ng the place. If they wanted to do anything like carrying off
Joe that is where they would have been likely to go."

"You may be right, Andy. It's worth looking into, anyway," declared
Rob. "I'll leave a note here for the others and we'll take a run over
there in the Flying Fish. If Joe is there we'll get him out."

"And in jig time, too," chimed in Ernest Thompson.

"Come on, boys, get some gasoline, hop in the dinghy and let's get
aboard. We've got to move fast if we're to accomplish anything. You
get the boat, Andy, while I write a line to tell the others what we've
gone after."

The young leader hastily ran into his tent and sitting down at the
table dashed off these lines:

"Boys, we think we have a clue to Joe's whereabouts. Have gone after
him. Keep camp in regular way while we are gone. Hiram Nelson is
leader, and Paul Perkins corporal, in our absence.

"ROB BLAKE, Leader,

"Eagle Patrol, B. S. of A."

With a piece of chalk the boy marked a rough square and an arrow on a
tree--the arrow pointing to a spot in the sand in which he buried the
letter.

"Now, then, come on," he shouted, dashing toward the boat, "shove off,
boys, and if Joe's in the Upper Inlet we'll find him."

"Hurray," cheered the others, much heartened by the prospect of any
trace of the missing boy, however slight.

"Give way, boys," bellowed the captain, who had insisted on coming
along armed with a huge horse pistol of ancient pattern which he had
strapped on himself in the morning when the news of Joe Digby's
disappearance reached him. "This reminds me uv the time when I was A.
B. on the Bonnie Bess and we smoked out a fine mess of pirates in the
Caribees."

"Regular pirates?" inquired Andy as Rob and Merritt bent to the oars.

"Reg'lar piratical pirates, my boy," responded the old salt, "we
decorated the trees with 'em and they looked a lot handsomer there than
they did a-sailin' the blue main."

Further reminiscences of the captain's were cut short by their arrival
at the Flying Fish's side. They had hastily thrown two cases of
gasoline into the dinghy before they shoved off so that all that
remained to be done was to fill the fast craft's tank and she was ready
to be off.

"Hold on," warned Rob, as Tubby Hopkins was about to secure the dinghy
to the mooring buoy, "we'll tow her along. We may need her. There's
lots of shoal water in that Upper Inlet."

"Right yer are, my boy; there's nothin' like bein' foreh