The door hinges creaked. Jack’s pulse was thumping as he had never known it to do. There was, of course, the bare possibility that this might be the watchman paying them a visit to see that all was well, and Jack had no desire to lay the worthy Cap’n Crumbie out on the cabin floor with a cracked skull.
“Who’s there?” he asked in a voice which he hardly recognized as his own. The boy could not even make out the outline of the intruder in the blackness.
There was a moment of tense silence, but only a moment. As soon as the midnight visitor recovered from the shock of finding some one in the cabin he closed the door with a bang just as Jack brought down his stick sharply, but it only came in contact with the wooden panel.
George leaped out of his bunk in alarm.
“What’s wrong?” he shouted.
Jack, however, had no time to waste on explanations. He seized the handle and flung open the door, just in time to hear the soft patter of bare feet along the deck, and the deep bass of Cap’n Crumbie, up on the wharf, whom the noise had attracted.
“Hello, Jack! Are you there? What’s up?” he called down anxiously.
Jack was by now half-way across the deck, following the retreating figure, but the mysterious visitor leaped over the side into a boat and pushed away before the boy could get within reach.
“Somebody came into the cabin,” Jack shouted back to the watchman. “Slip on board, and we’ll go after him on the sloop.”
“You can’t, son,” replied Cap’n Crumbie. “There ain’t enough wind. Listen! Which way did he go?”