"I should say it had," added Bobolink. "I kept moppin' my face most of the way up the rise. Thought we'd sure get a fine breeze after reachin' the top; but nixey, nothing doing. It's as dead as a door nail; or Julius Caesar ever was. Yes, that spells rain before night, I'd like to risk my reputation as a weather prophet in saying."
"Still, we go on?" Paul asked.
"Well, we'd be a fine lot of scouts," blurted out Bobolink, "if the chance of getting our backs wet made us give up a plan we'd decided on."
"Lead the way, Paul; they're bent on finding out something more about these men. And feeling that way, as Bobolink says, a little rain storm wouldn't make them change their minds," and Jack, while speaking, started after the scout master, who had commenced to descend the hill.
They did not immediately turn toward the north side. There seemed no use in deliberately making their presence known to any one stationed over at the north end of the island, providing the mysterious men were not already aware of it.
Paul, when doing his wigwag act, had been careful to keep the crest of the hill between his flag and that suspicious quarter where the smoke column was lazily creeping up, as smoke has a habit of doing just before rain comes.
Of course it might be possible that the man in the aeroplane, after discovering the tents in the sink, may have made some sort of signal that would tell his comrades the fact of the scouts having returned in the night.
Paul wished, now that it was too late, he had thought to ask Jud about that point. It might be of some benefit to them to know whether the men were aware of their presence; or rested serene in the belief that they were the only occupants of the island, besides the wild man.
After the scouts had gone down a little way, Paul began to change his course. He was now turning toward the north. The trees grew much more thickly here, and would surely screen them from observation.
The boys had resumed their former habit of observing everything that came in their way, as true scouts always should. They turned their heads from right to left and Bobolink even looked back of him more than a few times. Perhaps he remembered that there was a wild man at large who might take a notion to awake from his sleep, and, discovering the scout patrol, think it his business to follow them.