“We are going to take up a collection for that camera, and then we are going to find them,” answered Billy.

“We are going to try, you mean,” answered George with a mirthless smile.  “We have tried before—­and failed, and now we are obliged to confess that we are beaten for good and all.  However let us reason this thing out.  The ‘Red Rover’ couldn’t have disappeared, it could have gone only by being towed away.  If a launch had towed it, the noise would have awakened us, even though Larry or Sam had been asleep.  If the houseboat was towed by the girls, which it undoubtedly was, it can’t be far away.  That makes our work easier.”

“There is only one flaw in your argument, George,” interrupted Billy Gordon.  “Granting that they did row away from here, how do you know that at daylight they did not pick up a launch and hike half the length of the lake?”

George shook his head slowly.

“There wouldn’t be any fun for them in that.  They would want to be on hand, to make faces at us behind our backs.”

“You may be right at that.”  Billy gazed reflectively over the lake.  As he gazed his eyes took on an expression of new interest.  “What’s that out there, fellows?” he demanded.

It was some seconds before they discovered that which had attracted his attention.  Then when they did so, they were unable to decide what it was.  They were certain that the object had not been there the night before.

“That’s right where the ‘Red Rover’ lay,” cried Larry Goheen.  “Maybe they have sunk.”

The boys with one accord ran for the rowboat.  They shoved it off, leaped in and began rowing at top speed toward the object that had attracted their attention.  Larry began to grin long before they reached the spot.  They finally pulled up alongside the object and stopped.

The boys regarded it solemnly, then looked into each other’s eyes.  There followed a shout of laughter.

The object that had been discovered by them was a stick, which had been thrust down into the soft bottom in shallow water.  A lantern had been tied to the top of the stick.  It was this lantern, at the end of a stick, that Larry Goheen had been watching all night, believing it to be the anchor light of the “Red Rover.”  It was plain that the girls had known that they were to be watched, and that they had taken the easiest possible way to outwit their friends, by placing the anchor light on a stick and leaving it at the anchorage while the “Red Rover” slipped away unobserved under cover of the darkness.

“Stung!” groaned Sam.

“Worse than that,” answered George.  “There aren’t any words in the language to express what we’d like to say.  Wait till I get the lantern.”  The lantern was still burning and the chimney was considerably smoked.  George took it aboard and blew out the light.  “You didn’t see it go out after all, Sam.”

“I—­I thought I did.”

“I wonder when they left?” mused Billy.