“Let them wait,” grunted the wealthy nobleman.

Then he relapsed into his customary unconcerned impassibility.

Captain Spade’s hypothesis was doubtless correct.  The Falcon had as yet made no move towards the schooner, but would almost certainly do so as soon as the latter reached the inlet, and the Count would have to submit to a search of his vessel if he wished to reach the open sea.

How was it then that he manifested such extraordinary unconcern?  Were Thomas Roch and Gaydon so safely hidden that their hiding-place could not possibly be discovered?

The thing was possible, but perhaps the Count d’Artigas would not have been quite so confident had he been aware that the Ebba had been specially signalled to the warship and revenue cutters as a suspect.

The Count’s visit to Healthful House on the previous day had now attracted particular attention to him and his schooner.  Evidently, at the time, the director could have had no reason to suspect the motive of his visit.  But a few hours later, Thomas Roch and his keeper had been carried off.  No one else from outside had been near the pavilion that day.  It was admitted that it would have been an easy matter for the Count’s companion, while the former distracted the director’s attention, to push back the bolts of the door in the wall and steal the key.  Then the fact that the Ebba was anchored in rear of, and only a few hundred yards from, the estate, was in itself suspicious.  Nothing would have been easier for the desperadoes than to enter by the door, surprise their victims, and carry them off to the schooner.

These suspicions, neither the director nor the personnel of the establishment had at first liked to give expression to, but when the Ebba was seen to weigh anchor and head for the open sea, they appeared to be confirmed.

They were communicated to the authorities of New-Berne, who immediately ordered the commander of the Falcon to intercept the schooner, to search her minutely high and low, and from stem to stern, and on no account to let her proceed, unless he was absolutely certain that Roch and Gaydon were not on board.

Assuredly the Count d’Artigas could have had no idea that his vessel was the object of such stringent orders; but even if he had, it is questionable whether this superbly haughty and disdainful nobleman would hove manifested any particular anxiety.

Towards three o’clock, the warship which was cruising before the inlet, after having sent search parties aboard a few fishing-smacks, suddenly manoeuvred to the entrance of the pass, and awaited the approaching schooner.  The latter surely did not imagine that she could force a passage in spite of the cruiser, or escape from a vessel propelled by steam.  Besides, had she attempted such a foolhardy trick, a couple of shots from the Falcon’s guns would speedily have constrained her to lay to.