“We all saw that,” Herb put in; “but what do you suppose anybody would want to make us move our anchorage so much as to go to all that fuss and feathers to scare us?”
“Well,” answered Jack, “that’s a thing I can just tell—yet! You all admit it did keep waving its arms. And you heard those lovely groans stop just at the same time the thing disappeared. I thought I heard a sound like something falling to the ground. Did anybody else get that?”
“I heard some noise,” admitted George. “But, Jack, you certain must have some little suspicion about who engineered this silly game, if it was a set-up job?”
“Well, Josh saw a boat,” calmly remarked the one addressed.
“Listen to that, would you?” exclaimed Nick. “He means that it was Clarence who got up that cute game right now—Clarence, our old friend of the baseball diamond. And perhaps the ghost that groaned was only Bully Joe. Fellers, it sound good to me.”
“Well, it would be just like Tricky Clarence, as sure as you live!” admitted Herb, who had possibly been the least alarmed of the five.
“But why should he want us to vacate?” demanded Josh, who disliked very much to give up his pet illusion, and believe that the ghost was only the result of a clumsy trick on the part of some person or persons unknown.
“Perhaps he wants this fine little cove himself,” suggested George.
“That hardly fills the bill,” Jack went on. “He might think to get even for some of the times we’ve won out in the past. I tell you right now I’m bothered to understand it.”
“Do we clear out in the morning, then?” asked Herb.