And in another minute the Indian pilot had set his chatterbox of an engine to beating a lively tattoo, upon which the stub-nosed launch began to draw away. As long as it remained in sight in the moonlight the boys cheered, and called goodbyes, so that if there chanced to be any more ghosts lingering about that haunted island they must have taken this for a clear defiance of their power, and concluded to remain in hiding during the balance of the stay of the motor boat boys.
“Think we can pick up a few winks of sleep, fellows?” asked George, when the clatter of the loud-voiced engine had been mellowed by distance.
“We ought to try, anyhow,” said Jack, “Seems to me we’ve had our rest pretty badly broken up lately. For one I’m going to forget it all for a while.”
But the chances were that none of them got any satisfactory sleep during the balance of that eventful night.
On the following morning they prepared to vacate the cove that had been their anchorage for so long. All of them first went ashore; for Nick and Herb were very anxious to see the cabin, and the hole in the floor were the smugglers kept their goods concealed after secretly bringing the stuff over from the Canada mainland, waiting until a good chance opened to scatter it through the state, free of duty.
“Well,” declared Nick, as they prepared to get underway later in the morning; “this has been a great experience all around, sure enough. And it ended fine—that is for us boys, though I guess poor old Glenwood and his fellow conspirators don’t feel so very gay over it.”
“And don’t forget our friends, Clarence and Bully Joe, while about it,” spoke up George. “Just stop and think what Macklin went through—held a prisoner by those reckless men, and threatened with all sorts of trouble if he so much as squeaked on ’em. Then forced to do whatever they wanted. And last, but far from least, beaten in a fair race by this dandy little meteor boat that he once sneered at. That’s glory enough for me, I’m telling you, shipmates.”
“I guess we all enjoyed it,” remarked Josh.
“Yes, so far as I’m concerned I’d be quite contented and happy right now, if I only knew one thing,” remarked Nick, looking doleful again.
“Here, don’t you go to starting up your tune about that break,” said George, “we all agreed long ago that if you did leak to Clarence, you never would have done it on purpose. So forget it.”