"Then what you after him for--if he's your chum?"

"Well, he's--he's----" began Jerry, and Dave blurted out:

"Drowned!"

"What!" cried the whole crew at that. "Tod Fulton drowned!"

"We don't know for sure. That's why we're trying to get onto Lost
Island."

Then the story came out, piecemeal, for all three insisted on
telling it. Phil stood as if stunned. At the end he said simply:

"He's my cousin. I'm Phil Fulton. We live at Chester. That's about
ten miles south of here. We're the Flying Eagle Patrol of Boy
Scouts--maybe you noticed our suits."

"Thought you were some kind of bushwhackers the way you dropped on
us," complained Frank. "But what was the idea in thumping us because
you thought we were from the island?"

"We had good reasons enough," declared Phil. "We left town at
midnight last night, hiked all the way to our boat-landing two miles
up the river, and made the long pull up the Plum in the dark just
for the sake of getting an early morning chance at the best bass
rock you ever heard of--just to get chased out at the point of a
shotgun after we'd landed the first one--a three pounder too. Can
you blame us for being sore?"