It was impossible to consider rounding the island in the canoes in the sea that was running; but this difficulty was got over by Ben, who impressed a guide from the moonshiners’ settlement to guide them around to the spot where they had camped, and off which the Carrier Dove was moored. Arrangements were also made to have the canoes carried across the island later by three strapping young crackers, who were glad of the chance to earn a little money by proffering their services.

These arrangements completed the start across the island was made, and after about three hours traveling the boys reached the spot where they had camped. They hurried anxiously to the beach.

It was evident that the storm had not struck this side of the island with anything like the violence with which it had broken on the other shore. This raised the boys’ hopes for a few moments but they were destined to be as quickly dashed.

No Carrier Dove rode at anchor.

In fact the usually placid sea, still heaving under the influence of the squall which had now passed away, was as devoid of life as a desert as far as their eyes could reach.

It was a bitter moment.

Neither Frank nor Harry dared trust their voices to speak. They swallowed hard while their eyes brimmed at this wretched ending of their hopes.

With the Carrier Dove gone—and more than that with the Golden Eagle II, at the bottom of the sea, it would be useless to keep on. They would have to turn back and admit they had ignominiously failed.

As for Ben Stubbs, he removed his hat, scratched his head and remarked:

“Well, I’ll be double-darned, horn-swaggled——”

That was all, but there was a wealth of meaning in his tone.

Lathrop and Billy stood to one side, both realized what the Boy Aviators must be suffering at the sudden dashing to the earth of their high hopes. A cruder disappointment could not in fact be imagined. The work of their brains and the fruit of long experiment and research had been swallowed by the same hungry sea that had destroyed two of their enemies.

Practical Ben Stubbs broke the silence.

“Here you get along home and tell ’em to send us some grub,” he ordered the lanky young moonshiner who had escorted them. “I reckon we’ll camp out to-night.”

When the man had hurried off, Ben set to work getting a fire. When he had it in a bright blaze he shouted:

“All hands to the fire to get dry; no use of dying of rumatiz even if the sloop is gone.”

The boys, despondent as they were, saw the wisdom of his words and crowded about the blaze. They stripped to their underwear and hung their garments on a sort of long stick laid across two forked ones stuck in the ground about six feet apart in front of the fire.

“Now, that’s ship-shape,” he remarked when a row of wet clothes were hung on his handiwork to dry in the warmth, “next thing to do is to consider the situation, as the young man said when they offered him a good job as hangman.”

Ben’s flow of spirits had an effect on all the boys, who sat dejectedly around the fire in their wet underclothes. To tell the truth the old adventurer was far from feeling as cheerful as he tried to appear, but like all men who have faced real hardships he knew the value of making the best of a situation.

“Well,” said Frank with a melancholy smile. “What do you make of it, Ben?”

“What did that there poor fellow that’s drownded say to you he done with Pork Chops?” was the irrelevant reply.

“Oh, he said that they had put him ashore early to-day,” replied Frank. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

“Might have a good deal,” replied Ben. “I wonder where that black lubber is. He’ll have fifty-seven varieties of fits when he finds his boat’s gone—worse’n the skipper’s cat that lost all his nine lives at once when the shop’s rats gave out.”

“He can easily replace that rickety old sloop,” said Harry irritably; “to restore what we have lost will take months of work and more money than we can get.”

“If we can even get back to New York from this moonshining island we’ll be lucky,” grumbled Lathrop.

“Oh, don’t rub it in,” muttered Billy.

It was very plain that all the young adventurers were overwrought. More for the sake of creating a diversion than anything else, Ben said:

“Wonder what’s become of that floating pumpkin-seed the Squeegee?”

“Washed away, I suppose,” said Frank in an uninterested tone. The loss of the ungraceful Squeegee didn’t interest him much at that moment.

“She’d have been washed inshore by the waves,” mused Ben, “if she’d been driven anywhere; besides I hitched her to that tree yonder down by the beach. Hullo, that’s funny,” he broke off suddenly and rapidly walked toward the tree to which the Squeegee’s painter had been hitched. He examined the surface. There was no bit of rope hanging to it as he knew would have been the case if the painter had been snapped.

“Someone untied that rope,” said Ben to himself in a tone of deep conviction.

Hastening up the beach to where the boys were grouped Ben confided his discovery to them.

“Who do you suppose took it?” asked Frank.

“Some no-good moonshiner, I suppose,” snorted Ben indignantly. “Keelhaul those fellows, they’re a natural born pest, the whole boiling of them.”

“Do you think they could have weathered the squall in her?” asked Billy.

Ben laughed incredulously. “No, sir,” he replied. “I doubt he’d last out a squall as long in that craft as it would take a sailor to eat a piece of plum-duff. Whoever took that boat is at the bottom of the sea by now and the Squeegee along with him.”

It was dusk when the young moonshiner returned loaded with provisions for which the boys against his protest insisted on paying. There was a big piece of roast venison, sour-dough bread, roast land crab, a plethoric pot of beans and a plentiful supply of cassava cakes—even coffee had not been forgotten. Everybody cheered up a little at the sight of the food. It is wonderful what heart a good meal, even in prospect, can put into a healthy boy, and our young adventurers were no exception to the rule. Declining their invitation to stay and share the meal the young moonshiner plunged off hurriedly into the home trail.

In fifteen minutes Ben had the coffee ready and the cassava cakes heated on hot stones. After a hearty meal, of which indeed they stood in need, the party donned their clothes,—which were now thoroughly dry,—and earnestly discussed their prospects. Only Ben, who sat apart, took no hand in the conversation. Only once, however, he irrelevantly remarked:

“Keelhaul that Pork Chops, where is he?”

That the boys did not sleep their usual peaceful slumbers that night may be imagined. For hours they tossed and turned under their blankets and watched the fire die down and fade first to a ruddy glow and then to blackness.

It might have been an hour after midnight when the moon rose and shimmered over the sea, now perfectly smooth. Had their minds been at ease the boys would have been enraptured with the beauty of the tropic night. As it was, however, the coming of the moon and the illumination of the sea merely served Frank as an opportunity further to scan the scene for any trace of the Carrier Dove.

Casting off his blanket he hastened to the strip of beach on which the smooth swells were breaking with a milder thunder than usual. With his night-glasses he swept the midnight sea from horizon to horizon. There was no result. Thoroughly dejected he cast himself at the foot of a huge palmetto and gazed intently out to sea riveting his mind on the present situation of himself and the little band of which the Boy Aviators were the leaders.

Suddenly the current of his gloomy thoughts was broken in on by an occurrence which brought him to his feet with a bound.

A low lying group of brilliant stars just above the horizon had been blotted out. Something had passed between the boy and the stars. That something could only be a sail, and a sail meant at least rescue from the island.

With a bound Frank, glasses in hand, was knee-deep in the surf.

It was a sail!

With trembling hands he brought the glasses to a better focus. Intently he gazed till his eyes burned in his head.

The craft was a sloop!

Hardly daring to admit to his mind the wild hope that had suddenly arisen, Frank watched the strange sail as it grew nearer. Before the gentle breeze the craft advanced slowly to within a hundred yards of shore and then a dark figure bounded along her decks and there was a loud rattle from her cable as the anchor was let go and she swung into the wind with flapping mainsail. Another moment and her canvas was lowered with a run and she lay at anchor.

With his heart in his mouth Frank hailed:

“Carrier Dove, ahoy!”

“Dat you, Marse Frank—bress de Lawd—bress de Lawd!” came back across the water in Pork Chops’ rasping voice; but had it been the golden tones of an opera singer that answered his hail the sound could not have been sweeter to Frank’s ear at that moment than Pork Chops’ frog-like croak of welcome.

The Golden Eagle II was safe!

Before the echo of the Carrier Dove’s noisy arrival had died out in the woods, the young adventurers, hand-in-hand, were dancing in a wild circle round the bewildered Ben Stubbs, yelling like Comanches.

“Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!”