Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”
The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.
“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”
Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of its recent use.
When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three comrades there.
“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.
“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave him.
“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come, we hurried out here to look for you. Where have you been and what have you been doing?”
“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”
“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,” answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks of anxiety about you for an hour?”