Wyn stared all around. "You're right," she gasped. "There isn't a single twinkling lantern--except ashore." Polly, sitting in the stern seat, reached for their own lantern and smothered its rays. "We won't show a gleam, either," she muttered. "Why! who could it possibly be?" cried Wyn. "Do you think somebody may be following us?" "I don't know," returned Polly, grimly. "But I thought I heard something back there at our house. We were talking loud. If those silver images were worth all Dr. Shelton says they were, there are more than us girls who would like to find them." "My goodness me! I didn't think of _that_," observed Wyn Mallory, with a little shiver. "Do you suppose we really are being followed?" CHAPTER XXV THE STRANGE BATEAU Polly laughed a little. Yet she spoke seriously. "You needn't be so worried, Wyn. I know most of the men who do business on the lake. Some of them are mighty fine fellows, and others are just the opposite; but I'm not afraid of the worst of them." "If they followed us, and we _did_ find the sunken motor boat, couldn't they grapple for the box of silver images, and steal them?" demanded Wyn. "Not easily. You see, they don't know where the box was stowed. Father told nobody but me. The _Bright Eyes_ was a good-sized boat, and they'd have some trouble getting up the box without raising the boat herself." "I suppose that's so," admitted Wyn, less anxiously, as the _Coquette_ carried them swiftly toward Gannet Island. "But these men you speak of might interfere with us." "Yes. That's so. But they'd get as good as they sent, I reckon," said Polly, who didn't seem to have a bit of fear. Wyn was no coward; she had shown that the time she and Bessie Lavine were spilled out of their canoes in the middle of the lake. But she had not lived, like Polly, in the woods with few but rough people for associates. Soon they passed Green Knoll Camp, lying peacefully in the light of the moon that was just then rising above the Forge. Its rays silvered all the knoll and made the camp a charming spot. "I hope none of them will wake up and find me gone," remarked Wyn, chuckling. Polly gave the tiller and sheet to her friend and stood up to get a better view of the lake astern of them. At first she saw nothing but the dim shores and the silvering water. Then, some distance out, Polly caught sight of a ghostly sail drifting across the path of moonlight. "A bateau!" she exclaimed. "And--with the wind the way it is--she must have come right out of our cove, Wynnie." "Do--do you really think anybody was listening to us when we were talking there on the landing, Polly?" Wyn asked. "And are they aboard _that_ bateau?" "I don't know. But I know I heard something then." "But that boat isn't following us." "It may be. We can't tell. They can watch us just as easily as we can watch them."