.

"Hi there!" came a sudden call out of the darkness. "Who are you?"

Snap was startled, but he did not drop his oars nor did he stop
rowing. He was just rounding one of the points of the cove, and
now he saw somebody running toward the point at top speed.

"I say, who are you?" continued the party on shore, and now Snap
recognized Ham Spink's voice.

"None of your business!" answered Snap gruffly and in as heavy
a tone as he could command.

"You are running away with our boats!" continued Ham, in consternation.
"Hi, fellows, come here! Somebody is running away with all the
boats!" he bawled.

His cries soon reached those around the campfire, and a grand
rush was made to the water's edge. By this time Snap had rounded
the point of the cove and was rowing as rapidly as possible in
the direction where the raft lay.

"Stop him!"

"He has all the boats!"

"Who can he be?"

"Must be somebody from that other camp!"

Such were some of the cries uttered. Then someone ran for a shotgun,
but by this time Snap was out of sight around a fringe of brushwood.
He continued to row his best, and before very long gained the spot
where the raft rested. Then he leaped ashore and ran in the
direction of the campfire.

"This way, fellows!" he cried. "I have the boat! Back to the
raft! Back to the raft!" And he gave the well-known whistle.

In a few minutes he encountered Giant and Whopper and learned that
Shep had gone forward, to find out what the cries at the lake front
meant.

"We must get him to come back," he said. "You go down to the boats
and the raft and get them ready to shove off on short notice." And
he ran closer to the campfire.

The entire camp was now in wild commotion, for each lad present
understood that all the boats were gone. Ham Spink and Carl Dudder
were in a rage.

"We should have placed somebody on guard," cried Ham. "We were
chumps not to do it."

"I didn't think anybody would be over here so quick," answered
Carl. "How could they do it without a boat?"

"Maybe they had another boat," put in Ike Akley. "We missed it
by not looking around a little closer."

"Whoever he is, he isn't rowing across the lake," said Ham. "Let
us run along the shore and see if we can't get at him some way."

As there seemed to be nothing else to do, this plan was carried
out. The crowd, however, had only gone a short distance when they
literally ran into Shep, who had gone forward as already me