But the pup refused to keep still. Clambering up the three broad steps leading from the saloon to the cockpit, she changed her growl to a succession of shrill barks of defiance. “What’s up, I wonder?” remarked Heavitree, coming back to earth, or rather to his floating home. “Are the others returning?” “Don’t think so,” replied Peter, preparing to go on deck. “Molly’s welcome is very different from that.” On gaining the cockpit Craddock stared in bewilderment. It was some moments before he grew accustomed to the change from the well lighted cabin to the faint moonlight. When he did he was all the more puzzled, for, instead of land showing a few hundred yards to starboard, there was nothing but an expanse of sea dotted with the flashing light of numerous buoys. Then he looked to port. There was the land—the low-lying ground to the east of the entrance of Newtown River. He had completely ignored the fact that the _Kestrel_ had swung to the young flood tide. “What is it, Molly?” he asked. The pup, crouching with her forepaws planted against the low rail, was barking furiously at a dark object floating in the water at less than ten yards from the yacht’s bows. In the faint moonlight Craddock saw that it was a basket drifting bottom upwards. “That’s nothing, pup,” declared the lad. “Haven’t you seen a drifting basket before?” But Molly would not be silenced. She seemed to be fascinated by the derelict wickerwork. Then Craddock began to be interested, too. And for a very good reason: the basket was not drifting with the tide. It was moving decidedly against it and slowly yet surely approaching the _Kestrel’s_ bows. “Come on deck, old man,” said Peter to his chum, in a low voice; but Heavitree, who had resumed his absorbing pastime, either did not hear or did not want to. Presently the basket disappeared from Peter’s range of vision. From where he was standing in the cockpit he could not see the surface of the water in the vicinity of the yacht’s bows. He heard the rasping of the wickerwork against the _Kestrel’s_ side, and once more the basket appeared in view, bobbing astern and now drifting naturally with the tide. Molly’s bark grew louder and shriller. She had lost all interest in the basket and was directing her attention to something under the bows. Before Craddock could go for’ard to investigate, the dripping head and shoulders of a man appeared above the rail. Then, obtaining a foothold on the bobstay, the intruder swung himself on the fore-deck, stood up, and steadied himself by means of the forestay. “Get that there dawg of yourn out of it afore I ’as to ’urt it,” he growled. In the semi-darkness the stranger seemed to tower to a great height. Actually he was well over six feet, though narrow across the chest. He was clean-shaven, and wore an overcoat that was many inches too short for him. He was bare-legged, and it looked as if he were wearing shorts. Water drained steadily from his meagre and saturated garments.