“Well, come on,” said Nelson. “We’ll see if we can find him.”
So they turned and retraced their steps, although Dan affirmed positively that they had never come that way.
“The sensible thing to have done,” he grumbled, “was to have stayed just where we were and waited for the streets to come around to us. Then, when one went by with Tommy on the sidewalk, we could have just reached out and plucked him off.”
But no one heard him save a newsboy, who thought he was asking for an afternoon paper.
After five minutes on the “back trail,” they concluded to give it up, agreeing that Tom had probably wandered into one of the side streets, and that he would undoubtedly find some one to direct him to Nelson’s house. So they started again for the yacht-supply store, Dan pretending to be terribly worried.
“Who’s going to break the news to his parents?” he asked lugubriously. But by the time they were in sight of their destination he had acquired a more cheerful frame of mind. “Of course,” he confided to Nelson—the sidewalk here was wide enough to allow them to walk two abreast—“of course, I’m sorry to lose Tommy, but it’s well to look on the bright side of things. You see, Bob will have to be cook now, and you know he’s a heap better cook than Tommy ever was or ever would have been. Oh, yes, every cloud has a silver lining!” In the store he insisted on buying a dory compass for his own use. “You see, Bob, I might get lost myself on the way back,” he explained. Bob, however, convinced him that what he wanted was a chart.
Their purchases here were not many but bulky, and so they decided to call a hack. When it came, they climbed into it and surrounded themselves with bundles of rope, fenders, lubricating oil in gallon cans, and assorted tools and hardware. It was getting toward five o’clock by this time, and they decided to go to the boat yard, put the things on board, and leave the arranging of them until the morning. They dismissed the carriage at the entrance to the wharf and took up their burdens again. Dan, hurried along by the impatient Barry, was the first to reach the edge of the wharf, and——
“Well, I’ll be blowed!” he cried.
Bob and Nelson hurried to his side. There, lolling comfortably in the cockpit seat of the Vagabond and eating caramels, was Tom!
“You’re a nice one!” said Nelson indignantly. “We thought you were lost!”