“Later to be eaten by the sharks,” finished Tom, gloomily, and at this even Dick seemed convinced that the part of wisdom would be to stick close to the shore.
All day long they kept guard, ready at the first sign of attack to make for the barricaded cave, thus more or less evening the odds against them.
They were confident of being able to rout the enemy. It was only the delay that worried.
“Why don’t they get busy?” cried Dick, pacing up and down, his hands shoved savagely in his pockets. “I can stand anything but this waiting game. If they don’t start something pretty soon, I’m going to take my gun and do a little war dance over to their part of the island all by myself if nobody else will come with me.”
“Like fun you are,” said Phil quietly. “We can’t leave the treasure unguarded. You know that.”
This seemed to give Dick pause but almost immediately he began his restless pacing up and down again.
“Then why don’t they get busy?” he demanded again, as though in some mysterious way the delay were all Phil’s fault.
“Probably,” Phil answered, his gaze fixed on the lowering mountain where it towered far above them, “they are taking it easy to-day. They naturally think that in this fine weather we’d be out hunting the rest of the treasure. Probably Ramirez or one of his buddies will be sneaking around this evening to see what we’ve got.”
“I suppose so,” returned Dick and then he followed the direction of Phil’s gaze, his eyes coming to rest on the dark cloud that hovered close above the mountain.
“The old boy looks pretty bad, doesn’t he?” Dick remarked, anxiously.