"Piffle!" scoffed Nick. "What about guns, hey, tell me that? Ghosts don't appear to like guns much, do they? Jack says not, and Jack, he ought to know. Stay here? Of course we will; a week, two of 'em, if we feel like it!"

"Oh! yes, how brave some people are in the middle of the day, when the sun's shining," jeered Josh. "But wait; that's all! I expect to see you get the scare of your life tonight, don't you know. If that _thing_ gets real mad, and digs in for us you needn't bother worrying about taking on any more fat, because you'll shake that hard you'll lose pounds and pounds! But let's wait till Jack comes back, and find out what he's discovered. I've got a good notion to follow him ash.o.r.e, if I can pull up the anchor and beach the _Comfort_. Watch how I manage it."

CHAPTER X-FOLLOWING A TRAIL

Josh found his little plan was not hard of accomplishment. All he had to do was to push the _Wireless_ around, after letting out all the cable connected with the anchor, when he was able to jump ash.o.r.e.

He took with him another rope that was fastened to the stern of the motor boat, and this he fastened to the nearest tree. Now, when he wanted to go aboard, all he had to do was to unfasten this latter hawser, climb over the side, and draw the _Wireless_ back to her original anchorage.

"Good boy!" cried Nick, who had been a close observer of this clever little game. "You go up head. When it comes to dodges like that, you take the cake."

It was not often that Josh heard a compliment from this source, and he had to stop and wave his hand toward the cook of the _Comfort_, before following after Jack.

He had not gone twenty feet before he discovered the object of his concern, who appeared to be bending over something that seemed to greatly interest him.

"h.e.l.lo! there, what've you found, Jack? Signs of a diamond mine, or traces of the ice age they tell us about?" Josh demanded, as he reached the side of the other.

"h.e.l.lo yourself, Josh," replied Jack, looking up with a smile, as though pleased because he was to have some one to talk to, and possibly confer with. "Well, no, I can't just say that either of your guesses comes anywhere near the truth. I'm only examining a trail."

"What's that? Then this old island hasn't always been as deserted as it looks right now, if people sometimes drop ash.o.r.e here?" remarked Josh, his interest at once aroused.

"Look here and tell me what you see," the other lad continued, as he pointed to the ground near his feet.

"Say, as sure as you live, it is, for a fact," exclaimed Josh. "Looks like they'd done a heap of pa.s.sing up and down this way, too. D'ye know, Jack, I wondered what those marks on the little beach meant, and now I understand. Boats, that's what; boats that have been drawn up there when the water was higher than it is now."

"Yes, I saw them," said Jack, quietly. "In fact, I looked to find such marks on the sand. And this broad trail began there, too."

"Oh! I'm beginning to tumble to a few things. I guess that in the season, this same tight little island may be a place for duck shooters to hold out. Perhaps we might even find an old deserted shanty somewhere back yonder in which they camp out during the bl.u.s.tery fall months."

"Hold on, Josh," remarked Jack. "Is that all you know about signs?"

"Why, whatever do you mean?" asked the other, puzzled.

"Take another squint at these marks, and then tell me what you think, Josh."

"Say, I tumble to what you mean!" exclaimed Josh, after he had bent down once more. "You expect me to say that if these marks had been made months ago, with a winter's ice and snow, and a summer's heavy rains, they'd have been washed out long ago. And so they would, Jack, so they would. You're right about it. They've been made lately! They look fresh, for a fact!"

"Now you're tumbling to facts, Josh. Remember, we had a big downpour just three days ago, don't you?" Jack went on.

"Sure I do. And you're on to that, too. But I grab your meaning now, all right. There are marks here that must have been made since that rain."

"Well, what do you say about it now?" continued the boy who could read signs.

"Instead of duck shooters they're fishermen," observed Josh, calmly.

"Yes, and you remember how those three boats came along, and the men in each stared so hard at us? Jack, I see it all now. We just happened in a favorite place of theirs, and they didn't like it for a cent. Why, they even tried to scare us off with that silly ghost business that gave poor old Pudding such a fright."

Jack only smiled.

"Well," he said, "suppose we follow this trail for a bit. I have an idea it will lead us to the very place where I thought I saw a moving light, like a swinging lantern, last night."

Josh was eager to keep step with him; but there was no trouble experienced in picking up the trail, so plainly marked were the tracks.

"There it is, Jack!" exclaimed Josh, suddenly; for he had been looking ahead all the time his companion kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

"It is a shanty of some sort, isn't it?" remarked Jack, without much emotion; for he had been absolutely positive as to what they would discover, so that the announcement did not excite him.

"Why, yes, a tumbledown sort of a shack," observed Josh, with a trace of disappointment about his manner. "I'd pity the fellows who spent a rainy day in such a rookery. Why, the roof is falling in at one end; and the door hangs on one rusty hinge."

Jack saw all these things as quickly as did his companion, even though he failed to cry out and express himself as vehemently as Josh took pains to do.

"Old dilapidated cabin as it is, note one thing, will you," he remarked.

"You mean that the tracks lead up to the door, is that it, Jack?"

"Well, yes," the other continued, "but just notice that there's a rusty padlock on the door. Stop and think if that doesn't look queer, considering that if anybody wanted to get in, all they'd have to do would be to knock that one hinge, and the whole door would drop flat?"

"Say, that makes me laugh, for a fact," Josh chuckled. "But it's just what you'd expect to run across up among these simple people of the border. They make me think of the ostrich. Don't you know we read the silly thing just sticks its head in a little bush, and thinks because it can't see anything that it's got a bully hiding place."

"Yes, that sort of covers the bill," said Jack. "I guess this padlock is only meant to tell people who have no business here that they are not wanted inside this shack. It stands as a warning. To enter after that would be a breach of the rights to property, as Lawyer George would say."

"Looky here, would you!" cried Josh, presently, while his companion was prowling around, and peeping through a hole in the wall, as though curious to know what the interior of the cabin looked like.

"What have you found now?" asked Jack, who was himself wondering why that new single trail had been made, coming out of the dense bushes at the back of the hut, and showing signs of recent pa.s.sage, which somehow he could not help connecting with the flash of that lantern on the preceding night.

"The bally old lock don't hold even a little bit," announced Josh, as though that circ.u.mstance added to his hilarity. "See, I can lift it off with one finger. It's a fake, that's what it is, Jack. But while it might fool ordinary people, it can't a live Yankee. Now what d'ye say to going in?"

Jack laughed as though amused at the reasoning of his chum, and remarked:

"I see you think we wouldn't be breaking the law of possession if we walked in when the lock was out of gear. That sounds nice, Josh, but many a chicken thief has found that such a plea didn't save him. But all the same, I'm going to step in and look around a bit."

"Seems to me it smells fishy around here?" observed Josh, sniffing eagerly.

"Oh! that's easy enough to explain," and Jack pointed to several heads of black ba.s.s that lay near by. "Somebody has had a fish dinner, for there is the ash bed of a fire. It may have been pa.s.sing sportsmen from one of the big hotels; then again, perhaps the people who made the trail also cooked a meal or two here!"

Once inside the cabin he looked around. There was virtually nothing to see. The place had not a sign of furniture of any description. Some straw lay on the hard earthen floor, as though it might be made useful in case one wished to pa.s.s the night there.

Josh almost doubled up with laughter.

"This is sure the greatest joke ever," he remarked. "To think of trying to keep trespa.s.sers out of this old trap, just like it held all a squatter's possessions. Jack, what d'ye think the silly donkey meant by that padlock? Did he keep his stuff here once, and locked the door? I'm all in a fog."

Jack said nothing, only "browsed" around, as he expressed it, kicking the straw aside in places, only to replace it as he had found it, as though not wishing to leave any signs that trespa.s.sers had invaded the cabin of the mysterious island.

But all the while he was thinking deeply.

And once, after the laughing and scoffing Josh had stepped outside to look about him again, Jack stooped down and picked some object up off the earthen floor, which he seemed to examine with considerable curiosity before stowing away in one of his many pockets.