“If it hadn’t been for Captain Baker’s Lone Hill fellows, we wouldn’t have got anybody off,” was the way Rob put it.
One person there was in town who heard the news with an added interest, apart from the thrilling details of the actual work of getting the men through the surf. This man was Stonington Hunt. After hearing of the performance of the motor-scooter, he was more convinced than ever that the machine was a practicable invention, in which it would pay him handsomely to secure a controlling interest. As he himself often said, he was not a man to be easily beaten, and presently, after much casting about and quiet investigation, he lighted on a plan which he considered would place Paul’s interests in his hands and compel the boy to sell him the rights to the manufacture of other Motor-Scooters. What this plan was we shall see ere long.
In the meantime, nothing more had been heard of the former beach-comber who had so mysteriously reappeared and then vanished again. Although they made inquiries, none of the boys could find out what had become of him, and all their investigations along this line came to nothing. The Vesper still lay on the sand bar on which she had grounded. She had been fully insured, so Captain Pratt did not suffer great loss, and the insurance company, after a survey of the spot in which she lay, decided that it would be impracticable to remove her. She was a stout Nova Scotian built vessel, of good oak and pine, and, despite the buffeting she had been through, held together almost as intact as when she first grounded. The boys often planned to take an excursion to her some fine day in the spring, when the sea was more moderate than it was in the winter.
Toward the middle of April, the Boy Scouts decided that their organization was flourishing to such a degree that they needed more spacious quarters than those above the bank of which Rob’s father was president, and a large barn-like building on the main street—formerly a seine-net factory—being vacant, was fitted up as an armory, not all at once, of course, but by degrees. A minstrel show and other entertainments helped pay the expenses of fitting up the new quarters, and when they were completed no patrol in the state could boast more commodious or comfortable headquarters.