“With what?” shouted the others.
“I mean with her hands over her face. She has beautiful golden hair and wears black; they always do. Then there’s a terribly funny picture of the comic fellow jumping out of a second-story window with a life-preserver strapped around his waist.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly funny,” remarked Bob.
“With a life-preserver on him?” demanded Dan. “It was a fire.”
“You didn’t say it was a fire. I thought he was jumping into a river or something.”
“Well, he isn’t; he’s jumping into the street.”
“Still,” hazarded Nelson, “maybe he put the life-preserver on to save him from automobiles. You know it’s a mighty dangerous thing, jumping into the street nowadays.”
“Oh, you fade away!” growled Dan. “I’m going to see it, anyway.”
“We all are,” said Bob. “I haven’t been to a theater since Christmas vacation.”
So go they did, and had a fine time. After they got back to the launch and had been welcomed by Barry Tom and Dan reproduced the second act in the engine room, Dan playing the rôle of the Secret Service hero and Tom doing the distracted bride. Barry somewhat marred the effectiveness of the supreme situation by thinking the whole affair organized for his amusement and trying to shake Dan off his feet just when the latter had covered Nelson and Bob with a pair of “sneakers” and was in the act of declaiming in a blood-curdling voice: “The first to move is a dead man!”