With the usual perverseness of human nature, even though he fancied he could feel his hair rising, Crane proposed to linger a while longer.
“If we do,” he said, “mebbe we’ll see something.”
“Lot of good that will do us,” hissed Sleuth. “And there’s a big chance of seeing anything in this darkness, isn’t there? I thought you wanted to get to the camp?”
“And I thought yeou wanted to land on the island. Yeou don’t believe in spooks, yeou know.”
“What’s that got to do with it? Think I want to be chewed up by a hungry, vicious dog? I’m no fool.”
“Mebbe not,” admitted Crane, in a manner not at all intended to soothe the other boy. “Public opinion is sometimes mistaken abaout folks.”
Sleuth dipped his paddle nervously into the water.
“I’m hungry, anyhow,” he declared. “They’ll have supper waiting for us. It will spoil.”
“Look!” sibilated Sile, crouching a bit and lifting his arm to point toward the island. “I can see something! There’s something movin’! See it, Pipe—see it?”
Out from the edge of the pines, faintly discernible through the darkness, came something white which plainly resembled a dog. As both lads stared, motionless, at this thing, it seemed to squat upon its haunches, and, with lifted muzzle, it sent out across the water a repetition of that fearsome howling.