The Secret of the Caves

It was a Saturday afternoon in June, one of those warm, drowsy days when even the leaves of the trees seem too indolent to stir. There was scarcely a ripple on the surface of the water, no movement but the flow of the incoming tide.

Three motorboats circled lazily about in Barmet Bay within sight of the city of Bayport. The lazy spirit of the afternoon seemed to have spread to the occupants of the boats, for they lounged about informally.

Biff Hooper, in his craft, the Envoy, had devised a way of steering with his foot while sprawled on the side cushions.

In a motorboat close by, the Napoli, sat Tony Prito, a handsome boy with dark hair, olive skin, and sparkling eyes. In the third motorboat were two lads certainly who need no introduction to readers of previous volumes in the Hardy Boys Series.

The boy at the wheel, a tall, dark, handsome lad of about sixteen, was Frank Hardy, and the other, a fair, curly-headed fellow about a year his junior, was his brother Joe. These boys were the sons of Fenton Hardy, an internationally famous private detective who lived in Bayport.

“I didn’t expect to see you fellows out on the bay this afternoon,” shouted Biff Hooper, raising his head over the side of his boat.

The motor yacht was about a mile away.

On through the water plunged the Sleuth, gaining slowly but surely on the craft ahead.

Once in a while Biff cast a hasty glance backward to wave mockingly at them. He misjudged an approaching wave on one of these occasions and the Envoy swerved; he lost valuable seconds righting the craft into its course again and the Sleuth gained.

The yacht was about a quarter of a mile distant when the Sleuth at last pulled up beside the other boat. Inch by inch it forged ahead until the bow of each boat was on a line with the other. Then the Sleuth’s greater speed became manifest as it pulled away, leaving Biff shaking his head in exasperation.

Suddenly Joe, who had been looking at the passenger yacht in the distance, gave a shout of alarm.

“Look!” he cried.

Frank glanced up just in time to see an immense puff of black smoke bursting from above the deck of the yacht. Then, across the waves, was borne to their ears the roar of an explosion.

They could see figures running about on the deck of the boat. One of them, a woman, ran directly to the rail and began to clamber up on it.

“What on earth⁠—” gasped Joe.

“She’s going overboard!”

Another figure ran out, making a frantic grab at the woman who was balanced perilously on top of the rail. Then, her arms outspread, the woman jumped.

“How far is it to the place they call Honeycomb Cliffs?” he asked.

The old gentleman’s eyes widened.

“Honeycomb Cliffs!” he said, in a high, cracked voice. “Be ye goin’ to pass by there?”

“We want to camp around there for a few days and we were figuring on buying some supplies. If it’s far away we’ll buy all we need right now and carry the stuff with us.”

The old man leaned farther over the counter.

“Ye’re agoin’ to camp at Honeycomb Cliffs!” he exclaimed incredulously.

“Why, yes.”

“For three or four days!”

“Perhaps longer.”

The old gentleman shook his head solemnly.

“Ye’re strange to these parts, ain’t ye?”

“This is the first time we’ve ever been down this way.”

“I thought so,” returned the old man with a great air of satisfaction, as though his judgment had been verified.

“Well,” said Frank, becoming a trifle impatient, “we’d still like to know how much farther we have to go.”

“It’s a matter of about ten mile by the road. Then ye’ll have to walk a ways.”

“Ten miles. Why, that isn’t very far. We’ll just buy enough food to last us a day or so and then if we need more one of us can come back here. There’s no use packing along too much.”

“And ye say ye’re goin’ to camp there?” persisted the old man, as though he could not quite grasp the fact.

“Yes. What’s wrong about that? Aren’t there any places we can pitch a tent?”

“Oh, yes, there’s places ye can pitch a tent and I’ve no doubt but there’s fishermen’s cottages that you could find a room at.

Biff and Chet were soon snoring, and not until then did Frank broach the subject on his mind.

“Did you notice an expression Captain Royal used several times when he was talking to us?” he asked his brother.

Joe reflected.

“I can’t say that I noticed anything in particular,” he confessed.

“Don’t you remember that he said ‘by jing’ now and then?”

Joe looked up, startled.

“Now I remember! Yes, he did say that. And ‘by jing’ is the very expression⁠—”

“The very expression Evangeline Todd said her missing brother used so often!”

“That’s a fact!” exclaimed Joe. “And now that I come to think of it, I remember his shoelaces.”

“They were untied.”

“And Todham Todd had a habit of going about with his shoelaces untied too!”