If it had chanced that Mr. Carleton, too, being a man of shrewd observation, had noticed the omission on the part of Henry Burns, who was the last one overboard, to slip the padlock that made the hatch and doors of the companionway fast, he had not seen fit to mention the fact. Instead, he had been most talkative as they rowed away, pointing out various objects of interest up in the town. And now that the yachtsmen had retired for the night and Mr. Carleton had withdrawn to his room, it is just barely possible that he may have recalled that fact. At all events, he did not make ready to retire, but sat for a half-hour smoking. Then he arose, turned down the light, and went quietly down the stairs. It was about eleven o’clock, and the hotel was beginning to grow quiet. Few guests remained in the parlour, and most of the lights were out about the hotel and the grounds. Down in the town, as Mr. Carleton strolled leisurely along the streets, there were few persons stirring. Yachtsmen aboard their craft in the harbour had ceased bawling out across the water to one another, and no songs issued forth from any cabin. Only the harbour lights for the most part gleamed from the little fleet. The yacht _Viking_ lay some half-mile down below the village, toward the entrance to the harbour, and was hidden now from Mr. Carleton’s view by a little strip of land that made out in one place, and on which some tumble-down sheds stood leaning toward the water. Mr. Carleton went down confidently to the shore; but when he had arrived at the place where they had drawn the dory out, he met with a surprise, for there was no dory there. He looked about him, thinking he might have happened upon the wrong place; but there could be no mistaking it. There were the same sheds, with nets hung out, and the same boats in different stages of repair that he had observed with a careful eye when they had come ashore. He went along the beach for a little distance, to where a lamp gleamed in one of the sheds, and knocked at the door. “Some one seems to have taken our tender,” he said to a man that opened to his knock. “Do you know where I can borrow one or hire one for an hour so I can go out aboard? My yacht lies down there below that point. Anything you say for pay, you know.” “I’ve got a skiff you’re welcome to use, if you only fetch it back before morning,” replied the man, good-naturedly. “I don’t want pay for it, though. Just drag it up out of the reach of the tide when you come in.” He pointed to the boat, and Mr. Carleton, dragging it into the water, stepped in and sculled away.