"I guess they have got a little too much John Barleycorn on board!"

laughed Jamison, as the boat gave a lurch which sent him head foremost from his seat. "I'd go and take the wheel myself, only I don't know much about running a motor boat under present conditions."

Frank gave Tommy a quick nudge in the side.

"I can run the boat," he whispered, "shall I?"

"If he'd let you, yes!" replied Tommy.

"Where shall I take her?"

"To Cordova, of course, but perhaps you'd better wait until the men get a little bit drunker. Jamison will become frightened for the safety of his boat before long, and then he won't object to your taking charge of her. He's beginning to look sick already."

"If I ever get hold of that wheel," Frank whispered to Tommy, "I'll send her flying toward Cordova! I hope the members of the crew will be too drunk to know which, way I'm taking them."

Directly the boat gave another tremendous lurch, soaking the boys with cold salt water. Jamison rose to his feet with an oath and, steadying himself by clinging to the top of the cabin, shook a fist angrily at the man at the wheel. The man frowned back.

"What are you doing, you drunken hobo?" shouted Jamison.

The man grinned foolishly but said not a word.

"I wish I knew how to operate a motor boat as well as he does when he's sober," gritted Jamison.

"The owner of a boat ought to know how to run her!" suggested Frank.

"I bought the boat only a few days ago," replied Jamison.

"Look here," Frank said, as the boat gave another sickening whirl, "I can run a boat all right. Shall I take hold?"

"No," replied Jamison sourly, "we've got to land!"

"But there is no place to land," urged Sam.

"There is a place on the point where the doctor lives," answered Jamison, "where we can land in a rowboat. I'm glad now that I brought the dinghy along with us. We can anchor the motor boat under the point and take refuge in the doctor's cabin until this storm blows over."

The boys were greatly disappointed at this decision on the part of Jamison, but they dare not argue the point with him for fear that he would suspect that they were watching his every movement.

In a few moments a dark bulk showed directly in front of the racing motor boat, and only the quick action of the man at the wheel prevented a collision with a bold headland which showed dimly under the light of the few stars which looked down from the cloudy sky.

In a moment the boys saw a light, and then Sam whispered to Frank:

"That's not a coast point," he said. "It's one of the Barren islands. I don't believe there's any doctor there, as he said! What shall we do if he asks us to go ash.o.r.e?"

"We'll have to go, I suppose," returned Tommy, "but, all the same," he went on, "if we get a chance to get possession of the boat, we'll let these outlaws take a swim to the sh.o.r.e!"

Presently the boat came under the shelter of the headland, and then a member of the crew, in obedience to whispered orders from Jamison, dropped into the dinghy which had been trailing behind, and shouted to his mate to follow. Then Jamison himself stepped into the dinghy, which was swinging about wildly in the surf.

"Now boys," he said, "if you'll get aboard, we'll take you ash.o.r.e for an interview with the doctor. He'll demand big pay, but he's skillful and you ought to secure his services if you can."

"Only one man on board now," cried Tommy, "Now's our chance!"

CHAPTER IX

THE CLUES WILL FOUND

"I wish one of you boys would give me a good swift kick," George exclaimed as the three lads stood in the cabin discussing the strange disappearance of Bert Calkins.

"I'd do that all right if it would accomplish anything!" laughed Will.

"I'll do it anyhow, if you insist upon it!" grinned Sandy.

"It was a rotten thing for me to do!" exclaimed George. "I never expected to go to sleep when I lay down in my bunk, but I did go to sleep, and some one walked into the cabin and carried Bert away! I'll never get over it if anything serious happens to him!"

"Aw, cut it out!" exclaimed Sandy. "We'll find him all right. The question before the house right now is whether we're going to get supper before we start out on a hunt for the kid."

"We may as well get supper," Will advised. "There's no use whatever of our running around in circles in the dark. We've got to sit down here and reason it out. Before we do anything at all, we ought to reach some conclusion as to why the poor kid was taken away."

"Why, I thought that was all understood," Sandy interrupted. "I thought we decided not long ago that the man who stole the code wireless came back to get Bert to translate it for him."

"There was some talk of that kind," Will agreed, "and I guess it's as near to the truth as we can get with our present knowledge of the incident. Anyway, I can conceive of no other reason for the abduction."

"Then we may as well get supper while we're studying out the proposition," George said, "and, by way of penance, I'll do the cooking!"

The lad turned to Sandy to ask a question regarding the sudden appearance of the bear steak, and then for the first time noted his dilapidated and generally disreputable condition.

"Where did you get it?" he asked, pointing to the bruised face and torn garments. "You've gone and spoiled a perfectly good Boy Scout suit."

"And the bear we're going to have for supper," Will chuckled, "came very near spoiling a perfectly good Boy Scout."

"Did the bear hand him that?" asked George.

"He certainly did!" replied Sandy. "And he put me out for the count, too!"

"Then I'll take great joy in eating him!" declared George.

While George fried the bear steak over the gasoline "plate," Sandy told the story of the fishing trip, while Will listened with a grin on his face, now and then interrupting with what Sandy declared to be an entirely irrelevant remark.

The big acetylene lamp which, had come in with the boys' baggage had not been set up, so the cabin was now lighted only by flashlights. This made cooking difficult, and George protested against it, so Will went to work setting up the tank and getting the big lamp into use.

"That's better!" exclaimed George, as the great light flashed out. "Now, while I'm cooking the supper, you might look about and see what you can discover in the way of clues. There is an old theory, you know, that no person can enter a room and leave it without their leaving behind some trace of having been there!"

"That's a part of the Sherlock Holmes business that I entirely overlooked!" laughed Will. "Come to think of it, the fellow must have left some clue here. We'll see if we can find it!"

While Sandy and George worked industriously over the gasoline "plate,"

frying bear meat and fish, and making toast and coffee, Will began a thorough search of the cabin floor. He moved about for some moments on his hands and knees, studying the rough boards through a microscope.