No wonder Leslie gasped his amazement.
“A gorilla, Dick? An ape loose in the woods on Bass Island! Why, surely I must be dreaming, or else you’re joshing me.”
Dick, however, stuck to his guns manfully.
“Remember, Leslie,” he went on to say, steadily, “I can’t even guess how such an animal could get across from the mainland, even granting that one escaped at some time from a menagerie that was wrecked in a storm. We’re dealing with facts now, not theories. There’s an animal over here, because some of our crowd have seen it, and all of us have looked on the wreck of the trap set to hold it. I honestly and truly believe it’ll turn out to be a gorilla.”
“Well, let’s figure out how that explanation agrees with what we know,” was the sensible way Leslie commenced. “All the boys who have glimpsed the creature agreed that it was short in stature, and with broad shoulders, as well as long arms. I remember that gorillas are built that way, Dick.”
“Yes, and travelers say they are very powerful,” added the other. “I’ve read how a wounded gorilla will snatch the rifle out of a hunter’s hands, and twist the barrel as easily as if it were made of wire, tying it in a knot.”
“So he would have no trouble in smashing Dan’s silly trap, that’s right,” Leslie went on to say. “Yes, and I can also remember reading, Dick, that such an animal, when it gets mad, thumps on its chest and makes a rumbling sound like the beating of a drum.”
“Sure enough!” Dick exclaimed, smiling with glee over the probability of having solved the mystery that had been haunting the camp so long, “didn’t the boys tell all about hearing some one drumming, when they glimpsed the wild man as they thought, going through the brush?”
“Dick, I do believe we’ve solved the puzzle at last!”
“I’m dead sure of it!” Dick declared, “after finding this telltale scrap of reddish hair on the stick, and seeing that queer footprint. One thing certain, it’s likely we’ll never know just how the creature managed to get across here.”