“How about it now. Step Hen; any more objections?” asked the patrol leader.
“I guess I’m through, Thad,” acknowledged the other slowly, as though still unable to fully grasp the strange thing; “you’ve made out a pretty strong case, and I don’t glimpse a break in the chain. That’s the way you always hammer it in. If that hobo is here, then chances are he did come along with us, even if we never smelled a rat.”
“In the excitement of getting away,” Thad resumed, “I forgot I’d noticed cracks in the cabin floor that looked like a trap leading down into the hold of the boat. That was partly why I had Giraffe go back to where we left the shanty-boat. You remember he came and told us it had been driven off the point by that big squall.”
“I’m wondering what would have happened if you’d thought about the hold under the cabin before we ever quitted our old craft?” Giraffe remarked.
“Oh! we’d have found what was down there, and with guns in our hands could have easily cowed the hoboes,” Allan told him.
“Fight or no fight, that’s what we would have done!” declared Bumpus vigorously.
“Listen to him, will you?” chuckled Step Hen; “isn’t he just the fierce Cossack, though? I can see that tramp army wilting when they sighted Bumpus threatening to jump down on ’em. Who’d blame anybody for throwing up the sponge rather’n be mashed flat by such a hippo?”
“Well,” remarked Giraffe, as he rubbed his hands together in a satisfied fashion, “one thing sure, our old luck’s still hanging on.”
“How do you make that out, Giraffe?” inquired Smithy.
“We started on this hike with the idea of overtaking the tramp who was wearing the coat the judge’s wife gave away by mistake, didn’t we?” the lengthy scout demanded. “Well, stop and think for a minute, will you, what’s happened to us? Here we are, marooned on an island, from which nobody can get away right at present unless he swims, and none of us feel like trying that in such cold water, do we? Did you ever know a hobo who would willingly take a bath? Well, put things together, and what do you get? Wandering George, coat and all let’s hope, is shut up here on this strip of ground with us; and all we’ve got to do is to round him up to-day. Now, do you see, Smithy?”