“Catch me putting my hand on a pirate like that while he’s got an ounce of fight left in him,” the other declared. “Why, one snap of those jaws and he’d take your whole paw off, sure. Yes, give us the gaff hook, or we don’t go.”
“Then you don’t intend to keep us company?” asked Herb of Jack.
“I think I’ll just hang around here this morning, boys.”
“Oh! all right. I can see with half an eye that you’ve got something up your sleeve, Jack; but post us when the show comes off, won’t you?” George remarked, laughingly.
An hour later, long after the two ambitious fishermen had departed in their little rowboats for a siege of trolling along the lonely shores of the island, Jack quietly stepped into his own dinky, and paddled ashore.
“Now what can he be up to?” Nick asked Josh, as they looked after the other.
“Give me something easy, will you?” replied that worthy. “But all the same, I noticed that Jack was careful to take his gun along.”
“But he can’t shoot any game now; the law is on nearly everything, you know. And up here the wardens are always on the lookout for poachers,” Nick continued.
“Oh, shucks!” Josh complained, “you don’t see through a millstone, even when it’s got a big hole in it. Can’t you understand that Jack is bent on looking up that ghost business? Wonder if it was Tricky Clarence at the back of it. Gee! but when I first set eyes on the same I really thought it was a dead sure spirit of some old Injun chief come back from the Happy Hunting Grounds to warn us away.”
“Huh! I noticed that you hung on to that same idea to the bitter end,” Nick continued pugnaciously. “Right now, I bet you believe deep down in your silly heart, it was a regular hobgoblin. Oh! I know you all right, Josh Purdue; and you’ve got a scary heart all right. But I saw, just as soon as Jack spoke up, how we’d been fooled by Clarence. Wait till he comes back, and he’ll prove it.”