“Oh, well, they go to bed early here.”

“Don’t want to worry the Captain.  He expected us back before supper.”

“We’ll relieve his mind now, all right.”

“Gee!” said Jimmy, as we tramped down the hill, “but I’ll be glad to get aboard the ‘Hoppergrass.’  There’s nothing in the world so cosy as the cabin of a boat, on a night like this.”

The same idea struck all of us, and we hurried down the wharf.  The fog had lifted a little, and blew by us in wisps and fragments.

“For one thing,” remarked Ed Mason, “I’d like to get into some dry clothes.  I’m beginning to be soaked.”

“Oh, we’ll be all right again,” I said, “when we’re aboard.  The Captain—­”

I stopped suddenly.  We all halted on the end of the wharf, and stared across the inlet.  We looked at the spot where our boat had anchored, and then we looked up and down the inlet.  The “Hoppergrass” was gone!

CHAPTER V

MIDNIGHT BURGLARS

“What!” exclaimed Jimmy Toppan, “gone?”

“Gone,” replied Ed Mason, “sailed away and left us.  Like old Aaron Halyard, in ’The Angel of Death’.”

Mr. Daddles looked at him and grinned.

“At least, you remember your classics,” he said, “you can fall back on the consolations of literature in a time of sorrow.”

“But he can’t be gone,” put in Jimmy, “he wouldn’t sail off and leave us like this.  He must be somewheres about.”

And he commenced to shout “On board the ’Hoppergrass’!” He got us to shout the same phrase.  The sailor-like way of putting it did not please Ed Mason.

“Oh, I don’t see any sense in shouting ‘On board’ of anything, when the whole trouble is that we’re not on board.”

There was an echo from a building across the inlet—­an insulting echo—­which repeated the phrase, or rather the last three letters of the last word in an irritating fashion.

“I feel like one,” said Mr. Daddles, “but I don’t like to be told so by a blooming old echo.”

Then we all stood and looked at one another, and wondered what we should do.

“Friendless and alone, in a strange place,” said Mr. Daddles.

“Wet,” said Ed Mason.

“Hungry,” I added.

“Tired,” said Jimmy.

“With no money,” remarked Mr. Daddles.

“And nothing that we could do with it, if we had it,” Jimmy Toppan gloomily reflected, shoving his hands deep into his trousers pockets.

“And it’s ten o’clock,” I suggested.

“Eleven,” said Jimmy.

“Twelve,” thought Ed Mason.

“Our case is desperate,” said Mr. Daddles, “but we’ll pull through, somehow.  Perhaps the Captain went treasure-hunting himself, and has got lost in the fog.  This has been a busy little day.  Now, let’s see.  I think I remember a woman up the road here, who used to let rooms, or—­”