“Then we may be able to get across to the mainland before a great while?” queried Allan.
“We’ll talk about that while we’re eating breakfast,” Thad told him; “and as the sun is coming up I reckon we’d better waken the rest of the crowd. They’ve had a grand good sleep, I take it. Give Giraffe a push, Allan, will you, and roll Bumpus over a few times till he says he’s awake; that’s the regular program with him, you know.” One by one the scouts sat up, and yawned, and stretched, as sleepy boys are apt to do when they have not been allowed to have their last nap out. Of course Davy did not forget how Thad had made a flood-tally over at the river, which fortunately Bumpus had not kicked away when he took his unexpected plunge with a portion of the crumbly bank.
“I reckon, now, Thad, you’ve been over to see what’s doing,” he remarked, while Giraffe fixed his cooking fire, and set about beginning operations looking to having breakfast under way. “And if that’s so tell us how she stands. Did it drop half a foot or more during the time we snoozed?”
“More like three feet,” replied the other; “and if Bumpus fell over in the same place again he’d find the water hardly up to his waist, with little current in place of that mill race of yesterday. Yes, things begin to look encouraging all around, boys!”
“Like fun they do!” bawled out Giraffe just then, as he stood up, and turned a very red and angry face toward the rest of the scouts.
“Why, what ails you now, Giraffe?” asked Smithy, who, generally calm and cold as an iceberg himself, frequently took the others to task when they showed signs of great excitement.
“I’m as mad as a wet hen, I tell you, and I wish somebody’d kick me for not doing what I first meant to last night, ask Thad to set a watch!” exploded the tall scout, stamping on the ground, and grinding his teeth.
Thad smelled a rat immediately.
“Anything been taken, Giraffe?” he asked hastily.
“Anything?” roared the other; “why, there isn’t half enough left to give us a decent meal. I reckon I might be satisfied, but where the rest of you are going to come in beats me. Yes, this island is inhabited, all right, and they’re a set of low-down thieves at that. You hear me talking, fellows!”