He would see for himself. And judging from the way things were coming on, the crisis could not be long withheld now.
That caused Phil to remember that he had a chum aboard the Aurora. It seemed hardly fair that Larry should be kept in utter ignorance up to the very moment when the mine were sprung. The shock must be all the more severe under such conditions; and Larry would not be saved any agony of mind by the delay.
So Phil leaned over and shook the sleeper.
"Let up on that, Lanky!" grumbled Larry, who had doubtless been dreaming he was once more with some of his comrades at home; "I ain't agoin' to move, I tell yuh. Get breakfast first, and then call me. Go 'way!"
But Phil only renewed his shaking.
"Wake up, Larry!" he called softly; "the shingle-makers have come to board us! Get a move on, can't you?"
A startled exclamation, followed by a great upheaval, told that Larry had now grappled with the truth.
"W—where, which, how, why? Tell me, Phil, what's that fire doing down there? Oh! I hope now they ain't getting it hot for us, the tar, I mean!" he gasped, as he stared in the quarter where all those moving figures could be seen between the blaze and themselves.
"Oh, rats! get that out of your mind, Larry!" observed Phil, though truth to tell, it had cropped up in his own brain more than a few times to give him a bit of worry.
"They begin tuh come this way!" said Tony, with a catch in his voice, as though he were keyed up to a nervous tension because of the situation.