“I know about the Man who Never Lived, now,” he told himself. “It was Doc Morgan. He saw I had the tracing. He told me all that made-up stuff, and then went out. He came back, over the dories, maybe, under the place, and came up the ladder, in oilskins and rubber cap and gloves. Pouff! I guess that’s all there was to the ghost.”
That made him wonder if, in some way, they might find an equally sensible explanation for the spectre that had appeared and vanished so mysteriously in the clouds.
“But Don flew right into that cloud!” Chick objected to his own hopeful theory. “There wasn’t a thing there.”
He sat, shivering with the chill of his wet garb, wondering how long the successively approaching storms would continue.
Long hours seemed to pass. Chick got up, exercised, flailed his arms and did gymnastic exercises to promote circulation. Nevertheless, time dragged slowly.
The intensity of the storm lessened: lightning came more fitfully, rain ceased, thunder grumbled and ceased to crash, dying away in the South. Chick went to the door, looking out.
“There are stars,” he observed the bright sparks showing through the drifting, scattering shreds of the tempest, “maybe I ought to try to get home. They’ll be worried about me. I wonder where Don and Garry landed and if they got down all right.”
They had, but far up the Hudson.
Swamp life began to make itself heard—and felt.
Fish leaped, hungry for insects. Frogs began to sing their uncanny songs. Mosquitos, made ferocious by the cooling air, attacked Chick in swarms. He retired to the house, closing the door, killing as many of the pests as he could.