you."

"Jerry!" I said, speaking with difficulty because of heavy breathing
after having run so fast. "The Avenger is close at hand; she is the
craft we saw! Something must have gone wrong!"

Jerry turned his head very quickly now, forgetting for the instant
his desire to make a prisoner of Elias Macomber.

"What do you think can have happened?" he asked, and I replied
impatiently:

"That we shall only find out by boarding her. Come to the beach at
once!"

"But what about our work here?" and now it was the pungy that went
from his mind, leaving there only the great desire to accomplish the
purpose for which he had come.

"Never mind that now! It may be we won't want to fool around here on
his account! Come quickly, Jerry, for she was close at hand before I
started!"

It was actually necessary to shake the lad before I could arouse him
to a full sense of the situation; but once that had been done, he
followed me readily enough, even urging that I move faster.

The pungy was no more than half a mile away when we reached the shore,
and we launched the canoe without delay, paddling straight out in her
course.

As she came up I could see Darius at the tiller, with Jim beside him,
and the other two fellows lounging forward.

Nothing had happened to the crew, that much seemed certain, and I was
at my wits' end to account for the Avenger being apparently heading
for home.

When we were come within hailing distance I shouted, never thinking
that I might be heard by those on the Jenkins plantation:

"Why are you coming back? What has happened?"

"Where is Bill Jepson?" Darius cried.

"With the fleet."

"When did you leave him?"

"Yesterday. What is the matter?"

"Come aboard an' I'll tell you," the old man replied as he threw the
pungy up into the wind, and we did not waste many seconds in going
over the rail.

"Now what is it?" I asked impatiently when I stood facing Darius.

"The Britishers are gettin' under way, an' it kind'er looked as if the
oyster business wouldn't be any good after they'd left moorin's. If
there'd been any wind, you'd be seein' 'em by this time. What brought
you ashore at Hog Point?"

"Elias Macomber is there, living with Jenkins the planter. We stopped
on our way up thinking to get some provisions, and not only saw the
cur, but heard him say he was waiting for the Britishers, to whom he
could give a lot of information."

While I had been speaking Darius brought the pungy into