"Schooners, b' Gosh!" jerked Macro, as soon as he could speak; and eyed them intently. "How in name of sin did they get there?" and his eye travelled quickly along the sand-spit that shut out the sea, in search of the break in it through which the schooners must have entered. But no break was visible. Still it might well be that this great inland lake joined the outer sea somewhere over there, beyond their range of sight, and that this was a harbour of refuge, though he had certainly never heard of it before. "We must find out about 'em," he said at last, and they set off at speed towards the ships to which his eyes seemed glued. "Not a sign of a man aboard either of 'em," he jerked one time, as he lurched up out of a rabbit-hole. "Nor ashore either." And to Wulfrey also there was something strange and uncanny in the look of them. The absence of any slightest sign of life anywhere about imparted to them something of a lifeless look also. And their masts were bare of sails, spars, or even cordage, just bare poles sticking up out of the hulls like blighted pine trees. The sea outside had a long slow heave in it, but the water of the lake was smooth as a pond, not a pulse in it, not a ripple on it, and the two little ships lay as motionless as toy boats on a looking-glass sea. Macro was evidently much exercised in his mind. He never took his eyes off the ships. So intent was he on them that he stumbled in and out of rabbit holes without noticing them, and the "Gosh!" that jerked out of him now and again was provoked entirely by the puzzle of the ships. So they came at last round the curve of the land and stood opposite the nearer of the two, which lay about a hundred yards out from the shore of bare sand, and neither on ship nor shore nor water had they discovered any sign of life. "Schooner a-hoy!" bellowed the mate through his funnelled hands. And again. "Schooner a-hoy!" But no sudden head bobbed up at the hail, and but that they were whole and afloat the ships looked as dead as those others out past the point. "Gosh, but it's odd!" and he looked quickly both ways along the shore and over his shoulders, as though he feared some odd thing might start up suddenly and take him unawares. "What's it mean?" "There's no one there. They're deserted." "Deserted? Man alive! Who'd desert ships afloat like that? What in ---- does it mean?" his native fears of the unnatural and inexplicable getting the better of him. "We'd better go and see," said Wulfrey. "Swim?" "I suppose so. I don't expect we can wade." The mate shook his head. He had evidently no liking for the job, keen as was his desire to get to the bottom of it. "Let's feed first anyway," he said, and produced the rabbits, which he had held on to in spite of his surprise and many stumblings. So they sat in the sand and ate raw rabbit, with their eyes on the ships all the time.