They gave the yacht a wide berth, one lad at the oars, the other crouched in the stern of the rowboat. Bill used its lights, however, to get his bearings on the pier steps. He half expected some angry yachtsman to be waiting with threats to wring his neck for such bare-faced robbery. They were still a couple of hundred yards off the wharf when a sea-going tug swung round the riding lights of an anchored sloop. Bill heard the clang of the engine room bell, and almost directly the powerful craft slowed down, her propeller blades churning the water to foam. A voice hailed them from the deck forward.