“Must have thought they’d sent for you, on account of some of the fierce things you’d done in the past, eh, Nat?” quizzed Peg, boldly, for he knew the bully of Cliffwood was in no frame of mind to take offense just then, and pick a quarrel.
“Never you mind what I thought, Peg Fosdick!” said the other, still trembling. “If you’d had the same experience I did, I reckon your nerves’d a been shaky too.”
“Which way did it seem to go after jumping over you, Nat?” asked Dick, bent on extracting all the information possible from the alarmed one while the incident was still fresh in his memory. Later on he would be apt to become hazy about particulars, and even contradict himself it might be.
“Shucks! as if I bothered much takin’ any notice of such foolish little things as that,” replied Nat. “The only thing I do recollect was that it hopped over me comin’ from the left side. So I rolled the other way, you see.”
“And you lay down with your head toward the north, didn’t you, Nat?” came from Leslie, who realized that Dick was trying his best to get hold of some sort of clue, though really it did not appear to matter much.
“Here’s the way I was lyin’, so you can figure it out for yourselves,” said the other, throwing himself down for a moment, and then regaining his feet to continue his tale.
“But you want to understand that I’m done sleepin’ out here alone after this. I ain’t hankerin’ about bein’ waked up to find things like that playin’ leap-frog over me.”
He picked up his blanket with an air of determination that could not be mistaken. Dick understood from this that Nat must have been pretty badly frightened by his sudden awakening, and what he claimed to have seen.
These things aroused in Dick’s mind a greater determination than ever to learn the answer to the puzzle before leaving Bass Island. When the morning came one of the first things he meant to devote his attention to was searching for a clue to the character of the unknown terror.
It was not very pleasant standing around in the chilly night air, and lightly clad at that, so when Mr. Bartlett suggested that they turn in again no one offered any objection.