They returned as they had come, the motor launch towing the whaleboats, and were sped homewards by the welling flood tide. Madame, though she knew it not, was nearing the end of her brief spell of irresponsible happiness. While they had been disporting themselves off the Barrier, Fate had rung up the curtain for the Final Act in the drama of Willatopy. It was an Act which was long in the playing, but the end loomed inevitable almost from the opening bars of the overture. As the string of boats merrily buzzed into the narrow bay, they all saw that the _Humming Top_ no longer lay there alone. Within the entrance moored to the opposite bank was a small schooner which had just come in, for the crew were even at that moment stowing her lowered sails upon the deck.
"What is that ship?" asked Madame, her brows gathering into an uneasy frown. The Island had seemed so much the private property of the Topys and of the _Humming Top_ that the presence of a stranger schooner became an unmannerly intrusion. Especially so weather-beaten and dirty a schooner as that one over there.
"Trading schooners often shelter here for the night while on a round of the islands," explained Willatopy. "My yawl does all the Baru trade that there is."
But Madame Gilbert, in spite of this satisfying explanation of the schooner's presence in the bay, continued to look upon the vessel with disfavour. If one schooner dropped in thus unceremoniously, another might come, and another. Some day strangers might land, strangers from Thursday Island or from the big world beyond Thursday Island. The splendid steam yacht at its moorings and Madame's luxurious camp outfit in the woods were not common objects of the shore to be accepted in the Straits without explanation. And they would use up a lot of explanation, and still leave the curious unsatisfied. There was too much of Toppys about the Island and the yacht for their conjunction to be wholly a matter of chance. Grant, Willatopy's banker, already knew much, and had guessed the rest. He was safe, for his own reasons. But others coming might carry away to Thursday Island, and thence to the big world beyond Thursday Island, a story of the Toppys yacht afloat, and of the Topy family ashore; and some might--some certainly would--connect the one with the other. From that discovery to a peering into local registers would be, for our inquisitive white race, a brief step. Too many people knew the Toppys secret already, and too many more must presently get some hint of it. It was not much of a secret after all. Madame frowned at the dirty schooner and shrugged her shoulders. It was not her secret anyway, though she had done her best to keep it.