He took hold of the edge of the timbers above and pulled himself up, but the moment his head rose above the edge of the pier he realized that the men were close at hand. They were coming, and he could not get off the pier before they reached it!
“Trapped!”
He felt out with his feet, dropped back into the boat, sat down.
Then it was that Frank Merriwell’s brain worked swiftly. What was he to do? He thought of several things. His first thought was to cut the boat adrift, push it under the pier, where they could not find it, and keep still. Then he knew his friends would soon be coming down to that pier, and, if the sailors were there, a collision must take place.
His hand touched something in the prow of the boat.
“A tarpaulin!” he whispered.
With that discovery a daring scheme entered his mind. Not one boy in a hundred would have ventured to carry it out had he thought of it.
The boat was fairly large, and there was little danger that one of the four men would be placed in the bow.
“Got to hustle!” whispered Frank, as he heard the feet of the men on the pier above his head.
He lifted the tarpaulin, crawled under it, stowed himself as closely as possible in the forward end of the boat.