“When the pirate left us to walk forward, I noticed for the first time that there was a craft of some kind lying across our bow. I could see the two slender, tapering masts, but from where I was seated, here in this chair, I could see nothing of the hull.”

“The Goalong stands rather high out of the water. She has unusual freeboard for a craft of her size. That fact might account for what you tell me.”

“Sure! I understand that now. It did account for it—or, rather, it does account for it, as you shall see.”

“Well, go on.”

“Captain Sparkle was the last one of his crew to leave the deck of the yacht. He stood yonder in the bow until they had all disappeared. Then he turned, and, after waving his hand at us, he also jumped from the deck of the yacht and disappeared.”

“And then?” asked Nick.

“Why, then I could control myself no longer. I leaped to my feet and started forward. I don’t know just what I intended to do, save that my first thought[28] was to dive below, get a gun of some sort, and take a shot at something. But the count stopped that.”

[28]

“The count? How was that?”

“When I leaped from my chair, he grabbed me. I suppose I have to thank him for it, and the ladies, also, for the pirate might have returned if I had shot at him.”

“Well?”

“Then we stood right here, where we are now; the entire group; and we watched that pirate sail away without offering a word or an act of protest. Nick, did you ever see what is called a turtle-back craft on the great lakes?”

“Often.”

“Well, if you should reduce the size of one of them to about seventy-five or eighty feet, over all, and then run a bright nickel rail all the way around her from end to end, it would give you a better idea of that pirate craft than anything I can think of. And yet it is not a very correct idea, either. You will have to eliminate the upper works of the turtle-back, and also the funnel. Just bear in mind, will you, that the thing was not in sight for more than two minutes, at the most, so I had not much chance to take her measure.”

“Where did she go?”

“Go! She went like a shot out of a gun! She went 

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