"He'd have had my arm if you hadn't hit the mark," Frank said. "I'll owe you an arm as long as I live, old man!"
"And that big fish owes Uncle Sam a quart of gasoline and a good blue glass bottle," laughed Jack. "I wonder how it will set on his tummy?"
"Now," Ned said, "I'm as wet as it is possible to get, so I'm going on shore to see if our Boy Scout left any mail for us. I'm getting anxious to catch up with the Lieutenant and his abductors."
"I'm goin' too!" said Jimmie.
"You're not," Ned replied. "I'm not going to the trouble of keeping track of you in that wilderness."
"All right!" Jimmie grunted, apparently resigned to his fate, but when Ned rowed ashore and disappeared in the thicket which skirted the bay the little fellow recklessly slipped into the water and came out unharmed on the beach farther to the south than Ned had landed. He stood for a moment with the salt water running out of his hair and over his freckled face, made an amusing grimace at the boys in the boat, and scurried into the jungle.
"The little dunce!" Jack exclaimed.
"If he keeps close to Ned he will be all right," Frank observed, "but if he goes to wandering about on his own account he will get into trouble. I've got a hunch that the people we are following are on that island."
In five minutes Ned made his appearance, rowing swiftly out to the boat.
"They are there!" he exclaimed. "I found the trail mark and the direction. A yard from the last direction I found the triple warning three times repeated. You know what that means?"