“Oh, they got a little gay, but we managed to keep away from them,” was the reply. “They tried to steal our boat.”
“Yes, I presume they would like a trim little motor boat like yours,” suggested the stranger. “And now,” he continued, “I may as well get back to my friends. It will be daylight in an hour or two, and we’ve got to work at this dirty business in the dark if we work at all.”
Jule opened his lips to ask the man a question regarding the three blue lights but Clay, as if understanding his purpose, drew him back and whispered in his ear:
“No more questions just now, boy.”
“Why not?” Jule asked impatiently. “That’s just what we came up here for—to find out something about the three blue lights.”
“I have an idea,” Clay explained, “that this man didn’t tell the truth about the other things, and that he won’t tell the truth about the three blue lights—that is, if he knows anything about them at all.”
“I’ve been a little bit leary of him all along,” Jule replied.
While the boys were talking together, the stranger left the stranded coal barge upon which he had been standing and, pushing his boat along, joined his friends on the bank. The boys could hear a murmur of conversation following his arrival there, and now and then the light of a match flared up.
“There’s one thing I can’t understand,” Clay said as the boys put out into the current again, “and that is, why we have seen no wreckage from the steamer coming down.”
“That’s easy,” Alex grinned, “the boat must have dropped into the mouth of the lagoon.”