For two long days they took turns of two hours watching at the peep hole between the two rocks and nothing had happened.
“This sure is getting monotonous,” the Captain complained to Bob as he relieved him about four o’clock in the afternoon of the third day. “If they don’t come today or tomorrow I’m afraid the men will begin to get uneasy and want to give it up for a bad job, and I can’t say as I’d blame them much. It sure is beginning to get on my nerves.”
Two or three times each day Bob had called Jack on the pocket phone and they had enjoyed long talks together. The phones were working perfectly and Captain Brice told Jack that he considered it one of the most wonderful inventions he had ever seen.
“I guess you aren’t the only ones who are getting tired of this waiting game,” Jack said when Bob told him what Captain Jim had said a few minutes earlier. “Mebby you think it’s fun waiting around this old farm with nothing to do from morning till night except eat.”
“Well, you have always seemed to enjoy that all right,” Bob laughed. “How are they feeding you there?”
“Wonderful. Best eats I ever had,” Jack replied. “But I do wish they would come.”
“And you aren’t the only one who wishes it,” Bob laughed as he bade him good-bye.
The following day, some time during the afternoon, Bob, who had been on watch since two o’clock and it was nearly time for him to be relieved, peeped out through the bush, he saw a thin whisp of smoke coming from the chimney of the cabin.
“That’s funny,” he thought “I didn’t hear anybody come up the trail. Wonder if I’ve been asleep and didn’t know it.”
A moment’s thought, however, convinced him that it was not at all likely, for he had not been at all sleepy.