feat was a vastly sterner one. Hank was the first to give out, after going a little more than an eighth of the distance. He swam to the log, throwing his right arm over it and holding on while the two Maine boys pushed and towed it. Finally, when young Butts had broken away to swim, Joe closed in, holding to the log for a while. At last it came even doughty Tom Halstead’s turn to seek this aid to buoyancy.
Nor had they covered half the distance, in all, when all three found themselves obliged to hold to the log, as it rolled and plunged, riding the waves. Worst of all, despite their exertions, all three now found their teeth chattering.
“Say, it begins to look like a crazy undertaking,” declared Hank, with blunt candor. “Can we possibly make it?”
“We’ve got to,” retorted Tom Halstead, his will power unshaken.
“I don’t see the light over there any more,” observed Hank, speaking the words in jerks of one syllable, so intense was the shaking of his jaws.
“Maybe the boat isn’t over yonder any longer,” admitted Captain Tom, “but we’ve got to chance it. And say, we’d better shove off and try to swim again, to warm ourselves up. We’re in danger of shaking ourselves plum to pieces.”
There was another great peril, on which none of them had calculated well enough before starting. When they were clear of the log, swimming, it pitched so on the tops of the waves that it was likely, at any instant, to drive against the head of one of the swimmers and crack his skull.
“If we had known all this before we started–” began Hank, the next time the three swimmers were driven to cling, briefly, to their movable buoy.
“We’d have started just the same,” retorted Tom, as stiffly as his chattering teeth would let him speak.
“Humph!” muttered Hank, unbelievingly. “It’s a fool’s dream, this kind of a swim.”
“It’s less work to go ahead than to turn back, now,” broke in Joe, his teeth accompanying his words with the clatter of castanets.
“No; the wind and tide would be with us going back,” objected Butts. “We could almost drift back.”
“And die of chills on the way,” contended Tom, doggedly. “No, sir! We’ve got to go ahead. I’m swimming to the tune of thoughts of the galley fire aboard the ‘Restless’!”
“Br-r-r!” shook Hank, as the three cast loose from the log once more and struck out, panting, yet too cold to stay idle any longer.
It was tantalizing enough. The longer they swam, the more the boys began to believe that the island they sought was retreating from before them. Hank was almost certain they were moving in a circle, but Halstead, with a keen sense of location, insisted that they were going straight, even if very slowly, to the nameless island.
“I see it,” breathed the young skipper, exultantly, at last.
“What – the island?” bellowed Hank Butts.
“No; but I’d swear I saw the ‘Restless’ the last time we rode a high wave,” Halstead shouted back.
Ten minutes afterwards all three of the Motor Boat Club boys caught occasional glimpses of something dark and vague that they believed to be the hull of their yacht. The belief gave them renewed courage. Even Hank no longer had any desire to turn back. His whole thought centered on the lively times that were likely to begin when they tried to regain control of their boat from whomever had stolen it.
Then, bit by bit the trio worked their log buoy into the cove. Once they were inside, the water was very much smoother. Resting a few moments for breath, they then made a last dash forward, to get alongside.
In this smoother, more shallow water, the “Restless” rode securely at anchor. As they swam closer, the boys found that they could discover no human presence on the decks. Had the boat-stealers gone ashore on the nameless island? If so, it would be a comparatively easy matter to get aboard and cut out of the cove with their own craft.
Close up alongside they went. Tom Halstead was the first to be able to reach up at the hull and draw himself up over the side. Then, with his pocket-knife, as he lay at the rail of the “Restless,” the young skipper slashed the cord that still held him bound to the log. Reaching over, he passed the knife to Hank. In utter silence the Long Island boy cut the clubs free, and passed them up. Next Hank drew himself aboard, after passing the jackknife to Joe Dawson.
Just a little later all three of the Motor Boat Club boys found themselves standing on the deck, each grasping his own firewood weapon. They made no noise, for they knew not who, or how many others might be on board below. If they had a desperate gang of thieves to contend with, then their troubles had not yet even begun!
Joe and Hank stood where they were, shaking as though in the last ditch of ague, while Halstead went forward, with the soft tread of a cat, to peer down into the motor room, the hatchway of which stood open.
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