The boys looked at each other in dismay. Where was the dory? There was not a vestige of it. It had been securely tied to one of the spiles; Jack had attended to it himself; and that it could have tugged loose seemed impossible.
“Bill Glass,” breathed Hal with a kind of “I-told-you-so” inflection.
“I don’t believe it,” replied Bee stoutly. “You’re getting so you blame Bill Glass if you bite your tongue, Hal. Besides, I saw him when he went off and he certainly didn’t have Jack’s dory.”
“He could have come back last night and taken it, couldn’t he?” asked Hal scathingly. “Oh, he’s got it all right enough!”
“But he wouldn’t dare to,” persisted Bee. “Why, he couldn’t hide a dory, could he?”
“He doesn’t have to hide it. He’s painted it blue by this time!”
“Well, somebody must have taken it,” said Jack troubledly, “for I don’t believe any amount of wind would have untied those hitches of mine. Still, I suppose I’d better go up the river a ways and look. May I take the launch, Hal?”
“Of course, and we’ll go along.”
But although they chugged up the stream for a half-mile or more they saw no trace of the Faith and finally Jack declared that it was useless to look farther unless they meant to go all the way to Bill Glass’s. “That dory never got around three bends in the river,” said Jack, “without being towed. She’d have gone ashore long before this.”
So they turned the launch and went back in the teeth of the gale. Fortunately, although the tide was unusually high, the banks of the stream still afforded some protection from the wind. Otherwise the Corsair would have blown on the sand-bars time and again. Back at the island, they kept on to the Crystal Spring. The sloop had worked pretty well over to the south side of the river entrance and was rolling and plunging most undignifiedly. Jack scrambled aboard as soon as the launch was under her lee and presently returned with his second anchor. They ran around the stern of the sloop and almost across to the opposite beach. There Jack tossed the anchor over. Then, paying the cable out, the launch pitched her way back to the sloop and Jack made the rope fast on the bow. They were all pretty well drenched by the time they got back into the quieter water of the river, and as soon as they had made the launch secure where she could not rub against the spiles they got back to the tent as quickly as their legs would carry them.