The missing lighthouse keeper came eagerly forward. “I thought it was you, Jerry Blow, but I wasn’t takin’ chance. I was lying down on the bunk in case it was one of them other swabs, though I couldn’t understand what all the noise was about. How’d you get here?”
“It’s a long story,” answered the captain. “No use in talking about it here. Suppose we go into the room that gang was using and talk it all over?”
They climbed out of the hold and made their way back to the after compartment of the schooner. There in the room where the gang had been they settled down to talk, after the boys had been introduced to the keeper. As soon as he learned that Terry was a friend of theirs the keeper had news for them.
“They shipped your friend up the river in a barge,” he told them. “They ain’t going to hurt him, just going to dump him ashore when they get way out in the woods and let him walk home, that’s all. I heard them talking about it and this morning I heard the young fellow go aboard. He put up a dandy fight when he first came aboard but there was too many against him.”
The boys were relieved to find that they were on the right track and were anxious to start in pursuit at once, but both the captain and the keeper were against it.
“No use,” decided the captain. “We don’t know the river, and we might run aground. In the morning we’ll start early and run down on them. It won’t take your sloop long to run down a slow barge, and we’ll sure get ’em. They don’t know we’re coming and we’ll pounce on ’em sudden like. Eh, Timmy?”
“Sure thing,” agreed the keeper. “I’ll show you the mouth of the river when we go back.”
“Sure,” nodded the captain, lighting his pipe. “Timothy, do you know anything about a certain ghost that was playing around tonight?”
The lighthouse keeper’s eyes twinkled. “Well,” he drawled. “I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t. I was the ghost, myself. But maybe I’d better tell you everything, from the beginning.”
“Maybe you had,” nodded the captain. “Spread your canvas, son.”