Tom awoke and listened. "If s a motor-bicycle," he said, half asleep.
"Don't be a fathead!" said Andy. "A motor-bicycle on this island! You're dreaming. Come on, wake up—I tell you there's a jolly queer noise."
The noise itself hummed away into silence. The gulls screamed but soon became quiet. Andy sat and listened a little longer and then, as no more noise came, lay down on his springy bed again.
"Odder and odder," said Andy to himself. "We seem to have come to some most mysterious islands—and I'm going to find out what's happening—or my name isn't Andy!"
Chapter 9
The Mysterious Visitors
The next day the children talked about the queer noise that Andy had heard.
"I tell you it sounded exactly like a motor-bicycle," Tom said firmly, and nothing would make him admit that it wasn't.
"If I didn't know there couldn't possibly be any landing-ground on these rocky islands I might have thought the noise was made by an aeroplane," said Andy thoughtfully. "But that's silly. Why would an aeroplane come here? And where would it land?"
"It might be a motor-boat, perhaps!" said Jill suddenly. The others stared at her. For some reason, nobody had thought of motor-boats till then.