He was astonished to hear the sound of a loud ticking burst on his ears. Thrusting his hand forward, he encountered wood, and at last, sure that he was not yet in the old house, itself, he relighted the candle and looked at the object before him.
It was the back of a big, redwood grandfather clock, and Don was further amazed to see that a hook held one side of it to the doorway. Undoing this hook he found that the big clock swung outward on hinges, and then it came to him. The clock was a real one, but it was a clever disguise. If anyone raided the house the men would open the concealed doorway by pushing forward their clock, and if they happened to be in the storage room at the time they could make their escape into the house by way of the clock. The clock, for all its works and its ticking, was in reality a door, leading either into the storage room or into the house from the storage room.
Don now found himself on the landing of the stairway and alone in the house, unless the old woman was about. Fearful that she was, and not wishing to meet her, Don was at a complete loss as to what to do. He might find his way to the cove in the darkness, overpower the man who had been sent for the dinghy, and then make his way out to the sloop.
He made his way down the stairs, which creaked loudly under his feet, and got as far as the front door. This he could not open, but a full length window on the other side was much easier. After raising the window, he threw one leg over the sill, which was about a foot high. Suddenly a thin old voice shrilled out from upstairs.
“Who is it? Who is it?”
Don knew that it was the old woman, and so he lost no time in getting away. He found that he was lost in the intense blackness of the night, and was almost as hopelessly mixed up as he had been in the dark cellar. But he had a general idea of the direction of the cove, and he made his way in that direction rapidly.
It took him longer to get there than it had taken him to get to the house earlier in the day, but when he did get there he found he was doomed to disappointment. The dinghy was gone, and there was no sign of the men. Thinking that they might have gone somewhere along the shore he followed it, puzzled by another circumstance. The Lassie was nowhere to be seen. But that in itself was not hopeless, for he thought that Jim might have moved it purposely.
Continuing on around the shore he was in time to witness the battle aboard the sloop. He saw it all, from the appearance of Terry to the victory for his side. He exulted gleefully, mourning the fact that he could not be in on it, but he dared not swim out, for the distance was great and it was possible that they might weigh anchor and sail, leaving him to swim back to shore.
He missed the scene of the escape and the chase because of the darkness. He would not have seen the fight, except that vivid light poured up from the companionway of the Lassie. Realizing that he must stay there until morning, he sat down in the wet undergrowth to wait.
But when the storm came up he was forced to go back to the old house. He knew that he must find some kind of shelter, and so he followed the beach around to the cove and went back over the trail to the house. The place was absolutely black, without a light of any sort, but fearing a trap, he took refuge in a well-built henhouse until morning.