"How long have you been in charge here?" asked the boy.
"Two years. There's really nothing to do, but Uncle Sam thinks he needs a man in charge here, and pays pretty well, and so I've remained. It is a dull life, and I'm not certain that I don't enjoy this little excitement."
"Unless I am mistaken," Ned smiled, "it will not be so dull here in the future. I see trouble for the whole group."
"About a thousand of these brown leaders will have to be killed off before there will be any security of life or property here," said the Captain. "The natives would behave themselves if let alone."
"Now," Ned said, "you have been insisting all along that Lieutenant Rowe voluntarily left the island. Let us see about that."
"I never said he left the island. He may be here still, plotting with the natives, for all I know."
"You are mistaken there. Whether voluntarily or not, his party left the island last night, with the men who came here in the canoe."
"If he left the island, why didn't he go in the launch he came in? That would have been the most comfortable mode of leaving the place."
"Because, as has been said, the man who was sent to seize the motor boat could not make it move."
"How do you know that?"