“Well, do you want to search anymore?” Mr. Drew asked.
Nancy looked around sadly. “I don’t think there’s much use, do you?”
“Probably not,” her father agreed and began trudging up the hill to the backbone of the island.
Nancy followed slowly, her mind considering the possibilities. If they could somehow find the Polka Dot or whatever boat had brought the intruders to the island ... Or even get on board it long enough to use the radio. Her spirits lifted. There would be an opportunity, she was sure. It was just a matter of watching and being ready when the time came.
They were all hot and tired by the time they reached the resort, but a quick dip in the cove revived them enough for the girls to fix a light lunch. George sighed as she worked on the salad.
“I’m beginning to think you should have given that prize to Hannah,” she told Nancy.
“We could use her help around here. I’m just not a super cook.”
“Me neither,” Penny spoke up. “My grandmother is terrific, but I’ve never cooked for anyone but myself.”
“What we need is some fresh fish for dinner,” Nancy suggested. “How is the fishing around here, Penny?”
“It’s not too bad,” Penny replied. “I used to go out in one of the little boats and just fish with a hand line. I couldn’t supply all the guests, but I brought in three or four fish every time.” “Fishing in the cove?” Nancy asked.
Penny shook her head. “I caught some in the cove, but the best fishing is on the far side of the island. It’s a long way to row, but you catch a lot more.”
“Sounds like a good way to spend the afternoon,” Nancy said.
“I’ll envy you,” her father spoke up from the sink where he was making lemonade from the supply of frozen juices. “I’m going to devote the afternoon to working on the radiophone. I don’t know how much I can salvage, but maybe enough to build a simple transmitter—”
“Do you need an assistant?” George asked.
“I always liked jigsaw puzzles, and whoever hit that radio-phone sure created a dandy.”
“That leaves us to do the fishing, Nancy,” Penny said. “We can take both boats and try a couple of places, that way we’ll be sure of catching something for supper.”
“You’ll have to tell me how a hand line works,” Nancy told Penny.
“That’s the easy part.”
The conversation about fishing carried them through lunch, and afterward Nancy hurried to change to slacks and a cotton shirt that would protect her fair skin from the strong afternoon sun. She came out to find Penny waiting with lines, hooks, bait, and instructions.
“We’ll row outside the cove,” Penny said as they parted by the two small boats. “I’ll go out around the cove and try to get to my favorite fishing spot on the far side of the island. You should stick closer to the entrance of the cove, all right?”
Nancy nodded, aware that it had been some time since she’d rowed a boat and a little apprehensive about taking such a frail craft out onto the bouncing waves of the ocean. “I think we’d both better be careful,” she murmured. “After all, there’s no one we can call for help.”
Penny’s smile faded a little, but she nodded without commenting. “If you get into any trouble with the boat, row for shore anywhere along the island,” she told Nancy. “Even if you end up on the rocks, it doesn’t matter. As Grandpa says, ‘We can buy another boat’—just land safely.”
The boats were surprisingly maneuverable in the gentle waters of the cove, and Nancy soon found her previously mastered rowing rhythm returning. Still, she didn’t hurry after Penny when the other girl left the cove, preferring instead to enjoy the view of the resort and the surrounding gardens etched against the intensely blue sky above the snow-colored beach.
How can there be so much trouble here? Nancy asked herself as she directed the bow of the small boat toward the cove entrance and began to row more energetically.
The boat responded well till she hit the conflicting currents of the water beyond the cove, where it began to bounce rather frighteningly. Nancy slowed her pace and tried to choose a sheltered course, hesitant to venture far from the protective arm of land that kept the rough water outside the cove.
Now where did Penny tell me to fish? she mused, trying to remember what the redhead had told her. She let the boat drift for a few moments, resting her shoulders and the tender palms of her hands.
Every part of the island looked very much like the rest—the beacon tower of the resort was the only identifying landmark, and she had no idea where fish might be hiding. Finally, seeing that she was drifting away from the land, she simply put the oars to rest and baited the hook of the hand line, dropping it over the side without a great deal of enthusiasm. In her eagerness to catch fresh fish for dinner, she’d forgotten that fishing had its unpleasant moments as well as its exciting ones.
The first strike came quickly, and when she pulled the hook up, the fish on it was respectable both in size and type. “I must have found the right place,” Nancy said out loud to herself as she put the fish in the small cooler and dropped her line over again. “I hope Fenny is doing as well.”
The second fish came along as quickly as did a third. The fourth fish, however, followed only after quite a wait in the hot sun. Once the fifth fish was in the cooler, Nancy coiled the line in the bottom of the boat and stood up to stretch, her back and shoulders aching from her efforts.
A light breeze lifted her damp hair off her forehead, and as she looked around, a movement caught her eye. There was a boat just coming into view along the side of the island, and it looked very familiar to her.
Nancy sat down quickly and set her oars again, ready to row for the shore to get out of sight of the boat. Her oars dipped rhythmically, but her boat bounced erratically, and when she looked up, she realized that she wasn’t making any headway against the tide.
A little chill of fear touched her spine and she began to row harder. The land stopped moving away from her, but it didn’t grow any larger either, no matter how hard she tried. Her shoulders began to cramp and she had to stop rowing for a moment to ease them.
The boat was now much closer and Nancy was sure that it was the Polka Dot. Should she hail it? Ask for help? She looked around and felt surprised when she saw that land once more seemed to be approaching.
Then something else caught her attention—
cold water was washing over her feet! Nancy looked down and saw that the cooler was bub- bing on water rising over the floorboards of the boat. She couldn’t see the hole or whatever was allowing the water in, but it was obviously a large one, and the shore was still desperately far away! Nancy looked quickly toward the other boat, but it had disappeared! With no time to lose, she began to row with all her strength, praying that her rowing and the mysterious tide that was now carrying her would be enough to get her to shore.
14. Fearful Discovery
Nancy kept rowing, her lungs bursting from the effort, her eyes on the rising water level. If only there was someone else in the boat to help, to bail or try to stuff something in the hole. But she was alone.
The grating of the oars was loud in the muted world of her panting and the ocean’s splashing wash. Her oar caught, jerking her painfully one way, then the boat bounced her the other and she sank into the water in the bottom of the boat for a moment before she regained her seat. Only then did she realize that she was aground!
For just a heartbeat, she let herself slump on the hard boat seat, easing the pain in her back and shoulders. Then she caught her breath and
looked around. She was aground on the rocky shore somewhere below the ridge that formed the backbone of the island. From where she stood, she could see the bulge of the land that protected the cove, but the island curved enough at this point that she could see neither the entrance to the cove nor the resort above.
“Wow, that was close,” Nancy muttered as she got to her shaky legs and stepped out of the boat onto the rocky sh
ore. A couple of deep breaths and she turned her attention to lifting the cooler out and retrieving the hand line from the water in the bottom of the boat. Then she returned to the boat.
“Now, let’s see just what happened,” she said as she wrestled the heavy craft against the rocks and forced it over.
The hole was there—a small round hole so smooth that it was obviously not something that had happened accidentally. Nancy touched it and felt something sticky on her fingers, then looked into the boat, wondering if something had been plugged into the hole, something that had come loose while she rowed.
No plug was visible anywhere near the boat. Nancy sighed and tried to drag the boat higher on the shore, hoping to wedge it between the rocks strewn about the area.
Sighing, she looked up the steep hillside, knowing that she’d have an easier time getting back to the resort if she climbed up to the road. Then she remembered the big boat she’d seen. Where was it? She left the cooler and other equipment and moved out on the rocks.
The waves roared around her feet and the spray was salty on her lips as she leaned out, shading her eyes against the glare of the sun while she sought the outline of the boat she’d seen earlier. The waves washed the rocks on the hook of the cove and rolled through the opening, spending themselves on the sand.
Nancy frowned, then peered around again. There was nothing to be seen. No boat gleamed and bounced on the water, no distant motor sound reached her ears.
Could it be in the cove? Nancy hurried back to where she’d left her fish and fishing gear and picked up the cooler, aware that the fish would need to be cleaned and kept cold if they were to be dinner. It was a hard climb to the road with the extra weight of the cooler, but she made it. She hurried to the highest point of the road, and
looked toward the cove between the palm trees that shaded her. A small boat was moving along near the hook of land that surrounded the cove. Penny was on her way home, too.
“Nancy?” Her father’s voice brought her gaze back to the land, and she saw him approaching her at a fast clip. “What in the world are you doing here?” he demanded.
Nancy explained quickly as he relieved her of the cooler’s weight.
“Do you think the plug was something that could be dissolved in salt water?” he asked when she finished.
She shrugged. “It sure seems as if it was intentional,” she admitted. “I was just lucky that the tide caught the boat and helped me get to shore before it sank.”
“What about Penny?” Mr. Drew asked. “She’s on her way in,” Nancy answered. “I saw her from the road. There was something else, Dad,” she said. “I saw the Polka Dot!’ “You what?”
“It was just before my boat started to leak,” Nancy continued. “It looked like the Polka Dot was heading for the cove.”
“Well, I’m sure it hasn’t been in the cove,” her father observed.
“How can you be sure?”
“We gave up on the radio-phone shortly after you and Penny left,” he admitted. “Too much of it was totally smashed. We couldn’t salvage anything, so George and I spent most of the afternoon on the beach. I changed and decided to walk along the road to see if I could spot you or one of the islands Penny mentioned.”
“Did you?”
“It was too hazy to see the islands, and I didn’t see any boat either.”
“How long were you up here?” Nancy asked, frowning in confusion.
“Maybe half an hour before I saw you come scrambling over the ridge.”
“Then you must have seen the boat,” Nancy protested.
“Honey, I didn’t.”
Nancy looked up at her father, her brow furrowed, her lovely blue eyes troubled. She had seen it, she was sure. Yet the timing was such that her father had to have seen it, too, if it had sailed away from the island. And if it hadn’t? There was no place it could have gone except into the cove—and she’d seen for herself that the water was empty.
“There’s cold lemonade in the refrigerator,”
her father said as they neared the resort. “I’ll clean the fish while you change into something a little less fishy.”
Nancy smiled. “I guess I am a little ripe from the water in that boat,” she admitted. “I think the last person to use it left their fish in the bottom instead of putting them in a cooler.” “I’m just very glad that you’re safe. I want to look at that boat. Maybe Penny will know what was in the hole and why it disintegrated.”
“I definitely want to look at it again, too,” Nancy agreed.
The rear door of the resort opened, and George stepped out to greet them. “Nancy, what in the world happened to you?” she demanded.
Nancy repeated her story as she filled the tub with warm water. George shook her dark head. “I don’t understand any of it,” she admitted. “Why should anyone want to hurt you?”
Nancy shrugged. “I’m just glad it was the boat I took and not the one Penny has. She went a lot further than I did.”
“Are you sure she’s back?” George asked, instantly concerned.
“Dad and I saw her rowing into the cove just before we came inside,” Nancy answered, dropping her fishy clothes in a pile.
“I’ll go down and tell her what happened,” George said.
“Ask her if she saw the Polka Dot,” Nancy called after her friend, then stepped into the water with a sigh of contentment.
Penny was waiting in the lobby when Nancy emerged, dressed now in a pretty red and white print sundress. Penny’s green eyes were worried as she scanned Nancy’s face. “Are you really all right?” she asked.
“Fine now,” Nancy said, “though I’ll probably be a bit sore tomorrow from all the rowing.” “George told me what happened,” Penny said. “You must have been terrified.”
“I’m just glad it happened close enough to shore,” Nancy admitted. “I really want you to see the hole in the bottom of that boat. It looks like it was done with a large drill.”
“No one would patch a hole like that without being very careful,” Penny murmured. “My grandfather takes care of his boats.”
“How was your fishing trip?” Nancy asked immediately. “Did you catch anything?” “Between us, we have enough fish for several days,” Penny answered. “Your father insisted on cleaning mine, too, so I was just about to get things ready to cook them.”
Nancy laughed. “I’m glad it’s going to be
soon,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“I hope our lights are secure for tonight,” Penny murmured.
“I guess they’ll be all right if our visitors don’t come back,” Nancy observed, then asked Penny if she’d seen the big boat.
“It didn’t come my way,” the redhead answered. “I didn’t see anything out there all afternoon. I was watching, too. Sometimes someone will sail by and I thought I could hail them and have them call for help.”
Nancy shook her head in confusion as they went into the kitchen. George looked up from where she and Carson Drew were working at the sink. “Next time we fish and you two get to clean them,” she announced with a grin.
“Speaking of next time, what about Nancy’s boat, Penny?” Carson Drew asked. “Is there anything we can use to bring it back here to fix it?”
“The golf cart should be strong enough, shouldn’t it?” Penny asked. “We don’t have a car or anything like that. Heavy stuff usually goes on the Polka Dot.”
“Do you think we could carry it up the hill to the road?” Nancy asked her father.
“It shouldn’t be too heavy,” her father said. “Shall we go now?”
“You’ve got plenty of time before dinner,” Penny assured them. “The golf cart is in the shed over there, and the key is in it, I expect.” The trip along the road in the golf cart took only a few minutes, and Nancy stopped it just at the point where she’d come over the ridge to the road. “The boat is right down there,” she said, pointing between two palms. “I remember that pink hibiscus. I think it’s the only one along here.” r />
Her father nodded, starting down the hill, slipping and sliding in the sandy soil. They were almost to the bottom before Nancy had a chance to look around. Her eyes went immediately to the rocks that had caught the boat as it washed ashore. The water level was different now, but the rocks were still well clear of the waves.
Nancy swallowed hard, staring at rocky the ground where she’d left the craft. “It’s gone,” she gasped, then bending low to study the ground, she pointed at the man’s footprint that showed clearly in the damp earth. “Someone took my boat!”
15. Kidnapped!
Nancy and her father just looked at each other for several seconds. Then he sighed. “Well, I suppose it was someone from the Polka Dot,” he said.
Nancy nodded. “Someone who didn’t want us to know what they’d done to my boat.”
Her father took her arm. “Let’s get back and tell the others,” he suggested.
There was little else to be done, though Nancy gave the half-hidden footprint another long look before she walked up the hill to the waiting golt cart. "Why would anyone take the Polka Dot to Florida and abandon it, then bring it back here?” she asked once they were underway.
Her father shrugged. “I’ve got a whole list of
questions to ask whoever is doing this,” he admitted. “Starting with why they endangered you that way.”
“And where they’ve taken Bess . . . and maybe the DeFoes,” Nancy added.
“And why.”
They both considered that for several minutes as they drove to the shed at the resort. “That’s the most interesting question,” Nancy observed. “I keep thinking that if we could just figure out why all these things have happened, we’d have a better idea of who is behind it.” “I just hope that Sheriff Boyd is getting very impatient to hear from us,” Mr. Drew said, “so that he’ll send someone to look for us.”
“He’s the type who just might send the Coast Guard.” Nancy laughed.
“Well, what happened to the boat?” George asked, coming around the side of the shed. “Couldn’t you carry it up to the road?”