Bob then walked around to the chimney side. He wanted again to look at those marks in the soft ground—the marks that his chum had first taken for the prints of an elephant’s foot They were somewhat less plain now—those queer marks, but Bob could think of nothing more that they looked like than a sack of potatoes set down again and again because of its weight.
“It’s a queer case,” mused Bob as he turned away from the old log cabin. “A queer case—more so than that of the Golden Eagle or the wreck of the Sea Hawk. I don’t know how I’m going to make out on it.”
As he walked around to the front of the little dwelling, he saw, sitting on the low doorstep, the organ grinder. The Italian had leaned his wheezy instrument up against a tree, and the monkey was swinging from a low branch.
“Nobody home,” said Bob, thinking the fellow might have stopped to play, hoping, thereby, to earn some pennies.
“Nobody home,” murmured the other.
He held in his hand the long string that was attached to the collar of his monkey, and as Bob looked the fingers of the man began tying into the cord a number of sailors’ knots.
Idly, and seemingly unconsciously, the man made a square knot, he loosened that and threw a clove hitch—then a half hitch. Next he made a running bowline, all the while looking at the lad.
“Nobody home,” the Italian said, musingly. “Aw-right. I go—come, Jacko!”
And jerking on the string, which was a signal for the monkey to perch on top of the organ, the fellow shouldered his instrument and walked off toward the road.
“Sailors’ knot!” mused Bob to himself as he stood watching. “Sailors’ knots—I wonder——”