CHAPTER XIII.—EXPLORING A LAGOON.
“Are those blue lights on the water or on the shore?” asked Clay.
“You can search me!” Alex replied.
“They’re on the water!” insisted Jule. “Can’t you see the blue gleam shining on the waves?”
“Wherever they are,” Clay said, “I’m going down and investigate.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Alex. “We’ll go down and see what the ghost of the Mary Ann has to say for himself.”
“I was thinking of taking Captain Joe for company,” Clay laughed.
“All right,” Alex grinned, “go on with Captain Joe if you want to.”
“I’m afraid two will make too much noise making their way through the thickets,” Clay said thoughtfully.
“How are you going to get ashore?” asked Alex, briefly.
“I’m going to pole the Rambler up close enough so I can jump,” was the answer.
“I guess you can do that all right,” Case cut in. “This water seems to me to be about fifty feet deep.”
“This is an odd looking island,” Jule observed. “The land seems to be shaped like a horse shoe.”
“There are numerous odd-shaped islands in the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. You can see easily enough how this peculiar formation came about,” Clay observed, “some forest fire burned the timber out of the center of the island. When the roots and stumps died out, the river carried the soil away. If the big trees on the two arms of the island should be cut down, the river would eat the soil away in a very short time.”
“Well, what are you going to do when you get over to shore?” asked Alex.
“I’m going to sneak down to where the lights show, and see what it is that makes them.”
“All right,” Alex said with an aggrieved air, “while you’re out having fun with the blue lights and the dog I’ll go to bed.”
“Oh, come along if you want to,” Clay laughed.
“No,” Alex replied more cheerfully, “I think I’ll go to bed. You boys can blunder around all night if you want to.”
The boy made his way to the cabin, and Clay warped the boat toward the north shore. In a few moments the keel seemed to strike bottom and then the boy examined the bank with a searchlight. All was clear so he sprang lightly across the narrow stretch of water and disappeared in the darkness.
The three blue lights were still observable not far from two hundred yards from the boat. They lay in a straight line up and down the lagoon.
The boys heard Clay making his way through the thicket for a few moments, and then all sounds on the shore ceased.
“I don’t believe he’ll find anything in there,” Jule said.
“Then what makes those lights?” demanded Case.
“The old merchant up at Wolf Creek told us what made the three blue lights,” chuckled Jule.
“I just believe,” Case replied, “that that is some signal.”
“What would be the use of a signal, out in the middle of the river opposite Wolf Creek?” demanded Jule.
“I can’t explain it,” Case answered, “but it’s a signal, just the same. It just can’t be anything else.”
“And what would be the use of a signal in this little old shut-in lagoon?” continued Jule.
“Then if it isn’t a signal, what is it?” asked Case.
“It’s just some natural phenomenon,” was the reply. “When Clay gets down there he won’t see anything at all. It may be that you can’t see the lights from any direction except this! You’ve seen wandering lights in swamps, haven’t you? Well, it’s my idea that this is that kind of a light.”
“We may know something more about it when Clay comes back,” Case suggested. “He may find out what it means.”
While the boys sat on the deck watching the mysterious lights with puzzled eyes, there came a quick, sharp explosion and the lights disappeared. The explosion sounded like the touching off of dynamite.
Both boys arose to their feet and leaned over the gunwale of the boat, gazing down the lagoon with mystified faces.
“Alex went to bed too early!” Case suggested.
“Yes, he should have seen that little old Fourth of July celebration,” Jule replied. “Let’s wake him up and tell him about it.”
“You wake him up,” Case answered.
Jule made his way into the cabin and felt around on the bunk occupied by the boy. Teddy, the bear cub, lay there sound asleep but Alex had disappeared! Jule returned to the deck with a grin.
“That little idiot,” he said, “has left the boat again.”
“We might have known he would!” answered Case. “He runs away from the boat in the night every time he gets a chance, especially if Clay is ashore. They’ll both be back here before long.”
“Clay probably will,” Jule observed, “but we don’t know when Alex will return. We usually have to get him out of some scrape.”
In the meantime Clay was pushing steadily through the thicket which lined the north arm of the peculiar-shaped island. For some moments he guided his steps by the blue lights which seemed to him to rest upon the water. Then came the explosion which the boys had heard and the lights were no longer in view.
“Now that’s a funny proposition,” the boy mused. “Why should those lights be hidden in this out of the way lagoon, and why should they pop out like that?”
Captain Joe, following close at the boy’s heels, now forced his way through the underbrush to the water’s edge and began uttering a series of low growls. Clay whistled softly but the dog refused to return. In a moment he ceased his verbal demonstrations and lay still, looking across the lagoon to the other shore.
“What’s the matter with you, Captain Joe?” Clay demanded in a whisper. “If you see some one who might have produced those lights, why don’t you say so? And don’t make so much noise about it, either!”
The dog advanced a few feet into the water until his shoulders were well covered and then backed out again. All this time his snarling muzzle was directed toward the opposite bank.
Directly he came out of the lagoon and crouched down at Clay’s feet.
“There’s something going on here, dog,” Clay whispered, patting Captain Joe on the head, “and we’ll just settle down right here and find out what it is. All you’ve got to do in order to help out is to keep still.”
The dog nodded his head knowingly, and the two crouched down in the darkness of the thicket to listen and to watch.
While they waited, the lights of the Rambler showed farther up, and Clay understood that something unusual was in progress there.
“They might as well invite that saloon boat to come sailing in here as to turn on those lights!” Clay muttered. “There must be something serious or they never would illuminate the Rambler in that way.”
Captain Joe now began moving restlessly about, and finally started up the lagoon toward the motor boat. Clay followed slowly, and soon came within the circle of light from the deck. He found Case and Jule looking over the gunwale.
“Why don’t you put out the lights?” he asked.
“We turned them on to direct you boys home,” was the reply.
“You boys home?” repeated Clay.
“Yes, you boys!” answered Jule. “Alex jumped out about as soon as you left. Did you see him anywhere?”
“I don’t think he came out on this side” Clay replied.
“If he didn’t,” Jule went on, “he’s in some mixup over on the south arm. There’s doings of some kind over there.”
“How do you know?” asked Clay.
“Because, just a few moments after we discovered that the boy had gone, a large rowboat came in at the mouth of the lagoon, passed along our port side and ducked into the bank some distance down. We couldn’t see her, of course, only just for a second as she came opposite us, and then only indistinctly, but we could hear her when she landed.”
“The question before the house now,” Case observed, “is about getting you on board again. You can jump from the gunwale to the shore but you can’t jump from the shore back to the gunwale.”
“There’s a long board under the forward deck between the storage bins,” Clay answered. “Get that out and I’ll climb it.”
The board was brought, and Clay was soon on deck. The first thing he did was to turn off the lights.
“What did you do that for?” asked Case. “Alex never will find his way back here in the darkness!”
“Alex can hide in some thicket until we find out what’s going on,” Clay answered. “As for the Rambler, we want to drift down so those in the boat won’t know exactly where she lies.”
The boat drifted down on the sluggish current of the lagoon for perhaps two hundred yards, and then the anchor was dropped at a point very near to where the three blue lights had shown.
“Now, we’ll keep as quiet as three bugs in a rug till we find out what’s going on,” Clay said.
“What did you find out about the lights?” asked Jule.
“They went out before I got to them,” Clay answered.
“What do you think about them?” Jule insisted.
“I don’t think!” was the reply.
“Case insists that they are merely signals,” Jule went on.
“That’s my idea, too,” Clay answered. “The lights certainly do not come up out of the water.”
“But who would be signaling in this lonely old lagoon?” demanded Jule.
“That’s what we don’t know,” Clay returned. “All we’ve got to do is to lie here and watch.”
“Say!” Case exclaimed in a moment. “What did you do with Captain Joe?”
“Why, he was right there when I came on board,” Clay replied. “I thought he came up the long plank right after me.”
“Well, he didn’t?” Case went on. “I took in the board after you came up, and the dog was nowhere in sight.”
“I’m glad of that!” answered Clay. “I certainly am glad of that!”
“I don’t see any good reason for celebrating the disappearance of the dog!” growled Case.
“I do!” Jule cut in. “Captain Joe will go and find Alex.”
“Sure he will!” admitted Case. “I never thought of that.”
The three boys sat for a long time on the deck of the motor boat looking out into the darkness. Now and then they heard the sound of rustling bushes on the shores, but as a rule the scene was very still. It must have been near midnight when Jule caught his chums by their arms and drew them closer to the port gunwale.
“There,” he said, nodding his head to the west, “there are the three blue lights. They are close to the south arm of the island this time. Now what do you make of it?”
“Let’s wait and see if they blow up like the others did,” suggested Case. “They, too, may explode with a loud noise.”
“What else can we do?” chuckled Jule.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Clay advised, “if we want to settle this mystery right here and now, and that is to turn on the motors and shoot down there like a rocket.”
“I’m for it!” Jule declared. “Let’s ram the ghost out of the water!”