The boat slid easily down, struck the water with the slightest sound of a splash, and lay gently rocking while Nick Carter got out the light oars to take him out to where the yacht lay at anchor. It was too dark for him to see the launch. But there was no sound from that direction, and he was satisfied that Claudia Solado was sitting where he had left her, obeying his instructions to make absolutely no noise while he was gone. He muffled his oars with a handkerchief and one of his kid gloves, so that there was no sound as he stole up to the yacht and paused in the shadow of her rather broad stern. He was so close that he could steady himself by one of the rudder chains as he listened. Nothing seemed to be going on in the yacht, and if he had not seen the man on the cabin roof, still enjoying his cigar, he might have thought everybody on board was asleep, watch and all. “What the dickens they want to stay on the yacht at all for if they belong to that house is more than I can explain,” muttered Nick. “At least, until I have looked into the matter a little more.” He deliberately threw his painter rope around the rudder chain, and secured the skiff in that way. So long as the yacht was at anchor--as he had seen she was, swinging to the tide with her bow pointing upstream--there was no danger of harm to the skiff. Of course, if the yacht were to start, a different story might be told. Nick could climb anywhere that a man might expect to be able to go, and soon he went nimbly up the stern of the yacht, taking advantage of every ledge and protection on the way, until he was safely on deck. He lay down flat behind the log cabin. It was a handsome vessel, this yacht. Polished brass, white paint, silken curtains at the windows, and every equipment perfect of its kind, told the detective that no expense had been spared to make the vessel a fine one. Nick Carter was a yachtsman, and he could appreciate every point of excellence--many of which might have escaped the eye of a person who knew less than himself about such things. Cautiously he crept to the side of the cabin on the landward side. Here he was in deep shadow, for the slowly rising moon, partly obscured by clouds, was on the opposite side of the river. “That fellow either has a very large cigar, or he smokes it very slowly,” muttered Nick Carter. “I wish he’d get through and go below. Then there might be a chance for me to find out whether Prince Marcos is aboard.” He pulled himself to his feet, so that, when he stepped upon a block, his eyes were above the level of the cabin roof. Here he had a good view of the smoker’s feet, only a few yards away, and could see that the man was leaning back comfortably in a deck chair, apparently quite content with the way things were going.