The boys glanced at each other; but not a single hand went up.
"Well, that settles one thing, then," declared Paul. "This note came from some one not belonging to our camp. He must have crawled into the tent from the rear, taking advantage of our being busy. Yes, there's a bunch of scrub close enough to give him more or less shelter, if he crawled on all fours. Let's see if one or two of the tent pins haven't been drawn up."
Followed by the rest, Paul strode over to the tent where a quantity of the provisions were kept. Entering this, he quickly saw that it was exactly as he had suggested. Three of the tent pins, which the boys had pounded down with the camp axe, had been pulled up, and this slack allowed the intruder to crawl under the now loose canvas.
"I can see the place he shuffled along, and where his toes dug into the earth," declared Jack, as he bent over.
"We'll try and follow it up presently, and see where he got on his feet to move off," Paul remarked. "I'd like to find out whether his shoes make a mark anything like some of those we were looking at up the shore, Jack."
"Whew!" exclaimed Bobolink, who was again deeply interested in what was going on, since he had found his precious bugle unharmed.
"Let's look at that paper again," resumed Paul. "The writing was done with a fountain pen, I should say. That seems to tell that the owner was no common hobo. And the writing is as clear as the print in our copybooks at school. The man who did that was a penman, believe me. 'Leave this island at once!' Just like that, short and crisp. Not a threat about what will happen if we don't, you see; we're expected to just imagine all sorts of terrible things, unless we skip out right away. One thing sure, Jud, your wild man never wrote that note, or even pinned it on our ham, because the crawler wore shoes."
"That's right," muttered Jud, his face betraying the admiration he felt for the scout master who knew so well how to patch things together, so that they seemed to be almost as plain as print.
"Now, the rest of you just stay around while I take Jack and Bobolink with me along this trail. We want to settle one thing, and that'll come when we hit the place where this party got up on his feet to move off."
So saying, Paul himself got down and deliberately crawled under the canvas the same way the trespasser had. Jack and Bobolink hastened to follow his example, only too well pleased to be selected to accompany the leader.