"I'll do it anyhow, if you insist upon it!" grinned Sandy.
"It was a rotten thing for me to do!" exclaimed George. "I never expected to go to sleep when I lay down in my bunk, but I did go to sleep, and some one walked into the cabin and carried Bert away! I'll never get over it if anything serious happens to him!"
"Aw, cut it out!" exclaimed Sandy. "We'll find him all right. The question before the house right now is whether we're going to get supper before we start out on a hunt for the kid."
"We may as well get supper," Will advised. "There's no use whatever of our running around in circles in the dark. We've got to sit down here and reason it out. Before we do anything at all, we ought to reach some conclusion as to why the poor kid was taken away."
"Why, I thought that was all understood," Sandy interrupted. "I thought we decided not long ago that the man who stole the code wireless came back to get Bert to translate it for him."
"There was some talk of that kind," Will agreed, "and I guess it's as near to the truth as we can get with our present knowledge of the incident. Anyway, I can conceive of no other reason for the abduction."
"Then we may as well get supper while we're studying out the proposition," George said, "and, by way of penance, I'll do the cooking!"
The lad turned to Sandy to ask a question regarding the sudden appearance of the bear steak, and then for the first time noted his dilapidated and generally disreputable condition.
"Where did you get it?" he asked, pointing to the bruised face and torn garments. "You've gone and spoiled a perfectly good Boy Scout suit."
"And the bear we're going to have for supper," Will chuckled, "came very near spoiling a perfectly good Boy Scout."