Having made their prisoner secure, leaving one of their number to watch him, three of the men went down to the two boats. Tom could hear them laughing as they discovered the plight of the craft he had jumped into.
“Good thing you were short on gas, Kenny!” some one said. “Otherwise he might be on the mainland now.”
“Yes,” was the answer. “Well, he’ll be on mainland, anyhow, by night.”
Tom wondered what this meant. But Schlump, who was guarding him, gave no sign.
All the remainder of that day Tom remained a prisoner on Loon Island with the four men watching him. They seemed to have some human feelings, for they gave Tom water to drink and loosed his hands so that he could eat some of the food they brought to him from the boat in which they had pursued him.
The prisoner was grateful for the food, and more so for the hot coffee, which Kenny made over a fire he kindled. This coffee put heart into Tom, and he felt much better after drinking it.
He was worried, not so much over his own plight, as over what his father and his friends might think about his sudden and mysterious disappearance. That his father would worry, Tom well knew.
But Tom would not give his enemies the satisfaction of asking them their intentions. He preferred to wait and see what would happen.
“They must be going to take me to the mainland,” thought Tom, as he recalled what had been said. “It’s hard to tell whether I’ll have a better chance to escape there or here. I’ll just have to bide my time.”
It seemed that the day would never pass, but at length the shadows grew longer and Tom, who had been thrust into a rocky cranny behind a clump of bushes, realized that night was settling down. It would be the second night of his absence from home and he could imagine the anxiety among his friends.