Captain Flint rowed as if he were still racing after Nancy. Every stroke jerked the boat forward and jerked his passengers backward. In a very few minutes he had reached Cormorant Island and found a place where he could pull his boat’s nose up between two rocks. Everybody scrambled ashore.
But there was nothing to be seen on the island, except the bare tree and the white splashed rocks, and jetsam from the last flood, and big loose stones. They looked everywhere. Captain Flint climbed all round the island two or three times. He could find nothing.
“But I know they left it here,” said Able-seaman Titty. “I heard them say they couldn’t put it on a motor bicycle. And then they said they would come fishing and catch something worth catching.”
“It was the middle of the night, you know, Titty,” said Susan, “and you may have been mistaken.”
“They may have changed their minds,” said Captain Flint, “or they may have come for it already. Anyway it’s something to know which end of the lake they came from. Not that I think I shall ever get it again,” he added.
They rowed sadly back to Wild Cat Island.
The able-seaman did not weep, but she was very near it.
“I know they left it there,” she said.
“Never mind,” said Captain Flint. “We’ve had a good look.”
“And perhaps, if you had found it, you’d have turned native again after all, and gone on bothering about publishers,” said Nancy.
“Anyhow, I haven’t found it,” said Captain Flint, “so we’ll think of something else. Three o’clock tomorrow, for example.”