“Made me feel too much like an old slave on the chain gang,” he told himself. What the man had said about the necessity of keeping quiet on Loon Island came to Tom with force now. He had a wild idea of setting up a yelling that might attract some passing oarsman or motor boat man. But he gave this idea up very soon. “I might get help, and then, again, I might not,” Tom thought. “If I didn’t get it, these fellows would be angry at me and they might beat me up. I want to keep a whole skin as long as I can. I can do better work if I’m not injured. I wonder what their game is, anyhow? It’s a bold one—I’ll say that. And to think I made it easier for them!” For that is exactly what Tom had done. Thinking it over as best he could amid the whirl of ideas in his brain, he came to the conclusion that he had fallen into his present plight purely by accident. The men could not have known that he would follow that mysterious, disappearing stranger. They could not have known he would go down the flight of secret steps. But he had, through a chain of circumstances, and when the scoundrels found him in their power they proceeded with their plans. Tom had actually played into their hands. Of course he might have escaped had the motor boat contained but another quart of gasoline, but this was one of the times when Fate played against the young inventor. Having made their prisoner secure, leaving one of their number to watch him, three of the men went down to the two boats. Tom could hear them laughing as they discovered the plight of the craft he had jumped into. “Good thing you were short on gas, Kenny!” some one said. “Otherwise he might be on the mainland now.” “Yes,” was the answer. “Well, he’ll be on mainland, anyhow, by night.” Tom wondered what this meant. But Schlump, who was guarding him, gave no sign. All the remainder of that day Tom remained a prisoner on Loon Island with the four men watching him. They seemed to have some human feelings, for they gave Tom water to drink and loosed his hands so that he could eat some of the food they brought to him from the boat in which they had pursued him. The prisoner was grateful for the food, and more so for the hot coffee, which Kenny made over a fire he kindled. This coffee put heart into Tom, and he felt much better after drinking it. He was worried, not so much over his own plight, as over what his father and his friends might think about his sudden and mysterious disappearance. That his father would worry, Tom well knew. But Tom would not give his enemies the satisfaction of asking them their intentions. He preferred to wait and see what would happen. “They must be going to take me to the mainland,” thought Tom, as he recalled what had been said. “It’s hard to tell whether I’ll have a better chance to escape there or here. I’ll just have to bide my time.”