Josh made a scornful sound, which was a favorite habit of his whenever he wished to convey the idea that he looked on some remark of the stout boy as indicating an unsound mind.
“And us out here on a measly little old island in the middle of the old Mississippi, at that?” he observed, caustically, and then wound up with another “Huh!”
Jack at another time would have been amused to hear these two go at it, hammer and tongs; but the present was hardly an appropriate time for any sort of a dispute or even discussion.
“Suppose you fellows take a look around,” he remarked, “and perhaps after that you won’t need to ask me where I’m going to get my torch.”
After all it was sharp-eyed Andy who made the discovery.
“Arrah! and sure ’tis the moon he manes!” exclaimed the Irish lad.
“The moon,” echoed George, “now wherever do you see any signs of that same thing, I’d like to know?”
“Would you look at George, starin’ as hard as he can right into the west?” mocked Josh. “Since when has the moon taken to risin’ across the river, George? Reckon you’re a little mixed in your directions, ain’t you? Been bobbing over that engine of yours so much you get off your base. That’s right, turn your head around, and you’ll see what Jack means.”
There, somewhere not far from in the east the sky was brightening along the horizon which they could manage to see beyond the tumbling water of the river. Without a doubt it was the coming moon, sending a few shreds of her silvery light in advance to paint the way.
“I c’n see the tip of her face right now, apeekin’ above the line of trees away over there on the shore,” announced Josh, with a slight vein of exultation in his partly suppressed voice.
As they stood there and looked sure enough the edge of the moon began to slowly creep into sight. At first it seemed just for all the world like a silver pencil marking a bright eyebrow above the horizon; but gradually this extended, growing more pronounced all the while, until even a child could tell that it was the moon making her nightly bow to the darkened world below.
Not another word was said until every part of her now sadly battered disc had come into view. The moon was not near so beautiful as on the third night previous, when full; but there was still a deal of light shining from that yellow glove hung up there in the heavens like a huge lantern.