“Yes, sir, within a half-mile,” the man answered.
“This is guesswork, Eaton,” Major Harding protested. “We can’t scour a mile of river shore in the dark. Before we stumble on them they’ll have had their talk and gone home.”
“It’s not so hard as you’d think,” declared Larry. “I know the banks pretty well along here. Don’t throw the search-light over the shore, Ed,” he directed the man by the steersman’s side.
The boat was drifting now, in the shadow of the bank. Night had fallen and the moon was rising over the steep hillside that loomed above them.
“See there, Harding?” Larry continued, pointing inshore. “All along here are rocky or wooded slopes. Do you see the bushes growing low along the bank? There are no vineyards for half a mile further. It’s fairly deserted. We have only to find the barge they came in.”
“There’s a light, Larry,” Lucy whispered, her heart hammering with nervous excitement. “What can it be?”
“It’s a house near the little hamlet below here, Altheim, I think it’s called. Shut off your search-light, Ed.”
“There’s a barge, sir,” said the steersman, pointing ahead.
The boat’s passengers stared into the darkness, faintly lighted now by the moon touching the water with phosphorescent gleams. Along the dark line of the shore a darker blot showed, and, as the boat floated nearer, a big, heavily-loaded barge came into sight, fastened to one of the small trees growing near the bank, and somewhat hidden by the bushes’ low-growing bare branches.
“Push in here, Rogers,” Larry ordered. “Can you make a landing?”