He had a mind to do a little exploring along this southern shore. The water was smooth, and he felt like rowing. Rapidly he traveled along the shore, peering into bays and inlets, covering long stretches of thick forest, while the sun made his westward journey, the air grew cooler, and the shade stretched farther across the sea. There would be a moon to see him home again, and he was weatherwise enough to know that he had nothing to fear from the wind. The sun was almost setting when the rowboat rounded a wooded point and swung into a bay. Antony was following the shore-line, so he did not bother to look around, but pulled steadily ahead, keeping about the same distance from the bank. Then, to his great surprise, a voice directly ahead hailed him. "Look where you're going, son! Ease up a bit on your oars, and you'll get to us without bumping." He looked around and saw three men fishing from a boat. They must have kept very quiet not to have attracted his attention. He slowed the speed of his boat by dragging his oars in the water, but even so he swept pretty close to the fishermen, and one of them, with a quick turn of his own oar, brought the larger boat side-on to Antony's. "Pull in your oar," the man ordered. To avoid a collision Antony obeyed. The man caught the gunwale of Antony's boat, bringing the two side by side. All three of the men were grinning. "Well, now, lad," said the man at the oars, "where were ye bound at such a pace? Going to row across the ocean or down to St. Augustine? Bound out from Charles Town, weren't ye?" Antony smiled. "I was doing a little exploring," he answered. "I didn't know there were any fishermen down along here." The man's grin widened. "Ye didn't, eh? Well, there's quite a lot of us fishermen down along here. Take a look." He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. Antony turned and saw that at the other end of the bay were a number of boats, men on the beach, and that the hull and spars of a good-sized ship stood out beyond the trees of the next headland. The man in the bow of the other boat, a slim, dark fellow with a straggling black mustache, pulled in his fishing-line. "An' now you've done your exploring, you'll make us a little visit. It wouldn't do to go right back to Charles Town to-night." He stood up, and with the agility of a cat stepped from his boat to Antony's and sat down on the stern-seat. Antony had plenty of nerve, but somehow neither the words of the man at the oars nor the performance of the dark fellow was altogether reassuring. The two men now in the other boat were big swarthy chaps, with many strange designs tattooed on their brawny arms; and the one who sat in the stern wore gilded earrings and had a good-sized sheath-knife fastened to his belt. They didn't look like the men he was used to seeing about Charles Town.