Perhaps, after all, this treatment was what the case demanded. Hagle cowered under the attack, but when the Shark paused, he raised his head. There was, of a sudden, an air almost of resolution about him.
“I—I’ll tell you fellows. I know Sam saved me—Sam, and you, Shark.”
“Rats! Leave me out!” growled the youth especially addressed.
“I won’t—I can’t! You helped. And I am grateful—I am! Only—only”—Jack faltered miserably—“only what is there for me to tell?”
“You came over in a boat?” Sam suggested. “We saw one drifting away from shore—it was yours, wasn’t it?”
“I—I suppose so.”
“Why did you come across at night?”
“The fire had started up again. We—I mean, I—I saw the glow. I happened to be awake and looked out of the window. So I dressed, and took the boat, and rowed over, to see—to see how much of a start it was getting. And that—that’s the truth, Sam!”
Neither of his hearers had missed the inadvertent use of the plural pronoun. They exchanged swift glances at the betraying “we.” The Shark would have spoken, but Sam raised a warning hand.
“It’s queer, Jack, that you didn’t give the alarm to the people in the cottages.”