Bumpus was seen to be glaring suspiciously at the speaker when the wet tent was taken down in the most careful manner possible.
“I really believe you wouldn’t care a red cent, Davy Jones,” he said, sternly, “if I happened to make a bad step, and walked overboard. Fact is, I’m agoing to keep my eye on you after this. Like to have me get my old suit wet, would you, so I’d just have to make the change; well, I wouldn’t put it past you to give me a little shove, or trip me up, so I’d take a header. Better take care, because there’s a limit to my good nature. Some fellows can be coaxed to do nearly anything, but they object to being driven.”
“Listen to him talk, would you?” cried Davy, pretending to be hurt by the accusation of the other, though there was a gleam in his eyes that told he had been given an idea by Bumpus’ remark. “You make me think of the traveler that the sun and the wind picked out as a victim, to see which was the stronger. He had a cloak on, and the one that managed to get it off was to be the victor. So the wind tried as hard as anything, but the traveler only wrapped his cloak tighter around him. Then the sun got hotter’n hotter, till he just couldn’t hardly breathe; so what does he do but throw away his cloak; and of course the sun won, hands down.”
“Chestnut!” gibed Giraffe, from the other boat; “ten to one even six suns couldn’t force Bumpus to shed his coat when once he’d made up his mind to keep it on. Just like that stubborn will of his, it grows stronger and stronger all the time.”
“Yes,” added Davy, “and every little while you can see him sitting by the fire, with his chin held in his hand and a far-away look in his eyes; and then you know he’s cracking his poor brain trying to remember what happened to that five cents’ worth of medicine he can’t remember what he did with.”
“Didn’t I tell you again and again that the money part don’t enter into this matter at all?” demanded Bumpus. “It’s just because I was so wretchedly careless, that it keeps wearing on my mind. I ought to know what I did with that stuff; and I’m bound to figure it out, or bust a boiler atrying. Didn’t Thad tell us that was a good trait in a scout? Ain’t being determined what every good scout ought to try’n practice? Didn’t he tell us about how the hungry wolf over in Siberia will set out on the track of a deer in the snow, and keep everlastingly after him, even if the chase seems silly to begin with; but nearly every time he’ll get his game before he quits, just by his pertinacity. That’s what I am, one of the stick-at-it kind.”
“You never said truer words, Bumpus!” coughed Davy, toward the stern of the boat, “some things are like a rolling snowball, they keep on getting bigger’n bigger the longer they exist. But every dog has his day, and we live in hopes that something’ll happen to make you change your mind about that same coat.”
When the tents had been squeezed as dry as possible, the forward progress was resumed, all of them feeling rather light-hearted over the clever way in which they had cheated the storm. It always gives a boy a sense of superiority to feel that he has come out first best in a battle with Nature.
Some of the scouts doubtless began to wonder how they were ever going to locate the man and the girl, deep in the gloomy recesses of Alligator Swamp; but those who kept their wits about them, and watched what Thad was doing, must have ere this come to the conclusion that he had not been wandering aimlessly about all this time, but on the contrary had some definite plan of campaign in view, which he kept constantly following.
In fact, Thad was on the alert for any sort of sign that would tell him some other boat had been in the habit of passing along through these channels. Allan at times called his attention to certain indications along those lines. And it was in the hope that this other boat might be the one containing the man and the girl, whose presence here had drawn him from his faraway Northern home, that Thad continued to pursue his set course.