Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island Part 21

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Fulton and Phil in a breath.

But Jerry did not answer. There was no need. Down the path came an excited group, shouting:

"Somebody's made off with the _Big Four!_"

CHAPTER XVI

TRICKED AGAIN!

Nothing else happened that night, but the boys had already had enough excitement to keep them awake long past their usual time for turning in. Some of them, indeed, were for starting out in pursuit of the _Big Four_, but Mr. Fulton promptly squelched the plan. There was little hope of finding the boat in the dense darkness.

Next morning, before breakfast, Sid Walmaly and Dave were sent out on a scouting expedition, but they were not gone long. The _Big Four_ had been found, barely half a mile down, stranded on a sand-bar. A jagged hole in the side showed where the kidnappers had tried to scuttle the craft.

After this event, the boys settled to their work in high spirits, undeterred by the fact that the motor was still missing, although Mr.

Fulton felt sure it could not have been taken from the island. Phil ventured to advance a theory, which the boys were inclined to scout but which Mr. Fulton finally decided was at least worth the time and effort it would take to try it out.

The men had had no time to carry the motor far, argued Phil. They had not gone to their boat, else they could hardly have made their way back to the hangar. They might of course have picked it up after they had been frightened away, but there had been hardly time for that. They had undoubtedly hidden it in the first place. The easiest place to hide the thing was in the river, and the closest trail to the river hit the extreme north end, where there was a steep-sided bay.

"Who's the best swimmer in the crowd?" asked Mr. Fulton. "I don't dare take very many away from the job, but we've got to have the motor."

"Jerry Ring's the best swimmer and diver in Watertown," announced Dave without hesitation. Mr. Fulton turned inquiringly to the Boy Scouts, but no one answered his questioning look until Phil at last spoke up quietly:

"I'll go along if you need another one."

"I do. You two take the Scout boat and bring her around the point. I'll go through the woods--be there in half an hour or so, when I get things running smoothly here. Be careful you don't find the gas-eater before I get there," he jested.

But it was more than half an hour before Mr. Fulton came upon the two boys, stripped to their B-V-D's and at that instant resting on the bank. He came up just in time to hear Jerry say: "I used to think I could dive! Where'd you get onto it?"

"Just Scout stuff," laughed Phil, modestly. "Every Scout in the patrol's got swimming and diving honors."

"Good!" broke in Mr. Fulton. "Dive me up that motor and I'll get you a special honor as a subst.i.tute submarine."

"We've worked down from the point, sc.r.a.ping bottom for twenty feet out--that's about as far as they could heave it, we figured. We've just got to the place where I'd have dived first-off if I had only one chance at it. Here goes for that leather medal," as Phil rose and poised himself for the plunge.

It was as pretty a dive as one could want to see. He split the water with a clean slash, with hardly a bubble. A minute, another, and another pa.s.sed, the two on sh.o.r.e watching the surface expectantly. They began to grow worried.

"He's been beating me right along" confessed Jerry. "I can't come within a full minute of his ordinary dives. This one is a pippin--there he blows!"

Spouting like a young whale, Phil broke the water and came ash.o.r.e in long reaching strokes.

"I tried my best!" he gasped as he pushed back his hair and rubbed the water from his eyes. "But I couldn't make it!"

"Better luck next time," encouraged Mr. Fulton. "If you don't find her in two more dives like that, why she isn't in Plum Run, that's all!"

"Find her? I was talking about _lifting_ her. Guess we'll have to get a rope on her--she's pretty well down in the mud."

"Hurray!" shouted Jerry, giving his chum a sounding smack on the wet back. "Man the lifeboats! I chucked a rope in the bow of the boat."

Mr. Fulton stood on the bank to mark the line, while the boys pushed the boat out to where Phil had come up, some twenty feet from sh.o.r.e.

Jerry slipped over the side, one end of the rope in his hand. He did not remain long below.

Clambering in at the stern, he shouted: "Hoist away--she's hooked!"

And there was the motor, clogged with mud, to be sure, but undamaged.

Mr. Fulton stepped into the boat and they rowed quickly back to the "dock." While the two boys put on their clothes over their wet underwear, he hurried back to the workshop to see how things were going. A few minutes later they followed with the motor.

They felt, after this fortunate end of the adventure, that Mr. Fulton ought once more to be his own cheery self, but a look of gloom seemed to have settled down over his face, and his face looked haggard except when he was talking to one of the boys. Jerry finally decided to try to cheer him up.

"Luck was sure breaking our way this morning, wasn't it?" he exclaimed cheerfully as the man came up to where Jerry sat, removing the mud from their prize.

"Fine--fine," agreed Mr. Fulton, but without spirit.

"What's the trouble?" demanded Jerry, sympathetically. "Anything else gone wrong?"

"No--Oh, no."

"You look like the ghost of Mike Clancy's goat. Remember how you always used to be telling Tod and me to grin hardest when we were getting licked worst?"

"I sure ought to grin now, then."

"We're not licked--not by a long shot!"

"Yes we are--by about twenty-four hours. While you were gone I got word from the blacksmith. He says he can't possibly have that propeller shaft we found was snapped, welded before to-morrow afternoon late. Not if we're to have the other things he promised. He's lost his helper--quit him cold."

"No!" exclaimed Jerry, his heart sinking at least two feet. Then, with sudden suspicion, "Do you suppose----"

"I _know_ it," interrupted Mr. Fulton. "Our two friends are working every scheme they know. Blocking our blacksmithing was one of their easiest weapons. I'm only surprised they didn't do it before."

"What can we do?"

"Submit gracefully. But I just can't face those two doubters. First they were so enthusiastic and then so suspicious, that I can't be satisfied unless I convince them. But the stuff's all off--and I told Lewis and Harris to come out to-morrow afternoon at three-thirty to see the _Skyrocket_ make good all my claims!"

"Can't you beg off and get a little more time?"

"They'd be willing enough, I suppose. They don't seem to be in the slightest hurry. But there's that second option that begins operations after to-morrow. No, there's no loophole. All we can do is just peg ahead, and if the blacksmith comes through sooner than he expects, we may have a bare chance. I just sent Tod in to lend a hand."

The blacksmith did do better than his word, for Tod came back late in the afternoon bearing the mended shaft and two smaller parts that were urgently needed.

It took all the rest of that afternoon to lay the shaft in its ball-bearings and true it up. The propeller was still to be attached, but Mr. Fulton declared he would take no chances with that or with the final adjustments in the half light of the growing dusk.

The boys were glad to knock off. They had been working at high tension for a long while now and were beginning to feel the strain. They were all frankly sleepy, too, after the excitement of the night before. As a final precaution against a repet.i.tion of the surprise attack they all slept in the hangar, finding the hard floor an unwelcome change from their leafy beds in camp.

But the night pa.s.sed quietly. With daybreak they were all astir, but the time before breakfast was spent in an invigorating swim in the Plum. Elizabeth had done herself proud in the way of pancakes this last morning, and the boys did full justice. It was almost eight o'clock before anyone returned to the hangar with any intention of working.

After barely half an hour there, chiefly spent in polis.h.i.+ng and tightening up nuts and draw-buckles, Mr. Fulton drove them all outdoors. "Chase off and play," he insisted. "Tod and I will give her the finis.h.i.+ng touches; then you can all come back and help us push her out into the sunlight for the final inspection."