"That job's done," Paul remarked, presently, when Jud replied with a gesture that implied his understanding the message; "and now to move down-hill again. We're taking some big chances in what we're expecting to do, fellows, and I only hope it won't prove a mistake. Come along!"
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DISCOVERY
"There's one thing that I think we haven't bothered our heads much about, Paul," remarked Jack, just before they quitted the vicinity of the big cedar on top of the hill.
"What?" asked Bobolink, cocking his head on one side to see how well his initials looked in the bark of the tree from which Cedar Island took its name; and which would tell later explorers that others had been there ahead of them.
"Why, it seems to me those clouds down there on the southern horizon have a look that spells storm," Jack continued.
"Wow! wonder if we will strike another rainy spell?" said Bobolink, so quickly that none of the others had a chance to get a word in; "that last one helped us get out of the mud in the canal; if another comes will it be as accommodatin', or turn on us, and whoop things up, carrying our tents away over the island, and losing 'em in the swamps beyond there?"
"Oh! say, don't imagine so much, Bobolink," interrupted Phil. "You're the greatest fellow I ever saw for figuring all sorts of bad things out long before they ever get a chance to start. What Jack means is, will we be apt to get caught in the rain, and be soaked?"
"That's the main thing," added Tom Betts, who was rather particular about how his khaki suit looked on him, for Tom was a bit of a "dresser," as some of the others, less careful with regard to their looks, called it.
"I've noticed that it's grown pretty close and muggy," Paul went on.