“But there are no tigers, nor any other fierce beasts here, Jem.”
“Now, how can you be so obstinate, Mas’ Don, when you can hear ’em whistling, and sighing and breathing hard right in yonder. No, no, not a step farther do you go.”
“Don’t be so foolish, Jem.”
“’Tarn’t foolish, Mas’ Don; and look here: I’m going to take advantage of them being asleep to put on my proper costoom, and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll do just the same.”
Don hesitated, but Jem took advantage of a handy seat-like piece of rock, and altered his dress rapidly, an example that, after a moment or two of hesitation, Don followed.
“Dry as a bone,” said Jem. “Come, that’s better. I feels like a human being now. Just before I felt like a chap outside one of the shows at our fair.”
He doubled up the blanket he had been wearing, and threw it over his arm; while Don folded his, and laid it down, so that he could peer over the edge of the shelf, and command the entrance to the ravine.
But all was perfectly silent and deserted, and, after waiting some time, he rose, and went a little way inside the cavern.
“Don’t! Don’t be so precious rash, Mas’ Don,” cried Jem pettishly, as, urged on by his curiosity, Don went slowly, step by step, toward what seemed to be a dark blue veil of mist, which shut off farther view into the cave.
“I don’t think there’s anything to mind, or they wouldn’t have told us to hide here.”