“And say, look what he’s got along with him, will you?” exclaimed the second boy astonished. “A splendid motorcycle as sure as you live! No wonder he had to stay home and wait for it to come along. Chances are that Billy Worth and Monkey Stallings have got the same kind of bully mount. Are they back of you, Hugh? What news do you bring to camp?”
“Plenty of things doing, boys,” returned the patrol leader. “But you’ll have to hold your horses until I can see all the rest of the boys. Time’s too valuable for me to tell the story more than once.”
“Whew! do you hear that, Sam?” cried Cooper Fennimore excitedly. “Hugh as much as says there’s something going to happen to give us all a little whirl. Seemed to feel it in my bones this very morning when I turned out, that this day wouldn’t go by as quietly as the others did. Tom Sherwood said it must be going to rain, and that was what affected me; and Jack Dunham asked me how many helps I’d taken of that stew last night, because it was a case of indigestion I had developed; but you see after all it was what you might call a premonition of trouble. Coming events cast their shadows before, they say; and now I know it.”
“How do you get back and forth between the island and the shore?” demanded the newcomer impatiently, because Cooper Fennimore was known to be a great talker, and apt to waste considerable precious time.
“Why,” said Sam Winter, “we’ve got a cute little punt that they call a dinghy, which belongs to the big motorboat. You can push it with a pole in the shallow water, or use a paddle if it gets too deep for that. Here it is drawn up on the bank. It will just carry three of us, Hugh.”
“Then let’s be moving across as quick as we can,” remarked Hugh, “because the afternoon is wearing away, and there’s a lot to be done before sunset, if we expect to capture the two hoboes who held Gusty Merrivale up on the road and robbed him of the money he was taking to pay the men working in his father’s granite quarry.”
“Whee! listen to that, Sam!” gasped Cooper Fennimore, and then he hastened to push the flat-bottomed little tender into the water and take his place, ready to use the pole while Sam handled the paddle.
As they approached the island, there were evidences of considerable excitement ashore and a number of boys clad in the familiar khaki lined up to give their leader the customary scout salute. This, of course, pleased Hugh very much, for he was human enough to feel a thrill of pride in the affection his comrades seemed to entertain for him.
CHAPTER IX.
OVER THE RIDGE.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Scout Master!” called Bud Morgan as the dinghy drew in to the shore, and all the boys crowded down so as to be ready to shake hands with Hugh. “How’d you come up here, I’d like to know?”