“Never mind now,” said Larry. “We’ll take you where you want to go.” Larry was not to carry out that statement, but he did not know it as she made it.
There was a little group of the boys around the man now and Ted, speaking to Archie, who had said something Betty did not hear, said, “All right, Archie—you help Larry take him to the boat and I’ll help here. We’ll be away in a jiffy.”
Larry and Archie kindly helped the man over the rocks and down to the boat, while Ted turned to the other boys and girls speaking now in a low tone. “I’m suspicious of that chap,” said Ted. “I think Larry is, too. Don’t hurry too much and go down one at a time carrying something, girls. Come on, Chet. You and I will go over the island a bit and see what this wreck is.”
Arthur, who had been making a funny sketch of the picnic party when the man appeared, now put his paper in his pocket and told the girls that it seemed to be “up to him to pack the stuff.”
“Not a bit of it,” said Carolyn. “Didn’t you hear Ted tell us not to hurry. Go on with the boys.”
“I’ll see where they’re going,” returned Arthur, “and come back to protect you!”
The girls laughed at this, and Carolyn began to separate some of the most attractive remains to be packed together, ready for a good lunch for the “shipwrecked sailor.” She was the first one to go down to the boat, carrying this. Gwen followed her shortly, then Peggy. Kathryn and Betty were beginning to gather up the rest of the equipment, except the heavier articles, which they had been “ordered” to leave for the boys, when there came a hail and Chet came leaping over the rocks in the background, crossing from the rise of ground as the stranger had done before him. “Where’s the rest of that coffee?” he demanded. “We’ve found the boat all right, out of commission and there’s a fellow in it—bound and gagged he was—that old scoundrel!”
“Oh, Chet!” cried Betty. “Why, Carolyn took the thermos bottle and the coffee to the boat, for the man if he should want anything more.”
“What that fellow needs is a rope and a limb!” growled Chet, not waiting to be polite, but scrambling down the rocks to where the boat stood waiting. Betty and Kathryn left their baskets to run in the direction of the rocks. They had hoped to see something of this pretty island as it was. Through and over the rocks they speedily went and there stretched before them an irregular path, winding among more trees and disappearing in the direction of another shore where the wash of the surf could be heard.
They started down the path, but were surprised to see Ted and Arthur, slowly approaching and half carrying some one between them. “You’ll be all right, old fellow, as soon as you get limbered up a little,” Ted was saying.