“What’s that?” demanded the other.
“There’s a feller sitting on deck right now, and I’ll be hanged if he hasn’t got a pair of marine glasses in his hands, leveled straight at us. Didn’t I tell you, Jack, there’s something mysterious about that boat? They are keeping tabs on us right along. Perhaps they’re down here to follow us, though what for I declare if I can guess. There, I guess he saw I had a pair of glasses leveled at him, for he dodged inside the cabin like a flash. Jack, whatever can it mean?”
“You’ve got me guessing, George, and I’ll have to pass,” laughed the other, although admitting to himself that the circumstances were beginning to savor more of mystery than up to now he had been willing to acknowledge.
[CHAPTER VI.]
NICK TRIES AGAIN.
“Jimmy, strike up a bar of ‘Nancy Lee,’ or the ‘Larboard Watch,’ while we’re moving at this snail’s pace along this shallow shore, looking for some nice place to camp.”
“That’s right, Jimmy, just as Jack says; it would sound right to hear music, for this is by a long shot the dreariest place we’ve struck yet. Tune up your lyre, then, or your banjo—I don’t care which—and give us a song.”
Accordingly, when thus pressed by the skipper, not only of his own boat but Herb as well, Jimmy reached in the cabin, and taking hold of his never far distant banjo, commenced to plunk away.
He had a fine mellow voice, and the rest of the boys never tired of hearing him sing. All of them joined in the chorus, though Josh squeaked so that he would have killed the whole melody, only that the volume of sound was so great the discordant vein could not easily be detected.