“So, they were using rockets?”

“Yes.”

“Where did they ascend from?”

“From the other side of the hill, at this end, and from an old house at the other end.”

Ned stood for a moment without speaking.  So the Chinaman had been holding him in conversation while his tools had been signaling to some one farther up the road!

This was practically what he had suspected.  From the first he had believed that the old fellow’s purpose was to hold him there as long as possible.

Signals would naturally be the outgrowth of such a plan, and Ned had sent Jimmie on ahead—­silently—­in order to see where the other party answered the signals from, if they were answered at all.  As from the opening of the case, he had planned to secure his information from his enemies—­from their actions and their presence or absence from the position he occupied.

Directing the marines to follow on slowly, Ned awoke Frank and Jack.  The four climbed the hill slowly, watching the sky as they advanced.  The clouds lay low to the east, but in the west was a patch of clear sky.

When they gained the summit of the rise, they saw a light in a little grove some distance away.  It seemed like a lantern moving out and in among the trees.

“There,” Jimmie explained, “when I got to the top of the hill, I saw a rocket shoot out of that thicket.  It did not ascend the sky, but follow the line of the earth and died out in the road.”

“Of course,” Ned said.  “A rocket sent up in the usual way would have been visible from where we were standing.”

“And, in a minute,” the boy went on, “there came a rocket from that house, the house where the light was a minute ago.  That, too, followed the ground line.”

“Talking together in low tones!” grinned Jack.

“They were talkin’ together, all right,” Jimmie said.

“Dollars to dumplings,” Frank exclaimed, “that the funny chap we met in the old mud house at Taku has a room in that shack.”

“He might have been hiding there,” Ned said.

“An’ that old stiff signaled to him to make his getaway?” asked the little fellow.

“Looks like it,” Ned replied.

“Huh!” Jack objected.  “The signals might have told the men at the other end of the line to get their soldiers out and bump us off the continent.”

“Which idea,” responded Frank, “causes me to want to approach that house with all due caution and respect.”

“Suppose we four surround it,” suggested Jimmie.

“That’s the idea!” Jack commented.

“Just what I was about to propose,” said Wed.  “We’ll leave the marines within call and go up to this temporary signal station and see what about it.”

The Captain was communicated with, and then the four left the road and moved around toward the rear of the house, keeping in the shadows of the trees.  Not until they reached the very door of the place were there any signs of life there.