"Yes, but this isn't an untraveled region, like it was down there. In course of time we should be picked up."
"Hum! Yes, that's so. Tell you what, Sandy, if we get a chance to escape, we'll make for some island and hide there till an opportunity comes to get off."
"Jack, do you recall that island where the ghost was snoopin' around? Ye ken the one I mean?"
"Do I? I should say so. Well, that was as tight a scrape as this, but we got out of it, all right."
"So we did," agreed Sandy, cheering up, and with almost a lively ring in his tones, "and that fix was our own fault, too. If we hadn't tried tricks on the professor and got tied to that turtle, we wouldn't have been marooned."
"Well, in this case we haven't even the satisfaction of blaming ourselves," whimsically remarked Jack.
The hours wore slowly away. At first the long wait in the darkness was merely tedious. Then it began to grow painful, and at length, such were the boys' thirst and hunger and suffering from the intense heat, that they went almost crazy.
Work as they would at their bonds, they could not loosen them. The steel bracelets resisted all efforts to unfasten them. To make matters worse, when the lads flung themselves wearily down to try and pass the interminable hours in the forgetfulness of sleep, they found that they were not the sole tenants of the hold.
Huge rats presently began scampering about. The creatures at first rushed off when the boys cried "Scat!" But, after a time, they grew bolder, and came in legions. The lads could hear their squeakings and bickerings as they nosed about them. It was truly a horrible sensation. Little red eyes, like needlepoints of fire, burned through the darkness, and Jack recalled tales he had read of prisoners whose bones had been picked of flesh by the loathsome rodents.
"They'd find us tough picking," laughed Sandy, when Jack communicated his fears, but in his easy manner the Scotch lad concealed a world of real, almost desperate, anxiety.