“Wait a minute,” answered Harvey. “I’m coming ashore. Are the others on the way?”
“Yes,” answered the boy on shore, who proved to be Joe Hinman; “but they don’t like it a bit. It’s a shame to lose this fire, Jack. Why, you ought to see Colonel Witham. He’s the craziest man I ever saw, running around and begging everybody he sees to rush into the blaze and save his old office furniture.”
“Well, Joe,” said Harvey, as he stepped out of the small boat on to the beach, beside the other, “we’ve got some work cut out for us that beats watching a fire all to pieces. I’ll tell you all about it, but there isn’t one half-minute to lose now. Believe me, you fellows won’t regret it,—hello, here are the others!”
The three other members of the crew, George Baker, Allan Harding, and Tim Reardon, burst out of the woods into the clearing, gasping from running, and amazed beyond expression that Harvey should have called them from the fire.
“Fellows,” said Harvey, “I’ll tell you the whole story just as soon as we get aboard and up sail. This is the greatest thing we ever did in all our lives; but it’s the minutes that count now, and we have got to get under way the quickest we ever did yet.”
And then, as the boys hesitated, and Joe Hinman ventured the question, with something of suspicion in his tone that he could not all conceal, “Why, Jack, there’s no trouble, is there—no trouble—about the fire?” it suddenly dawned on Harvey that this sudden departure did have a queer look to it, and that he was, indeed, open to their suspicion.
“Yes,” he cried, “there is trouble, and it’s about this fire; but it isn’t our trouble. The trouble is for the man that set it,—and we are going to make it for him. We’re going to catch him. Now will you hurry?”
“Will we?” exclaimed George Baker. “Just watch us!”
And every boy made a dash for the camp to secure anything he might need on a cruise down the bay.
Harvey and Joe Hinman seized two big jugs and made off for the spring, whence they returned quickly. Then the entire crew piling into the small boat, they were soon aboard the Surprise.