The boys filed out with the crowd, and made the round of the stands and booths that were scattered about the circus lot. Pink lemonade and hot peanuts were to be had in riotous abundance, and they indulged in both these luxuries. Billy suggested that now would be a good time for his friends to exhibit their prowess with the lions and tigers, but as they were strangely reluctant, this project was dropped, but not without a few sarcastic remarks from Billy.
“Why, say, Billy, you know well enough we haven’t time for fooling around just now,” expostulated Fred. “We’ve got to get a train pretty soon, and here you are pestering us to go in and rough up a few poor animals that can’t help themselves.”
“That’s right,” said Bobby, in a tone of gentle reproof. “You ought to know better, Billy. Besides, the management wouldn’t stand for it, anyway. Those animals cost them a lot of money, and they wouldn’t like to have to buy new ones.”
“Huh! the management wouldn’t mind,” snorted Billy. “It would save them buying supper for the animals this evening. But you fellows are better at thinking up excuses than I am at thinking up jokes, so I suppose there’s no use talking to you any further.”
“Not a bit,” Bobby assured him cheerfully. “But speaking of Eskimos, isn’t that the old chief himself over there?”
The others followed the direction of his nod, and sure enough, there was Chief Takyak talking with a heavy, red-faced person, who carried himself like one who followed the sea for a livelihood.
The two were talking earnestly together, and as the boys watched them the seaman drew a notebook from his breast pocket and jotted down something in it. Then he and the old chief shook hands. The latter started for his tent while the seaman went off with the rolling stride that comes of walking on the heaving decks of ships.
“Wonder what they were talking about?” speculated Bobby.
“Maybe it had something to do with that ‘fortune’ that old Takyak hinted about to us,” replied Fred. “Maybe there’s something in it, after all.”
“Possibly,” said Bobby, seriously. “But we haven’t much time to talk about it right now. Our train is scheduled to leave in about half an hour, and I vote we get to the station as soon as we can. It’s better to wait a few minutes than to lose the train.”