The night was not a cheerful one, and morning came gloomily out of a gray bank of mist. Cleggett, as he looked about the boat in the first pale light, could not resist a slight feeling of depression, courageous as he was. The wounded man gibbered in a bunk in the forecastle. The box of Reginald Maltravers stood on one end, leaning against the port side of the cabin, and dripped steadily. Elmer, wrapped in blankets, lay on the deck near the box of Reginald Maltravers, looking even more dejected in slumber than when his eyes were open. Teddy, the Pomeranian, was snuggled against Elmer's feet, but, as if a prey to frightful nightmares, the little dog twitched and whined in his sleep from time to time. These were the apparent facts, and these facts were set to a melancholy tune by the long-drawn, dismal snores of Cap'n Abernethy, which rose and fell, and rose and fell, and rose again like the sad and wailing song of some strange bird bereft of a beloved mate. They were the music for, and the commentary on, what Cleggett beheld; Cap'n Abernethy seemed to be saying, with these snores: "If you was to ask me, I'd say it ain't a cheerful ship this mornin', Mr. Cleggett, it ain't a cheerful ship." But Cleggett's nature was too lively and vigorous to remain clouded for long. By the time the red disk of the sun had crept above the eastern horizon he had shaken off his fit of the blues. The sun looked large and bland and friendly, and, somehow, the partisan of integrity and honor. He drew strength from it. Cleggett, like all poetic souls, was responsive to these familiar recurrent phenomena of nature. The sun did him another office. It showed him a peculiar tableau vivant on the eastern bank of the canal, near the house boat Annabel Lee. This consisted of three men, two of them naked except for bathing trunks of the most abbreviated sort, running swiftly and earnestly up and down the edge of the canal. He saw with astonishment that the two men in bathing suits were handcuffed together, the left wrist of one to the right wrist of the other. A rope was tied to the handcuffs, and the other end of it was held by the third man, who was dressed in ordinary tweeds. The third man had a magazine rifle over one shoulder. He followed about twenty feet behind the two men in bathing suits and drove them.