"It's pretty poor and very heavy, but it will float, I think," was
Marian's first comment.
"It's theirs. Thought it wasn't worth risking a stop for."
"But how did they get into our camp? We haven't seen their tracks through the brush."
"Probably took up one small stream and down another."
The boat they had found was a wide, heavy, flat-bottomed affair, such a craft as is used by fishermen in tending pond-nets.
For a time the two girls stood there undecided. The chances of their recovering the motorboat seemed very poor indeed. To go forward in this heavy boat meant hours of hand-blistering rowing to bring them back to camp. Yet the thought of returning to tell Lucile's brother that they had lost his motorboat was disheartening. To go on seemed dangerous. True, they had rifles but they were, after all, but two girls against three rough men. In spite of all this, they decided in the end to go on. Pushing the boat into the sea they rowed out a few fathoms, then set the sail and bore away before the brisk breeze. The fact that the oar-locks, which were mere wooden pegs, were worn smooth and shiny, told that the boat had not been long unused.
In a short time they found themselves well out from shore in a gently rippling sea, while the point, behind which lay their camp, grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
Presently they cleared a wooded point of land and came in view of a short line of beach. Deep set in a narrow bay, it might have escaped the eye of a less observant person than Marian; so, too, might the white speck that shone from the brown surface of that beach.
"What's that in the center?" she mumbled, reaching for the binoculars by her side. "It's our schooner," she exclaimed after a moment's survey. "Yes, sir, it is! Anyway, it's a motor-boat, and if not ours, whose then?"
"We'd better pull in behind the point, drag our boat up on the rocks and come round by land," whispered Lucile.