Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/61

 we're after. Get it, all of you? All right. Look at your watches."

The ensign rose and started eastward around the edge of the straggling grove. Jones followed, and Staples. After a minute or so Endicott and Nelson quietly went their separate ways, leaving a somewhat anxious looking youth behind in the shape of Billy Masters. Nelson kept to the sand so that his feet would tread on no crackling twigs, and, when he had traversed what he believed to be the proper distance, knelt and looked at the watch on the leather strap about his wrist. He had still two and a half minutes to wait. From his place he could see the Wanderer again. She was swinging westward now, perhaps two miles away, but one who didn't know would never have suspected her of interest in this forlorn stretch of reef and sand. Nelson thought he could make out a moving figure on her forecastle deck and wondered if it was Cochran impatiently awaiting a chance to ram a cartridge into that bow gun. Save for the roar of the waves and the plaintive cries of the gulls everything was still. The seconds ticked themselves slowly away. A minute more now to wait. A half minute—fifteen seconds—ten—five

He arose, revolver in hand, and stepped for- 39