Finally he tucked the schooner into as pretty a bight for concealment as I could have imagined along that low-lying, marshy coast. Indeed, I didn’t believe there was such a spot in the entire region, for my own slight experience in the locality had come from a snipe-shooting trip I had once made with a gunning companion. Even thus at night I could gather its advantages; but when, after some five hours’ sound sleep, I stepped out on deck to greet the rising sun, the impression was intensified. It looked exactly as though that island had been chiseled out to fit that very boat; and, better to conceal it, had humped itself up into two lateral hummocks surmounted by the inevitable salt grass. In fact, bereft of spars as she lay now, not a trace could a man a furlong off catch of the craft except dead ahead, and even there the channel crooked to an abrupt turn. “It’s pretty near ideal, isn’t it?” said Stroth, coming up behind me. Not a trace of the fire of yesterday showed on the features of the owner. He was geniality itself. “I didn’t know there was such a place within a hundred miles of here,” said I. “Oh, then you know Great South Bay?” “Scarcely at all,” I replied. “I simply know that the bay is probably about five miles wide at this point. Over there”--and I swept my gesture toward the low line of beach some half mile beyond the island and to southward--“lies the Atlantic, and over this way----” “The south shore of Long Island; right.” “We’re about opposite----” I put it as a question. “Very nearly opposite Babylon,” said he slowly, and I felt more in his tones than the mere words. At any rate, I was silent some seconds before he broke into my reverie with: “You’re up against a problem, aren’t you?” He was right; something was distinctly bothering me that morning. I didn’t hurry to say so, however. “Shall I word it for you?” he queried, with a short laugh. “Well, you’re wondering, for one thing, just what would be the easiest way to get to that mainland, eh?” He had hit the nail on the head first crack, for there was a decided difference between being practically a prisoner on a schooner out of sight of land at sea, and being foot-free on that schooner when she was tied, bow and stern, in smooth water, a half mile from Uncle Sam’s well-patrolled beach. There would be a life-saving station within a five-mile trudge, I knew. But Stroth didn’t guess the real crux of the trouble. Duty to the force he could understand; but of my feelings for his daughter he had no inkling. Right there, though, lay my greatest difficulty, and I hate indecision worse than anything I know of. But he solved the thing for me in short order, and in his characteristic fashion. “I’ve got a choice for you again,” he said abruptly. “Naturally, the thing I most object to is having my whereabouts known. You can understand that.” I nodded.