Al, for all his natural eagerness to be at the scene, to share in their experiences, saluted without a word of remonstrance and hurried away. Meanwhile Bob, realizing that the oars for the boats were locked in the small pavilion on the wharf, determined to break in, feeling that the emergency removed any taint of robbery or pillage from the act.
Fortunately he found the old, rusted lock not caught. He slipped the rusty padlock, slipped the hasp free, and ran back to the dock where Curt had a boat untied and ready. In this, pushing off, they rowed out to the airplane. The weight of its engine was very slowly driving its nose deeper into the soft ooze of the marshy ground at that end of the lake.
“Hurry!” begged Curt, as Bob bent to his task.
Suddenly Bob rested on his oars.
“What’s the matter?” cried Curt, and as he saw the expression of Bob’s face he, too, became intent.
“There it is again!” panted Bob. “A call—a call for help?” he questioned.
“I don’t know. But row!”
Bob rowed.
CHAPTER III
A GREATER MYSTERY
“There comes the call again!” whispered Curt. “It was ‘help!’”