“It looks that way. Two unknown parties certainly dropped down on Josh while he was lying here. He put up as good a fight as he could, but they were too much for the poor fellow,” Jack went on, looking as though he might be reading all these things from the marks upon the sand.
“But you don’t say any signs of blood, do ye, Jack darlint?” asked Jimmy, with a plain vein of horror in his quavering voice.
“No, I’m glad to say I don’t,” replied the other. “So, on that account it would seem that the fellows haven’t actually hurt Josh, only made him a prisoner.”
Jimmy gave a bleat, not unlike the pitiful sound a distressed goat might emit.
“Och! thin the bally rascals have carried him away wid them, and we’ll niver set eyes on our chum agin. Whirra! whativer will Nick do about his rations, if the cook of the bunch be lost, strayed or stolen?” he whimpered.
“Nick be hanged!” said George, vehemently, though in a low tone; “never fear but he’ll get all he wants to eat. What we have to find out is where they’ve gone, and why they dared carry Josh Purdue away with them. And we’ll just do that same, if it takes the whole of the winter. You hear me speaking, don’t you? Oh! what did you do that for, Jack?”
This last sentence was caused by a sudden action on the part of Jack. He had raised the lantern, and with a quick, downward motion caused the light to go out—a trick readily learned by any one who will take the trouble to experiment. And thus they were left standing there in the dark.
“How under the sun did it happen that none of us saw it before?” Jack was softly saying, in a vexed tone, as though he had made a discovery that agitated him.
“Saw what?” asked George.