nearest
the lake. Yet it was from that spot that danger came, in the end.

It was two o'clock when a launch, with silenced engine, glided up to
the beach near the camp, as silently as a rowboat might have done, and
grated softly on the shelving beach. One man, slight and delicate in
appearance, was at her wheel, and from the bow, as she touched bottom,
another stepped out into the water and made his way cautiously, and in
roundabout fashion, toward the sleepers. He was big, strong, and
massive. His face was concealed, or nearly concealed, by a black mask
that hid his eyes and his nose and he walked with the stealthy
footsteps of one long used to avoiding detection as he moved about his
business. He seemed to know what he was doing, and where to go, and
one might have guessed that he had been spying on the camp, to learn
the way in which the sleepers were disposed. He avoided the lean-tos
near the fire, and, sneaking back and around through the woods, he
approached Jack Danby's lean-to from behind.

For a moment, silent and ominous in the darkness, he stood there,
studying the situation, as it seemed, and making up his mind just how
to accomplish his purpose. Then, drawing a handkerchief from his
pocket, he took the cork from a small bottle and poured its contents on
the handkerchief. At once a strong, sickly, sweetish smell arose,
unhealthy, and unpleasant, in contrast to the strong, fresh smells of
the sleeping woods. Holding this handkerchief in his hand, the
newcomer, a savage grin of ugly satisfaction on his lips, approached
Jack Danby, and, with a motion so swift as to be hardly visible, flung
his hand, with the handkerchief flat on his palm, over Jack Danby's
face.

Jack awoke at once and struggled for a second. But he could not cry
out, and in a moment the handkerchief, soaked with chloroform, had done
its work, and he lay unconscious.

Jack was entirely helpless, drugged as he was, and, with a triumphant
leer, the man who had drugged him picked him up, and, moving as
cautiously as ever, carried him to the motor boat. But he had
underestimated the watchfulness of the Scout sentries. At the sudden,
sharp explosions of the engine as it was started, and the launch backed
off the beach, there was a sudden cry from one of the watchers, and in
a moment his shrill whistle aroused the camp, so that a dozen Scouts,
turning out hastily, saw the motor boat back out and turn, as if to
race for the outlet at