hurled itself in our direction, and the nearer
the _Naiad_ brought us to the floating object, the more like a coffin it
became to our eyes. At last it was so much like, that Roger decided to
stop the yacht and examine the thing, which might even be an odd-shaped
small boat, overturned. He went off, therefore, to speak with the
captain, leaving us in quite a state of excitement.

Almost before we'd thought the order given, the _Naiad_ slowed down, and
came to rest like a great Lohengrin swan in the clear azure wavelets. A
boat was quickly lowered, and we saw that Roger himself accompanied the
two rowers.

A few moments before he had looked so happy, so at peace with the world,
that the tragic shadow in his eyes had actually vanished. His whole
expression and bearing had been different, and he had seemed years
younger--almost boyish, in his dark, shy, reserved way. But as he went
down in the boat, he was again the Roger Fane I had known and wondered
about.

"If he's superstitious, this will seem a bad omen," I thought. "That is,
if the thing _does_ turn out to be a coffin."

None of us remembered the tea we'd been pining for, though a white-clad
steward was hovering with trays of cakes, cream, and strawberries. We
could do nothing but hang over the rail and watch the _Naiad's_ boat. We
saw it reach the Thing, in whose neighbourhood it paused with lifted
oars, while a discussion went on between Roger and the rowers.
Apparently they argued, with due respect, against the carrying out of
some order or suggestion. He was not a man to be disobeyed, however.
After a moment or two, the work of taking the black thing in tow was
begun.

We were very near now, and could plainly see all that went on. Coffin or
not, the mysterious object was a long, narrow box of some sort (the
men's reluctance to pick it up pretty well proved _what_ sort, to my
mind), and curiously enough a rope was tied