The thing had been faked most obviously, and the faking had begun two days out from Frisco. A gale that had never blown had driven the _Tamalpais_ out of her course, et cetera; and Ginnell, with the eye of a sailor and with his knowledge of the condition of the _Tamalpais_ when found, saw at once that there was something here darker even than the darkness that Blood and Harman had perceived. Why had the log been faked? Why had the schooner been abandoned? If it were a question of insurance, Captain Keene would have scuttled her or fired her.
Then, again, everything spoke of haste amounting to panic. Why should a vessel, in perfect condition and in good weather, be deserted as though some visible plague had suddenly appeared on board of her?
Ginnell closed the book and tossed it back in the bunk.
At eight o’clock next morning, in perfect weather, Ginnell, standing by the steersman and casting his eyes around, saw across the heaving blueness of the sea a smudge of smoke on the western horizon. A few minutes later, as the smoke cleared, he made out the form of the vessel that had been firing up.
Captain Keene had left an old pair of binoculars among the other truck in his cabin. Ginnell went down and fetched them on deck, then he looked.
The stranger was a torpedo boat; she was making due south, and, like all torpedo boats, she seemed in a hurry.
Then, all at once, and even as he looked, her form began to alter, she shortened mysteriously, and her two funnels became gradually one.
She had altered her course; she had evidently sighted, and was making direct for, the _Tamalpais_. Not exactly direct, perhaps, but directly enough to make Ginnell’s lips dry as sandstone.
“Bad cess to her,” said Ginnell to himself; “there’s no use in doin’ anythin’ but pretendin’ to be deaf and dumb. And, sure, aren’t I an honest trader, with all me credentials, Capt’in Keene, of Frisco, blown out of me course, me mate washed overboard? Let her come.”
She came without any letting. Shearing along through the water, across which the hubbub of her engines could be distinctly heard, and within signalling distance, now, she let fly a string of bunting to the breeze, an order to heave to, which the _Tamalpais_, that honest trader, disregarded.