“The whole day,” Bumpus remarked disconsolately, “that means twelve long hours, don’t it? Well, I suppose I can stand the thing if the rest of you can; but it’s really the most dreadful calamity that ever faced us. They say starving is an easy death, but it wouldn’t be to me.”
No one was paying any attention to his complainings, so Bumpus stopped short in order to listen to what the others were saying. Possibly he told himself that the best way to forget his troubles was to get interested in what was going on. And it might be there still remained a shred of hope in his heart that if they made a quick job of the surround, and capture, perhaps they might retake enough of the purloined food to constitute a bare meal at noon.
“First of all we’ve got to have our breakfast, such as it is,” Thad observed.
“Tea and grits—oh! my stars!” sighed Giraffe; whereupon Bob White turned upon him with the cutting remark:
“You ought to be thankful for the grits, suh, believe me; it satisfies me, let me tell you. I wouldn’t give a snap fo’ all the tea in China or Japan; but grits make bone and muscle. You can do a day’s work on a breakfast of the same. Only it takes a long time to cook properly, suh; and the sooner we get the pot started the better.”
“You attend to that, Bumpus, please,” said Giraffe, “and be sure you get enough to satisfy the crowd, even if you have to use two kettles, and the whole package of hominy. I want to talk things over with Thad here.”
Bumpus hesitated for a minute. He hardly knew which he wanted to do most, stay there and listen, or return to the fire and begin operations looking to the cooking of that forlorn breakfast.
Finally, as he received a message from the inner man that it was time some attention was paid to the fact that nature abhorred a vacuum he turned away and trotted toward the camp fire.
Giraffe, together with Thad and Allan, tried to follow the trail of the two tramps further, but soon gave it up. After all, the several reasons why they should turn to the other way of rounding up the concealed men appealed strongly to them.
Later on they returned to the camp, to sit around and wait for their breakfast to cook. Nobody looked very cheerful that morning. Somehow the fact that they were isolated there on that island with only one meal between them and dire hunger, loomed up like a great mountain before their mental vision.