"Sure it's mesilf is wonderin' if we'll have the luck to run slap up against that other motor boat agin," he called out, as Jack happened to be bending over the engine at the moment.
The skipper made no response, as his attention happened to be taken up just then with something that required a little work. But the words had been spoken loud enough to have been heard twenty yards away in that quiet nook.
"I wouldn't shout so, if I were you, Jimmie," remarked Jack a little later, as he came back to where the other was getting the tent ready for erecting over the boat.
"Why, who's agoin' to hear me, sure?" demanded Jimmie, at the same time casting a nervous glance around at the heavy growth of bushes and trees that bordered their little cove.
"Oh! I don't suppose there's a human being within a mile of us right now," admitted Jack, laughingly; "but all the same it isn't good policy to tell all you know. Nobody can be sure there isn't some tramp lying hidden in these woods. And we don't want company, you see."
Frequently after that Jimmie would turn to glance around him, even while he was building the fire ashore and cooking the supper over it for a change. He could not get the warning of his boatmate out of his head, and Jack noticed that for a wonder the usually merry and light-hearted Irish lad made no attempt to carol any of his favorite school songs that evening.
They sat there by the fire a long while after eating. The night air had grown a bit cool, for it was October, when the early frosts nip. vegetation in the north; and even this far south the coming of night brings a change from the warm day.
And about nine o'clock Jack, feeling his eyes growing heavy, wondered whether it would not be wise for them to turn in. They had concluded, since everything seemed so safe, to try sleeping ashore for a change from the narrow quarters aboard the little motor boat; and the blankets were already lying in a heap; in fact, one served Jack as a means of keeping him from coming in contact with the bare ground as he sat there writing in his log book and figuring out the respective positions of the participants in the race, up to that time.
"I say, Jimmie," he began, when, looking around, he discovered that he was alone, the other having crept away at some time while Jack was busily employed.
"Now, where under the sun did that boy go to?" Jack said to himself, as he turned his head this way and that in the endeavor to see some sign of the missing one.