"Olly's made, if he's got some new clothes!" said Moke.
"He never would speak to us, after that!" said Poke. "Never mind; we can 'wake Nicodemus' without him."
"Wake Nicodemus!" Moke shouted gleefully, to hear his voice resound in the woods.
"Wake Nicodemus!" Poke repeated. And the three joined gayly in the chorus of a song then popular:
"Now, run and tell Elijah to hurry up Pomp, And meet us at the gum-tree down in the swamp, To wake Nicodemus to-day!"
The very human biped whose cries had been mistaken for a loon's, heard their voices wafted to him by the wind—the same wind that was blowing him farther and farther from the shore.
He screamed again, wildly; but his own voice sounded weaker and weaker, while the merry chorus still went up from the little camping party on the beach:
"Wake Nicodemus to-day!"
The boys sang and chatted as they worked. They made their beds in a hollow of the windswept dunes, where there would be less annoyance from mosquitoes than in the shelter of the woods, and spread their hay and blankets upon the dry sand.
"Besides," said Perce, "the daylight will strike us here, and wake us early."