"Get your anchor up, Mr Milsom, if you please," said Jack, allowing his eyes to stray shoreward as Milsom repeated the order to the mate. As he looked, he became aware of something in the nature of a commotion or disturbance at the end of the pier; and, entering the chart-house, he brought forth a pair of splendid binoculars with which to investigate. Upon applying the glasses to his eyes he saw that there was a little crowd of perhaps fifty people gathered on the pier end, all eagerly listening to a man who was talking and gesticulating with great vehemence as he pointed excitedly toward the yacht. The man appeared to be particularly addressing two gendarmes who were among the crowd, but everybody was clustering close round him and listening, apparently in a state of the greatest excitement, to what he had to say, while occasionally one or another in the crowd would face seaward and shake his fist savagely at the yacht. "Come here a moment, Carlos," called Jack. "I want you to look through these glasses at the mob gathered yonder on the pier end, and especially at the excited individual in their midst, and tell me whether you remember having ever seen him before." Young Montijo took the glasses from Jack, looked intently through them for a full minute, and then turned to Singleton, saying: "Why, yes, of course I do. He is the chap that the Pater and I were constantly meeting, wherever we went, while we were in Switzerland. We met him so repeatedly that at length we could not avoid the conviction that he was dogging our footsteps. On board the steamers, in the trains, even when out driving, it was continually the same; we did not seem able to get away from him. He never took the slightest notice of us, but that only made us suspect him all the more, because in the case of other people, after we had encountered them a few times, many of them bowed to us, some even entered into conversation with us; but although that fellow stopped at the same hotels as we used, and generally contrived to sit at the same table with us, he never allowed himself to show, by so much as a momentary glance, that he had ever seen us before. Oh, yes"--as he again applied the glasses to his eyes--"that is the same man; I could swear to him among a thousand. And what is he after now? Upon my word it looks very much as though he intended to follow us on board here! See, there are two men bringing a boat along toward the steps at the end of the pier, and--yes--by Jove, that is what he means to do! And he is bringing the gendarmes with him! Now what mischief can he possibly be up to? The Pater and I have done nothing--" "Let me have a look," interrupted Jack, almost snatching the binoculars out of his friend's hand, and putting them up to his eyes.