“You’d better not talk so loud or we’ll be telling our story to Captain Garrish,” cautioned Bobby, and the boys glanced about them uneasily.
“I passed somebody on my way up here,” said Billy, in a whisper that could barely be heard.
“I don’t know who it was, but I had a notion that he followed me for some little way.”
“Then we haven’t any time to lose,” cried Bobby, and for the first time the boys noticed the suppressed excitement in his voice.
They crowded close to him, trying to see his face in the deep shadows of the northern night. There were plenty of questions they wanted to ask, but Bobby would give them no chance.
Rapidly, he told them what had happened in Chief Takyak’s cabin that afternoon, and they listened, open-mouthed, with wonder, hardly able to believe what he was telling them.
Then, when they really gathered what it meant, they wanted to toss their cape aloft and give vent to their glee.
It was Bobby who restrained their enthusiasm. “No use getting excited yet,” he said. “We haven’t escaped from this old vessel yet, you know.”
“We’ll have to now,” said Mouser, suddenly sobered. “It’s up to us to give old Garrish the slip to-morrow night.”
“It won’t be so hard to get the boat,” Fred observed. “We ought to be able to do that. But it’s getting the provisions that worries me. We’ve got to have food!”