"That's what I say," I chipped in. "It's only eleven o'clock, and we have eight good hours of daylight. Let's go back and call Gates for a conference, without losing a minute!" "You may be right," he sighed, "but--well, let us go, as you say. With eight hours of light we can accomplish everything. Today may bring success!" CHAPTER XII THE HURRICANE Tommy's spirits were sky high. While treating our situation seriously he found in every phase of it some new sense of humor, whereas the professor looked on with grim purpose. Gates occupied rather a neutral ground, I think, perhaps alternately leaning one way and the other. But I was gripped by a single idea, a deep and growing love for this fugitive girl to whom I had never spoken, who I did not know, but had sworn to rescue. As we climbed back to the _Whim_ and summoned Gates it was understood that haste meant everything. Yet we could not very well move before knowing whither the outlaw crew had gone. That they made for Florida was, of course, self-evident, but where upon that vast stretch of coast? Would they entrench and wait? Were they even now watching with binoculars from a pine tree top to discover our next move, or had they set out at once for the security of the Everglades, the prairies, or the forests? Any of those trackless vastnesses to the eastward might hide a battalion of men for months; therefore, in case they had run, what hope of finding them? These and other facts I put before my friends while they listened in glum silence--indeed, with hardly a move except the pipes carried mechanically to their lips or down. Tommy's brier was empty, but his teeth were tight upon the stem and I saw the muscles of his jaws working, as though grinding up my conclusions. "So that's how it stands," I said, at last. "Personally I lean to the Ten Thousand Islands. Gates tells us the location is unexplored; it offers ten thousand hiding places and, in the circumstances, they couldn't ask for anything better." Monsieur stretched back in his chair and blew out a volume of smoke, adding: "It is the Islands, of course. And I think there is little doubt what they did after landing. They did not start inland. They feel secure where they are, and there they will remain to watch us. It may also be their lair, their home, for they must have a home ashore somewhere! _Mon Capitaine_, you know with certainty there is not a channel deep enough for our yacht?" "I never heard of one," Gates answered. "Of course, there might be; only I never heard of it." "If there were, why did they abandon the _Orchid_?" Tommy asked. "It will bear looking into," the professor mused. "Now, that paper with the dots and rambling line! Could it represent a chart to their stronghold?"