“Come on, Lathrop,” said Billy, the second morning after the aeroplane faded from view, “let’s get the guns and go for a hunt. I’m sure I heard a wild turkey in the brush yonder a while ago, and Ben can mount guard over the wireless while we are gone.”
“Do you think that will be all right?” questioned Lathrop dubiously, “you know I’m the only one in the camp that can operate the instrument and I think I ought to keep within reach of it.”
“You’re right,” rejoined Billy. “It will be better for Ben and I to go.”
Ben agreed with alacrity, the old prospector was never better pleased than when there was an opportunity to hunt, and he hastened to oil up his gun and fill his cartridge belt.
“Hold on a minute,” said Ben, as he and Billy Barnes started out, “I’m too old a woodsman to go into the woods without agreeing on a signal if anything happens. We’ll use the old hunter’s warning. If we need you, Lathrop, or you need us, we are to fire first one shot then a pause and then two shots in rapid succession and keep it up till we get an answer. We’ll be back to dinner.”
“All right,” replied Lathrop, “though I don’t see just what trouble you can get into here, and as for me, I am all right I guess—so long.”
Left alone Lathrop took his fountain-pen and—though he had no idea when he could post it—began the composition of a long letter home. He was so engrossed with this employment that he did not notice the hour, and it was not till Pork Chops summoned him to lunch that he recalled with a start that the two hunters were still away. However, he assured himself it was probable that they had found good hunting in some distant part of the island and that they had not, like himself, realized how late it was getting.
This done he walked uneasily up and down, waiting impatiently for the return of the hunters. He was really anxious and could no longer disguise from himself the fact that something of a serious nature must have happened to keep them out away so long. His mind ran the gamut of every accident, from snake-bite to accidental shooting, but he was as far from guessing the real truth as he was from being at ease in his mind.
“Bang!” A long pause—then again, “Bang—Bang.”
It was the alarm signal agreed upon by Ben Stubbs before the hunters left camp.