"We've sworn off practical jokes," joined in Frenchy earnestly.
"Huh! what's the matter with you?" sniffed Torry suspiciously. "Why this eleventh-hour conversion?"
But the two smaller fellows refused to be "drawn." They merely reiterated that they knew nothing about the cause of the ghostly sound. The four overhauled all the stowed tackle and lumber in the compartment, but found nothing but a locked carpenter's chest that was too heavy to move. And the noise did not seem to come from that.
"It's in the air—it's all about us," declared Whistler seriously. "I doubt if the source of the noise is in this room at all; it is somewhere near and by some freak of acoustics the sound is heard more plainly in this place."
"You can try to explain it as you will," returned Torry. "It's mighty mysterious."
"'Mysterious' is no name for it," said Frenchy. "It'll be more than that before all's said and done. By St. Patrick's piper that played the last snake out of Ireland! some of these garbies are getting blue around the gills already."
"Laugh at them," commanded Whistler. "We're Americans. We ought not to have a superstitious bone in our bodies."
"Arrah!" grunted Frenchy. "I don't know rightly that it's me bones that are superstitious. But that 'tick-tock' gives me the creeps, just the same."
In a week the bulk of the Kennebunk's crew were keeping strictly away from the compartment on the lower deck from which came the strange sound. In addition, a run of small accidents broke out which seemed to the minds of many of the crew to assure that the ship was doomed to bad luck.
"The ship is haunted," continued to be whispered from division to division. The sternness of the petty officers could not halt the spreading feeling.