While Saunders searched the stern of the schooner the Captain and Sidney and Mart searched the fo'castle cabin. Sidney, tugging away the heavy tarpaulins, disclosed a small wooden box. "I'm _sure_ it wasn't there before--" she cried. "Why--why, I was _sitting_ on it--" Cap'n Davies lifted the box. "It's pretty big to be diamonds but it looks suspicious like! And you're sure it wasn't there before? That it ain't the property of that summer boarder of Miss Green's?" Sidney's face was flaming with excitement. "Oh, I'm _sure_! The other stuff was there but there wasn't any box under it. If I hadn't been so excited listening I'd have realized I was sitting on something different. Can't we look inside?" "We won't take the time to look at anything now, mate. We'll get ashore. I reckon by this time there are folks strainin' their eyes for a sight o' you--" He fairly pushed Sidney and Mart ahead of him and toward the _Sally_. Saunders lifted the girls into the smaller boat, then took the box. "To Rockman's. Quick as you can make it," snapped Cap'n Phin. CHAPTER XXII "YOU NEED A BIG BROTHER" Aunt Achsa had not slept through the storm. Accustomed though she was to the howl of the wind and the roar of the pounding surf, tonight it filled her heart with dread. Lavender had not come home. Twice during the night hours she crept to the door of his small room and peered in, shielding her candle with a trembling hand. For a long while she sat in the window straining her eyes into the darkness. The cats came and rubbed her bare ankles and Nip meowed plaintively. She picked him up and cuddled him to her. Suddenly a moving object in the lane caught her attention. It separated itself into the forms of men, men moving slowly as though they bore a burden. They turned into the garden patch. "Lavender!" Aunt Achsa cried, jumping up quickly, shaking. "Oh--my boy!" But that was the only sound she made. She opened the door as though she had been waiting for these men with their limp burden. She directed them to carry the boy to his own room. She moved aside for Doctor Blackwell who had come with the others, an old pair of flannel trousers drawn over his night shirt. She felt Mr. Dugald put a restraining arm over her shoulders and nodded as though to say: "I'm all right--just look out for Lavender." One of the men coming back from Lavender's room offered an explanation. "Those young 'uns were on the _Arabella_ and it broke from its moorin's. The boy swum ashore to give an alarm. Plucky, I say--don't know how he did it." "Those young ones--_who_?" cried Dugald Allan. "Why, I cal'late that gal Sidney and I don't know who else--" "Sidney went with Miss Vine!" protested Achsa.