“Say that again, won’t you?” asked Teddy.
“It’s where the water’s comin’ in,” repeated Mark. “He said that over and over. I s’pose it was the feelin’ of the spray thet came over him in the boat. I don’t rightly know what else it could have been.”
As the boys themselves turned the phrase over in their minds, they could not see how it bore on the object of their search. They filed it away in their minds to think about later on.
For the next two hours they discussed the matter with Mark, trying to get from him any little shred of evidence that would be of help, and yet at the same time guarding carefully against revealing the real object of their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression and 166 failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they had come so far to make.
“Well, Mark,” said Lester at last, when several long yawns had shown that the old man was tired and sleepy, “we can’t tell you how much obliged we are to you for all you’ve told us. But I guess we’ve tired you out with all our questions.”
“Not a bit of it,” denied Mark valiantly, though his drooping eyelids belied his words.
“I was just a-wonderin’ where I was goin’ to put all you boys for the night,” he went on. “There’s only one bed in the cabin, but I kin spread some blankets on the floor, ef that’ll do yer.”
“Don’t worry at all about that,” said Fred cheerily. “You go right in to bed and we’ll bunk out here on the beach. It’s a warm night, and we’d as soon do it as not.”
As there was really nothing else to do, Mark, after making a feeble protest, said good-night and went inside, while the boys moved down the beach until they were out of earshot and prepared to camp out.
“We didn’t get much out of the old chap after all, did we?” said Bill rather despondently.