"Now, if you'll promise to stay here and not make any attempt to escape, we won't lock you up. Otherwise we'll have to lock you up in a stateroom."
"I'll promise," was the fellow's laconic response.
"By the way," Bud remarked, as they were about to leave the cabin, "would you mind telling us the handle of your name? We know your father's surname, but we'd like to know how to address you. You're too young for us to call you Mr. Howard."
"You c'n call me Bill, if you want to," the slingshot victim replied.
Hal was particularly impressed with a sly, cunning look in the eyes of the prisoner and told himself that the fellow would bear watching to keep him out of mischief.
"I tell you what I'd like to do," he said to his two friends as they reached the deck. "I'd like to hide in the closet in the cabin and watch that fellow. I bet he'd do something that would help us break his mysterious silence."
"You could steal down into that little alcove near the entrance of the cabin and watch him there through the crack in the door," Bud suggested.
"That's second best choice," said Hal, "I think I'll make use of it at once."
Accordingly he descended the companionway with the greatest caution and succeeded in ensconcing himself in the position suggested by Bud. He had not been there long when he was amply rewarded for his diligence.
He could hear the prisoner moving about in the cabin and a peep through the long narrow aperture along the hinge side of the door acquainted him with the object of the Canadian boy's interest. The latter, apparently, had just seated himself at the table, and with phones to his ears, was in the act of tuning the instrument.