14 The poor prisoner
　　Sure enough, it was the men’s plane. The children all recognised it quite well as they watched itvanishing into the distance. It flew towards the west.
　　‘Wonder if it’s going back to Bill’s aerodrome?’ said Jack¹. ‘Wonder if Bill knows what thosemen are up to?’
　　‘We don’t know very much ourselves, except that they are after some sort of treasure,’ saidPhilip. ‘But, honestly, what treasure they think they can find here in this place beats me.’
　　‘Beats me too,’ said Jack. ‘Well – there they go! Do you suppose they’ll come back?’
　　‘Sure to,’ said Philip. ‘They won’t give up as easily as that. Maybe they’ve gone to report thatthere are other people here now – for all they know, after the treasure too! And they might bringback more men to smell us out.’
　　‘Oh,’ said Lucy-Ann in alarm. ‘I don’t want to be smelt² out.’
　　‘Do you think both men have gone?’ asked Philip.
　　‘I should think so,’ said Jack. ‘But we can go and have a jolly good look round and see. If oneman is left, he’ll be somewhere near that shed of theirs. He won’t know how many of us there arehere – he may think there are men with us, you know, and not dare to move about too much byhimself.’
　　But when the children left the cave later in the morning and went to ‘have a squint³,’ as Jacksaid, they could find no sign of either Juan or Pepi. There was no fire. It had been stamped out.
　　And this time the shed was well and truly locked, and the key taken. No amount of shaking orkicking would open the door.
　　‘Well, if we’d known the men were going to fly off, we might have asked them for a lift,’ saidJack with a grin. ‘I wonder when they’ll come back – if they do come back, that is.’
　　‘Not till it’s daylight tomorrow, I should think,’ said Philip. ‘I expect they’ll take off at nightagain. Let’s go and have another squint at those crates⁴.’
　　But there was really nothing to see. They were empty as before, and the

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