"You fellows shut up!" growled the rich youth, shaking his fist at them. "If you don't I'll make it hot for the lot of you." "About as hot as you made it for Dave Fearless, eh?" was the reply, and a shout of derision went up. Then one of the boys began to throw some fish bait at Bart, and in a minute half a dozen youths were at it and Bart was struck in several places. "Oh, I must get away from here," he muttered and then cried to Hank Shores: "Row me over to Purry's dock, will you, Shores?" "I will," replied Shores, and leaping into the rowboat, took up the oars. Soon the craft was out of reach of those left behind. But before Bart got out of hearing he heard the village lads give a hurrah for Dave Fearless. "All right, Dave Fearless," he muttered, under his breath. "You're on top this time, but I reckon my father and I will win in the long run." "He played you foul, Bart," said Shores, soothingly. He was little better than a sneak himself. "He wouldn't have been able to do it only I--er--I sprained my arm at rowing yesterday. That's why I got you to row for me," answered Bart. But what he said about his arm was a falsehood. Half an hour later Bart Hankers entered his elegant home at the end of the main street of the village and sneaked up to the bathroom, where he washed up and changed his wet clothing for a dry suit. Then he went downstairs and to the library, where his father sat, reading the stock reports in a New York paper. "Father, the mystery is solved," he said, as he closed the door carefully, that nobody might hear what he had to say but his parent. Lemuel Hankers, a thin, yellow-skinned man of fifty, looked at his son curiously. "What mystery, Bart?" he asked. "The mystery of the missing Washington fortune." "You don't mean it!" And the man leaped from his chair in astonishment. "I do mean it." "What have you learned?" "I know where the _Happy Hour_ went down." "Where did you get your information?" "From the Fearlesses." "Do they know?" "They do. Quite by accident I overheard Dave and his father talking." "Indeed! Tell me the particulars," went on Lemuel Hankers. Without a blush Bart related all he had overheard while eavesdropping at the window of the Fearless cottage. Hankers senior listened with close attention. "It is a shame that we should have missed this information when it came in," he muttered. "We might already be on the way to recover the fortune." "We ought to try and get that chart," said Bart. "We won't want the chart. I can get the same news from the government that Amos Fearless has got." "Let us go in search of the sunken treasure, dad. It certainly belongs to us." "Of course it does, Bart. Yes, if this news is true, I will go after the missing million." "But you will have to take expert divers along, and all that sort of thing."