Its work! I repeated the words in my pondering mind. What was its work? What could be its object in repeatedly coming to the scow? Was it indeed a man as we had thought? Or was it, after all, a spirit from another world?

“Jerry!”

Carried along by my thoughts of ghosts and spirits, I gurgled, startled, as my chum’s low sharp voice came out of the darkness a few feet away.

“Let’s get out of this,” I shivered.

“There’s no one here,” he declared, talking to me over the side of the scow.

“We heard some one.”

“Our ears must have tricked us.”

I was still shivering.

“Get in the boat,” I urged, “and we’ll row back to the island.”

“Huh! And what are we going to tell Red and Peg when they ask us where the food is?” [[125]]