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CHAPTER XIII.
A NIGHT ALARM

Jack sat bolt upright in bed and listened with all his might. Outside the window of the little room he occupied that night in the captain's cottage he was almost certain he had heard the sound of a furtive footfall and whisperings. His blood beat in his ear-drums as he sat tense and rigid, waiting a repetition of the noise.

Suddenly, there came a low whisper from outside.

"If only we knew if the captain was alone. For all we know those bothersome boys may be with him, and, if they are, we are likely to get the worst of it."

"Donald Judson!" exclaimed Jack to himself. "What ought I to do?"

He pondered a moment and then recollected that there was a door to his room which let directly out on a back porch without the occupant of the room having to traverse any other chamber. Jack at once formed a bold resolve. He did not wish to arouse the others unnecessarily, but he did want, with all his power, to find out what was going on.

He rose from the bed as cautiously as he could, and made his way to the door. It was a ticklish task, in the dark, to accomplish without noise, but he succeeded in doing it. Outside it was very dark, with a velvety sort of blackness. The boy was glad of this, for it afforded him protection from the men he felt sure were reconnoitering the house for no good purpose.

Suddenly he saw, not far off, the gleam of a light of some sort. If it belonged to the Judsons, they must have presumed that nobody was about, or not have realized that the place where they had left it was visible from the cottage.

"Now I wonder what they've got up there?" mused Jack. "Maybe it would be a good scheme to go up and see."

Anything that looked like an adventure aroused Jack's animation, and a few seconds after the idea had first taken hold of him he was making his way up a rather steep hillside, covered with rocks and bushes, toward the light. At last he reached a place where he could get a good look at the shining beacon. He hardly knew what he had expected to see, but somehow he felt a sort of sense of disappointment.

The lantern stood by itself on a rock and the idea suggested itself to Jack that it might have been placed there as a beacon to guide the midnight visitors back when they had accomplished whatever they purposed doing.

"I've a good mind to carry off their lantern," said Jack to himself; "if they put it there to guide them that would leave them in a fine fix and we could easily capture them."

Once more, half involuntarily, his feet appeared to draw him toward the lantern. The next instant he had it in his grasp.

"Now to turn it out," he muttered, when he felt himself seized from behind in a powerful grip and a harsh voice growled in his ear:

"Yer would, would yer, you precious young scallywag."

The lantern was wrested from his grasp, and Jack felt a noose slipped over his head.

"Who are you?" he demanded indignantly of his unknown captor.

"Bill Smiggers, of the motor boat Black Beauty," was the gruff reply. "They left me up here to watch by the light, and I guess they'll be glad they did when they see who I've caught. I reckon you're one of those snoopy kids I've heard them talking about."

"I don't know what you mean," replied Jack, "but you'd better let me go at once."

"Huh, I'd be a fine softy to do that, wouldn't I? No, young man, here you are, and here you stay. I'm getting well paid for this job, and I'm going to do a good one."

Just then footsteps were heard coming up the hillside. Then a low, cautious voice whispered out of the darkness:

"What's the matter, Bill? We saw the light waved, and came right back. Is there any danger?"

"Not right now, I reckon," rejoined Bill, with grim humor. "Any of you gents know this young bantam I've got triced up here?"

"Jack Ready, by all that's wonderful!" cried Judson, stepping forward. He was followed by young Judson and Jarrow.

"Dear me, what an – er – what a pleasant encounter," grinned Jarrow.

"So you thought you'd spy on us, did you?" snarled Donald, vindictively; "well, this is the time that we've got you and got you right."

Jack's heart, stout as it was, sank like lead within him. He was in the hands of his enemies and that, largely, by his own foolishness.

"So this is that Ready kid I hearn you talkin' about?" asked Bill.

"That's the boy, confound him! He's always meddling in my schemes," growled Jarrow.

"Bright looking lad, ain't he?"

"Too bright for his own good. He's so sharp he'll cut himself."

"No, his brightness won't help him now," chuckled Donald maliciously. "I'll bet you're scared to death," he went on, coming close to Jack.

"Not particularly. It takes more than a parcel of cowards and crooks to frighten me."

"Don't you put on airs with me. You're in our power now," jeered Donald. "I'll make you suffer for the way you've treated me."

"It would be like you to take advantage of the fact that my arms are tied," retorted Jack.

Donald came a step closer and stuck his fist under Jack's nose.

"You be careful, or I'll crack you one," he snarled.

"You're a nice sort of an individual, I must say. Why don't you try fair dealing for a change?"

"I do deal fair. It's you that don't. I – "

"That will do," interrupted his father; "I've been talking with Bill and he says he knows a place where we can take this young bantam and leave him till he cools off."

"You mean that you are going to imprison me?" demanded Jack indignantly.

"You may call it that, if you like," said Judson imperturbably; "you are quite too clever a lad to have at large."

"Where are you taking me to?"

"You'll find that out soon enough. Now then, forward march and, if you attempt to make an outcry, you'll feel this on your head."

Judson, with a wicked smile, flourished a stout club under the captive boy's nose.

CHAPTER XIV.
JACK'S CURIOSITY AND ITS RESULTS

"What do you intend to do with me?" repeated Jack, as they hurried over the rough ground, following Bill, who trudged ahead with the lantern.

"You'll find out quick enough, I told you before," said Donald.

"Don't you know that my friends are in the neighborhood? They will invoke the law against you for this outrage."

"We know all about that," was the elder Judson's reply, "but we're not worrying. We'll have them prisoners, too, before long."

Jack made no reply to this, but he judged it was an empty threat made to scare him. He knew that nothing would have delighted Donald Judson more than to see him breaking down. So he kept up a brave front, which he was in reality far from feeling at heart.

From the bold manner in which Bill displayed the lantern as he led the party on, Jack knew that the rascal must be familiar with the country, and know it to be sparsely inhabited. So far as Jack could judge they were retreating from the river and going up hill.

About an hour after they had started, Bill paused in front of an ancient stone dwelling – or rather what had been a dwelling, for it was now dilapidated and deserted.

"This is the place, boss," he grated, holding up his lantern so that its rays fell on the old place, which looked as grim as a fortress.

"It's haunted, too, isn't it, Bill?" asked Donald meaningly.

"Well, they do say there was a terrible murder done here some years ago and that's the reason it's been deserted ever since, but I really could not say as to the truth of that, Master Judson," rejoined Bill, falling into Donald's plan to tease Jack.

Inside the place was one large room. A few broken bits of furniture stood about. Bill set the lantern down on a rickety table and then went to guard the door, while the others retreated to a corner and held a parley.

At its conclusion Judson came over to Jack.

"Well, Ready," he said, "you've caused us a lot of trouble, but still I might come to terms with you."

"Are you ready to release me?" demanded Jack.

"Yes, under certain conditions. First, you must tell us all you know about that naval code of Captain Simms."

"And the truth, too," snarled Jarrow. "We'll find out quick enough if you're lying, and we'll make it hot for you."

"You bet we will," chimed in Donald.

"Donald, be quiet a minute," ordered his father. "Well, Ready, what have you to say?"

"Suppose I tell you I know nothing about the naval code?" said Jack quietly.

"Then I should say you were not telling the truth."

"Nevertheless I am."

"What, you know nothing about the code?"

"Nothing except that Captain Simms was ordered to get up something of the sort."

"You don't know if it's finished or not?"

"I have no idea."

"Is your life worth anything to you?" struck in Jarrow.

"What do you mean?" asked Jack.

"Just what I say. If it is, you had better make terms to save it."

"Impossible. You are fooling with me, Jarrow. Even a man as base as you wouldn't dare – "

"I wouldn't, eh? Well, you'll find out before long if I'm in earnest or not."

Jack was a brave lad, as we know, and carried himself well through many dangerous situations. But he was not the dauntless hero of a nickel novel whom nothing could scare. He knew Jarrow for a desperado and, although he could not bring himself to believe the man would actually carry out any such threat as he had made, still he realized to the full the peril of his situation.

"Well, what do you say?" demanded Jarrow, after a pause.

"I don't know just what to say," said Jack. "My head is all in a whirl. Give me time to think the thing over. I can hardly collect my thoughts at present."

The men made some further attempts to get something out of him, but, finding him obdurate, they ordered Bill to see that his bonds were tight and then to put him in the "inner room" he had spoken of. Bill gave the ropes a savage yank, found they were tight and then led Jack to a green door at the farther end of the large room. Jack had a glimpse of a square room with a broad fireplace at one end and a small window. It appeared to be used as a storehouse of some kind, for it was half filled with bags, apparently containing potatoes. In one corner stood a grindstone operated by a treadle. Then the door was shut with a bang, and he was left to his own, none-too-pleasant reflections. Outside he could hear the buzz of voices. But he couldn't catch much of what was being said. Once he heard Jarrow say:

"You're too soft with the boy. A good lashing with a black-snake would bring him to his senses quick enough."

"I'd like to lay it on," he heard Donald chime in.

At last they appeared to grow sleepy. Jack heard a key turned in the lock of the inner room that he occupied and not long thereafter came the sound of snores. Evidently nobody was on guard, the men who had captured him thinking that there was no chance of the boy's escape.

"Now's my chance," thought Jack. "If only I could get my hands free, I might be able to do something. But, as it is, I'm helpless."

His heart sank once more, as he thought bitterly of the predicament into which his own foolhardiness had drawn him.

CHAPTER XV.
BILLY TAKES THE TRAIL

"What's the matter?"

Just as Jack stole out of the house Billy Raynor sat bolt upright in bed and asked himself that question. He was on the other side of the cottage, and, like Jack a few minutes before, he too heard the cautious footsteps of the marauders, as they crept round the cottage, reconnoitering.

"Somebody's up to mischief," thought the boy. "It may only be common thieves, or it may be that rascally outfit. I'll go and rouse Jack. Perhaps we can get after them."

He tiptoed across the main room of the cottage to Jack's door. Inside the room he struck a match. He almost cried out aloud when he saw that the bed was empty and that there was no sign of his chum.

"Where can he be?" thought the lad. "Surely he has not gone after that gang single-handed."

Raynor hastened to his own room, slipped on some clothes, and went to the door. Far up on the hillside a lantern was twinkling like some fallen star.

"That's mighty odd," reflected the lad. "I guess I'll take a look up there and see what's coming off."

He picked his way cautiously up the rough hillside. But the lantern retreated as he went forward. As we know, Judson and his gang, led by Bill, were carrying off Jack. Without realizing how far he had gone, Raynor kept on and on. Some instinct told him that the dodging will-o'-the-wisp of light ahead of him had something to do with Jack, and he wanted to find out what that something was.

But, not knowing the trail Bill was following, and having no light but the spark ahead of him, Raynor found it pretty hard traveling. At last he was so tired that he sat down to snatch a moment's rest, leaning his back against a bush.

As his weight came against the bush, however, a strange thing happened. The shrub gave way altogether under the pressure. Raynor struggled for an instant to save himself, and then felt himself tumbling backward down an unknown height. He gave a shout of alarm, but his progress down what appeared to be a steep wall of rock, was over almost as soon as it had begun.

"What happened?" gasped the lad, as, shaken by his adventure, he picked himself up and tried to collect his wits. "Oh, yes, I know, that bush gave way and I toppled over backward. I must be in some sort of hole in the ground. Well, the first thing to do is to get a light."

Luckily Raynor's pockets held several matches, and he struck one of them and looked about him.

His eyes fell on the bush which lay at his feet.

"No wonder it gave way," he muttered. "The thing is dead and withered. But" – as a sudden thought struck him – "it will make a dandy torch and help save matches."

He lit the dead bush, which blazed up bravely, illumining his surroundings with a ruddy glow. Above him was a dark hole, presumably the one through which he had fallen. But there was no way of escape in that direction. He turned his gaze another way. The cave appeared to recede beyond the light of the blazing branch.

Looking down, he saw that the floor of the cave was thickly littered with leaves and small branches. This encouraged him a good deal.

"They couldn't have been blown in by the hole I fell through," he mused, "for the dead bush covered that. Their being here must mean that there is another entrance to this place."

Carrying his torch aloft, he struck off into the cave. Its floor sloped gently upward as he progressed and the walls began to grow narrower. The air, too, rapidly lost its musty odor, and blew fresh and sweet on his perspiring head.

"This will be quite an adventure to tell about if I ever get out of here," muttered Raynor, and the thought of Jack, whom he had almost forgotten in his fright at his fall into the cave, occurred to him.

What could have happened to his chum? Surely he had not been foolhardy enough to face the marauders alone? Raynor did not know what to make of it.

"Somehow," he pondered, "I am sure that lantern had something to do with Jack. I wonder if they would have dared to carry him off? I wish to goodness I'd kept on, instead of leaning against that bush. Even if I do get out of here, the light must be far out of sight by this time, and I'll have to wait till daylight, anyhow, for I must have walked almost a mile from the other entrance to the cave by this time."

His thoughts ran along in this strain as he walked. The thought of Captain Simms' alarm, too, when he found both boys missing, gave him a good deal of worry.

He was thinking over this phase of the situation when he was startled by a low growl, coming from a pile of rocks just ahead of him. What could it be? Holding his breath painfully, while a cold chill ran down his spine, Raynor came to a dead pause and listened. His improvised torch had almost burned out and it was appalling to think that he faced the possibility of being in darkness ere long, with a wild beast close at hand.

Again came the growl. It echoed and re-echoed hollowly in the cave till the frightened lad appeared to be menaced from all directions.

"It must be a bear, or some wild beast just as bad," thought Raynor.

The growling was repeated, but now it appeared to be retreating from him. Plucking up courage, after a while, Raynor, waving his torch, pushed forward again. He came to a place where it was necessary to scramble up to a sort of platform considerably higher than the path he had been traversing.

As he gained this, he saw several tiny bright lights in front of him.

"Hurrah! It's the stars!" he cried aloud.

"The – s-t-a-r-s!" the echoes boomed back.

At almost the same instant Raynor saw, in front of him, what looked like two balls of livid green flame.

But the boy knew that they were the eyes of whatever beast it was that had sent its growls echoing fearfully through the cave.

CHAPTER XVI.
A "GHOSTESS" ABROAD

Suddenly, like an inspiration, Jack thought of a way in which he might free his captive hands. Naturally quick-witted, the emergency he found himself facing had made his mind more active than usual.

"That grindstone," he thought. "I can work the treadle with my foot, while I stand backward to it. If I hold the rope against the sharp edge of the stone it ought to cut through in a very short time."

It was quite a task to locate the grindstone in the darkness without making a noise. But at last Jack, by dint of feeling softly along the walls, located it. Then he turned his back to the machine and put his foot on the treadle. As the wheel began to turn he pressed the rope that bound his hands against the rough stone. In ten minutes he was free.

"Now for the next move," counseled the boy. "I've got to do whatever I decide upon quickly. If I don't escape, and that gang finds how I've freed my wrists, they'll shackle me hand and foot, and I'll not get another chance to get away. If it was only daylight I'd stand a much better opportunity of getting out."

There was the door, but to try that was out of the question. Jack had heard it locked and the key turned. The window? It was too small for a big, well-grown boy like Jack to creep through. He had noted that during the time the door was open and his prison was lighted by the rays of the lantern.

"There's that fireplace," thought the boy, "that's about the last resort. I wonder – "

He located the big, old-fashioned chimney, built of rough stones and full of nooks and crannies, without trouble. Getting inside it on the hearthstone he looked upward; it was open to the sky and at the top he could see a faint glow.

"It's getting daylight," he exclaimed to himself.

The next moment he noticed that right across the top of the chimney was the stout branch of a tree.

"If I could get up the chimney that branch would afford me a way of getting to the ground," he thought.

"By Jove! I believe I could do it," he muttered, as the light grew stronger and he saw how roughly the interior of the chimney was built. "It's not very high, and those rough stones make a regular ladder."

As time was pressing, Jack began the ascent at once. For a lad as active as he was, it proved even more easy than he had anticipated. But long before he reached the top he was covered from head to foot with soot, although, oddly enough, that thought never occurred to him. At length, black as a negro in mourning, he reached the top of the chimney and grasped the tree branch he had noticed from below.

He swung into it and made his way to the main trunk of the tree, an ancient elm. It was no trick at all then for him to slide to the ground. Then, silently as a cat, he tiptoed his way from the old stone house, with its occupants sleeping and snoring, blissfully unaware that Jack had stolen a march on them.

"Well, things have gone finely so far," he mused. "Now, what shall be the next step?"

He looked about him. The country was a wild one. There was no sign of a house, and, as far as he could see, there was nothing but an expanse of timber and rocks.

"This is a tough problem," thought the boy. "I've no idea where I am, or the points of the compass. If I go one way, I might come out all right, but then again I might find myself lost in the forest. Hanged if I know what to do."

But, realizing that it would not do to waste any time around the old house, Jack at length struck off down what appeared to have been, in bygone days, some sort of a wood road. It wound for quite a distance among the trees, but suddenly, to his huge delight, the boy beheld in front of him the broad white ribbon of a dusty highway.

Suddenly, too, he heard the sound of wheels and the rattle of a horse's hoofs coming along at a smart rate.

"Good; now I can soon find out where I am," thought the boy, and he hurried forward to meet the approaching vehicle. It contained a pretty young woman, wearing a sunbonnet.

Jack had no hat to lift, but he made his best bow as the fair driver came abreast of him.

"I beg your pardon," he began, "but could you tell me – "

The young woman gave one piercing scream.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h!" she cried, and gave her horse a lash with the whip that made it leap forward like an arrow. In a flash she was out of sight in a cloud of dust.

"Well, what do you know about that?" exclaimed Jack. "She must be crazy, or something, or else she's the most bashful girl I ever saw."

He sat down on a rock at the side of the road to rest and waited for another rig or a foot passenger to come by. Before long he heard a sprightly whistle, and a barefooted boy, carrying a tin pail, and with a fish pole over his shoulder, appeared round a curve in the road.

"Now, I'll get sailing directions," said Jack to himself, and then, as the boy drew near:

"Hullo, sonny! Can you tell me – "

The boy gave one look and then, dropping his can of bait, and his pole, fled with a howl of dismay.

"Hi! Stop, can't you? What's the matter with you?" shouted Jack. He ran after the boy at top speed. But the faster he ran the faster the youngster sped along the road.

"Oh-h-h-h-h! Help! Mum-muh!" he yelled, as he ran, in terrified tones.

At length Jack gave up the chase. He leaned against a fence and gave way to his indignation.

"Bother it all," he said. "What can be the matter with these people? Everyone I speak to runs away from me, as if I had the plague or something. Anyhow, that youngster can't be very far down this road. I guess I'll keep right on after him, and then I'm bound to come to some place where there are some sensible folks."

As he assumed, it was not long before he came in sight of a neat little farm-house, standing back from the road in a grove of fine trees. He made his way toward it. In the front yard an old man was trimming rose-bushes.

"Can you tell me – " began Jack.

The old man looked up. Then uttering an appalling screech, he ran for his life into the house. "Mandy! Mandy! Thar be a ghostess in the yard!" he yelled, as he ran.

Jack looked after him blankly. What could be the matter?