“That’s so!” Sam exclaimed.
“I believe they’ve gone into Shark River—” Nicky declared.
“But we are at the mouth of the channel into Shark River,” objected Tom. “And they captured the Libertad North of this place, and turned North again from there.”
“They may have doubled back; Nicky defended his idea.
“I think there is a more likely solution,” suggested the lieutenant. “They went to the channel at the opening of the Harney River, above; there they could go back into the inner channel—above Whitewater Bay, and down that, again, to the landward entry into the Shark.”
Plans were discussed, ideas proposed, until far into the night. In all that the chums proposed, they figured; in those their elders discussed, they did not.
But because of the crew’s depletion by the departure on the sloop of two of her fighting patrols, and because neither Sam nor Mr. Neale was an expert with a rifle or pistol, the more vigorous plans for pursuit and capture had to be shelved in favor of more adroit measures.
And so it came about that a plan partially suggested by Nicky and elaborated by the lieutenant, in which the boys must figure, was the one to be adopted.
And again the Mystery Boys were adventure bound.
“But,” said Cliff, as a new thought struck him, “those hi-jackers must have seen our lights—we made plenty of excitement.”