"I wonder where the young rascal is?" sang out the Captain in a jovial sort of way, to allay the alarm of the others and hide his own uneasiness. "You'd better get inside out of the damp all of you while I go off to the coastguard-station. I wouldn't mind betting a brass farthing I'll find Master Bob there hobnobbing with Hellyer and Dick. He's very fond of going there to listen to my old coxswain's yarns when he has got a chance." "I'll come with you," said Mr Strong, not liking to let him go alone, besides also beginning to feel anxious, adding to his wife-- "Go in, Edith! you need not be uneasy. We'll soon bring back our young truant!" So saying, he and the Captain, followed by Rover with drooping tail, started for the coastguard-station on the beach. However, on getting there, their fears, instead of being dispelled, were, on the contrary, alarmingly heightened! Hellyer told them that he had not come on duty until a late hour in the day; and had then not seen anything of either Bob or Dick. "The man as I relieved," continued the coastguardsman, "told me as how he seed two boys in the Cap'en's boat about midday; and, all at once, arter his dinner, for which he goes into the cabin, you know, he misses the boat and the boys too. But, he doesn't think anythink o' this, he says, believin' they has took her into the harbour." "Confound him!" cried the Captain excitedly. "Who was the man? He ought to have known something was wrong when he saw the two lads alone in her like that." "He would be a stranger to you, sir," said Hellyer. "He wer' a man from the Hayling beat as just come on fresh to jine this station here to-day, sir. He's a man, sir, of the name of Jones, and rayther soft, like!" "How unfortunate!" muttered the Captain, while Mr Strong groaned and upbraided himself for his seeming harshness to Bob in the morning. "How very unlucky!" "Of course," went on the coastguardsman earnestly, in deep sympathy with both--"the moment the man tells me of this, I knows what happens, seeing that blessed sea-fog a creeping up and the wind falling; and so I goes off to the commander and tells him what I thinks--as how Master Bob and that young Dick o' yourn, Cap'en, were most likely all adrift and couldn't fetch in to the land. I--" "But what did your commander do?" cried the old sailor, interrupting. "Tell me that!" "Why, sir, he sent word round to all our stations and down to the Dockyard, and he's telegraphed likewise to the h'island so as how there'll be a strict look-out kep' all round the coast for the poor lads." "I am very much obliged to you, Hellyer, and to the commander as well," said the Captain as he and Mr Strong turned away mournfully, retracing their steps back to "the Moorings." "I'm afraid we can do nothing more now." No, nothing more could be done then. The morning brought no news to gladden their hearts or brighten their hopes. Matters, indeed, looked worse than had been expected.