AND IS CAUGHT.
It was, as he afterward told Jack, a good man-sized sneeze, and made noise enough to waken the seven sleepers. Instantly the voices stopped. Poor Bob was in a quandary as to what to do. He knew that it would be useless to beat a retreat as they would be sure to hear him and be upon him before he could much more than get started. So he lay perfectly still hoping that they would attribute the sound to some animal. But, in his heart, he knew that the hope was futile. These men knew perfectly well the sound made by any animal in the Maine woods and would know that the sneeze came from a human throat.
“By gar! Dat some man close here,” he heard one of them say.
“Oui, I tink you right,” the other replied. “We better find heem queek.”
Bob hoped that they had no light but this hope was almost immediately dashed to the ground as the light from an electric torch began to play through the thick woods. He was lying behind a thick clump of bushes and he tried to worm himself into the midst of them hoping they would conceal him.
The two men were now making no pretense of keeping quiet but were crashing this way and that through the underbrush and the boy knew that unless the unexpected happened it was only a question of a few minutes before they would find him. He was debating whether it would not be better to get up and show himself and had decided on making the move when he felt his foot grasped by a powerful pair of hands and he was yanked violently out of his hiding place.
“Me got heem,” his captor called as he grabbed him by the shoulder and jerked him to his feet.
The other man was only a few feet away and in another moment had joined them.
By the light of the torch Bob saw that he had been correct in his thought regarding the identity of one of the men. The other was much smaller and, to the best of his knowledge he had never seen him before.
“What you do here, huh?” the big man demanded still retaining his hold on Bob’s collar.