Nothing was to be seen. Heyst let his eyes roam idly over the sea. He
was so absorbed in his perplexity that a hollow sound, as of somebody
tumbling about in a boat, with a clatter of oars and spars, failed to
make him move for a moment. When his mind seized its meaning, he had
no difficulty in locating the sound. It had come from below--under the
jetty!
He ran back for a dozen yards or so, and then looked over. His sight
plunged straight into the stern-sheets of a big boat, the greater part
of which was hidden from him by the planking of the jetty. His eyes
fell on the thin back of a man doubled up over the tiller in a queer,
uncomfortable attitude of drooping sorrow. Another man, more directly
below Heyst, sprawled on his back from gunwale to gunwale, half off
the after thwart, his head lower than his feet. This second man glared
wildly upward, and struggled to raise himself, but to all appearance was
much too drunk to succeed. The visible part of the boat contained also
a flat, leather trunk, on which the first man's long legs were tucked
up nervelessly. A large earthenware jug, with its wide mouth uncorked,
rolled out on the bottom-boards from under the sprawling man.
Heyst had never been so much astonished in his life. He stared dumbly at
the strange boat's crew. From the first he was positive that these
men were not sailors.
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