“Aloft there!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Can you make out her build?”

“Rides high, like a dory, sir.”

“Wasn’t there a dory on the Laughing Lass?” cried Forsythe.

“On her stern davits,” answered Trendon.

“It is hardly probable that unattached small boats should be drifting about these seas,” said Captain Parkinson, thoughtfully.  “If she’s a dory, she’s the Laughing Lass’s boat.”

“That’s what she is,” said Barnett.  “You can see her build plain enough now.”

“Mr. Barnett, will you go aloft and keep me posted?” said the captain.

The executive officer climbed to join the lookout.  As he ascended, those below saw the little craft rise high and slow on a broad swell.

“Same dory,” said Trendon.  “I’d swear to her in Constantinople.”

“What else could she be?” muttered Forsythe.

“Somethin’ that looks like a man in the bottom of her,” sang out the crow’s-nest.  “Two of ’em, I think.”

For five minutes there was stillness aboard, broken only by an occasional low-voiced conjecture.  Then from aloft: 

“Two men rolling in the bottom.”

“Are they alive?”

“No, sir; not that I can see.”

The wind, which had been extremely variable since dawn, now whipped around a couple of points, swinging the boat’s stern to them.  Barnet, putting aside his glass for a moment, called down: 

“That’s the one, sir.  I can make out the name.”

“Good,” said the captain quietly.  “We should have news, at least.”

“Ives or McGuire,” suggested Forsythe, in low tones.

“Or Billy Edwards,” amended Carter.

“Not Edwards,” said Trendon.

“How do you know?” demanded Forsythe.

“Dory was aboard when we found her the second time, after Edwards had left.”

“Can you make out which of the men are in her?” hailed the captain.

“Don’t think it’s any of our people,” came the astonishing reply from Barnett.

“Are you sure?”

“I can see only one man’s face, sir.  It isn’t Ives or McGuire.  He’s a stranger to me.”

“It must be one of the crew, then.”

“No, sir, beg your parding,” called the lookout.  “Nothin’ like that in our crew, sir.”

The boat came down upon them swiftly.  Soon the quarter-deck was looking into her.  She was of a type common enough on the high seas, except that a step for a mast showed that she had presumably been used for skimming about open shores.  Of her passengers, one lay forward, prone and quiet.  A length of sail cloth spread over him made it impossible to see his garb.  At his breast an ugly protuberance, outlined vaguely, hinted a deformity.

The other sprawled aft, and at a nearer sight of him some of the men broke out into nervous titters.  There was some excuse, for surely such a scarecrow had never before been the sport of wind and wave.  A thing of shreds he was, elaborately ragged, a face overrun with a scrub of beard, and preternaturally drawn, surmounted by a stiff-dried, dirty, cloth semi-turban, with a wide, forbidding stain along the side, worked out the likeness to a make-up.