Page:The Missing Chums.djvu/137

Rh had left the motorboat and he had come to the conclusion that the grove was not far away from the end of the island and almost in a direct line with the cove. Now, in their mad race toward the shore, he took the lead, heading toward the rocky bluffs.

The Hardy boys stumbled through the grove, keeping somehow to the trail. They were aided by the lightning flashes that gave spasmodic illumination, revealing the soggy leaves, the black branches, the tossing tree-tops bowed in the wind.

The storm had become a din of furious sound. The gale shrieked its way across the island from the booming sea and the thunder rolled like a battery of cannon while the rain beat down on the forest in a drumming downpour.

The boys were soaked to the skin. They fled toward the shore, keeping their course more by instinct than judgment, and all the time there was the dread thought in their minds that they were lost if the Sleuth should be cast up on the rocks and wrecked.