"Then they've put one over on us," was Bud's inference. "Are you sorry we came?"
"I? No, sir!" Cub emphasized. "It's a dandy adventure, whatever the result. I didn't swallow that Crusoe story whole at any time."
"Neither did I," said Hal.
"I thought there were some funny things about it," Bud announced reflectively; "but I didn't know how to put them together or take 'em apart."
"That was my fix," said Cub; "and it's my fix yet."
"I guess we all agree that the whole affair is very strange," Hal concluded. "We really don't believe we've been told the truth, and yet we get in worse trouble when we try to make something else out of it."
"I wonder what your father thinks about it, Cub," said Bud.
"Oh, he accepts it at its face value for the sake of the adventure," the tall youth replied. "But he's wise enough to know there may be a lot of hocus-pocus in the business."
For nearly two hours the motor boat wound its way at a fairly good clip among the picturesque islands of the upper St. Lawrence, the radio compass fixing the course as certainly as the hunter's pursuit is directed by the nose of his hound. They had no way of telling, at any time, how far ahead was the object of their search, but they had the satisfaction of knowing that they were constantly approaching it. At last an unexpected climax threw their hitherto clear prospect into confusion. This climax grew out of a series of confounding messages from the "lost islander".
"I see you coming," was the first of these messages.