Phil nodded.
“Getting worse and worse all the time,” he said, adding with a grin as he drew his gaze down from the mountain, “Looks as if we were hedged in between two fires. We’ll have to be pretty spry on our feet if we don’t get burned by one or the other of them.”
“I’ll tell the world,” said Tom ruefully. He had come out of the cave just in time to hear Phil’s last sentence. “If old Ramirez doesn’t get us, the mountain will. Bimbo says that old boy is getting ready to spill a lot of lava on us.”
“Which old boy, Ramirez or the mountain?” asked Tom, trying to be funny and only getting a pitying stare for his pains.
“So Bimbo says we’re going to have an eruption, does he?” remarked Phil, adding softly, as though speaking to himself, “Well, a little while ago I wouldn’t have paid much attention to what Bimbo said. But now it’s different. He said there wasn’t any luck for us on this island, and I’m beginning to believe him.”
“How about the treasure?” asked Jack Benton and Phil turned on him with a grin.
“We didn’t find that on the island,” he reminded him. “We found it under the sea!”
And so the long hot day wore on and nothing happened except that that menacing cloud over the mountain grew darker and darker. Toward the middle of the afternoon there came a slight earthquake shock, not severe enough to cause them any great alarm. Just the same it might be noticed that they gazed oftener and more anxiously at the threatening mountain.
Needless to wish now as they had wished so many times before that they had not lost their good ship on the treacherous rocks. If they had any kind of water-tight craft, large enough for them to set sail in, it would be so easy to outwit Ramirez and his gang now that they knew of his villainous plans. They could not recover the rest of the treasure, perhaps, but they could at least make sure of what they had.
Poor Bimbo was anything but happy. Nearly all the day he hugged the cave as though that were his only refuge. Once or twice he ventured forth, and on those occasions he seemed to be doing his best to keep his eyes from wandering to the lowering mountain and the cloud of smoke that hung low above it. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, his gaze would come round to it and with an ejaculation of terror he would duck for the cave once more.