"Then that's the place to look."
As he spoke, the young leader of the Eagles stripped off his shirt, for the night was warm and he was coatless, and then divested himself in turn of his shoes and trousers.
This done, he turned to Merritt.
"I don't know just why, old fellow," he said, "but I've got an idea in my head, somehow, that there's some sort of dirty trick being put up to-night."
"What do you mean?"
Merritt asked the question looking into his comrade's eyes as he clasped Rob's extended hand. For some reason he felt a cold shudder run through him. What the danger was that Rob dreaded he did not know, but there was something in the hand-shake that his leader gave him that almost seemed like a farewell clasp.
Before his inquiry was fairly out of Merritt's mouth, Rob had disengaged his palm and slipped silently over the side of the submarine. As the waters closed above him, Merritt almost cried out aloud. The same mysterious sense of a danger, terrible and imminent, had run through his brain like a warning flash. But it was too late to recall his comrade now.
Whatever peril Rob was facing, he was called upon to brave it out alone.
* * * * * * *
Earlier that evening a small, but fast and high-powered motor boat had glided almost silently out of Bellport, a fishing village on the coast, and, waiting till darkness had descended, made at top speed for the vicinity of the submarine island.