Page:The Missing Chums.djvu/207

Rh but what can we do?" he said, turning to the others, as he slowly brought the Napoli around.

"If the men catch us and the motorboats, the boys will only be worse off than they were before."

"I guess you're right," agreed Jerry Gilroy. "I sure thought for a minute that we were going to be able to save them. Between the crowd of us we could have held off those other two toughs long enough to get Chet and Biff on board, but when the others showed up I knew it was all off."

"The fellows put up a good fight, anyway," declared Phil Cohen. "I hope those villains don't treat 'em too rough."

"We'll get them free yet," asserted Tony. "I don't know how it's going to be done, but we'll get 'em free. We've still got all the motorboats and the gang can't leave the island, that's sure."

When he had brought the Napoli out a safe distance from shore, Tony decided to drop anchor.

"We'll stick around," he decided. "They'll know that we aren't going to desert them anyway."

So the Napoli, with the two captured motorboats drifting behind, remained at anchor, while the three chums scanned the rocky shore. Once in a while they saw one or another of the