“Say, Frank, he thinks it must have been Ossie Fredericks!” exclaimed Jerry; “but I say it was that Marcus Stackpole. He wanted to get that treasure Uncle Felix hid away on board so neat that even I never could find it. But Marcus, he’s bound to get it, even if he has to take the old boat, and tear her to flinders. Oh! what a bunch of gumps we were to leave her that way, to run to a fire.”
The countryman was listening to all they said, and trying to grasp the situation. Frank saw him step over to the tree to which they had fastened the cable of the boat so securely, as they thought.
“This whar you tied her up, boys?” asked the young farmer.
“To that tree, yes,” Frank replied. “What have you found—a piece of the rope left there?”
“Jest what I hev,” came the reply, as the other took out a match, and prepared to strike it.
“Sliced it off as neat as you please; didn’t they?” demanded Bluff, angrily.
“Wall, not as I kin see,” replied the farmer, bending closer to look, as the match flamed up. “This hyar rope, she’s gone and busted clear off!”
“No knife used, then, you mean?” asked Frank, jumping at conclusions.
“Nixy a knife,” came the answer, in a positive tone.
“Then that settles it,” Frank went on, turning to his comrades. “Our cable turned out a bad one, boys; and in the storm, when the wind struck the side of the cabin, the rope snapped off short!”
“Wow! what do you think of that, now?” cried Jerry.
“Then it wasn’t Ossie and his crowd; nor yet Marcus Stackpole, that did the little job for us?” observed Bluff, bottling some of his wrath for another occasion.
“We can lay it all to the storm,” Frank went on to say, as he too examined the frayed end of the piece of cable still hanging from the trunk of the tree; and which it was plain to be seen had never been severed by a sharp instrument.
“But that’s just about as bad,” Will plaintively struck up just then. “Perhaps our fine boat has been knocked to pieces before now; or even if she hasn’t, then she must be booming along in the middle of the river, turning around and around as she floats. Why, Frank, this happened half an hour ago, and by now where do you think the _Pot Luck_ can be?”
“If she hasn’t been snagged and sunk in the storm,” replied Frank, “or upset by the hurricane wind, why, by now she may be floating peacefully along, all by herself, say about two miles, perhaps three, below here.”