“But they’ve stole all our grub!” Bill replied angrily as he halted, “an’ if we wait two or three hours there’ll never be a chance of gettin’ it back.”
“There’s no show of catchin’ them anyhow, so what’s the use of pullin’ all ’round the river for nothin’?”
By this time Bill began to realize that pursuit would be useless, and he came back to where his companions were standing as if dazed by the bold outrage.
“I knew it was Sim Jones gettin’ into that boat on the other side jest before I came below; but what beats me is, how he found out where we was? He must have follered me this afternoon.”
“I don’t reckon there was any need of that,” Tom added. “They could see us all the time while we were comin’ over, an’ after you got inside I reckon they rowed mighty hard. It wouldn’t be a great job to sneak up under the stern of this boat, an’ then, while one of the fellers made a noise on deck, the others crawled in through the windows. That’s the way of it.”
There was but little satisfaction in thus settling the method of the robbery; and Bill asked impatiently as he looked at each of his friends in turn:—
“What’er we goin’ to do ’bout it? Seems pretty tough to let them fellers break our good time up when we’ve counted on stayin’ here all the afternoon an’ evenin’. There won’t be any fun loafin’ ’round with nothin’ to eat.”
“S’posen all hands of us go ashore an’ buy somethin’ more?” Jimmy suggested. “We ain’t got the cash to get so much as we had before; but what we can scare up’ll be better’n nothin’.”
Bob and Tom looked at each other in dismay.
They had spent all their surplus money on the trip to Coney Island, and had no more than enough to buy their supply of papers when Josiah’s visit should have come to an end and they resumed work once more.