“Say! Don’t talk to me!” sullenly replied the man, as he limped along. “This has been a fizzle, and it’s all your fault!” he added, turning to Noddy. “Don’t talk to me! And don’t you dare say snakes or gold!”
By degrees, however, the disappointed party got the truth from him, and many were the expressions of anger against Noddy. And yet he was not so much to blame. Though he had managed to spy and eavesdrop enough to learn that Jerry and the others were after gold, and though he had managed to trace the course of the airship sufficiently to pick out the location of the valley after a long trip on a lonely trail, still some of the others had before this tried to rob Harvey Brill, and they had been as eager as was Noddy to take up the mean work again.
“Huh! Snakes!” exclaimed Jake Paxton, the man who had gone down in the gulch, as he and the others moved away from the top of the cliff in the darkness. “Now we’ve got it all to do over again, for I’m sure someone has hidden gold in that valley, and I’m going to get it. We’ll just stay here a spell yet.”
In the airship there was rejoicing mingled with uncertainty. The professor was glad because he had found the snakes, but the others were a bit uncertain in regarding to finding the sixty nuggets, though Harvey Brill was positive that his quest would be successful.
“Of course the landslide mixed things up,” he explained; “and it isn’t going to be as easy to find the place as I thought. But I’ll do it!”
“Supper!” announced Bob, at this juncture, and for once no one joked about his fondness for always having something to do with eating. They were all hungry.
“Where’s the professor?” asked Jerry, as they filed out into the dining cabin. “He must be——”
“Boys! Boys!” suddenly called the scientist. “Come here—quick!”
“Trouble again!” cried Ned, as he made a rush for the professor’s cabin, whence came his voice.
“Those snakes!” murmured Jerry. “Maybe, after all, they are poisonous!”