"Maybe—maybe he's tied up in there—hurt," suggested Sammy.
"Maybe—and maybe not!" exclaimed Frank with vigor. "I'm going to have a look!"
His chums glanced at him admiringly. After just a moment of hesitation, Frank tried the knob of the stateroom door. The portal swung open easily, and the boys eagerly looked inside. They were rather disappointed, it must be confessed, when they did not see the body of the captain stretched out in his berth, bound with ropes. The stateroom was empty.
"Well, what—what made that groaning noise?" asked Sammy.
The groaning sound came again, and then all three of the boys saw what it was. A chest of drawers made fast to the side of the stateroom, had torn loose, probably when the schooner pitched and tossed in the storm, and this chest, swaying back and forth as the vessel rolled, scraped against the floor, making a groaning, creaking noise that sounded a good deal like a man in pain. Now that the boys were close to it, the sound did not seem quite so weird, but at a little distance almost anyone would have said it was a groan.
"And that's all it was!" exclaimed Sammy.
"Yes," said Frank, "that's usually the way things do turn out."
For a moment the boys stood peering about the small cabin Then Bob said:
"Let's look around a bit more. Maybe we can find somebody, or something, that will tell how the vessel came to be drifting this way."
They opened the other stateroom doors, but inside all was in order. The bunks were made up, and there was no confusion.
