When just abreast of the passage they ceased rowing, and a figure stood in the stern, and hailed the shore party.
"Yes," answered the man who had struck the light. "Come in here, Adams, and take us across. There is a channel here, and though I guess it is not very deep, the current is running like a mill-race."
Still crouching behind the coral boulder the girl saw the boat row in to the shore, a little distance further down, so as to escape the swirling eddies of the passage.
As the man-o'-war cutter--for such was the boat--touched the rocks, a lantern was held up, and by its light the girl saw a short, stout man step out on to the beach and walk up to the officer in charge of the shore party.
"Ah, Adams, is that you? Well, this is a devil of a place. We have crossed at least half a dozen of these cursed gutters, and thought to have crossed this one too, without trouble, but the tide is coming in fast. However, it's the last one--at least so this infernal hang-dog looking native guide tells me. So the sooner we get across in the cutter and get this man-hunting business over the better I'll like it."
"Aye, aye, sir!" answered the man he had addressed as Adams. "It won't take us much longer, I guess. Not a canoe has passed us going down the coast, so we are pretty sure to catch him at home."
"That is what this truculent scoundrel says," and the officer nodded in the direction of a native who had seated himself on the ground only a few yards distant from the rock behind which the girl was hidden. "He tells me that young Swain came home about a week ago from Maiana"--another island of the group--"and the old man induced him to stay at home and help him rig a new boat he has just built."
"We'll catch him, sir," answered Adams, confidently.
Clutching the side of the rough boulder in an agony of terror, the girl saw the two men turn away, and, followed by the rest of the shore party, natives and all, walk down to the boat. Then, standing upright, she watched them get in and the cutter shove off.
That they were in search of her brother she was now only too certain, and dreading that the boat would land the shore party again on her side of the channel and she be discovered and prevented from giving the alarm, she sprang over the loose slabs of coral that strewed the shore between the water and the coconut palms, and fled along the night-enshrouded path towards her father's house.