Part 10 (1/2)
THE JOURNEY BEGINS
”Well, boys,” said the professor, ”have you had enough breakfast?”
”I don't knohether I have had enough or not,” responded Jo ”But I'm afraid I can't eat any more”
”That's bad,” re with you Still, if you go on deck, perhaps you will be better by dinner tiht pick out your staterooms This is the captain's rooineer's roo over the rooms about which there was really little choice, Jo and To, and Juarez decided on the invitation of John Berwick to rooineer on the voyage This left Jim with a cabin to himself
The boys had but just settled the ry exclamations from the professor
”Nohat do you think of that?” he cried, when the boys rushed into the saloon where he was standing holding up his handbag in which a long slit had been cut with a sharp knife
”Their audacity passes all bounds!” he went on wrathfully ”They have got it at last”
”What is lost?” asked Jim
”The chart, the map of the island,” replied the professor ”I don't know as it will do any one else ood Besides the points of the coures on it, but it's a bad loss for all that”
”Are you sure it is gone?” asked Jim
”Well, it isn't here,” replied the professor ”Fortunately, I can reitude, which is really the i”
”What was the paper like?” put in Tom
”It was just a rude chart,” answered the professor ”It was in a flat box I put it in the box to keep it safe fro it withshould get out of ht And I don't knohen it did”
”Looks as if we had spies all around us,” said Jireed the professor ”But now that we are on the yacht ill be safe”
”Humph!” muttered Tom, who had just returned to the cabin after a moment's absence, ”I'm not so sure about that, but,” he continued, ”was the box anything like this?” He held up to their gaze a thin oblong tin box
”Why, it looked like that!” exclai the box To with it?”
”I found it in ed to Jo, and that he had dropped it in by mistake”
”I suspect that is just what I did in an absent-,” said the professor ”The joke is onthat I did it, for I think now, seeing this slit inI can do is to have you take care of it for me”
”Don't you think you had better keep it?” protested Jim