“Why, where are Bob and Frank?” he demanded. “They were here a moment ago.”
He stared about him in bewilderment. The others 96 did likewise. But the two mentioned could not be seen. With an exclamation, Jack rose to his feet.
“Come on,” he urged. “I’ll bet Bob decided to go for the fellow who burned his plane and take it out of his hide. When that boy gets angry, he wants action.”
He started striding hastily down toward the beach, alongside the wire fencing. The others pressed at his heels. Presently, they caught the glint of water through the trees, and then, some distance ahead, caught sight of two figures moving out from the grove onto the sands on the opposite side of the fence. Jack increased his pace, but even as he did so two other figures stole from the woods on the heels of the first pair.
Involuntarily, Jack cried out. The second pair leaped upon the backs of the first and bore them to the ground. The next moment, the air was filled with curses, and the four figures rolled on the sands.
“Come on, fellows,” cried Jack, breaking into a run, and dashed ahead.
He broke from the trees and discovered the boundary fence came to an abrupt end at the edge of the grove. It was here Bob and Frank, he felt sure, had made their way and leaped on Higginbotham and the thug. For so he interpreted what he had seen. 97
As he came up the fight ended. It had been bitter but short. Frank was astride Higginbotham and pressing his opponent’s face into the sand to smother his outcries. Bob had wrapped his arms and legs about the city ruffian and the latter, whose curses had split the air, lay face uppermost, his features showing contorted in the moonlight. Bob knelt upon him. As Jack ran up, he was saying:
“You want to be careful whose airplane you burn.”
An exclamation from Captain Folsom drew Jack’s attention from the figures in the immediate foreground, and raising his eyes he gazed in the direction in which the other was pointing. Some fifty yards away, on the edge of Starfish Cove, a half dozen objects of strange shape and design were drawn up on the sand. They were long, shaped somewhat like torpedoes and gleamed wet in the moonlight.