The stillness was broken by a piercing scream that caused every head to bob up, and the blankets to be hurriedly thrown aside.
"My owl's mate has come in on us, mebbe!" exclaimed Step Hen; for that idea was so firmly lodged in his brain that it had to occur to him as soon as he heard all that row.
But some of the others were wiser, for they knew that shout had surely come from human lips.
Giraffe was the first to call out and draw their attention to certain facts.
"Looky there at old Bumpus dancing a jig, will you! Whatever ails the feller, d'ye think! Acts like he'd clean gone out of his head, and got loony!" he cried, as with the other boys he came tumbling out from under the rude shelter made of branches.
CHAPTER IV
LAUNCHED ON THE INLAND SEA
Sure enough Bumpus was in plain sight, for the fire still burned, and there was also a bright moon high up in the heavens. The fat scout seemed to be trying to execute all the steps in a Southern hoedown, or an Irish jig; for he was prancing around this way and that, holding on to his hand, which the other boys now discovered was streaked with blood!
"Oh! what's happened to you, Bumpus?" cried Step Hen, as he ran out toward the spot where the other continued to waltz around in his bright red and white striped pajamas, that made him look like an "animated sawed-off barber's pole," as one of his chums had once told him.
"It bit me, oh! I'll bleed to death, I reckon now!" wailed the other; "say, Thad, get out some of that purple stuff you use for scratches from wild animals. Mebbe blood, poisoning'll develop; and I'd just hate the worst kind to die up here, away off from my own home."