ich they had passed and picked up a pole about ten feet long and two
inches thick.

Mr. Perry and the other two boys rushed forward and made an eager
examination of Bud's discovery.

"This looks interesting," said Bud significantly as he called attention
to several worn places at both ends and the middle of the pole, as if
with iron rings or wire held close around it under a strain.

"There's another just like this one over there," cried Hal, suddenly
darting forward toward a slender pine tree about a hundred feet away and
standing a short distance out from the thicket border of the open area.

Mr. Perry, Cub, and Bud rushed after Hal, who picked up, under the pine
tree, a pole almost the exact duplicate of the one found by Bud. After a
careful examination of them both, Mr. Perry announced:

"It looks to me, boys, as if you had discovered the spreaders of a
demolished aerial."

"No doubt of it," Hal agreed. "Somebody used this tree and that one over
there as masts of an aerial."

"But trees are not supposed to be good for aerial masts," Bud objected.

"They're all right if you have your insulation well out beyond the
branches," said Cub.

"Yes, that's true," Bud admitted. "And look up there--see that wire? The
fellow who took down this aerial didn't do his work very well."

All looked up in the tree and saw a wire hanging down among the branches
and appearing to be attached at the farther end near the top of the pine.

"It was probably done in a hurry," Mr. Perry observed.

"And that is one more point to the argument that this is the island we
were looking for," said Bud.

"Yes, but the fellow we came to rescue is gone and left no trace where
he's gone to," added Cub.

"Still, don't you think the search has been worth while?" the latter's
father inquired.

"I do," put in Hal, who had been noticeably quiet and meditative since
the last very important discovery. "This makes it look as if that last
distress message we got from the island was no fake affair?"

"Why?" asked Bud.

"Why!" flashed Hal. "It's plain enough to me. Those four fellows, he said
were coming to attack him, probably overpowered him and swept away his
camp, radio outfit, and all."

"And what did they do with him?" demanded Cub, eager for the last chapter
of the plot.

Hal seemed about to make answer to this question, but something of the
nature of a "lump in his throat" checked his utterance. His friends read
his mind without diff