"I hear it's done all manner of things around here," Andy remarked earnestly. "I hope, Merritt, you and Rob managed to get that boat home; because if she's up in that cove still there won't be two sticks of her left fastened together. Why, the seas rose higher than they ever did before, so I heard, and they must have pounded in along that shore like hot cakes!"
"Oh! we managed to work her down, never fear," Merritt assured him; "and chances are she's O. K. now. Hello! Rob, we thought we'd step in and see how you all managed to hold out through the storm!"
"No damage done at our house; but I heard that the poor old Academy got caught again," the patrol leader remarked.
At which Andy threw up his hands, exclaiming,
"Don't tell me it was burned again, after the other bad blaze that let us out of school long enough for some of you fellows to run down to Panama, and have all kinds of fun!"
"No fire this time, but wind and rain," Rob said soberly. "Why, they say the whole roof was carried two hundred yards away, so that the rain beat in, and played hob with everything! The Academy is next door to a ruin right now. It begins to look as if we might have to be given another long vacation till they get a new roof on; and that may be a month, perhaps two!"
The three boys who heard this interesting news somehow did not seem to feel particularly sorry. Indeed, as soon as he could find his voice, Tubby burst out into a regular cowboy yell.
"Hooray! that means we'll have a chance to take Uncle Mark at his word if so be he wants the lot of us to hike down there over the Rio Grande, and see what can be done with his cattle on that ranch in Mexico! Again I say, 'Hooray for everybody.' Oh! say, tell me about that, won't you? It sounds too good to be true, Rob! Are you dead sure that that accommodating new roof went sailing away? And did it land two hundred yards off? Wouldn't I have liked to be around to see her go, though! And it will surely take the carpenters six weeks or two months to get a new one on and the rooms fixed over. Talk about luck, it never rains but it pours!"
"Yes," said Rob, laughing at the extravagant actions and words by means of which Tubby tried to express his joy; "we've just seen it pour the worst ever. If an inch fell on poor old Hampton, I'd say there was a foot solid came down; and without a roof on top, the inside of the Academy must look pretty tough."
"But about this queer old uncle of yours, Tubby, how is it we never met him?" inquired Merritt. "Tell us all about him, won't you? He must be some traveler; because I heard you say once he'd just been nearly a year in Africa exploring over the course Livingstone and Stanley took a long while back."