"Excellent. You will go at once?"
"I think so. You will remember! A blue light, I am sick or in danger. A red light, I need provisions."
"Signal any time from ten to twelve. I will be on the watch. If you say so I will start up the launch at once and take you to your destination."
"H'm," mused Dave, as double footsteps sounded the length of the porch. "Some new mysterious trick to delay the Swallow? Schmitt-Schmitt going away somewhere? This is too interesting to miss."
Dave crept out from under the porch. He dodged in among some bushes. Peering thence he saw Schmitt-Schmitt leading the way towards the beach, the pilot carrying his wicker satchel.
Dave did not venture to follow them direct. He lined the "frew-frew" plantation, and at a clearing in it near the treadmill cut across it.
From the grinding-mill a rude wooden trough extended. This was full of a sticky resinous mass, and the ground all round was spattered with the glutinous substance.
"Frew-frew must be a sort of gum or oil they make from those stalks yonder," decided Dave. "The mischief! it's worse than fly paper."
Dave's shoes stuck to broad leaves and lifted them bodily as he walked; they became tangled in vines which raised about him like ropes. He made an effort to get out of the direct zone of stickiness.
Dave leaped over the edge of a board where the wooden trough ran in among tangled vines and plants.