"I should say not!" Cloudman agreed.
"The rain washed the rock free and sent it down the hill," decided
Phillips. "I can understand that, all right. But why did it fall just
now? Of course, there's nothing fishy about it, Rex?"
"I couldn't say. A fish might have done it, but he'd had a stiff climb
up to where that rock was."
"After that I'm sorry that _you_ moved! There's nobody would have done
such a thing, anyway."
"Even that scaley Injun wasn't on the island," Applejack added.
"I don't believe our beloved Horace, or any of his bunch, would have
strolled out in such a rain," Red went on carelessly.
"Hush!" chided Kingdon. "Evil to him who evil thinks."
"It's knocked all the think out of me," said Cloudman, grinning in a
sickly way.
All five felt a seriousness that they feared to display. Boys are prone
to consider any show of deeper feeling unmanly.
They started to dress, and found that the most of their garments were
more or less wet. As for putting on shoes and socks, that was foolish.
The driest place they could find was the cabin of the catboat, and as it
was almost high water they easily got aboard. When the oilstove was
lighted, Cloudman started to fry soft clams and bacon for breakfast.
"Talk about paradise!" sighed Red, stretching and crowding Peewee into a
space about as wide as a knife-edge. "This is it."
"It distinctly is _not_ it," denied Hicks. "A sardine in a can feels
lonesome, 'side of _me_. Move over, and let a fellow breathe."
Kingdon had not come aboard to stop. Getting into his oilskins, he
climbed the hill above the camp alone. He was in a pretty serious mood.
The bowlder had sheared the sod off the hillside for its entire course.
The water was running in a brown flood down the path of the avalanche.
Where the bowlder had been set was a hole all of two feet deep, and full
of water. The drainage from above, pouring down the hill, seemed to
have excavated the earth from all around the station of the bowlder. It
might be that the huge rock was merely washed out of its bed by the rain
and started in its plunge down the hill.
Kingdon looked farther up the hill. Through the still falling drizzle
he mounted the slope a few yards and found the sapling that he had
before noted. It had been brought out of the woods and apparently had
been put to criminal use. The smaller stone, still in position as a
fulcrum, pointed to one answer to the problem. The leverage of that
green stick might easily have started the bowlder to rolling. The rain
had merely helped cover the fact.