“Why, to be sure we are. Talk to me about your brave men, I like to hear a fellow speak about being scared away by the first sight of some poor, harmless chap. Perhaps it’s another of Mr. Smithson’s crazy people, escaped from the asylum over at Merrick, and hiding out here.”
On their camping-out trip of the preceding autumn they had met with a remarkable personage who persisted in declaring that he was the famous Prince Bismarck, and who eventually turned out to be an escaped inmate of the asylum at Merrick, some miles away.
A keeper named Smithson had engaged them to help him capture the demented one, and this was what Jerry was referring to when he spoke.
“I wouldn’t wonder but what that may be true,” remarked Frank, seriously; “but no matter, we are not the kind to run at a shadow. We laid out this trip to spend our Easter holidays on Wildcat Island, and it’s got to be something pretty threatening that will frighten us off.”
“Hear! hear!” exclaimed Jerry.
“That’s the stuff!” declared Bluff, thinking that he could not afford to let his rival take all the credit for valor.
“But I’ll never get another opportunity to take his picture,” complained Will.
“How do you know? Man alive, there may be no end of stirring times coming, with that same old hermit figuring in the circus. Perhaps the scent of our coffee and bacon will bring him back into touch with civilization; why, he may even walk into our camp, and try to make friends, when he gets a whiff of onions frying,” and Frank slapped his chum on the back as he spoke along this line.
“Oh! well, if you think that way I’ll keep up my hopes. And you just remember that if I seem to be hugging this little snapshot contrivance closer than usual, why, I’m only keeping in readiness for instantaneous work. A fellow has to be pretty quick on the trigger to get a picture of a wild man, you know.”
They soon had the boats unloaded.