“Are you busy to-morrow afternoon?” asked Geisner of Ned, as Nellie was being handed in, after having kissed Josie.

“Not particularly,” answered Ned.

“Then you might meet me in front of the picture gallery between one and two, and we can have a quiet chat.”

“All aboard!” shouted George.

“I’ll be there,” answered Ned, shaking hands again with Geisner and Stratton and with Josie, noticing that that young lady had a very warm clinging hand.

“Good-bye!  Good-bye!  Good-bye!” From the three on shore.

“Good-bye!  Good-bye!  Good-bye!” From the three in the boat as George shoved off.

“Good-bye!” cried Connie’s clear voice from the verandah.  “Put up the umbrella, Ned!”

Ned obediently put up the umbrella she had lent him, overcoming his objections by pointing out that it would keep Nellie’s hat from being spoiled.  Then George’s oars began to dip into the water, and they turned their backs to the pleasant home and faced out into the wind and wet.

The last sound that came to them was a long melodious cry that Josie sent across the water to George, a loving “Good-bye!” that plainly meant “Come back!”

CHAPTER IX.

“This is socialism!”

The working of George’s oars and the rippling of water on the bow were all that broke the silence as the skiff moved across the harbour.  Suddenly Ned lost sight of the swinging lantern that Josie had held at the little landing stairs and without it could not distinguish the house they had left.  Here and there behind them were lights of various kinds and sizes, shining blurred through the faint drizzle.  He saw similar lights in front and on either hand.  Yet the darkness was so deep now that but for the lantern on the fore thwarts he could not have seen George at all.

There were no sounds but those of their rowing.

Nellie sat erect, half hidden in the umbrella Ned held over her.  George pulled a long sweeping stroke, bringing it up with a jerk that made the rowlocks sound sharply.  When he bent back they could feel the light boat lift under them.  He looked round now and then, steering himself by some means inscrutable to the others, who without him would have been lost on this watery waste.

All at once George stopped rowing.  “Listen!” he exclaimed.

There was a swishing sound as of some great body rushing swiftly through the water near them.  It ceased suddenly; then as suddenly sounded again.

“Sharks about,” remarked George, in a matter-of-fact tone, rowing again with the same long sweeping stroke as before.

Nellie did not stir.  She was used to such incidents, evidently.  But Ned had never before been so close to the sea-tigers and felt a creepy sensation.  He would much rather, he thought, be thirty-five miles from water with a lame horse than in the company of sharks on a dark wet night in the middle of Sydney harbour.