Weeks passed, full of work and play, and no further news came of the lost steamship on which Mr. and Mrs. Blake had sailed for Brazil. The wreckage had been sighted off the Orinoco, and the name of the steamship was plain upon the wreck. But it might have drifted a long way after the catastrophe. Just where the ship had been burned, nobody could guess.
No boat from her, no word from her captain or crew, came to the owners in New York. She had been a freight boat, carrying on that trip scarcely a score of passengers.
Much of this Bobby did not hear, or understand. He clung like a limpet to the imaginative idea of a shipwreck that Barrymore Gray had drawn for him. And it was well that this was so.
Thanksgiving came and went. The Belden school came over in the forenoon to Rockledge and its football team was nicely thrashed by the Rockledge eleven. The Lower School went almost mad with delight; and Fred Martin and Larry Cronk, the Belden boy, came almost to blows on the campus.
Neither of the Lower Schools had forgotten the hot potato fight on the island. Ere this, Bobby and his friends had completed their camp and had begun to furnish it, but they hoped the youngsters from Belden would learn nothing about the hideout.
One thing pleased Bobby and Fred immensely at Thanksgiving. A big box came to them from Clinton. In it were all sorts of good things made by Meena and Mrs. Martin, fall apples and pears picked by Michael Mulcahey, candy from Mr. Martin's store, and gifts from Fred's sisters and smaller brothers.
The Second Dormitory had a great feast after hours one night, of which even Captain Gray knew nothing. Bill Bronson and Jack Jinks got onto it, and the small boys had to bribe the two bullies with some of the choicest of their stores. Nevertheless, the midnight feast went off very smoothly.
There were a few more cases for the medical attendant to see to at Rockledge School after Thanksgiving than usual. The midnight feast coming so soon after the big Thanksgiving dinner, played havoc in the ranks of the smaller boys.
Pee Wee had what Bobby declared to be "internal, or civil war," and went to the hospital in Dr. Raymond's house for three days. He came out wan and interesting looking, declaring that he had lost pounds of flesh! But he proceeded to get his avoirdupois back again very promptly.
It was a full week before the school was back on its usual working basis—and the midwinter holidays only a month away. The teachers spurred the lazy scholars, and helped the dull ones, and out of this pushing in classes arose the trouble that became a very serious affair indeed for both Fred Martin and Bobby Blake.