The Blue Envelope | Page 6

of the way down, at the water's edge?"
"Don't know. Rock maybe. Anyway, it's not our motorboat."
"No, it's not. It's worth looking into, though. Let's go."
Eagerly they hurried along over the hard-packed sand. The tide was ebbing; the beach was like a floor. Their steps quickened as they approached the object. At last, less than half-conscious of what they were doing, they broke into a run. The thing they had seen was a boat. And a boat to persons in their position was a thing to be prized.
Arrived at its side, they looked it over for a moment in silence.
"It's pretty poor and very heavy, but it will float, I think," was Marian's first comment.
"It's theirs. Thought it wasn't worth risking a stop for."
"But how did they get into our camp? We haven't seen their tracks through the brush."
"Probably took up one small stream and down another."
The boat they had found was a wide, heavy, flat-bottomed affair, such a craft as is used by fishermen in tending pond-nets.
For a time the two girls stood there undecided. The chances of their recovering the motorboat seemed very poor indeed. To go forward in this heavy boat meant hours of hand-blistering rowing to bring them back to camp. Yet the thought of returning to tell Lucile's brother that they had lost his motorboat was disheartening. To go on seemed dangerous. True, they had rifles but they were, after all, but two girls against three rough men. In spite of all this, they decided in the end to go on. Pushing the boat into the sea they rowed out a few fathoms, then set the sail and bore away before the brisk breeze. The fact that the oar-locks, which were mere wooden pegs, were worn smooth and shiny, told that the boat had not been long unused.
In a short time they found themselves well out from shore in a gently rippling sea, while the point, behind which lay their camp, grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
Presently they cleared a wooded point of land and came in view of a short line of beach. Deep set in a narrow bay, it might have escaped the eye of a less observant person than Marian; so, too, might the white speck that shone from the brown surface of that beach.
"What's that in the center?" she mumbled, reaching for the binoculars by her side. "It's our schooner," she exclaimed after a moment's survey. "Yes, sir, it is! Anyway, it's a motor-boat, and if not ours, whose then?"
"We'd better pull in behind the point, drag our boat up on the rocks and come round by land," whispered Lucile.
"Yes, if we dare," said Marian, overcome for a moment with fear. "If they have seen us and come out to meet us, what then?"
"I hardly think they'd see us without a field glass," said Lucile.
Bending to the oars they set their boat cutting across the wavelets that increased in size with the rising wind.
Ten minutes of hard pulling brought their boat in behind the point, where it was quieter water and better rowing. This took them to a position quite out of sight of the white spot on the distant beach. If the pirate robbers were truly located in the bay and had not seen the girls they were safe to steal up close.
"Well, suppose they have. If the worst comes to the worst we can escape into the brush," said Marian. "We won't be worse off then than we are now."
"If only we can catch them off guard and get away with our motorboat!" said Lucile fervently.
Two hours of fighting the wilderness brought them at last to the beginning of the short, sandy beach. By peering through the branches they discovered that a clump of young tamaracks, growing close down to the shore, still hid the white spot they had taken for their boat.
Lucile stepped out upon the sand, then bent down to examine a footprint. Quickly she dodged back into the brush.
"They're here, all right," she whispered. "That's the track of the fellow with the mis-mate feet."
"Listen!" said Marian.
"Sounds like shouting," said Lucile, after a moment's silence.
"What do you suppose?"
"We'd better move around to a better position."
Cautiously they worked their way through the dense undergrowth. Pausing now and again to listen, they laid their course by the sounds. These sounds resolved themselves into bursts of song and boisterous laughter.
"They're drinking," said Lucile with a shudder.
"If they are, we daren't get near them," whispered Marian.
Closer and closer they crept until at last they expected at any moment to come into view of the camp.
"It's no use," said Lucile at last, shrinking back into the brush. "I can't go on. They're drunk, and all drunken men are dangerous. It is no use risking too much for a motorboat."
Wearily then they made