o sense in that."

The boys sat up straight.

"Say that again, won't you?" asked Teddy.

"It's where the water's comin' in," repeated Mark. "He said that over
and over. I s'pose it was the feelin' of the spray thet came over him in
the boat. I don't rightly know what else it could have been."

As the boys themselves turned the phrase over in their minds, they could
not see how it bore on the object of their search. They filed it away in
their minds to think about later on.

For the next two hours they discussed the matter with Mark, trying to
get from him any little shred of evidence that would be of help, and yet
at the same time guarding carefully against revealing the real object of
their questioning. He, for his part, set it down to the natural
curiosity they felt in an event that touched the life of one of them so
nearly, and did his best to cudgel his memory. But nothing more came of
it than they had already learned, and it was with a sense of depression
and failure that they finally gave up the cross examination that they
had come so far to make.

"Well, Mark," said Lester at last, when several long yawns had shown
that the old man was tired and sleepy, "we can't tell you how much
obliged we are to you for all you've told us. But I guess we've tired
you out with all our questions."

"Not a bit of it," denied Mark valiantly, though his drooping eyelids
belied his words.

"I was just a-wonderin' where I was goin' to put all you boys for the
night," he went on. "There's only one bed in the cabin, but I kin spread
some blankets on the floor, ef that'll do yer."

"Don't worry at all about that," said Fred cheerily. "You go right in to
bed and we'll bunk out here on the beach. It's a warm night, and we'd as
soon do it as not."

As there was really nothing else to do, Mark, after making a feeble
protest, said good-night and went inside, while the boys moved down the
beach until they were out of earshot and prepared to camp out.

"We didn't get much out of the old chap after all, did we?" said Bill
rather despondently.

"After coming all this way too," added Teddy, even more dejectedly.

"The only thing we'll have to show for the trip will be the shark, I
guess," said Lester.

"Well, that would be enough if we hadn't gotten anything else," declared
Fred. "But I'm not so sure that we came on a fool's errand after all."

"What makes you think we didn't?" asked Bill. "What do we know that we
didn't know b