The sound he had heard was the splash of oars and the hum of voices, and in a few moments he saw a boat containing two men appear around a corner of the higher rock, which descended sheer to the water’s edge, and make its way slowly toward the open bay.

“I tell you there is one, Davis,” Jack heard one of the men say, recognizing the voice as that of the man with the white mustache, as he always thought of him, and not as his stepfather.

In fact, he had long since repudiated any relationship whatever with the man, and regarded him as a stranger who had come into his life without any wish of his own, and whom he would willingly put out of it, and be satisfied never to see or hear of again.

“But weren’t you in here the other night when I signaled?” asked the other man, who was rowing.  “You answered and told me to come in.”

“Me?” with a laugh.  “I tell you I was not.  I don’t know the way in any more than you, though I know that there is one.”

“But I saw lights, and I got flashes from some one on deck, in the regular code, too.”

“They were from the deck of this yacht I told you of, and I will show her to you if you are patient.  Go easy, though, for we may come in sight of her at any moment.”

“But how about the signals I got?  How could any one know I was out there, and how would they know the code?”

“They got you by accident, perhaps, and then were smart enough to take your signals and answer them.  I know a boy who is clever enough for that.  He is on the yacht, too.  She has a lot of schoolboys who are on a trip to these seas.  They were carried in here by a tidal wave, and now cannot get out, not knowing the passage.”

“Well, I don’t know it myself, and I never would have come in only for finding a pilot who knows the ins and outs of all the islands in the Caribbean, but if I noticed any lights when I came in I must have thought they were yours.”

The men rowed on out of sight, for Jack did not care to lean over too far, partly from fear of falling and partly because he might be seen if any one else should happen to pass that way.

There had a vessel come into the bay, then, and she was now probably up the cove out of sight, and the man in the boat with the other was her captain.

“That is the man whose vessel I signaled the other night,” thought Jack.  “Rollins must have come over to this side and met him.  They know each other, it seems.  Birds of a feather flock together.”

Not caring to expose himself to the risk of being seen by the men when they returned, Jack now crept back to the other side of the rock and began to descend carefully, Percival being at length able to help him.

“Well, Jack,” said the latter when his friend was safe on the ground, “did you discover anything!”

“Yes, I did,” and Jack told him briefly what he had seen and heard.

“H’m! then there was a vessel coming in last night, and old Ben was not mistaken?” exclaimed Percival.