“All right.” Johnny sprang to his feet. “Shake on it. Let’s always be friends.”
The girl made no response. There was no need. She did clasp his hand in a grip that was friendly and strong.
A half hour later they were having one more cup of tea in their staterooms and Johnny was thinking, “Life surely is strange. I wonder how this affair will end.”
Before he fell asleep he went over it all again. Blackie and Lawrence, the silent, moving shadow, the hard-working men on shore, the airplane that might come. When he was too far gone in sleep to think clearly he fancied that he felt the ship’s propeller vibrating, that the ship was on the move. He was not sure. After all, what did it matter? There was nothing he could do about it. And so, he fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER XIX
ORDERED BELOW
Back in the trapper’s cabin Blackie was in a rage. He stormed at the Orientals, at MacGregor, then at himself. From time to time he rushed out on the small dock in a vain attempt to pierce the thick fog and to listen with all his ears.
“The robbers have got them,” he muttered. “I should have known. That shadow! It’s done for them and for the Stormy Petrel.”
As night came on he settled down to sober thinking. “There’s a fishing skiff out there by the dock,” he said to Lawrence. “We’ll have to put it in the water and make a try for the mainland. This cabin is on an island. Mainland must be thirty miles away. We’ll make it. We’ll find some sort of power boat. And then, by thunder! Things will get to popping!”
Lawrence, too, was disturbed in his own quiet way. He knew a great deal about Johnny. Many a time Johnny had been in a tight spot. Always, somehow, he had come out safely. MacGregor was old and wise. And, after all, this was not a time of war. Why need one worry too much?
There were a number of tattered books on the shelf in the corner. Evidently this trapper was something of a naturalist, for five of these were about animals and birds. In browsing through these, the boy made a real find, a picture of a glacier bear, a brief description, and the history of the animal as far as known.