An idea struck the scout. Crouching under the screen of the kegs, he turned it over in his mind.
“About the only way to get at those scoundrels,” he mentally debated, “will be to starve them out. No charge could be made across the quicksands, unless an attacking force had the outlaws’ means for getting across, and a few men behind those rocks on the island could stand off a besieging force indefinitely. If we could remove these supplies, and keep Bascomb and Bernritter from——”
The scout, while he was thinking, was also keeping his eyes over the top of the kegs. Suddenly he detected a movement among the shadows that lay under the rocks of the island. Ceasing his reflections, he leaned across the kegs and watched intently.
Somebody was doing something; but what? The shadows lay so thick about the island’s shore that he could not tell.
Presently he saw a man moving out upon the surface of the treacherous quicksand. As the man walked, he seemed to be pushing something ahead of him.
Curious, and profoundly interested, the scout kept his eyes on the dark figure.
Farther and farther the man left the shore of the island behind him, still pushing a round object in advance of him as he walked.
How was he able to keep on top of the bubbling sands? What sort of an object was it that he was pushing?
The man appeared to be leaving a broad, dark trail behind him. For some time the scout was mystified.
The man was laying a course that would bring him to the shore at the place where the kegs and boxes had been placed. When he had covered half the distance that separated him from the shore, the scout began to make discoveries.