"That's precisely the objection which occurred to me," said Wilbraham, coolly. "But here was at last a fact which fitted in with my guess-work, and I own to being uplifted. That evening I got the ticket that the _Tarifa_ was to put to sea the next day, and sure enough in the morning she swung out into the fairway and waited for the evening ebb. I passed that day in an altogether unenviable state of anxiety, Mrs. Warriner; for if by any chance I was wrong, if she did not mean to take up another cargo of a more profitable kind by dark, if she were to sail clean away for Ushant on the evening ebb, why, the boat might be the _Ten Brothers_ or it might not, and the master might be the late Captain Warriner or he might not. Any way the bottom fell clean out of my little business. But she did not; she got her anchors in about eight o'clock and reached out towards the Lizard in the dusk with a light wind from the land on her beam." "The story so far," Miranda interrupted, "seems nautical, but hardly to the point." "Think so?" said Wilbraham, indifferently. "Did I mention that at the mouth of the harbour the _Tarifa_ passed a steam launch pottering around the St. Anthony Light? Between you and me, Mrs. Warriner, I was holding the tiller of that steam launch." "You!" she exclaimed. "Just poor little me," said he, smiling politely, "with a few paltry thick-uns in my pocket to speculate in the hire of a steam launch. I gave the _Tarifa_ a start and followed, keeping well away on her lee with her red light just in view. That first half-hour or so was a wearing time for me, Mrs. Warriner, I assure you," and he took off his hat and wiped his forehead, as though the anxiety came back upon him now. He laboured his breath and broke up his sentences with short nervous laughter. He seemed entirely to forget his companion, and the sun, and the Andalusian sierras across the plain; he was desperately hunting the _Tarifa_ along the Spit to the Lizard point.