Staff nodded, wondering what they would find on Wreck Island, bitterly repenting the oversight which had resulted in Ismay's escape from his grasp. If only he had not been so sure of his conquest of the little criminal ...! Now his mind crawled with apprehensions bred of his knowledge of the man's amazing fund of resource. He who outwitted Ismay would have earned the right to plume himself upon his cunning.... When he looked up from his abstraction, the loom of the mainland was seemingly very distant. The motor-boat was nearing the centre of a deep indentation in the littoral. And suddenly it was as though they did not move at all, as if all this noise and labour went for nothing, as if the boat were chained to the centre of a spreading disk of silver, world-wide, illimitable, and made no progress for all its thrashing and its fury. Only the unending sweep of wind across his face denied that effect.... Iff touched his arm. "There...." he said, pointing. Over the bows a dark mass seemed to have separated itself from the shadowed mainland, with which it had till then been merged. A strip of silver lay between the two, and while they watched it widened, swiftly winning breadth and bulk as the motor-boat swung to the north of the long, sandy spit at the western end of Wreck Island. "See anything of another boat?" Iff asked. "You look--your eyes are younger than mine." Staff stood up, steadying himself with feet wide apart, and stared beneath his hand. "No," he said; "I see no boat." "We've beaten him, then!" Iff declared joyfully. But they hadn't, nor were they long in finding it out. For presently the little island lay black, a ragged shadow against the blue-grey sky, upon the starboard beam; and Bascom passed the word aft to shut off the motor. As its voice ceased, the boat shot in toward the land, and the long thin moonlit line of the landing-stage detached itself from the general obscurity and ran out to meet them. And so closely had Bascom calculated that the "shoot" of the boat brought them to a standstill at the end of the structure without a jar. Bascom jumped out with the headwarp, Staff and Iff at his heels. From the other side of the dock a shadow uplifted itself, swiftly and silently as a wraith, and stood swaying as it saluted them with profound courtesy. "Gennelmen," it said thickly, "I bidsh you welcome t' Wrecksh Island." With this it slumped incontinently back into a motor-boat which lay moored in the shadow of the dock; and a wild, ecstatic snore rang out upon the calm night air. "Thet's Eph Clover," said Bascom; "him 'nd his wife's caretakers here. He's drunker 'n a b'iled owl," added the boatbuilder lest they misconstrue. "Cousin Artie seems unfortunate in his choice of minions, what?" commented Iff. "Come along, Staff.... Take care of that souse, will you, Spelvin? See that he doesn't try to mix in." They began to run along the narrow, yielding and swaying bridge of planks.