Joe Arnold released his grip with a vigorous shove that sent the girl spinning across the sands. Prim caught her as she staggered.
“Terry, listen to me,” said Prim with decision in her voice. “I don’t know what we are going to do, but one thing sure is that you mustn't make that man angry. He’s capable of anything. He’d think nothing of leaving us here to starve. He’d even kill us if it suited his purpose.” Prim shook her sister’s arm. “Don't talk to him at all if you can’t do it without getting angry.”
Terry was deathly white, not from fear but anger. “But look, Prim! You don’t seem to realize that Bud is going to take our plane away from us. Now we’ll be real castaways!”
Prim searched the sky. “Oh, if Allan and Syd would only come! I’m afraid something terrible has happened to them. I didn’t see them after the storm struck our plane. Where did they go?”
“Don’t talk about it, Prim. Let’s get busy and do something so we won’t have time to think. I don’t dare!” Terry said with trembling lips.
The girls stood watching as Bud and Joe wheeled Skybird around to head away from the beach and over the water. They started the engine. It coughed, it wheezed, it sputtered but at the same time the amphibian taxied over the smooth blue waters and took to the air. Skybird was flying away without them.
Joe Arnold waved his hand toward the departing plane, then turned and climbed the hill, looking back at the girls with a triumphant grin, far more menacing than an angry scowl would have been. Terry knew that he had never forgiven her for her part in the rescue of Allan and Syd when he had kidnapped them in the far north.
Now was his great opportunity to settle matters once for all. This was his chance. He had them at his mercy.
Everything had worked out to Joe’s advantage. Bud's plane had been wrecked some weeks before and on that account they had worked under a handicap, waiting to replace it. Now a fine little plane had miraculously dropped from the sky at their feet.
Joe Arnold smiled. “Luck comes that way to me,” he said to himself. “I have a few bad breaks, but often they work out for my good. If I had succeeded in getting the Dick Mapes Flying Field six months ago as I planned. I’d never have started this island base. At least not so soon.—And this has turned out to be the best graft I've ever struck.”