here," was the reply.

"You couldn't make a throw like that again in a hundred years!" Frank
said.

"If you're goin' to feed gasoline to the crocodiles," grinned Jimmie,
"I'll notify the government."

"If the breed listens to what that fellow has to say of gasoline as an
article of food," Ned laughed, "there won't be much demand for it."

"He'd have had my arm if you hadn't hit the mark," Frank said. "I'll owe
you an arm as long as I live, old man!"

"And that big fish owes Uncle Sam a quart of gasoline and a good blue
glass bottle," laughed Jack. "I wonder how it will set on his tummy?"

"Now," Ned said, "I'm as wet as it is possible to get, so I'm going on
shore to see if our Boy Scout left any mail for us. I'm getting anxious
to catch up with the Lieutenant and his abductors."

"I'm goin' too!" said Jimmie.

"You're not," Ned replied. "I'm not going to the trouble of keeping
track of you in that wilderness."

"All right!" Jimmie grunted, apparently resigned to his fate, but when
Ned rowed ashore and disappeared in the thicket which skirted the bay
the little fellow recklessly slipped into the water and came out
unharmed on the beach farther to the south than Ned had landed. He stood
for a moment with the salt water running out of his hair and over his
freckled face, made an amusing grimace at the boys in the boat, and
scurried into the jungle.

"The little dunce!" Jack exclaimed.

"If he keeps close to Ned he will be all right," Frank observed, "but if
he goes to wandering about on his own account he will get into trouble.
I've got a hunch that the people we are following are on that island."

In five minutes Ned made his appearance, rowing swiftly out to the boat.

"They are there!" he exclaimed. "I found the trail mark and the
direction. A yard from the last direction I found the triple warning
three times repeated. You know what that means?"

"Life or death," was the reply, and the three boys stood looking into
each other's faces for a moment without speaking.

"I guess they're going to murder the prisoners," Jack said, presently,
breaking the painful silence.

"That is what the sign seems to read," Ned said, gravely.

"Then we may as well be getting out our guns," Frank said.

Ned nodded, and turned toward the shore again. In a moment he faced his
chums again, his eyes startled and anxious.

"Where's Jimmie?" he asked.

"He went ashore!"

"Didn't you see him?"

Ned turned from Frank t