"Have those beggars let her drift again?" said Warrender, angrily. "Pratt!" he called.
There was no answer. They looked down the river. The boat was not in sight. Hurrying to the tent, with the expectation of finding Pratt asleep there, they discovered that it was untenanted.
"What the dickens!" exclaimed Warrender. "Surely he hasn't gone larking with the boat? He always prided himself on knowing nothing about her working!"
"Seems to me they've run off with him and the boat too," said Armstrong. "Where's his banjo, by the way?"
It was neither in the tent nor on the chair outside, where Pratt sometimes left it.
They looked blankly at each other for a moment, then Warrender exclaimed--
"Come on! This is serious! I can't believe he's kidnapped. What's the use of that? Let us row down--perhaps he hasn't gone far."
They ran to the bank, sprang into the dinghy, and sculled rapidly down stream, every now and then turning their heads to scan the river, the banks, the island, for a sign of the motor-boat. They had almost reached the mouth when Armstrong suddenly cried--
"Listen! Isn't that a banjo?"
They shipped oars. Faintly on the breeze from seaward came the strains of "Three Blind Mice." A few strokes brought the rowers round the slight bend. Looking out to sea they descried, about half a mile away, the motor-boat, stationary, lapped by white-crested wavelets.