“Joe,” he called, “this is great! They’ve gone ashore. And they must be coming back soon. That’s why they’ve left the sail up.” Then Little Tim Reardon, scampering forward, did a strange thing. Tugging away at the rope, he brought the anchor off from bottom and clear to the surface of the water. Taking a few turns of the rope around the bitts, to secure it, he darted astern, seized the wheel of the _Viking_, and put her under way. “Here, you Tim, quit that!” cried Joe Hinman in disgust, from the stern of the _Surprise_. “You don’t want to be too free with your tomfoolery with Jack and Henry Burns. Just remember whose yacht we’re sailing. They’ll be mad clean through, too. It’s no joke to think you’ve lost a fine yacht.” Little Tim only chuckled derisively, realizing that his larger companion could not compel obedience from the deck of another boat. “I’m doing this,” he said. “We don’t get a chance to play a joke like this on Henry Burns every day. Wouldn’t he do it quick, himself, though? Besides, I’m not going far—only up around the end of that long wharf. We can watch from there and see what happens.” “You’re a meddlesome little monkey; that’s what you are,” exclaimed Joe Hinman, too sleepy and weary to see fun in anything. “You’ll catch it from Jack—and you’ll get what you deserve.” And yet Joe Hinman, so long as somebody else would smart for it, had just enough interest in the plot to follow along with the _Surprise_. Together, the two yachts turned in under the lee of a long wharf, less than an eighth of a mile ahead, lowered the sails so they should not be visible, and came to anchor. “You’ve got to take the blame for this, Tim,” said Joe Hinman, as they waited together on deck. “I’ll do it,” chuckled Tim Reardon. “I like a joke as well as Henry Burns does. He’ll take it all right, too. You see if he don’t.” They woke the two boys who were sleeping in the cabin of the _Surprise_—to see the fun. George Baker and Allan Harding came on deck, sleepy and grumbling. Nor did the joke take on a more hilarious aspect, as the time went by and no Jack Harvey and no Henry Burns put in an appearance. “I’m going to turn in,” said Joe Hinman, at length. “You can have all the fun to yourself, Tim.” He went below, the two other boys following his example. Little Tim, himself, began to lose heart in the joke—when, suddenly, in the faint gray of the approaching dawn, he espied a boat coming out from shore toward where the _Viking_ had lain. It was four o’clock. The boat was a small skiff. There was only one person in it. Whoever he was, he was rowing furiously. There seemed to be a box of some sort on the seat in front of him.