Page:The Missing Chums.djvu/143

Rh fire, which one of the men had replenished from a pile of wood near by. The boys, therefore, could see without being seen.

The men were divesting themselves of their oilskins, and one of them, the newcomer, had flung himself down on a pile of blankets, as though exhausted.

"I tell you it was a tough trip," he was saying. "I was sure I was going to be wrecked. I couldn't find the passage. If you hadn't come along with the lantern when you did I'd have been washed up on the rocks and the boat would have been smashed to pieces."

"Well, you're here, and that's all there is to it," declared the man they called Red. "You shouldn't have started out when you saw a storm was coming up."

"I didn't know it was going to be so bad. Anyway, I thought I'd get here before it broke."

"It must have been good news that brought you out here to-night," declared one of the others, sitting down.

"I'll say it was good news," said the newcomer. "Mighty good news."

"What is it?" they asked eagerly.

"I've found out why Fenton Hardy didn't pay any attention to that letter."

The boys listened eagerly. At the mention of their father they knew that all their sus-