And, surely enough, there she came back, as if nothing had happened.
Mr. Bobbsey waved his hat and some one on the motor boat blew a whistle. And then, as if knowing that something was wrong, the boat was steered closer to shore than it had come before, and Mr. Chase cried:
“What’s the matter? Did anything happen?”
“We thought something had happened to you!” shouted Mr. Bobbsey. “Captain Crane and Mr. Dent have gone off in the small boat to look for you.”
“That’s too bad,” said Mr. Chase. “While you were away, on the other side of the island, we finished work on the engine. We wanted to try it, so we pulled up anchor and started off. We thought we would go around to the side of the island where you were, but something went wrong, after we were out a little while, and we had to anchor in another bay, out of sight. But as soon as we could we came back, and when I saw you waving your hat I feared something might have happened.”
“No, nothing happened. And we are all right,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “except that we were afraid we’d have to stay on the island all night. And Captain Crane has gone to look for you.”
“I’m sorry about that,” returned the engineer. “It would have been all right, except that the motor didn’t work as I wanted it to. But everything is fine now, and we can start for the other island as soon as we like. I’ll blow the whistle and Captain Crane will know that we are back at our old place.”
Several loud toots of the air whistle were given, and, a little later, from around the point came the small boat with the captain and Cousin Jasper in it. They had rowed for some distance, but had not seen the Swallow, and they were beginning to get more worried, wondering what had become of her.
“However, everything is all right now,” said Captain Crane, when they were all once more on board the motor boat, it having been decided to have supper there instead of on Palm Island.
“Aren’t we coming back here any more?” asked Freddie.