"What, in this storm and darkness? No, but I think there's a cave near here. We can go in that and keep dry, at any rate."
"Go ahead, I'm with you."
They were fortunate in finding a small cavern, and in it was a supply of dry wood. They made a fire, though the smoke was almost as bad as the dampness, but it served to get rid of that chilly feeling.
It was still raining when morning came, but the boys were more cheerful with the appearance of daylight, though they had to breakfast on cold food, for all the wood was wet, and the supply in the cave had been burned.
"Oh, well, we can go back to our first camp and row out to the Gull pretty soon," remarked Frank. "Let's hurry on with our search now."
"I'm afraid it isn't going to amount to anything," declared Andy. "That man isn't here, and he hasn't been here. Captain Trent's theory was all right, but it didn't work out."
"Oh, I'm not going to give up yet," insisted Frank. "We have a good part of the island to explore yet."
But, as they went farther on, it became more and more evident that there was no one on the island but themselves—that is, unless the mysterious man was hidden somewhere between them and their first camp—a distance of about a mile.
"We'll cover that, and then all there is to do is to sail back home," proposed Andy, as they started on the last lap of their search, after eating a hasty lunch. It had stopped raining, for which they were very thankful.
There was one more cave to explore, and this was soon proved to contain nothing but a colony of bats, which they disturbed with their flashing light.