“Oh! he’s aboard our boat, just now, and will be glad to welcome you,” the other party remarked, coolly. “And I hereby invite you one and all to come along to see for yourselves. It’s a mistake all around, I guess. Please accept my invitation in the same friendly spirit in which it is given, and honor us with your company, boys. Josh is getting back to his old self, but he had a nasty tumble, I give you my word.”
“What’s that?” asked Jack.
“He tripped over a root,” said the man, earnestly, “and struck his head on a lump of coquina rock. It made a bad cut on the side of his head, and he bled quite a little. Besides, the blow must have knocked him senseless. My friend Carpenter and myself were just coming back to the boat, after a little side hunt for a deer, when we discovered him lying there, and took him aboard. After he came to, he told us who he was, and all about the rest of you. And am I right in believing that you are Jack Stormways?”
Of course the three boys were more or less thunderstruck by what they had just heard. It knocked all their theories “into flinders,” as Jimmy would have said. Here they had been concocting all manner of wonderful stories in connection with the two parties aboard the little power boat. They had even gone so far as to believe the men must be some desperate characters, fleeing from the sheriff, who might turn up at any hour in full pursuit.
And now, from what the other had just declared, it would seem that the shoe was exactly on the other foot. Instead of proving to be lawless men, criminals in fact, they gave evidence of turning out to be Good Samaritans. Why, Josh might have been in a bad way, only for them, according to what the man had just said.
But could he be believed? Might it not all be a part of some clever trap? George, always inclined toward suspicion, would have held back, had the decision been left to him; Jack was inclined to take the man’s word, for he had a frank way about him; while Jimmy was hanging in the balance, hardly knowing what to believe.
Just then there came a shout from within the cabin of the little boat.
“Hello, Jack; it’s all right!”
All of them readily recognized the well known voice of Josh; and his assurance went far toward alleviating the fear George entertained, that danger lurked in their putting themselves in the power of the unknown parties.
“You hear what your mate says, Jack?” remarked the man whose figure was outlined against the glow of the cabin’s interior. “Tell them to come aboard, and see what we did for you, Josh.”