"You hain't seen nothing of no suspicious-looking fellows in a row-boat, have ye?"
The boys told him that they had seen nobody since they had cast anchor.
"Well," resumed the man, "you keep a smart look-out. There's been half a dozen sail-boats stole out of this bay in the last two weeks by some fellows that sneak 'round in a row-boat at night. Why, they stole a colored man's boat last week while he was asleep in her. Chucked him right overboard, they did. Those fellows is regular pirates, and if they catch you lying at anchor in some out-of-the-way place, you'll have trouble with 'em."
The man's caution did not alarm the boys, but they thanked him, and said they would remember his advice. "We'll set an anchor watch at night," said Charley. "It's what we ought to do, anyway. This anchoring the boat, and then going to sleep and letting her look out for herself, is too much like the way Frenchmen manage ships. We might have been run down by some big fishing-boat last night, for we didn't hang out our lantern, and we were all sound asleep."
The wind was fair, and the crew of the Ghost, thinking that the man had greatly exaggerated the difficulty of finding the channel, were not disturbed when they presently found themselves in what looked like a narrow creek winding through a low marshy meadow. Charley climbed up the mast hoops, and saw that the Ghost had entered an archipelago. In every direction, as far as he could see, the low meadow was divided into hundreds of little islands, separated by narrow creeks varying in width from a few feet to a dozen rods. He made up his mind that it was going to be a difficult task to find a channel deep enough for the Ghost, for he could see that the water had the appearance of being very shallow in nearly all the creeks. He had just decided on the course that it would be best to steer for the next ten minutes, when the Ghost ran on a mud-bank, and came to a stop.
It was some time before she could be pushed off again, so deep and sticky was the mud; and when at last she was once more on her course, Charley took the helm, and sent Joe aloft to look for the channel. Joe had no sooner climbed the mast hoops than the Ghost was aground again, and another half-hour had to be spent in getting her afloat. The whole morning was passed in this unsatisfactory way, and the boat was at least half the time stuck in the mud. At noon the crew let her remain aground while they had lunch, and rested for an hour. Then they resumed the tiresome business of running aground and getting afloat again, and when the end of the afternoon approached, they anchored in a little cove where the water happened to be deep enough to float the boat, and acknowledged to one another that the inquisitive old man was right, and that they would probably have to spend a long time in working their way out from among the islands.
"I don't believe what the old man said about pirates," said Harry, as they were rigging the canvas cabin, and preparing for the night; "but I did see what you may think was a suspicious-looking boat when I was up aloft this afternoon."
"Let's hear about it," said Charley.
"It was a row-boat tied up to the shore in a little bit of a creek about half a mile from here, and there were three men lying asleep in her. Now what were they doing that for, I'd like to know?"
"I don't see what could induce anybody to row into such a place as this, and then go to sleep. If they had been fishing, now, I could understand it," said Charley. "What sort of looking men were they?"