Arriving at the wide waters, the big one had fashioned a sort of bathing suit of his underwear and shirt and had swum to the island, where he had promptly come in contact with the girl, informing her in the meeting of the attack upon her grandfather and of her position in the tangle. The white-haired uncle, the swimmer had learned [[190]]in turn, had not been to the island, nor had the warty-nosed man been there.
“I told Lizzie,” Peg concluded, “that the thing for us to do, now that her grandfather was in the hospital, was to dig up the bonds and get them into a bank as soon as we could. Then her uncle wouldn’t be able to steal them. She agreed to the suggestion. And if we had dug up the bonds then, everything would have been lovely. Instead, I borrowed her boat, which was hidden in the shore willows at the head of the island, and rowed to the tow path for Red.
“And now comes the sad part,” freckle-nose put in, wagging his head.
There was an anxious look on Scoop’s tired face.
“What happened?” he inquired in a somewhat dull voice, plainly prepared to hear the worst.
“In the time that we were away,” Peg continued, “campers landed on the island from down the canal. The Stricker gang. Seven of them. We had a time getting back to our harbor unseen.”
“The dickens!” Scoop cried, with troubled eyes. He looked at me. “That explains the campfire, Jerry.”
“Returning to the island,” Peg went on, “we [[191]]lay in hiding, in the hope that the enemy would leave the place long enough for us to climb the knoll and dig up the bonds. No such good luck, though. Not only were the others in complete possession of the island, but they actually pitched their tents on the knoll over the buried bonds.”
The leader was staring open-mouthed.
“What’s that?” he cried.