"We'll stick around," he decided. "They'll know that we aren't going to desert them anyway."
So the Napoli, with the two captured motorboats drifting behind, remained at anchor, while the three chums scanned the rocky shore. Once in a while they saw one or another of the gangsters emerging from behind the boulders to gaze at them, then return.
"We've got them guessing," chuckled Tony. "They don't know what to make of us. They know we have their boats, but they don't know who we are or how we got 'em."
Two hours passed. The sun rose higher in the sky. Blacksnake Island, in all its sinister ugliness, simmered in the morning heat. There was no further sign of life from the shore. Although the boys in the motorboat did not know it, the boulders behind which Chet and Biff had been carried hid the trail up to the grove and thence to the cave in the rocks. The gangsters had decided to return to this cave and Chet and Biff, with their ankle bonds untied, had been roughly ordered to their feet and bade proceed with the gangsters up the hidden trail. They had not been seen from the boat because a heavy veil of overhanging branches from the trees masked the trail where it wound up the hillside.
Toward mid-morning Tony chanced to look up and gaze out toward the mainland. He leaped up with a frantic yell.
"Here they come!" he shrieked. "Here they are!"
The others rose and stared. Then, as the meaning of what they saw dawned on them, they cheered hoarsely, and danced with delight until the motorboat rocked and swayed beneath their feet.
Cleaving the waves, came a low, rakish craft, speeding along with white wings of foam at her prow. It rushed silently toward them with the grace of an arrow. It was a United States revenue cutter, and when the boys in the boat witnessed its approach they knew that the Hardy boys had been successful in obtaining the aid they had gone to seek.
The boys cheered and waved their arms, trying to signal to the cutter that they had located Chet and Biff. Finally, Tony started up the engine and brought the Napoli alongside. The cutter slowly came to a stop, there was a clank and a clatter as the anchor was sent over.
A husky revenue officer with a revolver strapped to his waist leaned over the side and hailed them.