"Sink me, mate," cried Ferral, "but we had a close call of it. We shook hands with Davy Jones—just about—and then Miss Brady and Carl pulled us away from him."
"I'm all twisted up about this," said Matt, rubbing a hand across his eyes in a dazed way.
"I'm all ahoo over it myself," put in Ferral. "I'm glad I'm alive, but I can't understand how Miss Brady got here and helped us out of that scrape."
"Tell dem aboudt it, Miss Prady," urged Carl. "You haf tone a mighdy fine t'ing, und Matt und Tick ought to know all aboudt it."
"Ever since you got away from Willoughby's swamp with the Hawk, Matt," said Helen, "I have been staying in Lake Station. My father, and Pete, and Whipple got out of the swamp by a secret way they knew about, very soon after you left. Dad gave me some money and told me to find a place to stay in Lake Station. He was terribly ugly to me, and I was glad that I was going to be free from him for a while. There was a woman in the village who had some furnished rooms to rent, and I rented them and stayed there. I didn't see anything of dad until last night. I was in the other part of the house, visiting the woman who owned it, and when I went back to my rooms I saw a light shining through a window between the edge of the curtain and the sill. I listened and heard voices—then I knew that dad had found the place where I was staying, and had come there.
"There was a way to get into the cellar, and I got into it and crept up a stairway without being heard. By sitting at the top of the stairs I could listen and hear all that was said.
"Whipple was in the room with dad, and they were talking over a scheme for getting hold of the Hawk. Officers of the law were hunting them, and, if they did not have the air ship, they felt that they would not be able to avoid arrest for very long.
"Whipple told dad how Grove had managed to escape from the South Chicago police, and dad told Whipple how he had been out in a sailboat with my brother, and how they had tried to get some money from a young fellow my brother had met on the train, and how Motor Matt, with the Hawk, had come along just in time to prevent the robbery. After that, my father said he and my brother had the sailboat set them ashore. My father had come to Lake Station, and had sent my brother to tell Whipple to come to the same place. And that was how the two happened to meet in my rooms.
"Whipple, Pete, and Harper had been in hiding in Willoughby's swamp, and that was the place to which Grove came when he made his escape.
"My father knew that the Hawk was being kept by the police in the old balloon house, and that two officers were constantly on guard to see that no harm came to the machine. It was also known that Motor Matt was spending a good deal of time at the balloon house and running the air ship for the officers.