The last launch in was theMyoni. Williams, her owner, told Blade that he had taken his angler as far south as Bunga Head, and that he had not sighted theMarlin since nine o’clock that morning. This was shortly after six when the roar of the surf was louder than the whine of the wind about the mast stays of craft moored to the sheltered jetty. The river’s mouth was foaming, and now and then the sea on the bar and beyond it lifted high above the water in the channel.

“Another easterly making,” complained Alf Remmings, his moustache salted by sea spray, his darkly tanned face brightened by the spray’s stinging lash. “Why can’t it blow from any other quarter but the east? Looks like we’re going to be kept in for days. If Jack Wilton and Joe don’t soon turn up in theMarlin they won’t risk the bar and they’ll have to punch away out to Montague and shelter there.”

“Trust them two to look after themselves.” said Burns, as he was about to pass on his way to his home. “They went down south and they’ll likely enough run in to Eden for the night. And that’s where theDo-me is going to turn up, too, under her sail. This wind’ll bring her in even if she drifted fifty miles out.”

A little after seven o’clock the anxious Mrs Wilton was relieved of growing anxiety by a telephoned message stating that theMarlin had reached Eden and would stay there the night.

Her son and Joe had seen nothing of theDo-me.

At seven-thirty Edward Blade locked his office and went home to find his wife absent and no dinner prepared. He changed into warmer clothes and walked to the headland. The sea was a restless pattern of black and white. The sky was ribbed with black cloud streamers, pointing to where the highlands made a bold silhouette against the sunset glow. The endless procession of rollers, surmounted by a film of spray, swept past the headland into the great bay, their left flanks wheeling into the inner bay to smash with ghastly whiteness against the promontory protecting the river, their centres rushing onward to hurl themselves far up the sand slopes beyond.