CHAPTER XX

THE HUNT FOR TENDERFOOT JOE

Rob, Merritt, Tubby Hopkins and Captain Hudgins rested, perspiring under the noon-day heat, on a group of flat rocks at the highest point of the island. Their search had been fruitless, and their downcast faces showed it.

"How ever are we going to break the news to his parents?"

Merritt it was who voiced the question that had been troubling all of them.

Before any one had time to frame a reply the captain, whose keen eyes had been gazing about him, gave a sudden shout:

"There's that smoke yonder yer boys were lookin' fer," he exclaimed, pointing.

"Four columns of it," shouted Rob, "hurray, boys, that means news!

It's 'Come to counsel.' Come on, don't let's lose any time in getting back."

Rapidly the boys stumbled and ran forward over the rocks and pushed on among the dense growth that covered the hillside they had climbed.

They hardly noticed the obstacles, however, so keenly were they bent on getting back to camp and learning the news which they knew must be awaiting them. They covered the distance in half the time it had taken them to ascend the hillside and were met in the camp by the body of searchers--Andy Bowles, Sim Jeffords and Ernest Thompson--who had swung off to the left or mainland side of the island.

"Well, boys, what news?" breathlessly exclaimed Rob, "we saw the counsel smoke and hurried down at top speed."

"Well, there's not very much, I'm afraid, Rob," began Andy, "but we found something that may give us a clue. About half a mile down the beach there's the distinct mark of a boat keel where it was drawn up on the hard sand and the marks of three separate pairs of feet."

"Good," exclaimed Rob, "that's something and half confirms my suspicion. Go on, Andy, what else?"

"Well, we examined the marks carefully and found that two pairs of feet wore good shoes and the third a very broken, disreputable pair."

"Yes," exclaimed Rob, while the others listened breathlessly.

"Of course that indicated to us that three persons must have carried Joe off--for I don't think there's much doubt now that he was carried off, do you?"

"I don't," said Rob sadly, "but for what possible motive?"

"I have it," suddenly exclaimed Tubby Hopkins, snapping his fingers, "you remember the day of the aeroplane model contest?"

"Yes, but what--" began Rob.

"Has that to do with it," finished Tubby for him. "Everything. It was Joe who first told the committee that Jack's model was a bought one and so lost him the fifty-dollar prize."

"By cracky, that's right!" a.s.sented Rob, "and you think that Jack and his gang have carried him off in revenge for it?"

"Looks that way to me," nodded the stout youth.

"Why, they wouldn't dare," began Andy Bowles.

"Oh, yes, they would," amended Rob bitterly, "they'd dare anything to get even on us for their fancied wrongs. But whose could have been the broken ragged shoes?" he asked, suddenly taking up another train of thought.

"Hank Handcrafts, the beach-comber's," suggested Tubby.

"Gee Whillikens! I'll bet a cracker that's the solution," cried Andy, "and now I come to think of it I heard, before we left, that Jack and his gang had gone camping."

"Where?"

"Up around the Upper Inlet somewhere. You know that's full of islands and as there's no drinking water there few people ever think of frequenting the place. If they wanted to do anything like carrying off Joe that is where they would have been likely to go."

"You may be right, Andy. It's worth looking into, anyway," declared Rob. "I'll leave a note here for the others and we'll take a run over there in the Flying Fish. If Joe is there we'll get him out."

"And in jig time, too," chimed in Ernest Thompson.

"Come on, boys, get some gasoline, hop in the dinghy and let's get aboard. We've got to move fast if we're to accomplish anything. You get the boat, Andy, while I write a line to tell the others what we've gone after."

The young leader hastily ran into his tent and sitting down at the table dashed off these lines:

"Boys, we think we have a clue to Joe's whereabouts. Have gone after him. Keep camp in regular way while we are gone. Hiram Nelson is leader, and Paul Perkins corporal, in our absence.

"ROB BLAKE, Leader,

"Eagle Patrol, B. S. of A."

With a piece of chalk the boy marked a rough square and an arrow on a tree--the arrow pointing to a spot in the sand in which he buried the letter.

"Now, then, come on," he shouted, dashing toward the boat, "shove off, boys, and if Joe's in the Upper Inlet we'll find him."

"Hurray," cheered the others, much heartened by the prospect of any trace of the missing boy, however slight.

"Give way, boys," bellowed the captain, who had insisted on coming along armed with a huge horse pistol of ancient pattern which he had strapped on himself in the morning when the news of Joe Digby's disappearance reached him. "This reminds me uv the time when I was A.

B. on the Bonnie Bess and we smoked out a fine mess of pirates in the Caribees."

"Regular pirates?" inquired Andy as Rob and Merritt bent to the oars.

"Reg'lar piratical pirates, my boy," responded the old salt, "we decorated the trees with 'em and they looked a lot handsomer there than they did a-sailin' the blue main."

Further reminiscences of the captain's were cut short by their arrival at the Flying Fish's side. They had hastily thrown two cases of gasoline into the dinghy before they shoved off so that all that remained to be done was to fill the fast craft's tank and she was ready to be off.

"Hold on," warned Rob, as Tubby Hopkins was about to secure the dinghy to the mooring buoy, "we'll tow her along. We may need her. There's lots of shoal water in that Upper Inlet."

"Right yer are, my boy; there's nothin' like bein' forehanded,"

remarked the captain as Merritt bent over the flywheel and Rob threw in the spark and turned on the gasoline. After a few revolutions an explosion resulted and the Flying Fish was off on the mission which might mean so much or so little to the anxious hearts on board her.

"Do you know the channel," asked Merritt as Rob with his eyes glued on the coast sent the Flying Fish through the waves, or rather wavelets, for the sea was almost like a sheet of gla.s.s.

"I've been up here once or twice after duck," rejoined Rob, "but it's a tricky sort of a place to get through. However, I guess we'll make it."

As they drew nearer the sh.o.r.es the boys made out an opening which Rob said was the Upper Inlet channel.