Just as the brig’s boat had been swung out, ready for lowering, the yacht’s gig hauled up by its line appeared tossing and splashing on the lee quarter.  Carter stood up in the stern sheets balancing himself cleverly to the disordered motion of his cockleshell.  He hailed the brig twice to know what was the matter, not being able from below and in the darkness to make out what that confused group of men on the poop were about.  He got no answer, though he could see the shape of a man standing by himself aft, and apparently watching him.  He was going to repeat his hail for the third time when he heard the rattling of tackles followed by a heavy splash, a burst of voices, scrambling hollow sounds—­and a dark mass detaching itself from the brig’s side swept past him on the crest of a passing wave.  For less than a second he could see on the shimmer of the night sky the shape of a boat, the heads of men, the blades of oars pointing upward while being got out hurriedly.  Then all this sank out of sight, reappeared once more far off and hardly discernible, before vanishing for good.

“Why, they’ve lowered a boat!” exclaimed Carter, falling back in his seat.  He remembered that he had seen only a few hours ago three native praus lurking amongst those very islands.  For a moment he had the idea of casting off to go in chase of that boat, so as to find out. . . .  Find out what?  He gave up his idea at once.  What could he do?

The conviction that the yacht, and everything belonging to her, were in some indefinite but very real danger, took afresh a strong hold of him, and the persuasion that the master of the brig was going there to help did not by any means assuage his alarm.  The fact only served to complicate his uneasiness with a sense of mystery.

The white man who spoke as if that sea was all his own, or as if people intruded upon his privacy by taking the liberty of getting wrecked on a coast where he and his friends did some queer business, seemed to him an undesirable helper.  That the boat had been lowered to communicate with the praus seen and avoided by him in the evening he had no doubt.  The thought had flashed on him at once.  It had an ugly look.  Yet the best thing to do after all was to hang on and get back to the yacht and warn them. . . .  Warn them against whom?  The man had been perfectly open with him.  Warn them against what?  It struck him that he hadn’t the slightest conception of what would happen, of what was even likely to happen.  That strange rescuer himself was bringing the news of danger.  Danger from the natives of course.  And yet he was in communication with those natives.  That was evident.  That boat going off in the night. . . .  Carter swore heartily to himself.  His perplexity became positive bodily pain as he sat, wet, uncomfortable, and still, one hand on the tiller, thrown up and down in headlong swings of his boat.  And before his eyes, towering high, the black hull of the brig also rose and fell, setting her stern down in the sea, now and again, with a tremendous and foaming splash.  Not a sound from her reached Carter’s ears.  She seemed an abandoned craft but for the outline of a man’s head and body still visible in a watchful attitude above the taffrail.