Dick had ridden to the camp on his motorcycle, and now they heard the sharp clatter of its engine as he started it.
"If they're making for the outlet, he'll head them off," said Durland. "Hart, take your Patrol and go up to the dam there, in case they went that way. The rest of you follow me. We'll take Crawford's route, and see if we can't get there in time to help him. I'm afraid Danby is in the gravest sort of danger."
They followed him with a shout, half dressed as most of them were. Jack Danby didn't lack friends, at least, even if he did have powerful and determined enemies.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RESCUE
Needless to say, it was some time after he was roughly thrown into the bottom of the motor boat before Jack came to his senses. The chloroform had taken effect quickly, and the soaked handkerchief had not remained very long over his mouth and nostrils, or Jack might have ended his career then and there. As it was, however, the rush of the cool night air as the swift motor boat sped along the quiet waters of the lake did a good deal to revive him, and it was, comparatively speaking, only a short time before he realized where he was—or, rather, realized that he had been snatched from his blanket, and was being carried off somewhere, probably by those who had anything but good-will toward him.
His first impulse was to cry out, but he checked himself, for he realized that his best chance just then was to feign an ignorance of his surroundings that would throw his abductors off their guard. If he made them think that he was still senseless, he might find some way of escape opening before him, and he might, too, overhear something that he could turn to his own advantage.
It was pitch dark in the bottom of the boat, and his eyes, moreover, were aching. His whole head throbbed as he came out of the effects of the deadly drug that had been used to make him helpless, and he decided that the first thing he should do was to give nature and the healing air a chance to restore him to his senses and some semblance of a better physical condition. He was in no state now to do anything to help himself, and he had no idea of whether or not any of his comrades had taken the alarm when he was carried off. He was senseless when the men who had caught him were making their escape, and he had no way of telling what had happened.
He guessed, even before he saw the evil face of the man who sat up in the bow, stripped now of his black mask, and gloating over his success, that it was one of the trapped and disappointed train wreckers who now had him in his power, and he shivered a little at the thought of what his fate might be. A man who had planned such a fiendish crime was not likely to be anything but brutal in his treatment of one of those who had helped to foil him, and Jack understood that perfectly well. If he had needed anything more to make him realize his position it was supplied in a moment.