Presently the call of the siren brought forth a boat, not in the little bay, but up the river a few hundred yards. It moved down to the coastline with only the canopy, which was of faded scarlet cloth, and the heads of the rowers in view above the tops of the bushes and creepers which lined the stream.
The land smoked under the rising temperature brought on by the climbing sun, and Jimmie chuckled as he nudged Frank's arm.
"I see your finish there," he said. "A boy as fat as you are will melt over there. There's nothin' left of the brown men in the boat but their heads!"
Frank looked along the bow-shaped shore, over the palms, now touched with the red light of a hot morning, and wiped his streaming forehead.
"This doesn't look good to me!" he said. "I thought we were going to Manila!"
"Didn't Ned tell you about it?" asked Jack Bosworth.
"Not a word."
"Well, we're going to disembark here; I don't know the name of the place, or even if it has one, and make our way among some of these islands in a motor boat. There are a lot of secret service men at Manila who don't want to mix with us kids!"
"That's nice!" Jimmie cried. "We won't do a thing to 'em! We'll put it over 'em good, you see if we don't! I reckon Ned Nestor can give any of 'em half a string an' win out, at that!"
"Of course he can," Jack replied, "but I'm not kicking at this way of doing things. I'm thinking of the motor boat, and the long days and moony nights in the seas among these islands!"