Salt water might ruin the watch; but, if so, that was probably ruined already. At all events, it was past being returned to its case in Mr. Hatville’s room, without that gentleman’s knowledge of its having been removed. Past, indeed! Thinking of it, Olly put up his hand to his pocket. It gave him a start of fresh terror, even in his utter misery and wretchedness, to find it empty. The watch was gone! That was his last disheartening discovery. How long it had been gone he had not the slightest means of knowing. His teeth chattered, and he trembled from head to foot, as he hurriedly searched his clothing for the timepiece, but in vain. He at first believed that he had lost it in his struggle between the boat and the ledge; for he remembered having looked down and seen the golden glitter of the seal, not long after he went adrift. But now the moonlight disclosed the seal still hanging by the hook in his button-hole. The guard had been broken, and everything, excepting the seal and a few dangling links, had gone with the watch. He concluded that he must have lost it when he had his first tumble in the boat. The oar, when it struck his breast, and flew from his hand, had doubtless caught in the chain, and snatched the watch from his pocket. Of course he couldn’t know that this was so; but if he had foreseen what Perce Bucklin was to find on the beach a few hours later, he would have argued that no watch could have been conveyed so far, in so short a time, by waves or tide. However it might have happened, it was hopelessly gone; and now, in his enfeebled, frightened state, he began to consider how he should escape the suspicion of having stolen it, if ever his body reached the shore alive or dead. “Nobody knows I had it,” he said miserably to himself. “And why should anybody ever know?” He unhooked what was left of the guard, and held it, with the seal, for a moment in his shaking fingers, considering whether he should destroy that evidence against him by flinging it into the sea. But he could hardly make up his mind to cast away irrevocably what might prove of value, should the watch and the rest of the guard be found. That might still be possible, he reasoned; and, after a few minutes of sickening doubt and hesitation, he put the shining trinkets into his pocket. Even as he did so, he went about mechanically searching for what he had hardly the faintest expectation of finding. Who that has ever lost a prized object has not done the same?—looking again and again in places where a superstitious hope whispers that it may be mysteriously lurking. He felt sure that it could not, without his knowledge, have dropped from his pocket when he had stooped over the pool to grope for barnacles; and even if it had, the moonlight must show so bright an object shining in the shallow bottom. Yet he explored it carefully with his hands, and went back and explored it again, after examining other parts of the ledge.