“Noddy!” called Jerry. Still Noddy did not turn his head. Then all three boys united in a chorus of shouts. The Cresville bully gave no indication of having heard them.
“He’s deaf!” exclaimed the professor, and this view of the matter was confirmed a moment later when Ned, having touched Noddy on the shoulder, was confronted by a very much surprised youth. Jerry, Bob and Mr. Snodgrass joined Ned at Noddy’s side. The latter looking in wonderment from one to the other, took out a piece of paper and a pencil and, handing them to Jerry, said:
“I am totally deaf. I ate some queer kind of red berries and I’ve lost my hearing. You’ll have to write out your questions for me.”
“What are you doing here?” wrote Jerry.
“I’m camping here until I have that dispute over the cocoanut grove settled,” Noddy replied with something of his old manner. “I’ve got a colored man staying with me. When I found I was deaf I sent him off to the village for some medicine. He hasn’t come back and I guess he ran away with my money. I was watching for him to come on a path through the swamp yesterday when that alligator got after me. I couldn’t hear you when you yelled at me, but I felt the ground tremble when the alligator threshed around after you shot it. I was so frightened that I ran away.”
The professor, who was impressed by Noddy’s plight, urged him to accompany the boys back north. The three chums were willing to let by-gones be by-gones, and aid their former enemy, who was glad enough to accept help. His money was all gone and his food supplies running low. What he would have done had not the boys discovered him would be hard to say.
Noddy’s tent was taken down and he was brought to the other camp. There, made miserable by his deafness and his failure to secure a cocoanut grove, he sat apart, refusing to talk.
That evening, when the three chums were beginning to wonder if Mr. Snodgrass had not become lost in the swamp, they heard a shouting along the path that led through the morass.
“That sounds like him,” said Bob.
“It is!” exclaimed Ned a moment later as the professor came into view. He was fairly leaping up and down, holding something in his hands.