“But the principal thing of all, and which we’d have to find out first, before thinking of hooking the boat, would be to know whether they expect to sleep ashore, or aboard,” Jack went on to say.
“Think what a cheeky thing it’d be,” he remarked, softly, “if we ran away with the boat, and then found that we’d kidnapped a couple of innocent ducklings, one of them mamma’s darling boy! Whew! mebbe we wouldn’t feel cheap though!”
“Oh!” said Jack, “then you’ve been thinking that this terrible Slim Jim, the dandy hobo, might be somebody else, have you, Buster? Well, I tell you what we ought to do, boys--hang around, and watch that pair some more. If they begin to get the camp ready as though they meant to stay ashore tonight, we can talk it over again, and decide whether we’ll play George’s trick or not with the boat. How?”
“I say leave it that way,” ventured Josh, now completely won over.
“I’m agreeable,” George hastened to say, for he was not altogether unreasonable in anything save that troublesome engine aboard his Wireless; and in that quarter he would never take advice from any one until in difficulties; he knew it all.
They could creep up, and from their old place of observation keep an eye on the two who were under suspicion; and in this way something might arise whereby they would be able to tell definitely whether they would be justified in going to extremes, or ought to keep their hands off.
Even as they started to once more advance toward the spot where the camp fire burned, they began to hear a strange clanking sound, as of steel smiting steel, that gave them new cause for wonder.
“What in the wide world’s that?” asked Buster Longfellow, as they came to a halt in order to listen.
“Sounds like somebody’s started a blacksmith shop over here on the island, that’s what!” remarked Josh.
“Mebbe they’re counting over the ducats they’ve stolen,” suggested George; but the idea of silver dollars making such a loud sound as this as they jingled in a heap, was really so ridiculous that even Buster chuckled in derision; whereupon George had to hastily add “joke!”
“Tell you what I think,” observed wise Herb. “You know they were having some engine trouble a while back; and I reckon that mechanic fellow has got busy fixing it up. The only thing that surprises me is that George here didn’t recognize something mighty familiar in the racket. He’s forever making it himself, so if I didn’t know he was alongside, I’d take my affidavy that was him right now.”