They borrowed a kicker from one of the summer colonists and set out for home just before noon. Skippy was too overwhelmed to speak until long after they left the beach and Tully sat tragic and silent at the wheel.

“We might’s well look agin,” he murmured brokenly, as he headed the boat toward the Channel. “Just so’s to be makin’ sure.”

“Might’s well,” Skippy echoed. Then: “Gee, do you think maybe he was blowin’ the siren?”

“That he must o’ done. He must o’ been blowin’ it like mad.”

They spent half the afternoon chugging up and down the Channel and passed several craft, government and otherwise, which had heard the warning that the Inland Beach guards had passed along. Finally they decided to return home and with bowed heads found their way out of the treacherous waters.
163

“Sure if the coast guards ain’t found him, we won’t—not if we be stayin’ there all night,” said Tully mournfully. “Kid, don’t ye be jumpin’ on me, now. If ye knew what I been through since ... since.... I been blowin’ a siren in distress five hun’erd times, so I have, and five hun’erd times, I been in that Davy Jones callin’ me lungs out for help an’ no help come! I’ve sunk with her too—oh shiverin’ swordfish ... kid, I ain’t nothin’ but a plain....”

“Don’t say it, Big Joe,” said Skippy, moved to the depths of his soul with pity. “Gee, don’t I know! You wouldn’t have done it a-purpose.”

“No. ’Tis right ye be there.” Tully looked beaten.

They chugged on up the river and seemed to pass everyone they knew. Inspector Jones and his men bobbed by in the trim harbor launch waving a cheery greeting to Skippy and eyeing Tully with obvious suspicion.

Skippy was grateful for the silent inlet and the warm throaty bark that Mugs gave as he scrambled aboard the barge. He looked at the dog, winced a little at his faithful canine eyes and took him up in his arms. He couldn’t do to Mugs what they had done to that unknown man on the Davy Jones.
164

He sprawled in a rickety arm chair on deck while the sun sank slowly in the west. The whole horizon was a blaze of scarlet, then gold, then purple and at last it faded into leaden colored clouds. Big Joe was calling him in to supper.

Skippy looked down in the crook of his arm at the sleeping dog. Supper? He didn’t want any—he never wanted to eat while that man on the Davy Jones lay in Watson’s Channel. He couldn’t do it to Mugs.

Tully got tired of waiting and came out on deck. After one glance at Skippy’s tragic face he got his hat, pulled it down over his head and left the barge while the boy watched him go with a constricted feeling in his throat. And though he wanted with all his heart to call Big Joe back, he knew that he could never again sit opposite him at the table with a dead man between them.

Dusk settled over the inlet and through the shadows came Mrs. Duffy. Her cheery smile was conspicuous by its absence just then and her cheeks looked tear-stained............