“No, we’ll stand by you,” said Henry Burns. And he added, “Let’s try the easiest way first, Jack. We’ll run in as quietly as we can, come up alongside the _Surprise_ and take her in tow. If they wake, we’ll stand by you and fight for the boat. But I think we may get away with her. They’re bound to be sound sleepers.” Carefully stowing away every pail or oar or stick that could be in the way at the wrong time and make a noise, the yachtsmen brought the Viking close in upon the dismasted _Surprise_. Then, as Harvey made a wide sweep to bring the _Viking_ about into the wind, Henry Burns and Tom Harris dropped astern in the dory and picked up the line with which the _Surprise_ had been moored. They were ready for Harvey when he had come about. Throwing the line aboard as the _Viking_ rounded to, close in, they rowed quickly alongside and sprang over the rail. The line had been caught by Bob, who made it fast astern. The _Viking_ had not even lost headway, so skilfully had the manœuvre been carried out. Standing away on the starboard tack, the _Viking’s_ sails filled and the line brought up. The wind was fairly fresh and the weight of the unballasted _Surprise_ did not stop the _Viking_. The _Surprise_, its long, lonely stay down in the Thoroughfare ended, had at last begun its homeward journey toward Southport. “I don’t see but what your friends on the _Seagull_ did us a good turn in trying to rob you of the _Surprise_,” said Henry Burns, smiling. “They seem to have made the old boat pretty fairly tight. They’ve saved us time.” “Oh, yes, we owe ’em something for that,” exclaimed Little Tim, feeling around for a sore spot, “but I hope they don’t try to collect any more of the debt from me.” “Tim, you were a brick to do what you did!” cried Harvey. “And the rest of you, too. You had the real pluck. But Tim suggested it, and he’s first mate of the _Surprise_ after this, and next to Skipper Joe. That’s fair, isn’t it?” George Baker and Allan Harding agreed. “What do you think,” asked Harvey, as they sailed on up the bay, “will they keep up the fight for the boat? Will the squire take it to court, or will they quit, now they find themselves outwitted?” “They’ll give it up,” said Henry Burns. “They would have tried to lie it through if they could have got the boat away from here. But now that we have it, they will look at it differently. They’ll find, when they get back to the village, too, that the Warren boys were down here, and that will settle it.” Henry Burns was right. John Hart and his comrades, astounded, on awakening, to find the _Surprise_ nowhere to be seen, had jumped to the conclusion that the crew had stolen down and cut her loose. “We’ll take it out of them!” he had cried, fiercely; and, followed by his no less irate comrades, had dashed up to the old cabin. Another disappointment. And still another, when they had searched all the shores of the Thoroughfare and examined its waters, and realized that the boat was gone.