Part 6

They went through the house from top to bottom and Don showed them the storage room. But now there remained but a few of the smaller articles, everything else had been carted off.

“After we chased them off last night they must have loaded their stuff into a boat and run off with it,” remarked the captain. “But what I want to know is what kind of a boat have those fellows got? Must have some kind of a power cruiser that runs up here close to the house by way of a creek.”

A little later on, they found that this was so. While looking over the cellar which Don had not seen at all, owing to the darkness, they found at one end a door which led directly out into a thicket. Through the midst of this thicket was a path, and soon they came across a narrow creek, in which lay their own dinghy.

“Sure,” nodded the captain. “They run their boat up here and kept out of sight. Last night they loaded that stuff and slipped away.”

Don and Terry rowed out in the dinghy, while the captain went around to the cove for the dory. Soon the captain caught up to them under power and they arrived at the _Lassie_ at the same time. Jim was overjoyed to see his brother safe and sound, and they all united in thanking the old captain.

“Avast there, stow that stuff!” he protested. “Nothing to thank me for. I never liked the looks of that crew, and I always felt that they had no business on my island. I’ve lived there for twenty years. Now, it’s time we got down to business. We’ve got to get over to Stillwell at once.”

“What for?” asked Don.

“We must make a report to the authorities about these fellows and have that house taken over. Start your engine running. It won’t take us long.”

They started the engine and headed the sloop across the gray water toward the town of Stillwell. Don was starved, of course, and Jim, as soon as his duties permitted, made him a hearty meal. The captain insisted upon taking the tiller and in a few hours they were gliding in beside the long dock at the town. Jim stood at the bow while Don slowly throttled the engine down, and when the bow was close to the dock he leaped ashore, snubbed the rope around a post, and then pushed the bow off with one foot, so as not to allow it to scrape. The _Lassie_ came to a halt, riding quietly up and down.

Stillwell was a town of some importance, and they wasted no time in laying their case before the harbor authorities. The chief was much interested and listened eagerly to their story. When Don had finished the chief pushed a button on his desk.

A man in uniform entered briskly and saluted. The chief directed him to proceed to Mystery Island at once and take possession of the old house there. After the man had gone the chief turned to the boys and the captain again.

“It is always possible that they might go back there for something, and if they do we’ll be able to lay hands on them. But frankly, I’m afraid that they have gone. There is a heavy reward out for them, and I’m rather sorry you weren’t able to hold onto them. But you have done well as it is. I promise you that we’ll bend every effort to catch those fellows and put them behind bars.”

After this interview the boys walked around Stillwell, where they were pretty well known, and made a few purchases. The captain had refused to join them, and when they went back to the sloop they found him sitting on the cabin of the _Lassie_ calmly smoking his pipe, his broad back against the sail.

“What you been doing, captain?” hailed Terry.

“Thinking,” replied the captain. “How’d you fellows like to go in for a beach party tonight?”

“A what?” asked Jim.

“Beach party. Long’s there isn’t anybody on the island now except me, what do you say we go back, build a fire on the sand, eat out there, and if you are agreeable, I’ll spin a yarn or two. What say?”

“I say yes,” voted Don, quickly.

“I second that yes,” cried Jim, and Terry nodded.

The captain got up. “That’s fine. Let’s get back; that parrot of mine’ll think I’m dead or something. There’s a fair breeze, so let’s see you sail back.”

While the captain held the tiller the boys ran up the sails, and soon the sloop was heeling over under a cracking load of sails. The canvas curved out under the force of the breeze until it looked to Terry as though they must burst, but the Mercers and Captain Blow did not seem to mind it in the least. It took them about two hours, and just as the feeble sun was going down they ran past the cove on the island and rounded the point that sheltered the captain’s little bit of land.

The sloop was anchored and they went ashore in the dory. After they had beached the dory the captain led the way to the door of the shack and, after winking at the boys, suddenly began to rap on the door.

Instantly a medley of groans and sobs sounded from the inside of the shack. Jim, remembering the captain’s words when they left the shack, grinned, but the others looked startled. The captain laughed heartily.

“Ahoy, Bella!” he yelled.

The groaning and sobbing ceased abruptly and there was a moment of silence. Then the parrot cried out, “Open the door, open the door!”

The captain opened the door and they went in. The parrot, who had been sitting on top of the cold stove, flew to the captain’s shoulder and perched there.

“Quit that, you lubber,” the captain growled, as the parrot bit him lovingly on the ear. “Well, what about it, old girl? Any visitors?”

“Bella was a good girl!” the polly answered.

The captain hung his hat on a peg. “Well, now, I’m real glad to hear that. It don’t happen very often.” He turned to the boys. “Make yourselves at home, as much as you can in such a little place. I’ll get things together and we’ll tramp up the shore aways.”

The captain began to wrap up beans, fish, bread and butter in a large package. The boys looked over his fishing tackle and some models of sailing ships that he had carved out of wood.

“Where did you ever get this piece of wood, captain?” Jim asked, holding up a small dory carved out of red wood.

“Oh, I get most of my wood right here on the beach. The tide washes it up and I find it. I found that piece about three miles down the shore. Don’t even know what kind of wood it is, and it was tough to whittle.”

It was now beginning to get dark and the captain and the boys left the shack and started down the rough beach. The storm of the evening previous had littered it with driftwood, and they had to watch the sand before them as they walked. When they got to a point about a mile from the shack the captain stopped and placed his bundles on the sand. Terry and Don, who also carried bundles which the captain had given them, did likewise.

“Now,” said the captain, briskly. “We’re ready to go to work. Gather up a load of dry driftwood. Don’t bother with any of the stuff that came ashore last night, but get good stuff. Jim, you help me with the eats, while the boys get the wood.”

Getting the wood was no task, as the beach was covered with it. While Terry and Don gathered it the captain put beans in a pot, added water from a jug, and as soon as the fire was going, set them to boiling. On a second fire he started to broil fish. Soon the air was filled with the smell of good cooking.

The night was pitch dark and the fire, leaping up into the still air, made a pleasing picture. Far to the south a light flashed out across the water, and Don asked the captain about it.

“That’s the Needle Point Lighthouse,” the captain answered. “Run by a friend of mine, Timothy Tompkins. Rather queer old boy, but a good fellow, once you get to know him. We used to have a scheme that if anything went wrong at the lighthouse he would burn a red light and I would come over to help him, but I haven’t seen him for a year or more, and we never did have any use for that light.”

The captain dug a hole in the wet sand, made a fire of embers and then put the pot of beans on them. “Beans cooked like this are called bean hole beans,” he told them. “It works a lot better when you are out in the woods, though. Well, how’s that fish? We might as well start in.”

That meal was one of the most enjoyable meals the boys ever had. They settled themselves in the sand, listening to the beat of the waves on the beach, and ate the beans and fish with wholesome and hearty appetites. The fire blazed merrily upward toward the sky, and the sand hills back of them seemed to crouch down and ring them around.

When the meal was over the captain filled his pipe and began to tell them stories. He had had a wide career on the sea, and had visited many lands on many ships, so they enjoyed his stories immensely. Stories of storms and staunch old sailing ships, of mutiny on the high seas and the people of the southern seas, of the great old shipping days in Boston, and many others. The boys listened attentively and with respect to their friend as he told it all in his own, vivid way.

It was Don who first interrupted. He had been looking off across the sea and now he said, “I beg your pardon, Captain Blow, but wasn’t your friend to burn a red light if he needed you for anything?”

“Eh?” said the captain, coming abruptly out of a story. “Yes, he was. Why?”

“Because,” answered Don, pointing across the tumbling black waters, “there is some kind of a red light burning from a window in the lighthouse right now!”

_13. The Red Lamp_

The captain jumped to his feet with a startled exclamation and looked in the direction of the lighthouse. Sure enough, a red light was burning high up in a window near the top.

“Well, I’ll be darned!” the captain exclaimed. “It’s the light, sure enough. Let’s get over there and find out what is wrong.”

Leaving everything just as it was on the sand the boys and the captain ran down the beach until they came to the shack and there they piled in the dory. The captain started the engine and headed out to sea toward the south shore and the lighthouse.

“This Timothy is a pretty queer sort of a fellow,” Captain Blow explained, as the dory cut her way into the bobbing waves. “I think so much solitude in that lighthouse has been too much for him. Like as not we’ll find that it is nothing at all. I told him more than once that he ought to get over being so sort of nervous, but he just keeps on his merry way. ’Taint very merry, though. Timothy is just the opposite of merry, but he is a good lighthouse keeper.”

It took them more than a half hour to arrive at the black spur of rock which ran abruptly out into the water and which was named Needle Point. When they got there the captain ran his boat alongside the dock and tied it up securely. The beacon itself stood about a hundred yards away from the dock.

“Come on,” said the captain. “We’ll find out what’s wrong here.”

Led by their friend the boys approached the tall structure of stone and brick that rose high into the air above their heads. It was the first time that they had ever been close to a lighthouse. The base of the light was a regular house, they discovered, with several rooms in it, while the column tapered and became much smaller as it became higher. Just now Captain Blow was at the main front door, hammering with all his might.

“Open up, Timmy Tompkins!” he bellowed. “What in time’s the matter?”

There was no reply to his knock or his question, and after waiting for a moment the captain opened the door and looked in. After hesitating for a brief second he walked in and the boys followed him.

They found themselves in a large room, the central room of the lighthouse. In the center of the room stood a table, faced with a few chairs and an old sofa. The walls of the room, plainly whitewashed, were covered with one or two old prints, some framed official documents, and a large map. The room was in perfect order and the place empty of life. Off this room the party could see the other rooms: a kitchen, a bedroom, and what appeared to be a storeroom. Led by the captain they visited each room and looked around, without finding anything.

“He isn’t down here,” said the captain. “More than likely he’s up in the tower. You boys ever see a real lighthouse? Well, then come on. You’re going to see one now.”

On the other side of the room an iron ladder led to a trap door in the ceiling, and that door had been pushed open. The captain mounted the ladder and disappeared through the trap, closely followed by the boys. When they stepped through the trap door they found themselves in the shaft of the lighthouse.

It extended straight upward for many feet, a spiral staircase leading up to the room which housed the light itself. The whole shaft was brilliantly illuminated by electric lights spaced along the wall, giving a steady light to the spiral stairs. At intervals along the shaft narrow slits served for windows, through which, in the daytime, sunlight poured into the column. Taking in all these details briefly the boys followed their friend up and around the shaft, step by step, until they came to another trap door, through which they made their way, and so entered a small room.

It appeared to be the keeper’s chief room while on duty. Through it a heavy beam ran straight up to the lamp itself, which was in the room directly above. A metal shaft with a handle came into this room through the floor overhead, and the captain told them what it was.

“This is the room where Timmy stays when the light ain’t working any too well,” he said. “Sometimes the automatic machinery gets out of order and don’t turn the light, and then Timmy has got to sit up all night and work the thing by hand. Not the kind of a job to go looking for, unless you have to.”

“Here is where he placed the light, Captain Blow,” called out Don.

A narrow slit which served as a window had been cut in the east side of the tower and on that small window sill the keeper had placed the red lantern. They crowded around it and examined it with interest and curiosity. It was quite hot and there was no means of knowing how long it had been lighted.

“Got any idea of how long that lamp was there before you sang out?” the captain asked Don.

“Not a bit,” confessed the boy. “But I am sure it wasn’t long. I had glanced at the lighthouse several times during the beach party, in fact, I guess you all did, and it wasn’t there. It was while you were telling your South Sea Island story that I looked over this way and happened to see it burning here.”

“Mighty funny,” muttered the old seaman. “If Timmy isn’t up in the light, I can’t figure what could have happened to him.”

The lamp itself was in the small room above the one in which they were standing and they climbed the short length of iron ladder and entered the room. A terrific burst of heat smote them in the face, and their eyes smarted from the blinding light which beat upon them as the lamp automatically swung toward them. The lamp was a huge affair, of shining brass, polished to the last degree, inside of which a powerful light burned. The light turned away from and then toward a thick plate glass window, and each time it turned toward the window a long arm of brilliant light stabbed out across the tumbling sea.

“He isn’t up here,” the captain said. “Let’s get down and look for him below.”

The boys were glad to leave the heat and the unbearable light and in silence they walked down the spiral steps to the room below. Once there they halted in the main room and looked blankly at each other.

“He seems to be gone completely,” remarked Jim.

“Yes, and that’s bad,” nodded the captain. “Something out of the ordinary must have popped up, or he would never have left the light. That’s against the law, and Timmy knows it. But the funny part is this: he must have known that he was going, because he left a warning light. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Terry, slowly. “Don’t know whether there is anything in it, though.”

“What is it?” asked the captain.

“I was just wondering if the marine bandits had anything to do with it all. You see, they ran away during the storm, and we thought that they ran down the coast, but we don’t really know just where they did go. Maybe we’re just getting in the habit of blaming everything on those fellows, but I was just wondering.”

“Could be,” agreed the captain. “What is that?”

An urgent buzzing reached their ears, and they looked in perplexity around the room. The buzzes came in regular order, and after looking in a distant corner Jim gave a shout.

“It’s the lighthouse telephone,” he said. “The receiver is hanging off the hook.”

The captain went to the telephone which was a wall affair, and which was in a corner. Just as Jim had said, the receiver was hanging off the hook, dangling at the end of its cord. The captain picked it up and shouted into the mouthpiece.

“Hello! Who is this?”

An impatient voice reached him over the wire. “This is the night telephone operator, over in Maplebrook. What in the world is the matter with you people. Your receiver has been hanging off the hook for at least an hour, and I’ve been buzzing my head off. Don’t you know that makes a button on my board light up and a bell ring?”

“Sorry,” explained the captain. “This is Captain Blow, from Mystery Island, speaking. I came over here to answer a distress signal and I find the keeper has disappeared. The receiver’s been off the hook an hour, you say?”

“Yes, about that. I’ve got a special line here from the lighthouse, and earlier in the evening the button lighted up and the bell began to ring. I answered it, but didn’t get anything or hear anything. I thought somebody must have just knocked it off and forgot about it, so I’ve been buzzing every once in a while. You say Timothy is missing, eh?”

“Yup. Guess you’ll have to get the police on the wire and hustle ’em out here. Is there a lighthouse keeper anywhere around that can be sent out here?”

The voice on the other end of the wire hesitated for a second and then replied: “Yes, the retired keeper lives here, and I can get ahold of him. Guess I better get him on the job until Timothy is located, eh?”

“Sure thing,” the captain concluded. “And get the police out here on the jump, will you, bub?”

The night operator agreed to do so at once, and the captain hung up the receiver. He explained the situation to the boys and then proposed that they look further.

“I don’t think he is anywhere around,” he said. “But we’ll look all over the place. No use in missing anything. All I hope is that he hasn’t met with any foul play. I’m going to look through these rooms again. Suppose you fellows look around the grounds, only don’t go too far away.”

The boys went out of the door as the captain once more looked through the rooms of the station. Jim and Don walked out to a shed in the back of the lighthouse grounds and Terry walked away alone, toward the end of the rock upon which the lighthouse stood. He was soon lost in the darkness and Don and Jim forgot him in their interest.

A single shed, in which they found a rowboat and some canvas and rope, was at the back of the lighthouse and the boys made a thorough search of the place, but found no clue. They followed the spur of rock back toward the mainland until they came to low and marshy ground. Then, remembering the captain’s warning, they walked back toward the lighthouse, skirted it and walked out on the point of rock where it ended abruptly in the ocean.

Several minutes later the captain, standing in the middle of the floor of the bedroom, heard them enter. Don poked an anxious head in the doorway.

“Say, Captain Blow,” he said. “Isn’t Terry in here?”

“No,” answered the captain. “He’s outside somewhere.”

But Don shook his head. “He isn’t. We just went over the whole point, and he isn’t around. I’m afraid Terry has disappeared, too!”

_14. Terry’s Adventure_

Upon leaving the two boys Terry wandered down a path that led to the other side of the narrow strip of dirt and rock which formed the needle-like point. He had no definite object in mind other than a hazy idea that each foot of the place must be gone over in the search for clues. So he headed for the side of the point directly opposite to that upon which they had arrived.

Although the underlying surface of Needle Point was of solid rock, the top, for a depth of a foot at least, was composed of soft soil, and Terry began to scan it for footprints. He had no difficulty in finding them, and when he did he was more than interested. Evidently two persons had passed from the north side of the point to the lighthouse and when they had gone back again their feet had made deeper prints in the earth. It occurred to him that they might have been carrying someone, and he had no doubt that it had been the keeper. Deeply intent on the tracks Terry followed them down to the shore and there paused.

There was a single rock there that formed a natural landing place, though no dock had been constructed of wood. Here the prints of the men’s footsteps stopped and it was evident that they had taken to a boat. Where had the boat been? Terry looked out across the water as far as he could see but there was no craft of any kind in sight, except a very small rowboat that bobbed up and down a few feet away, tugging at the painter which held it captive to a stake which had been driven in the ground.

Terry glanced back at the lighthouse. He wondered if he should tell the others of his findings immediately or wait until he could find something else. After all, he had found out so little, and he wanted to push his search a little further before he told anything. Off to his right stretched the shore, a low-lying, swampy mass of mystery, bound up in a heavy fog which rose from the ground. He wondered if there might be some creek there which might shelter a small boat, and deciding to investigate, he pulled the small rowboat to him and got in.

“Won’t be gone but a minute,” he decided, remembering the captain’s warning. He found the boat a trifle wet, but making the best of it all, he bent to the task of rowing. The boat was light and he sent it toward the misty shore with swift, sure strokes.

His idea was to press close to land and examine the mouth of any little inlet that he might find, so, quickly gaining the shore, he began to row more slowly, watching carefully. There were a few openings, he discovered, but none large enough to hide anything of importance, and so he kept moving onward, fascinated with the search he was conducting. In time the lighthouse got further and further away and he came at last to a point of land, shaped like Needle Point and jutting out into the water in the same manner. Realizing that he was getting quite some distance from his friends, Terry determined to round the point and give one sweeping look, and then, if he found nothing, to row back to the lighthouse.

Accordingly, he rounded the point rapidly, and almost ran into a long, low black cruiser which seemed to crouch beside the reedy shore. As soon as the boy saw it he knew from the way it was drawn up beside the bushes that it was there for no good. Hastily backing water with his oars, so as not to run into it, Terry sat motionless in the rowboat, looking at the cruiser which loomed not ten feet away from him.

He had feared at first that someone might see him, but no one was on the deck, although a light stabbed the darkness from a side cabin window. The cruiser itself had light, fast lines, with a sharp bow, narrow cabin with a foot of deck space on each side of it, and a small after deck, from which the pilot operated the wheel and the motor. Terry’s first thought was to row the boat silently to the side of the cruiser, stand up and look in the window of the cabin; but fearing to make a noise which might betray him, he decided not to do it. But he was more than anxious to see what was in there, and he considered the possibility of boarding the craft and looking in from the narrow deck.