“Oh, well, cheer up; we’ll get it all right somehow,” Jack assured him.  “And in connection with that I’ve got a scheme.  Why shouldn’t we three fellows go camping after the motor-boat races?”

“Go camping—­where?” asked Bill, looking up surprised.

“Well, I would have suggested Topsail Island, but those pestiferous kids are going there, I hear.  However, there are plenty of other islands right inside the Upper Inlet.  What’s the matter with our taking possession of one of those?”

The Upper Inlet was a sort of narrow and shallow bay a short distance above Topsail Island, and was well known to both Bill and Jack, who had been there in the winter on frequent ducking expeditions.

“We might as well do something like that before school opens,” said Sam.  “I think that Jack’s suggestion is a pretty good one.”

“I don’t know that it’s so bad myself,” patronizingly admitted Bill; “but what connection has that with your scheme for getting money, Jack?”

“A whole lot,” replied the bully.  “I’m going to get even with that young Digby if it takes me a year.  He cost me the fifty-dollar prize, and, beside that, all the kids in the village now call me ‘cheater,’ and hardly anybody will have anything to do with me.”

“Well, how do you propose to get even by going camping?” inquired Bill.

“I plan to take that Digby kid with me,” rejoined Jack calmly.

“You’re crazy!” exclaimed Bill.  “Why, we’d have the whole country after us for kidnapping.”

“Oh, I’ve got a better plan than that,” laughed Jack coolly, “and we won’t need to be mixed up in it at all.  It’ll all come back on Hank Handcraft, I owe him a grudge for bothering me about money, anyhow, the old beach-combing nuisance!”

“But where do we come in to get any benefit out of it?” demanded Sam.

“I’ll explain that to you later,” said Jack grandiloquently.  “I haven’t quite worked out all the details yet; but if you’ll meet me here this evening I’ll have them all hot and smoking for you.”

CHAPTER XII

JACK FORMS A PLOT

The next morning Jack lost no time in making his way toward Hank Handcraft’s tumble-down abode.  He found its owner in, and likewise disposed to be quarrelsome.

“’Oh, here you are at last!” exclaimed the hairy and unkempt outcast, as the bully approached heavily through the yielding sand.  “I’d about given you up, and was seriously contemplating making a visit to your home—­”

“If you ever did,” breathed Jack threateningly.

“Well,” grinned Hank impudently, with his most malicious chuckle, “if I did, what then?”

“I’d have you thrown out of the house,” calmly replied Jack, seating himself on a big log of driftwood, once the rib of a schooner that went ashore on the dangerous shoals off Hampton and pounded herself to pieces.