"Quick, open the door!"
Chapter Sixteen A PLAN— AND A NARROW ESCAPE
DICK unbolted the door at the top and bottom and flung it open.
He rushed in and thumped George and Julian happily on the back.
"Hallo!" he said.
"How does it feel to be rescued?"
"Fine!" cried Julian, and Tim barked madly round them.
George grinned at Dick.
"Good work!" she said.
"What happened?"
Dick told them in a few words all that had happened.
When he related how he had climbed down the old well, George and Julian could hardly believe their ears.
Julian slipped his arm through his younger brother's.
"You're a brick!" he said.
"A real brick!
Now quick—what are we going to do?"
"Well, if they've left us our boat I'm going to take us all back to the mainland as quickly as possible," said George.
"I'm not playing about with men who brandish revolvers all the time.
Come on!
Up the well we go and find the boat."
They ran to the well-shaft and squeezed through the small opening one by one.
Up the rope they went, and soon found the iron ladder.
Julian made them go up one by one in case the ladder wouldn't bear the weight of all three at once.
It really wasn't very long before they were all up in the open air once more, giving Anne hugs, and hearing her exclaim gladly, with tears in her eyes, how pleased she was to see them all again.
"Now come on!" said George after a minute.
"Off to the boat. Quick! Those men may be back at any time."
They rushed to the cove.
There was their boat, lying where they had pulled it, out of reach of the waves.
But what a shock for them!
"They've taken the oars!" said George, in dismay.
"The beasts!
They know we can't row the boat away without oars.
They were afraid you and Anne might row off, Dick— so instead of bothering to tow the boat behind them, they just grabbed the oars.
Now we're stuck.
We can't possibly get away."
It was a great disappointment. The children were almost ready to cry.
After Dick's marvellous rescue of George and Julian, it had seemed as if everything was going right— and now suddenly things were going wrong again.
"We must think this out," said Julian, sitting down where he could see at once if any boat came in sight.
"The men have gone off— probably to get a ship from somewhere in which they can put the ingots and sail away.
They won't be back for some time, I should think, because you can't charter a ship all in a hurry— unless, of course, they've got one of their own."
"And in the meantime we can't get off the island to get help, because they've got our oars," said George.
"We can't even signal to any passing fishing-boat because they won't be out just now.
The tide's wrong.
It seems as if all we've got to do is wait here patiently till the men come back and take my gold!
And we can't stop them."
"You know— I've got a sort of plan coming into my head," said Julian, slowly.
"Wait a bit— don't interrupt me.
I'm thinking."
The others waited in silence while Julian sat and frowned, thinking of his plan.
Then he looked at the others with a smile.