"Oh! as if we don't know the real reason," Step Hen declared, indignantly. "If you wasn't so crazy after eating all the time, I guess now you'd be the last one to go down there of your own free will. But that ain't saying we ain't glad of it. 'Taint often we get a chance to harness that appetite of yours to something that pays. Go on down a few more times, Giraffe; we might toddle along under another fish apiece."
"Not much I will," grunted the other; "six trips is the limit for anybody with a weak stomach."
"Weak stomach-what, you?" cried Step Hen, scornfully throwing up his hands.
The tall scout however did not want to be drawn into an argument just then, since that would only delay their departure from the cabin and all that it spoke of in such a distinct way. He darted in again, however, for a last visit, and vanished down the pit; to appear a minute later holding the largest fish they had as yet run across.
"There, what d'ye think of that for a jim dandy, fellows?" he cried. "And Bumpus, take a good look at him, because I'm bound to hook the mate to this next time we get out our lines. I'm not only a weather prophet, but there are times when I feel it in my bones that something is going to happen."
He tripped just then, and took a header, whereupon Bumpus, with pretended sympathy, hurried to his side, and offered to help him get up, saying;
"Oh! Giraffe, that was the time your bones told you the truth, didn't they; and I reckon your knee joints are skinned some after that tumble, too?"
Giraffe may have been suffering all sorts of agonies at the time, but of course he was not going to let the others see him wince; so he smiled sweetly as he once more gained his feet, and took up the big fish, saying at the same time:
"Don't mention it; I'm all right, Bumpus."
But they could see him limp more or less as they headed for the camp by the captured motorboat of the fish poachers.