“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.”