“How’s that?” asked Harry, not knowing well just what to say to the old man who took his business failure so much to heart.
“Why, I was watching you studyin’ that map. I could see by yer face that you put some stock in Duval’s yarn. Ain’t that so?”
Harry could not but confess that it was. The old man’s story, and the map, had aroused in him the strong desire for adventure that both Boy Aviators possessed to a marked degree. Of course, from what Ben had said, Duval did not appear to be a person on whom much reliance could be placed, but then, again, there was the map, and it at least, even if crude, appeared to have been a genuine effort to mark the spot where the wreck lay. It showed a bayou marked “Black Bayou,” running back from the main stream of the Mississippi. A black dot some distance up this bayou was lettered “Belle of New Orleans,” presumably the name of the steamer on which Duval met his end.
The boy was still pondering over the map when, from seaward, there came a sound that made both Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs spring to their feet.
“It’s a gun!” shouted the old man, as the booming echoes died away; “may be a ship in distress.”
“Hardly, in this weather,” rejoined Harry, in a perplexed tone.
But Ben Stubbs had darted from the shanty and was running for the beached skiff. A minute later Harry was close on his heels, and presently they were pulling around the point, about to run into the surprise of their lives.
CHAPTER VII.—A PUZZLING PROBLEM.
It is now time that we returned to the island where we left Pudge Perkins patrolling the beach, and Frank Chester and Billy Barnes wrapped in slumber. Frank had set the alarm clock for midnight, when it had been arranged that he and Billy were to turn out on patrol, and its insistent clamor had only just commenced when he sprang out of his bunk broad awake and prepared to go on duty. Billy stretched and yawned a bit before he, too, tumbled out.
“Gee whillakers!” he exclaimed, as he got into his clothes, “it seems to me that we are making a lot of fuss over nothing, Frank. I don’t believe those fellows will come near the island to-night.”