“If they get away with the boat, they can’t row, anyhow,” he reasoned, “and I don’t believe they’ll find her.”
He approached the cave cautiously, for he did not want to fall a victim to those who had captured his chums. But the cavern in the hillside was empty, and Tom felt a sense of disappointment.
“Now for the mill,” he mused, as he set off in the skiff again. He had almost reached it, and was debating within himself how best to approach it, when a new thought came to him.
“Suppose they catch me?” he asked himself. “They are four to one, and, though I don’t mind Sam or Nick, the hermit and Skeel would be more than a match for me. If they get me I can’t be of any help to the boys.”
Tom was no coward, and he would have dared anything to rescue his chums. Yet he realized that this was one of the occasions when discretion was the better part of valor.
“I think I can serve ’em best by staying on the outside a while,” he argued, as he got to a point where he could catch a glimpse of the old mill. “I’ll look about a bit,” he went on, “and see what sort of a plan I can think out.”
Keeping well in the shadow of the bushes that lined the river bank, he watched the mill. For half an hour or more there was no sign of life in it, and then, so suddenly that it startled Tom, there appeared at one of the third story windows the form of the old hermit, and he had a gun in his hands.
“There he is!” whispered Tom. “He’s on the lookout for me. Lucky I didn’t rush in. And he’s on that third floor, though there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting up to it. I’ve got to go for help,” and Tom, waiting until old Wallace had disappeared from the casement, slowly rowed away.
He reached the lonely camp late in the afternoon, for he spent some time going along the shore of the lake, searching for his motorboat. But he did not find it.
“Now what shall I do?” he asked himself as he sat down to a solitary supper. “Go for help, or try to make the rescue myself?”