“Bother him!” Tempest said. “We can’t very well slide off without wagging his paw and saying a few nice things. I wish he’d come. The breeze is dodging round more to the west’ard, and we should get a fine start now.” After darkness had fallen Tempest began to grow anxious about Flagg. The men employed on the plantation reported that they had seen nothing of him all day, and his scraggy pony was securely tethered in its stable. “This is beginning to get mysterious,” Dave said. “I think perhaps we ought to organize a search-party and hunt for him,” Tempest suggested. “He may be lying injured somewhere.” Dave was looking out over the darkened sea. He said nothing for several minutes. “I wonder whether a search-party would find him,” he observed after a lengthy pause. “Why, what do you mean?” Tempest asked quickly. His own nerves were almost on edge. “I mean,” said Dave, slowly, “do you really think he is on Washington Island at the present minute?” “Great Mackerel, Dave, but I’m glad you’ve said it! Do you know, the same idea has been worrying me ever since sunset, and yet I hated to put it into words.” “Well, since we have put it into words, what about it?” There was a steely glitter in the boy’s eyes which Tempest had never seen there. The same glitter had come once or twice before, when Dave suddenly found himself in danger or when faced with apparently insurmountable obstacles, just as it had come into the eyes of his father and his grandfather on similar occasions. “There is no sign of the _Firefly_,” agreed Tempest. “I wonder if the old villain is trying to beat us to it.” “Now I come to think of it,” said Dave, “he never could look one straight in the face. Tempest, I’ve got my suspicions!” “And so have I, Dave,” Tempest replied, now thoroughly strung up. “The longer we hang around here, the better start he has. Fortunately, the wind hasn’t been in the right quarter to please him all day. Come on, Dave,” he added, already hurrying in the direction of their boat. “I don’t know what speed Flagg can knock out of the _Firefly_, but we’ll give him a run for his money in the _Nautilus_.” CHAPTER XIX LOST ISLAND! Followed by Jim, they scrambled into their boat, and shot the sails up; and in a few minutes the _Nautilus_ was bobbing her way out of Shavay Bay on a course almost due southeast, her bow being in a straight line for Fanning Island. From the latter place Tempest intended to take his bearings, and then veer slightly to the south in the direction of the island Joe Flagg had indicated on the chart. “I’ll tell you what, Tempest,” the boy said when the sails were bellying and the waves were flopping against the boat’s nose, “if we do happen to have made a mistake in judging Mr. Flagg, and he’s only gone to pay a visit to some one, he will think us a queer lot to have bolted like this.”