Finally the pout was broken loose, and Merriwell succeeded in making Hans understand that the dreaded stingers could no longer trouble him.
Hans sat up, a woe-begone figure. He was bound hand and foot by the line as completely as Gulliver was bound by the Lilliputians.
“Are you much hurt?” Merriwell asked.
“Much hurted?” Hans indignantly snorted. “I vos kilt alretty! Dose knifes peen sduck in me in more as sefendeen hundret blaces. Bevore dose troudt come a-veeshin’ vor me again I vill break my neck virst.”
It was impossible to untie the line, so Merriwell took out his knife and cut it.
“This was an accident,” he said. “I shan’t say anything about it to the others. Take the fish to camp, and we’ll have them for dinner. They’re good to eat.”
As indeed they were.
Thereupon Hans’ courage came back. He washed his hands and face in the lake, carefully strung the pouts on a piece of the severed line, then waddled to camp with them, with all the proud bearing of a major-general.
Frank Merriwell sat for a time on the point of rock, looking out across Lily Bay. Then he started, as the sound of the deep baying of hounds came to him from the mainland.
“They’re after some poor deer, probably,” was his thought. “The only way to make a deerhound pay attention to the close season is to tie him to his kennel.”