“Oh, shut up!” begged Ossie almost tearfully.

“It was bully!  Were you there when we chased the burglars?”

“When you—­what?” asked Wink.

“Chased the burglars, I said.  Mr. Drummer, or something—­I never did get the name of the folks—­found three of them trying to break into his safe, and they knocked him down and half-killed him, and the servants chased them, and then everyone took a hand!  It was fine and exciting, I tell you!  Had you gone off before that?”

“Why—­er—­seems to me we did hear something,” said Perry.  “When—­when was this?”

“Oh, about a quarter to ten, I suppose.  We were dancing—­”

“You were dancing?” ejaculated Wink.

“Sure!  All of us danced.  Didn’t you?”

“Who with, for the love of Mike?”

“Oh, lots of girls.  Mrs. Thingamabob happened to find Joe standing around and made him tell her his name, and then she took him off and introduced him to some girls, and then he introduced the rest of us.  It was a peachy floor.  Some of the girls were all right, too.”

“You seem to have got on fairly well,” said Wink, “considering you weren’t invited.”

“We were invited just as much as you were,” responded Han indignantly.

“Maybe, son, maybe,” answered Wink, as he climbed aboard the darkened Follow Me, “but I’ll bet they weren’t half as sorry to see you go as they were to see us!”

With which cryptic remark Wink stumbled into the cockpit and disappeared.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SQUALL

Although the Adventure Club remained in port for another day, neither Perry, Wink nor Ossie went ashore again, and all the efforts of the rest of the party failed to coax them off the boats.  They were, they declared, fed up with Bar Harbor.  And they hinted that so far as they were concerned the voyage might continue at any moment without protest.  Han brought back a newspaper that afternoon containing a vivid and highly sensational account of the attempted robbery of the Alfred Henry Drummond “cottage.”  The three read it with much interest, and especially that portion of it which stated that “the local police force is investigating and has every expectation of making arrests within twenty-four hours, since it is not believed the burglars have succeeded in leaving the island and all avenues of escape are being closely guarded.”

It might have been observed by the others, but wasn’t, that Perry and Ossie, on the Adventurer, and Wink, on the Follow Me, exhibited a strange fondness for the seclusion of the cabins from that time until the next day at eight, when the cruisers up-anchored and passed out of the harbour.  And as the broad Atlantic rolled under the keels three hearty sighs emerged from as many throats.

The two boats passed Petit Manan Island toward ten that forenoon, a tiny rocky islet holding aloft a tall shaft against the blue of the Summer sky.  “A hundred and fourteen feet,” said Joe informatively, “and the highest lighthouse on the coast except one.”