IN THE GRAY OF THE MORNING.
As the first flush of dawn appeared Ned said: "Jack, we mustn't lose our heads. You know what you said after the wreck. You and I have to look after Charley to-day, and we may have need of all our wits and all our strength; so, for his sake, if not for our own, we must force a full breakfast down our throats. It will steady as well as strengthen us. I don't want any thing to eat, and I suppose you don't, but we must eat for all that. We haven't had a mouthful since noon yesterday, and we'll be fit for no exertion if we go on in this way."
"That is true," answered Jack; "we must eat breakfast."
"Very well; then let's be about it, so that we may have it over by the time that it is fairly light, and then we'll lose no time in setting out."
"You can't leave camp," said Jack; "your foot is awfully swollen and your leg too."
"Yes, I know," answered Ned, "but I am going anyhow. We must find Charley, and maybe both of us will be needed when we do."
While this discussion was going on the breakfast preparations were advancing, and it was not long before the two disconsolate fellows began the difficult task of forcing food down their unwilling throats.
"What is our best plan of operations, Jack?" asked Ned.
"I scarcely know. Perhaps we'd best go round the island, one one way and the other the other, shouting and looking. Then, if either finds Charley and needs assistance the other will of course be there soon afterward."
"Hardly," said Ned. "The island is pretty large, and I suppose it is a good many miles around it. Wouldn't it be better to take a direct course?"
"How?"
"Why, by going first to the rice swamp. There we shall almost certainly be able to find and follow Charley's trail."
"Of course," answered Jack. "What an idiot I was not to think of that first! The fact is, I believe last night's anxiety, particularly while you were away, was too much for me. I lost my head a little, I think, and haven't quite found it again."
"Listen! What's that?" exclaimed Ned, rising to look. As he did so, the bushes near the shore on the left of the camp parted, and——
"Bless me! it's Charley!" shouted both boys in a breath.
"Did you think I had run away with your trowsers?" asked the cause of all their anxieties, throwing down the two pairs of pantaloons stuffed full of wet rice.
"Gracious! Charley, where have you been?"
"We've had an awful night!" exclaimed Ned.
"Do I look as though I had had a particularly pleasant one?" responded Charley. "Do my dress and general appearance indicate that I dined last evening in the mansions of the great and slept upon a bed of down?"
"Well, no," said Ned, unable as yet to share Charley's cheerfulness of mood; "but really, Charley, we have suffered a good deal. You ought to have come back to camp."
"Now, look here, fellows," said Charley, more seriously than he had yet spoken, "if you think I haven't known by instinct how much you would suffer because of my unexplained absence, you do me great injustice. My situation through the night has been none of the pleasantest, but the worst part of it has been what I have suffered thinking of your anxiety. Pray, don't imagine that I'm totally destitute of feeling."
There was a hurt tone in Charley's voice as he said this, to which Ned responded at once.
"Forgive me, Charley," he said, holding out his hand, which the other took. "I did not mean to reproach you wrongfully. I know your warm heart and generous soul."
"Yes," added Jack, "and nothing in the world could have made us so happy as your safe return. But tell us what has happened. Where have you been?"
"Not a word until food is set before me," said Charley, relapsing into his playful mood again. "I am famished."
"All right," said Ned; "we cooked enough to take with us, and we didn't eat much, so your breakfast is ready. In fact I begin to be hungry myself, now that you've got back in safety."
"So do I," said Jack; "let's begin over again, and all breakfast together."