Suiting the action to the word, he started to crawl along the wall, and it did not take him long to get free of the hay, and raising his head, he saw something that made him draw down hurriedly, and take the trail back to where his comrade was waiting.
"What luck?" asked Berwick.
"Not a place where a rat could crawl out," remarked Jim, "but you just wait. I think there is something going to happen."
There did, but it was not exactly what was expected. It was evident that the search below was over, and after a brief parley, heavy feet could be heard coming up the ladder. At the moment that the leader's head appeared through the opening, a gray and ghostly figure rose with its weird, shrill cry of rage that startled the two comrades safely hidden in the hay.
The effect upon the intruders can be easily guessed. These superstitious Mexicans had known vaguely of a woman haunting this castle by the sea. Sometimes they had seen a gray, creeping figure at the end of the hall or heard a piercing cry ring out at midnight, and now this creature was about to spring upon them and curse them to the bottomless pit. There was a cry of fright, and in leaping back, the man near the top of the ladder knocked over the one below, and he in turn the next, so that it was like when a ball hits the King Pin and the others are sent sprawling.
The searching party fled in panic and dismay out of the barn, and nothing could have persuaded them to have set foot in those haunted walls again, no, not even the threats of the redoubtable Captain William Broome himself. What the outcome would have been had the captain been on hand, it is difficult to say, for it was commonly supposed that he was in fear of nothing.
"Well, what did I tell you, Jack?" questioned Jim smiling grimly. "There was something on hand sure enough."
"What under the canopy was that thing doing?" exclaimed John Berwick. "It gave me the creeps, and that is a sensation that does not bother me very much these days."
"That was the story of a haunted house," replied Jim, "but it is safe enough now since our friends, the enemy, have fled. Let us go out and see for ourselves if you aren't too timid."
"Anybody who survives the excitement of following your fortunes for a few weeks cannot be very timid," replied Berwick candidly.