The tide was more than half down, and dory and pea-pod lay high and dry on the shingle. The sloop rode at her mooring in the cove. Percy hesitated. Her engine would take him to Head Harbor in less than two hours, and save him a long, hard row. But no. Her absence would interfere seriously with pulling the trawls and lose Spurling & Company a good many dollars. Bitter though his feelings were, he did not wish to cause financial loss. He decided on the pea-pod. Ten feet of gravel lay between her stern and the water. Grasping her gunwale, Percy dragged her inch by inch gratingly down over the shingle, every sound magnified to his ears by his dread of discovery. He worked with the caution of an escaping convict. Now and then he glanced nervously toward the cabin, but from its gloomy interior came no sign that he was seen or heard. Apparently Spurling and his mates were sleeping the sleep of the dead. At the end of five minutes the pea-pod was afloat. Percy tossed in his suit-case and clambered hastily aboard. There was no time to waste. He wished to put as much salt water as possible between himself and Tarpaulin Island before midnight. Shipping his oars, he began to row, using infinite care lest creaking rowlock or splashing blade betray him. Gradually he drew out of the cove, and there was less need of caution. As he rounded Brimstone Point he cast one last, long look at the cabin, square and black and silent. The remembrance of his discomforts and indignities of the last three weeks surged over him. He shook his fist at his vanishing prison. "Good riddance!" he muttered. "Hope I'll never set eyes again on you or the bunch inside you!" He bent to his oars with redoubled vigor, and presently a high boulder shut out the camp. In five minutes more he had rounded the point and was pulling north on the heaving Atlantic swell. The tide was running out strongly. It came swirling round Brimstone in rips and eddies. Percy had never before realized that its force was so great. He made a hasty calculation, and was very unpleasantly surprised to discover that he would have to pull against it for fully ninety minutes ere it turned to run the other way. He began to feel less sure of reaching Head Harbor before daybreak. "Guess I've bitten off an all-night job," thought he, disconsolately. But there was no help for it--unless he desired to slink back to the camp he had just abandoned with such thief-like stealth. Percy set his teeth. "Not while I've got arms to pull with!" Before buckling to his task he glanced about. On his left rose the familiar shores of Tarpaulin. Miles to his right and almost due west the twin lights on Matinicus Rock twinkled faintly across the sea; while behind him, a little to the west of north, shone the single star of Saddleback, a good four leagues away. The dark-blue summer sky, unmarred by the slightest cloud-fleck, was brilliant with constellations.