“He doesn’t know himself, probably,” he answered. “Darkies always do look on the black side of things.”
“Maybe due to their color,” grinned Tom, and so the thing passed off with a laugh.
By this time the sky had darkened until it was almost like night on the island and a wind had risen. The boys knew that any further adventuring for the treasure was off, for that day at least, and so they resigned themselves to the inevitable. Not without a good deal of grumbling, however, for their disappointment was keen. They had counted on having part of the treasure safely stowed away by nightfall.
And that was not the worst of it. The storm, unlike the others which they had encountered, refused to blow over in a few hours. It continued all that day and the next and well into the next. Even though the wind had abated most of its fury it seemed to the exasperated boys as though the rain would never stop. It came in a steady sheeting downpour until it seemed as though the heavens must be emptied of every drop of moisture. And still it rained.
Although there was no chance at present of salvaging the treasure, the boys refused to be held prisoners with in the cave. Putting on rain coats and boots and drawing their caps down over their eyes, they plunged out into the beating rain with a sense of defying the elements. This was on the afternoon of the third day.
“Maybe if the rain sees we don’t scare for it, it will get tired and stop,” said Tom boyishly as they trudged along, heads down, collars turned up about their ears.
“I hope so, but I doubt it,” returned Dick, gloomily. “Looks as if this state of things were going to continue for another week at least.”
Jack Benton and Bimbo had declined to accompany the boys, the former because he felt it necessary that some one should stay at the cave, and Bimbo because he disliked wet weather in general.
“I wonder what that old boy has on his mind,” said Dick, speaking of Bimbo. “He sure thinks this island is all to the bad. I wonder if he knows anything that we don’t know.”
“What a crazy idea,” snorted Tom. “What could he know?”