“Bend your head this way, and look yonder through the bushes,” Jack told him.
“Great governor!” whispered the Wireless skipper, hoarsely; “it is a light, as sure as shooting! And on the water, too, Jack. Say, that power boat must be over there, in another bayou just beyond. There’s a neck of land runs out, and it’s covered with trees and scrub. That’s why we didn’t glimpse that light before.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head, George, for that’s just the way the land lies,” Jack went on, trying to control his voice, which would tremble a little despite his utmost endeavors. “But perhaps that light wasn’t shining a bit ago. There, look! it’s disappeared again.”
“That’s what it has,” Jimmy observed, having been an interested observer all the while; “just for all the worrld loike a windy had been opened, and shut again. I do be thinking mesilf that somebody was afther coming out of the cabin to take a look around, and lift the door open the while, that’s all. Now he’s gone in again, by the same token.”
“I hope, then, he didn’t just catch a glimpse of our light moving, before I doused the glim,” was the fervent wish expressed by Jack.
“I hardly think he did, Jack,” George said, nervously. “You see, it was standing on the ground up to the time you grabbed it up again. But what ought we do now?”
“Make our way around that tongue of land the best way we can, and see how things are there,” Jack replied, without the slightest hesitation.
“Why not follow the beach around?” George suggested.
“Now, that wouldn’t be a bad scheme. It’s so dark that if we kept low, they couldn’t see us moving. And, besides, it’ll save a lot of scrambling through that brush, without the help of the lantern. All right; come along then, boys. And let’s remember to keep as quiet as an owl in the daytime.”
Saying this in a whisper, Jack led the way, the others following along in Indian file at his heels. Whenever he halted for any reason, both George and Jimmy would also draw up instantly. And no doubt, on every occasion of this sort, their excited pulses would cause their hearts to beat like trip-hammers.