Sundersley, and, in spite of my efforts to avoid him, he haunted me
continually. The yacht, too, had evidently settled down for some time at
a berth in the harbour, for I heard that a local smack-boy had been
engaged as a deck-hand; and I frequently encountered Jezzard and the
other members of the gang, who all professed to believe that I had
committed the Eastwich forgeries. One day I was foolish enough to allow
myself to be lured on to the yacht for a few minutes, and when I would
have gone ashore, I found that the shore ropes had been cast off, and
that the vessel was already moving out of the harbour. At first I was
furious, but the three scoundrels were so jovial and good-natured, and
so delighted with the joke of taking me for a sail against my will, that
I presently cooled down, and having changed into a pair of rubber-soled
shoes (so that I should not make dents in the smooth deck with my
hobnails), bore a hand at sailing the yacht, and spent quite a pleasant
day.

"From that time I found myself gradually drifting back into a state of
intimacy with these agreeable scoundrels, and daily becoming more and
more afraid of them. In a moment of imbecility I mentioned what I had
seen from the shop-window at Eastwich, and, though they passed the
matter off with a joke, I could see that they were mightily disturbed by
it. Their efforts to induce me to join them were redoubled, and Hearn
took to calling almost daily at my house--usually with documents and
signatures which he tried to persuade me to copy.

"A few evenings ago he made a new and startling proposition. We were
walking in my garden, and he had been urging me once more to rejoin the
gang--unsuccessfully, I need not say. Presently he sat down on a seat
against a yew-hedge at the bottom of the garden, and, after an interval
of silence, said suddenly: