“Wonder what dear old Captain Garrish is doing just now,” said Bobby dreamily, as they toasted their feet and hands over the grateful warmth of the stove.
“Better wonder what he’s saying,” chuckled Billy. “I bet he hasn’t any vocabulary left.”
“We sure left just in the nick of time, too,” remarked Fred thoughtfully. “I bet he was cooking up a way of making us tell what we knew.”
“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Bobby, and then told them what the hairy-faced giant on the ship had advised him to do.
The boys were intensely interested.
“Even the men knew Garrish had it in for us,” Bobby continued, adding with a chuckle: “But I bet this particular man didn’t expect us to take his advice and ‘beat it’ quite so quickly.”
“We’d probably be in prison now in the hold, eating hardtack out of the boxes to keep from starving,” said Mouser, and they looked at him reproachfully.
“Why remind us of such unpleasant things?” protested Billy, but Bobby came to Mouser’s defense.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “I don’t mind a bit thinking about where we might be now. It makes this place seem even better by comparison. Say, fellows, did you ever dream a house made of snow could be so comfortable?”
“It sure beats me,” agreed Fred, beginning to wander about the room, examining the skins that hung on the walls. He drew one or two of them aside, disclosing the solid white wall of snow. “All the comforts of home!” exclaimed Bobby.