“There’s the public, too. They’re hoping against hope. They suppose that I’ll be there. They bought tickets to help out a great cause. They should get a show for their money.
“So you see,” he smiled grimly, “it’s up to us, just you and me. To-morrow at two p. m. the team lines up. Seventy thousand people will be crying for victory. You should see it, Pierre, you really should! It’s inspiring!”
“You’ll go in an airplane,” said Pierre. “You must. There can be no other way. We have here a radio telephone. We can speak with Detroit, Chicago, any big city of the midwest. To-day there are airplanes everywhere. It will be easy. Come! We will send out the call.”
“The call. Wait!” Once again the boy’s mind was in a whirl. “The call.” It would be heard everywhere. Men would rush to newspaper offices to sell the story. “_The Red Rover found!_” would be flashed across the country. The radio, the press, and after that every man, woman and child would take up the cry: “_The Red Rover has been found!_” He thrilled at the thought, thrilled to the very center of his being. But did he want this? A voice deep within his very soul whispered: “No.”
“Wait!” His hand was on the arm of the genial lighthouse keeper. “Wait for a time, at least.”
He recalled the sound of drumming motors that had struck his ears out there while he and the girl still tossed upon the waters. “There may be some other way,” he told himself. “No brass bands for me. If only I can slip back to the city unheralded; if I could take my place behind the line when the great moment comes; if only I could do that without even the Grand Old Man knowing! Oh, boy!”
It would seem that Red Rodgers’ reasons for wishing to rejoin his team were all that one might ask; yet at the very moment he stood there talking with the chubby lighthouse keeper, Drew Lane was telling Johnny Thompson of reasons that to him seemed tremendously important. These reasons had to do with the cause of the kidnaping. Who would not find this a subject of absorbing interest?
Drew Lane possessed an all but superhuman power of finding his way about in the dark. Though he had never before seen Isle Royale, he not only was able to land safely in the channel known as Rock Harbor, but once ashore, he experienced little difficulty in making his way across the ridge to the other channel that lay on the opposite side.