“We may be out this afternoon, captain,” responded Rob.  “I am curious myself to see if any mischief has been done on your island.  If there has been,” he added earnestly, “you can count on the Eagle Patrol to help you out.”

“Thanks, my boy!” exclaimed the old man, who was bending over his gasoline tank.  “Hullo!” he shouted suddenly.  “I wasn’t crazy!  This boat was took out last night.  See here!”

He held up the gasoline measuring stick which he had grabbed up and plunged into the tank.  The instrument was almost dry.  The receptacle for fuel was nearly empty.

“And I filled her before I started out!” thundered the captain.  “Whoever took my boat must have run her a long ways.”

Fresh fuel was soon obtained, and the captain, after more shouted farewells, started for the island to try to obtain some clue to the mysterious happenings of the night.

Rob, after watching him for a few moments, as he sped down the blue waters of the sunlit inlet, turned away to return to his home, just recollecting that, in their eagerness to search for the boat, both he and the captain had entirely forgotten about breakfast.  He was in the middle of the meal, and eagerly explaining to his interested parents the strange incidents of the missing boat and the decoy note, when Merritt Crawford burst into the room unannounced.

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” he apologized, abashed.  “I didn’t know you were at breakfast.  But, Mr. Blake—­Rob—­something has happened that I just had to come and tell you about at once.”

“Good gracious!  More mysteries,” Mr. Blake was beginning in a jocular way, when the serious look on the boy’s face checked him.  “What is it?  What has happened, Merritt?” he asked soberly, while Rob regarded the spectacle of his usually placid corporal’s excitement with round eyes.

“The uniforms are all gone!” burst out Merritt.

“What uniforms?”

“Ours—­the Eagle Patrols’.”

“What!  Stolen?”

“That’s right,” hurried on Merritt.  “I met old Mrs. Jones in a terrible state of mind.  You know, Mr. Blake, she’s the old woman who scrubs out the place in the morning.  I asked what was the matter, and she told me that when she went to the armory early to-day, she found the lock forced and all the lockers broken open and the uniforms gone!”

“Have you seen the place?” asked Mr. Blake.

“Yes, I followed her up.  The room was turned upside down.  The locks had been ripped right off and the lockers rifled of everything.  Who can have done it?”

“I’ll bet anything Jack Curtiss and his gang had something to do with it, just as I believe they put up some crooked job on the captain!” burst out Rob, greatly excited and his breakfast entirely forgotten.

“Be careful how you make such a grave accusation,” warned his father.

“I know it’s a tough thing to say,” admitted Rob; “but you don’t know that bunch like we do.  They’d—­”