“You certainly are not going to try any fool stunt like that, boys!” declared Anderson. “I know what a current there is through that inlet, and you couldn’t hire me to let you try to swim it! Why, out there,”—he pointed to the nearest extremity of the island,—“is what is called a sea puss, a place where cross currents meet and form a whirlpool at mid-tide. It would swallow you up before you could guess what had happened to you! No, sirree! Here you’ll stay until low tide again. Do your folks know you came over here to-day?”
“Oh, yes; I told them,” Alec answered.
“All right, then; they won’t be worried. If you hadn’t told them, I’d get out a boat and take you over, but——”
“We’d hate to give you that trouble,” said Hugh. “Besides, we’re not a bit sorry to stay here in this interesting place; that is, if you don’t mind. We’re not in the way?”
“Not a bit of it! The boys’ll be glad of your company. Sorry that Mark and Ruth are away, though. You’ll be marooned here twelve hours. That means all night, as it’s four o’clock now. Well, never mind. I guess we can put you up for the night, if you’re not too particular, and the missus can rustle enough grub for us all.”
“Thanks, ever so much,” said Alec and Billy, almost in one breath, and Hugh added: “It’s mighty good of you, Captain Anderson.” He was much pleased with the hospitable captain’s “us all.” It seemed to include all four boys in a fellowship with the crew of life-savers, for whom the young scouts had begun to feel a genuine liking and respect.
“I guess you boys can find enough to do to amuse yourselves till supper time,” the keeper continued. “If you want to, you can go out with the beach patrols.”
“Are they going over to the mainland?”
“No, not this afternoon. I guess it won’t be necessary,” said Anderson, gazing up into the leaden sky. “It’s pretty windy, to be sure; but unless this wind shifts to the northeast, all they’ll need to do, until dark, will be to cross from one key to another, and so on down for quite a long way.”
“How will they cross?”