“You needn’t go that far from home,” said Frank, a student of Long Island colonial history. “There was a time when, on both coasts of Long Island, pirates and smugglers made their headquarters and came and went unmolested. In fact, the officials of that day were in league with the rascals, and there was at least one governor of the Province of New York who feathered his nest nicely by having an interest in both kinds of ventures.”
The boys knew the names of most of the owners of great estates along the Long Island shore up to Southampton and beyond, and some time was spent in laughing speculation as to whether this or that great man was involved in the liquor-smuggling plot.
“Captain Folsom said,” explained Jack, “that so much money necessarily was involved in the purchase and movement of all that liquor, in the radio equipment, the buying of the Brownell place, the hiring of ships, the employment of many men, and so on, that he was pretty certain the men captured were only underlings and not principals. And, certainly, the business must have taken a great deal of money.” 194
Several days passed without the boys hearing further from Captain Folsom, nor was any word received that their motor boat had been recovered. They came to be of the opinion that it had been either scuttled or abandoned in some lonely spot upon which nobody had stumbled, or else that the thieves had managed to elude police vigilance in the harbor of New York. That the thieves might have used it to make their way to sea to a rendezvous where the ships of the liquor-smugglers’ fleet gathered did not occur to them, for the reason that despite the knowledge they had gained of the contraband traffic they were not aware as yet of its extent. Yet such was what actually had happened, as events were to prove.
Meantime, both Mr. Temple and Mr. Hampton returned to their homes, to be amazed at the tale of developments during their absence. Over their cigars in Mr. Hampton’s library, the two, alone, looked at each other and smiling shook their heads.
“I had to scold Jack for running his head into trouble,” said Mr. Hampton. “But—well, it’s great to be young, George, and to have adventure come and hunt you out.”
Mr. Temple nodded.
“I gave Bob and Frank a talking-to,” he commented. “Told them they had no business getting into trouble the minute my back was turned. But 195 Bob said: ‘Well, Dad, we got into trouble when your back wasn’t turned, too, out there in California last year. And we got you out of it, as a matter of fact.’ And Frank said: ‘We manage to come out on top, Uncle George.’”
Mr. Hampton laughed.
“Jack said something of the sort to me, too,” he said. “He recalled that it was only by putting his head into trouble, as I called it, that he managed to rescue me when I was a prisoner in Mexico and to prevent international complications.”