“Couldn’t find—no boat—nothing?” quavered Tom.
“Not a thing!”
There was not much sleep that night and they were all glad to see the sky begin to turn gray, then lighter, in the East, as dawn came.
Sam came out sullenly to prepare breakfast. Their supplies were very low for they had laid in only a small store, to keep up their pretence of cruising among islands where food was plentiful. At several points of the shore they had secured yams, corn flour and other necessities, but the meal, with a lean larder and a morose, intimidated cook, yielded little zest or nourishment for even such good appetites as the Mystery Boys usually possessed.
“I’m going to suggest that you fellows go ashore,” Mr. Neale said. “I’ll set you on the beach—and be careful about snakes! Then I’ll take the dinghy and go around the point to see that chap we met last night. There is more behind this than we see just now.”
“Don’t you think?—” began Tom.
“I think a good deal,” the captain replied, “but ghosts are the very last explanation I will accept!”
He put Nicky and Cliff on the bank of the inlet, noting that by daylight the sand and undergrowth was trampled and muddied.
“No ghosts did all this,” he said. “There is a human agency at work and I want to find out why all this trouble was taken—to scare us.”
He went back to the sloop, ordered Sam to pull himself together, and took Tom aboard the dinghy. When he landed the third of the comrades Mr. Neale, repeating his warning about snakes, bade them reconnoiter and find all the signs they could, against his return. Then he rowed off toward the point around which Nelse had said he had a plantation.