ly, slipped off to their
tents; but as soon as they were sure that they were free from
observation they had, in pursuance of their plans, taken up a position
close to the sheltering place of the _Peacemaker_.

Rob had dozed off shortly before midnight, and the words at the
beginning of this chapter formed Merritt's notification to him that it
was time to bestir himself.

The boy, aroused at once from his nap, sat up at his comrade's summons.

"What is it?" he asked in a whisper.

"Look! Look yonder! Don't you see Barton sneaking toward the shed?"

There was no moon, but in the starlight Rob, thus admonished, could
distinctly discern a shadowy figure gliding across the sand dunes to the
submarine shed.

"It _is_ Barton, sure enough!" he exclaimed in a low, tense voice. "I
guess we were right, Merritt, when we read that 'Ready to-night'
message."

"We sure were," was the response; "the question now is, what is that
fellow up to?"

"Some sort of mischief, just as we surmised," was the reply. "Let's do
an Indian crawl toward the shed and see what we can find out."

The next instant both boys were noiselessly wriggling their way on their
stomachs toward the shed into the interior of which Barton had, by this
time, vanished. It was easy work to make a noiseless advance over the
soft sand, but so thoroughly had both the Boy Scouts practiced the
maneuver of silent advance that even had the ground been different, it
is likely that they could have approached unheard.

Right up to the very walls of the shed they wriggled their way and then,
placing their eyes to a crack in the timbers, they peered in. By the
yellow light of a lantern Barton had lighted they saw him dive down into
the interior of the submarine and emerge, ere long, with several rolled
sheets of paper.

The fellow did not appear to labor under anxiety that he was being
watched, for he went boldly about his business, taking no apparent pains
to screen the light or to move noiselessly. Having emerged from the
submarine and reached once more the door of the shed, he extinguished
the light and glided out into the night like a half-embodied form.

Merritt half leaped to his feet as he saw the fellow making off, but Rob
drew his companion down into their place of concealment with a
whispered,

"Hold on. Don't spoil everything now by betraying our presence. Let him
get a little way and we'll follow him."

"But we may lose him in the darkness," objected Me