"Hurry; they are after me. I think they are the ones who marooned me
here. Their boat looks like yours, I guess."

"See!" exclaimed Bud. "This makes things look bad. If those fellows are
robbers they're armed. We haven't a gun on board, and if we had we
wouldn't want to get in a fight over an affair that looks more like a
joke than a tragedy."

"And yet it may be a tragedy," said Hal.

At this moment Cub reappeared in the cabin and the situation was
explained to him.

"It begins to look like a tragedy," he admitted; "and yet if we treat
it as a tragedy and it proves to be a joke, we'll feel like a comedy
of errors."

"Now, you're getting highbrow, Cub," was Hal's mock objection.

"It's common sense, isn't it?" the youthful philosopher reasoned.

"Yes, but you forget one thing," the sly-eyed Hal rejoined: "With so much
Q R M, it's very hard to pick out common sense in an affair like this."

"That's true," replied the other. "We've had more interference in this
trip thus far than anything else."

"And the big question now is, how're we goin' to tune it out?"