"From the other side of the hill, at this end, and from an old house at the other end."
Ned stood for a moment without speaking. So the Chinaman had been holding him in conversation while his tools had been signaling to some one farther up the road!
This was practically what he had suspected. From the first he had believed that the old fellow's purpose was to hold him there as long as possible.
Signals would naturally be the outgrowth of such a plan, and Ned had sent Jimmie on ahead—silently—in order to see where the other party answered the signals from, if they were answered at all. As from the opening of the case, he had planned to secure his information from his enemies—from their actions and their presence or absence from the position he occupied.
Directing the marines to follow on slowly, Ned awoke Frank and Jack.
The four climbed the hill slowly, watching the sky as they advanced.
The clouds lay low to the east, but in the west was a patch of clear
sky.
When they gained the summit of the rise, they saw a light in a little grove some distance away. It seemed like a lantern moving out and in among the trees.
"There," Jimmie explained, "when I got to the top of the hill, I saw a rocket shoot out of that thicket. It did not ascend the sky, but follow the line of the earth and died out in the road."
"Of course," Ned said. "A rocket sent up in the usual way would have been visible from where we were standing."
"And, in a minute," the boy went on, "there came a rocket from that house, the house where the light was a minute ago. That, too, followed the ground line."
"Talking together in low tones!" grinned Jack.