“What! more adventures?” cried the chagrined Nick. “I tell you it ain’t fair for everybody to get in the lime light, and leave poor me in the lurch. What have I done to deserve this? Say, I hope you fellows ain’t holding that silly thing up against me yet, about betraying our secrets to the enemy, and all that rot, you know? That would be mean.”
“Oh! shucks, cut it out, Buster,” said Josh; “and let George tell us what else happened. This mystery is getting on my nerves, I tell you, boys. Go on, proceed, George, old chum. Give us the harrowing details.”
“You won’t find much to alarm you in this,” laughed the other. “Only, while we were fishing a boat came along, and it had two men in it. They rowed up close, and we could see they had a fishing rod in action. The one who held it kept watching us as sharp as the mischief. He spoke to us pleasant like, and asked a few questions about our luck, how we happened to be so far over toward the Canada side, if we expected to move away soon to new grounds, and such things.”
“Did you recognize the boat, or the men, George?” asked Jack, quietly.
“Herb and myself talked that over afterwards; until his tumble overboard knocked it all out of our heads. And we thought that perhaps those men were one of those couples we saw yesterday, passing here and staring in at us.”
“Say, perhaps they may have been Canadian custom officers, who patrol the river to keep American fishermen off their side,” suggested Nick.
“That might be,” George said. “We thought of that; but they didn’t give us any warning. And besides, from the chart we’ve got we’ve learned that this island is American territory all right, you know.”
“Oh! well, what’s the use of bothering our heads over it,” declared Herb, from inside the outing shirt he was pulling over his head.
“That’s right!” cried Josh. “Fling away dull care while the sun shines, and we’ve got enough grub left to keep Nick here from starving to death.”
When the fat boy was not looking, Josh reached down, and took hold of some object he had smuggled aboard without the others noticing the fact. It was a length of old tin waterpipe that he had found up alongside the deserted shanty, and which had evidently been useful at some time in the past, to convey the water from the roof to a spot where it would not back into the cabin.