Lowering the butt of the pole to the ground, Stone left the smudge burning against the hornets’ nest and rejoined his watching friends.
“We’d better keep watch to see that it doesn’t set fire to the woods,” he said. “By the time it burns out there will not be many hornets left to bother us.”
“You’ve got a great head on your shoulders, Stoney, old scout,” complimented Piper.
“I wish,” said Crane revengefully, “that I could hold that Dutchman’s nose in that smoke for abaout one minute. I guess he’d cough some.”
It was a long time before the smoke of the smudge died down to a tiny, wavering spindle of blueish gray; but when this took place the nest lay there, burned a bit and blackened at one end, a deserted looking thing indeed. If any of the hornets had survived, it seemed that they had departed in desperation or despair.
“Who is going to see if there are any left?” asked Sleuth.
“I think Sile would be a good one to do that.”
“What?” shouted Crane, glaring at the speaker with his unbandaged eye. “What d’yeou mean?”
“Why,” said Sleuth innocently, “if there should be any, and you happen to get stung two or three times more, it wouldn’t make much difference. You couldn’t feel a great deal worse.”
“Bah!” snarled Sile. “That’s sense, ain’t it? If you get me monkeyin’ round that thing yeou’ll know it, by jinks!”
It was Stone who picked up the pole and poked the nest around with it. Although he mutilated that nest, no hornets appeared, and, thrusting the charred, pointed end of the pole into the thing, he carried it away into the woods and left it.
“There,” he said, returning triumphantly, “we’re at peace once more.”
Not until an hour or more after dinner did any of the boys set out to visit Spirit Island. With the exception of Crane, all showed some eagerness to go; with the stingers extracted from his wounds, Sile was much more comfortable, but he made his condition an excuse for remaining at the camp. And, as the canoe was not large enough comfortably to carry more than three, Stone also self-sacrificingly agreed to remain behind.
The day was hot and muggy and still, and there were some masses of clouds bulking up along the western horizon as the canoe put forth bearing the three investigators. The two who remained behind watched them from the shore and wished them luck.