“S-S-Say!” he exclaimed, pointing, “isn’t th-that another b-boat?”

There was another boat, certainly,—­a sail had appeared some distance behind the yacht we had first sighted.

“They’re not chasing us,” remarked Spike; “somebody’s chasing them!”

“What makes you think anybody is chasing anybody?” I asked.  “They may be just out for a sail.  Anyone would think there was a war going on here in Broad Bay.”

“Th-There’s b-b-battle, m-murder, and s-s-sudden d-death g-g-going on for us,—­at B-Bailey’s Harbor.  And l-l-look!  B-By J-J-J-Jiminy Kuk-Kuk-Crickets!  There’s another b-boat!”

“Oh, they’re all probably pleasure boats, like this one.”

“D-D-Do you c-c-call this a p-p-pleasure b-boat?  S-Seems to m-me the ‘H-Hoppergrass’ is b-becoming a b-b-burden, like the one in the B-Bible.”

“Just the same,” said Spike, looking back uneasily, “this last one has come from Rogers’s Island, I should think.  Do you suppose it is Snider and the other man?  Did they have a boat?”

“I didn’t see any,” I replied.

“They’d be sure to have one, though.”

Spook went down into the cabin again, to get Captain Bannister’s spy-glass.  While he was down there, hunting for it, his brother and I watched the yacht and the two smaller sailboats behind us.  The yacht and the boat which came from the direction of Rogers’s Island were so situated that a line drawn between them would have formed the base of a triangle at the apex of which was the “Hoppergrass.”  The other small boat was half a mile or more behind the yacht.  As we watched the three of them, the wind dropped a little, and there came a hot puff from the land.

“Hullo!” said Spike, “there won’t be any chasing if the wind goes down much more.”

Spook came on deck with the spy-glass and spent some time in trying to make out who was on the three boats.  Beyond thinking that he saw pitchforks on all of them, however, he did not give us much information.  The wind continued to fail, and it got hotter and hotter.  In ten minutes we were sailing at a very slow rate,—­ hardly more than moving.  The yacht was becalmed, its sail flapping.  The little boat from Rogers’s Island, however, still had a breeze; it was about half a mile distant and drawing up on us.

The behavior of the wind was explained by a mass of white clouds, dark underneath, which had been piling up in the west.  For an hour they had been gathering, and now we saw that they were thunder-heads.  They promised all the wind we needed, before long.

Presently the small boat ran into the calm streak, and her sail, too, hung loose.  She was near enough now for us to see that she was merely a large sailing dory.  There were two men on board her, but whether they were Mr. Snider and the Professor I could not tell.  I reached for the spy-glass, when Spike said: 

“They’re going to row.”

One of the men had lowered the sail, and the other was getting out a long pair of oars.