ripples. It was not cold, and had the men not been so full of their
adventure they could have slept. At intervals Hilliard consulted
his luminous-dialed watch, but it was not until the hands pointed
to the half-hour after one that they made a move. Then once more
they softly ascended to the wharf above.

The sides of the structure were protected by railings which ran back
to the gables of the tin house, the latter stretching entirely
across the base of the pier. Over the space thus enclosed the two
friends passed, but it speedily became apparent that here nothing
of interest was to be found. Beyond the stacks of props and wagons
there was literally nothing except a rusty steam winch, a large
water butt into which was led the down spout from the roof, a tank
raised on a stand and fitted with a flexible pipe, evidently for
supplying crude oil for the ship's engines, and a number of empty
barrels in which the oil had been delivered. With their torch
carefully screened by the black cloth the friends examined these
objects, particularly the oil tank which, forming as it did a bridge
between ship and shore, naturally came in for its share of suspicion.
But, they were soon satisfied that neither it nor any of the other
objects were connected with their quest, and retreating to the edge
of the wharf, they held a whispered consultation.

Hilliard was for attempting to open one of the doors in the shed at
the end away from the manager's room, but Merriman, obsessed with
the idea of seeing the unloading of the Girondin, urged that the
contents of the shed were secondary, and that their efforts should
be confined to discovering a hiding place from which the necessary
observations could be made.