"Hold on!" corrected Giraffe, "you're forgetting that time you tripped in the dark, and fell over a precipice a thousand feet deep, and hung there from the top, yelling for help. We came galloping to the spot, and rescued you, about as limp as a dish-rag; and you told us how you'd suffered such agonies that you lived ten years, and wanted to know if your hair had turned white. But when we held the light over the top of that awful precipice, and showed you that the ground was just about six inches below your toes as you dangled there, why, you made out that it was all a good joke, and that anyhow you'd given the rest of us a bad scare."
Bumpus grinned, as though the recollection rather amused him now.
"But this time it was different, Giraffe, because they wanted me to tell, and I just wouldn't. Then the big man who was leader, gave me a knock on the head, he was so mad at me, and I keeled over a second time. That's when I thought days had passed, when I heard you fellows talking outside, and after that an earthquake came knocking down the door. My! but I was glad to see the bunch come piling in, you can take it from me. Never will forget it, I give you my word, boys!"
"But see here, Bumpus," said Thad, "what do you mean when you say you refused to tell? Of course all of us know how stubborn you can be, when you take a notion; but what could these men want to get out of you that you'd refuse to let go? Not any information about us, I should think?"
"Well, hardly," replied the other. "You see, they had me tied up, and that horrible fishy rag fastened around my mouth so I couldn't talk; but the fellow that could speak United States bettern'n either of the others told me to nod my head if I promised to show 'em where I'd hid it; but every time I shook it this way," and he proceeded to give an emphatic demonstration of what a negative shake might be.
"But what had you hid away that they wanted so badly?" persisted Thad.
Bumpus grinned, and raised one of his eyebrows in a comical manner.
"Oh! that was a little trick of mine," he remarked, composedly. "P'raps the rest of you'll give me credit for being a mite smart when I tell you. But in order to make you understand, just wait till I go back to the time I left camp to look for this belt."
"That's the best way, I should think," agreed Giraffe, who knew from experience how hard it sometimes proved to drag the details of a story from Bumpus.
"Oh! I ain't meaning to string it out everlastingly!" declared the other. "I'm going to be right to the point, see if I don't. Well, after I picked up my belt I just happened to remember what Thad had told us about that concealed boat belonging to the queer chaps who were hiding on this island; and before I knew hardly what I was doing I found myself aboard the same, nosing around.