BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS
"Do you know what I think?" said Archer. "If Alsace used to belong to France, then the Rhine must have been the boundary between France and Gerrmany and we'rre right on that old frontierr now—hey? I'm a smarrt lad, huh? They used to have watch towers and things 'cause I got kept in school once forr sayin' a poem wrong about a fellerr that was in a watch towerr on the Rhine. I bet this towerr had something to do with that old frontierr and I bet it was connected with that castle overr on shorre, too. Therre was a picture of a fellerr in a kind of an arrmorr looking off the top of a towerr just like this—I remember 'cause I marrked him up with a pencil so's he'd have a swallerr-tailed coat and a sunbonnet."
Archer's education was certainly helping him greatly.
"If we could once get overr therre into that Black Forest," he continued, scanning the Baden shore and the heights beyond with the rescued glass, "we'd be on easy street 'cause I remember gettin' licked forr sayin', 'the abrupt west slopes of this romantic region are something or otherr with wild vineyards that grow in furious thing-um-bobs——'"
"What?" said Tom.
"Anyway, there's lots of grapes there," Archer concluded.
"If that's the way you said it I don't blame 'em for lickin' you," said sober Tom. "I think by tonight I'll be able to swim it. There seems to be some houses over there—that's one thing I don't like."
The Baden side, as well as they could make out through the haze, was pretty thickly populated for a mile or two, but the lonesome mountains arose beyond and once there, they would be safe, they felt sure.
They spent the day in the dilapidated frontier tower, as Archer called it, and he was probably not far from right in his guess about it. Certainly it had not been used for many years except apparently by fishermen occasionally, and the rotten condition of the seines showed that even such visitors had long since ceased to use it. Perhaps indeed it was a sort of outpost watch tower belonging to the gray castle which they saw through the mist.
"Maybe it belonged to a Gerrman baron," suggested Tom.
"Anyway, it's a barren island," said Archer; "are you hungry?"
Tom sat in the doorway, favoring his hurt knee, and watched Archer move cautiously about among the sharp, slippery rocks, where he succeeded in cornering and spearing several bewildered fish which the troubled waters of the night had marooned in these small recesses.
"I'm afraid, you'll be seen from the shore," Tom said, but without that note of assurance and authority which he had been accustomed to use.
"Don't worry," said Archer, "it's too thick and hazy. Just wait till I spearr one morre. Therre's a beaut, now——"
They wasted half a dozen damp matches before they could get flame enough to ignite the whisk stick which Tom held ready, but when they succeeded they "commandeered" the broken door as a "warr measurre," to quote Archer, and kindled a fire just inside the doorway where they believed that the smoke, mingling with the mist, would not be seen through the gray, murky atmosphere.
It is a great mistake to be prejudiced against a fish just because it is German. Tom and Archer were quite free from that narrow bias. And if it should ever be your lot to be marooned in a ramshackle old watch tower on the Rhine on a dull, rainy day, remember that the same storm which has marooned you will have marooned some fishes among the crevices of rock—only you must be careful to turn them often and not let them burn. The broken rail of an old spiral stairway, if there happens to be one handy, can be twisted into a rough gridiron, and if you happen to think of it (as Tom did) you can use the battery case of your flashlight for a drinking-cup.
"If we couldn't have managed to get a light with these damp matches," he said, as they partook of their sumptuous breakfast, "we'd have just had to wait till the sun came out and we could a' got one with the lens in the spy-glass."
Once a scout, always a scout!