“There is only one thing to think,” Dick answered decidedly. “We must get ashore. Let them lower the boat, captain.” In five minutes more, after some risk in the heavy sea, they were both in the Whitehall boat, and its owner was rowing them in the direction in which the shore was supposed to lie. Another minute or two and the boatman called out:-- “There’s something ahead here, and we’re near the beach, for I smell it. Yes, we’ve made it; here’s the end of the old wharf. That was a good guess on such a night.” Dick and his companion, with their landsmen’s eyes, could see nothing; but they could feel the worm-eaten timbers of the decaying old wharf. How long it might be and how far the end from shore they could not even guess. But they could tell by feeling that the structure towered far above their heads. There was no help for it but to climb the timbers, feeling their way slowly from one to another, to the platform far above. To make matters worse, Mr. Hills was much too fat for a climber, and Dick had almost to drag him up. After climbing thus nearly twenty feet, with hands cut by barnacles and rusty spikes, both men stood safely upon the platform of the pier. Neither of them had ever been in Port Monmouth before, and perhaps that was not Port Monmouth after all. How many planks were missing from the shaky old pier? How far was it to shore? In what direction lay the town? They must find it all out by feeling. “That is all we want,” Dick called down to the boatman. “The tug can take you back to the city. We are all right now.” “Are we?” Hills panted. “I wish I thought so!” CHAPTER V. “SHADOWING” THE CHIEF OF POLICE. The gale threatened every moment to blow Dick and his companion from the old pier; and while the lights of the tug became smaller and smaller they felt their way carefully toward the shore. “Let me go first,” Dick said, “as I am so much lighter. We might find a rotten plank anywhere, or no plank at all. If there should be a wide gap, I hardly know what we’d do, for we never could walk one of the timbers in this wind.” Fortunately there were no wide gaps and no planks too rotten to bear their weight; and after traversing more than a hundred feet of pier, putting a foot down carefully with every step before trusting much weight upon it, they felt themselves upon the sand of New Jersey. “I suppose the telegraph office must be the first thing for us to find, if this is really Port Monmouth,” Dick suggested. “I should like to let the office know that I am here.” “So should I,” Mr. Hills responded; “and here is a good omen for us.” The good omen was the first ray of light they had seen since leaving the tug. Through an opening in the black clouds the moon was making a sickly effort to shine. The light was very dim, but far better than the intense darkness. “There is a big house!” Dick exclaimed; “up this road, or street, or whatever it is. We can rouse them up and find out where we are.”