But Pee-wee was gone; there was no dream about that, and the boat did not seem like the same place without him.
The first place they passed was Stoneco, but there was no sign of life near the shore, and the Good Turn chugged by unheeded. They ran across to Milton where a couple of men lolled on a wharf and a few people were waiting at the little station. They could not get in very close to the shore on account of the flats, but Roy, making a megaphone of an old newspaper, asked if a flash message had been received there. After much shouting back and forth, he learned that the searchlight had been seen but had been thought to be from one of the night boats plying up and down the river. It had evidently meant nothing to the speaker or to anyone else there. Roy asked if they would please ask the telegraph operator if he had seen it.
"He'd understand it all right," he said, a bit disheartened. But the answer came back that the operator had not seen it.
At Poughkeepsie they made a landing at the wharf. Here expressmen were moving trunks about, a few stragglers waiting for some boat peered through the gates like prisoners; there was a general air of bustle and a "city" atmosphere about the place. A few people gathered about, looking at the Good Turn and watching the boys as they made their way up the wharf.
"Boy Scouts," they heard someone say.
There was the usual good-natured curiosity which follows scouts when they are away from home and which they have come to regard as a matter of course, but the big yellow flag seemed to carry no particular meaning to anyone here.
They walked up to the station where they asked the operator if he had seen the searchlight message or heard anything about it, but he had not. They inquired who was the night watchman on the wharf, hunted him out, and asked him. He had seen the light and wondered what and where it was. That was all.
"Foiled again!" said Roy.
They made inquiries of almost everyone they saw, going into a nearby hotel and several of the stores. They inquired at the fire house, where they thought men would have been up at night who might be expected to know the Morse code, but the spokesman there shook his head.
"A fellow who was with us got locked in a freight car," Roy explained, "and we signaled to people up this way to stop the train."