CHAPTER XX Kidnaped
"What's that?" Don demanded suddenly, before they had made the crest of the hill.
All had heard the sound, or rather series of sounds, to which he referred; all stopped still to listen.
It was the steady, powerful chug-chug of a motor, and at first they thought it was another plane.
"Motorboat, but a fast one," said Jack, in expert diagnosis.
"Yes, and from the sound of it, coming this way," Andy added.
"We can probably see it from the brow of this hill," Fred suggested, and they continued the two hundred feet or more to the point indicated.
There they stopped to survey that surface of the sea which previously had been obscured. A motorboat was racing madly up the coast, toward where their hydro lay, and at sight of them one of the crew on the craft set up a loud shout and a frantic waving of his arms. Two others on the boat came to his side, as she changed her course with an evident intention of drawing up close to where the plane washed idly back and forth on the calm surface of the sea.
"Seem to want us," said Big Jack, "but surely we can't be on private property."
"Yes, they're coming ashore all right—six of them," Fred announced, watching them climb out of the powerful and speedy launch.