“I can soon build a fire on the ground large enough to cook the coffee, and that will be all we shall need.”
The others were perfectly willing to agree to this proposition, and the last work of the day was quickly dispatched.
Then the boys lay down to rest, and neither of them felt like prolonging a conversation when their eyes were so heavy.
Before nine o’clock the three were sleeping soundly, and it seemed to Vance that he had but just lost himself in slumber, when he was aroused by what sounded very much like a groan, as if a human being was in agony.
There were cold, bead-like drops of perspiration on his face as he raised himself to a sitting posture and listened.
The unearthly sound was repeated, and he trembled with fear, while before his eyes came a picture of the horrible sight he had witnessed during the forenoon.
Now Vance was not a boy who believed in ghosts or anything of that kind, but he knew perfectly well there were no other persons on the island, and yet here was a noise apparently close at hand, which must have been made by a human being.
“Of course those men whom we buried were dead,” he said to himself, “and if I waken the fellows they’ll insist I’m afraid of my own shadow.”
He was about to lie down again when the unearthly sound floated on the night air once more, and this time he fancied it came from some point nearer the tent than before.
There was no longer any fear in his mind that Ned and Roy would think him cowardly.