This from the panting Buster, and he really meant it, too, which was the strangest part of it all; he had come rumbling along like an ice-wagon, as Josh was accustomed to saying, swinging that long club of his in a way that was as dangerous to friends as foes.
“Huh! let ’em!” Josh went on to say, mockingly. “I like that, now, sure I do. As if we had anything to do with their skipping out. They were ready to flew the coop when they heard us a-comin’, and only had to start the engine. Jenks, here he got that fixed a little too soon. If he’d only let her go till morning he’d not be minus a boat now, see?”
All of which was true, but nobody sucked any consolation out of it. When a horse has been stolen, how little the unlucky owner cares when some neighbors come along and show him how he might have avoided his loss; what he thinks of most of all is the matter of getting the lost animal back again into his barn.
And Jack was built that way. He seldom spent any time mourning over the milk that was spilt; but immediately proceeded to try and remedy conditions.
One thing sure, if ever they hoped to give these fellows any further trouble, it would not be accomplished by sitting down, and trying to discover why they could not have navigated that little patch of timber faster; or pushed through at a more direct line, so as to have saved that fatal angle.
The mill will never again grind with the water that is past—how frequently Jack could remember hearing his teacher in school say that; and he had often applied it to his own actions.
No, the robbers were done with that island, and had also abandoned their own boat, for it could be seen tied up there, just ahead. If they were to be met again it must be on the river.
That would mean a hot pursuit on the part of the motor boat boys; and this was what Jack was turning over so quickly in his mind while he stood there looking out after the disappearing craft.
“Oh! they left it after all!” exclaimed Algernon, as he too came up, considerably the worse for wear, because of the frequent arguments he had had with various unseen branches and logs and such things, in his hasty run.