"Whereabouts is the hope?" I inquired.
"It is all guess-work," he admitted. "Assuming that they came last night to dig—and didn't dig—and assuming again that they came back in the dark hour before dawn, and still didn't dig, it is a fair inference that we haven't seen the last of the Andromeda—or isn't it?"
"I don't know," I said. "The plot has grown much too complicated for me. Meanwhile, I suppose we ought to be thankful that we haven't five additional mouths to fill—with nothing to fill them with. You wouldn't have let those five pirates starve, would you, Bonteck?"
The look that came into his eyes was handsomely gloomy.
"I meant to come just as near doing it as I could, and get by without serving a sentence for manslaughter." And with that, he pulled his cap over his eyes and walked away, coming back presently with a still gloomier look in his eyes.
"It's hell, Dick," he broke out grittingly. "I've got to tell these people of ours what's been done to them. It is the least I can do now. There is starvation just ahead of us; and from what we saw last night, it is perfectly plain that if the Andromeda comes back, it won't be for the purpose of taking us off."
"Not to take us off, perhaps, but the other motive—the motive that brought her here last night—still exists. If she came to dig up your buried 'ammunition' which has so mysteriously disappeared, she will come again. You may depend upon that."
"Just the same, I've got to tell them," he said doggedly, going back to the conscientious part of it; adding: "And I'd much rather be shot. It was such an asinine thing, even as I had it shaped up in the beginning. How can I ever make it appear to them as it appeared to me?—as a harmless little practical joke, with no particular sting in its tail? In the light of what has happened, I can never hope to make it look that way; not even to you or to Madeleine, I'm afraid."
I rose upon an elbow.
"Why not wait a little longer?" I argued. "The Andromeda will surely turn up again, and when she does, it will be up to us to recapture her at all hazards. When that is done, you can tell the others, if you still think it necessary."