Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/279

Rh individual who was rowing away from the ship in a little boat. 'There's the thief! I thought there was something suspicious about the way in which he came sneaking up from below. Before we knew what he was up to he had dropped into his boat and was off. If you look alive, Golden, you'll catch him yet, red-handed.' The boat in which I had come from shore was still alongside, and, before I had a chance to collect my scattered senses, his lordship had not only bundled me into it, but the boat itself was pushed off from the yacht.

"We chased that boat which contained the solitary rower, as it appeared to me, for hours. I will not dilate on what I still continued to suffer, but through all my agony I urged the rowers in pursuit. As soon as we were within hailing distance I shouted to the fellow, 'Stop!' Directly I did so, standing up in his boat, he dropped something into the sea. I distinctly saw that he dropped something, but what he was too far off for me to see. When we reached him he declared that he had merely thrown overboard some rubbish, but why he had chosen that singularly inopportune moment he did not condescend to explain. We took him in tow, he seeming not at all unwilling, and at last we reached the land. How thankful I was to do so no one but myself can have the faintest conception.

"Hardly had I set foot on terra firma than I became convinced that I had been duped from first to last. The fellow we had chased turned out to be an honest, simple fisherman, who had been employed to take a telegram from the post office to the yacht, and who protested that he had never left his boat,