“Well, what next, I wonder?” ejaculated Giraffe, with the air of one who had received especially good news; “I always did say I liked honey about as well as anything that grew; but, then,” he added, as though seized with a sudden depressing remembrance, “what good would all the wild honey going do a fellow when he hasn’t got a cupful of flour to make a flapjack with, or a single cracker to eat with the nectar? Oh! rats! but this is tough!”
“Anyhow,” Davy continued, “Bob, he said the tree was a whopper for size, and the hive was away up in a dead limb that we couldn’t well reach; so I guess that winds it up for us this trip. And as you say, Giraffe, what good would just plain honey do a starving crowd? Give me bread before you try to plaster me with honey. Still, it’s queer how many things we keep finding on this same island, isn’t it?”
“There goes another rabbit right now, Davy; and I could have knocked him over as easy as you please, if I was hunting something to eat, instead of men! They always do say what strange things you do see when you haven’t got a gun; and with us it runs the other way; for we’ve got a shooting-iron, but dassen’t use the same for fear of alarming our human quarry.”
“You do manage to put things before a fellow the finest way ever, Giraffe,” Davy told him; “and some of these days I expect to see you making a cracking good lawyer, or an auctioneer, or something that requires the gift of gab. But seems to me we’ve been poking like this for a long time now. How much further d’ye think the island runs?”
“It’s some longer’n I had any idea would be the case,” admitted Giraffe; “but I reckon we’re shallowing up now. The shore line looks to me like it’s beginnin’ to draw in closer, every time I make the beach. If that’s so we ought to come together down at the lower end before a great while now.”
“Say, what if we do get there and never once sight George and his pal, Giraffe?”
“Aw! don’t be trying to get off conundrums on me, Davy; I never was much good guessing the answer,” the tall scout went on to complain. “It don’t seem like that could happen, because they’re here on our island, and we sure haven’t left a single place unsearched where a fox could hide. Don’t borrow trouble, my son. We’re bound to corral the pair down at the lower point; and they’ll throw up their hands when they see us coming, six abreast, with guns leveled and all that.”
“I hope so, Giraffe; I hope it turns out that way; but I’m not feeling as sure as you are. Something seems to keep on telling me we’re due for a big surprise, and I’m trying to shut my teeth, so as to be ready to meet it like a scout should always meet trouble.”
He had hardly said the last word when a large object jumped almost under Davy’s feet, upsetting him completely. And as he fell over, nimbly turning a complete back-somersault, for Davy was as smart at such things as any circus performer, he managed to bawl out wildly:
“Bear! Bear! why don’t you shoot it, Giraffe?”