I told them the best that I could about my adventures, and I asked him what had happened to the light.
“I stumbled over the storage battery and spilled the chemicals,” he said.
“Was it you calling killed?” I asked him.
“It was I calling spitted,” he said.
“Good night!” Grove blurted out.
“It shows how much you all know,” Pee-wee piped up. It was the same old Pee-wee. “I wasn’t anywhere near those two rocks and I—I wouldn’t know them if I met them in the street. I was sub-conscious in a tree—I mean unconscious. When I slipped up there, I went kerflop off the precipice—just like in the movies. There was a tree sticking out and I caught it and I was kind of stunned. But anyway, I stuck there in the branches, because I’m lucky. When I got all right again I managed to crawl along a little ways and then I slipped down and landed behind a rock or something, and below that it wasn’t so steep. I went down, because I couldn’t get up and I wandered around down there, until I heard somebody groaning. That was Roy.”
“Why didn’t you answer when I called?” Harry asked him.
“I guess I must have been unconscious then,” the kid said. “How could I answer you if I was unconscious? I guess you were never unconscious.”
Harry said, “Well, if I’ve never been unconscious, at least I’m stupefied. Pee-wee, I think you have nine lives like a cat. I’ll never worry about you again. Go where thou wilt. You were born under a lucky star. But tell me this, do either one of you nightly wanderers know who it is who lies wedged between those two rocks somewhere down here?”
“He’s surely dead,” little Skinny piped up; “isn’t he?”