"Sure I will; and tell you a few things I got from him," the scout-master went on to say, as they pushed in toward the little beach where the landing had been made on the first occasion of their visiting the lake island.
"Bob must have been through some stuff in his old home," remarked Davy, enviously; "from the few little things he's said. Things happen there in the Blue Ridge mountains, down in the Old Tar Heel state. Up here it's as dead as a door nail; nothin' goin' on atall to make a feller keep awake. Don't I just hope you get that deal through, Thad, and take the whole patrol along, to pay a visit to Bob's home country. I just know we'd have a scrumptuous time of it. Imagine me up in the real mountains, when I've never even seen a hill bigger than Scrub-oak mountain, which I could nearly throw a stone over!"
Then the prow of the canoe ran aground in a few inches of water. Thad sprang ashore, and holding the painter, drew the boat in closer. Relieved of his weight in the bow its keel grated on the dry sand, and the other two were able to step out easily enough.
They drew the boat up good and far on the beach.
"The wind's liable to get even stronger than it is," remarked Thad, "and we don't want a second experience of having the canoe blown out on the lake."
"I should say not," observed Smithy, uneasily; for he had only recently learned how to swim, and the shore seemed a tremendous distance away, with the flag of the camp floating in the morning breeze, and the tents showing plainly against the green background.
"Now, this time I'm going to comb the whole island over, and see what's here," announced Thad, resolutely. "You see, we can make a start, and keep close to this shore until we strike the other end. Then changing our base, we'll come back this way, keeping just so far away from our first trail. After that, it's back again; and in that way we ought to see all there is."
"Going to be pretty tough climbing, I reckon?" remarked Davy, surveying the piled-up rocks, of which the island seemed to consist mainly, with the trees growing from crevices, and in every odd place, so that they formed a dense canopy indeed.
"That'll make it more interesting, perhaps," said Smithy; and Thad nodded his head encouragingly; for he liked to see evidences in the spoiled boy tending to show what his real nature must be, back of the polish his fond mother and maiden aunts had succeeded in putting upon his actions in the past.
They reached the other end of the island and began to make the return trip. As Davy Jones had said, it was strenuous work at times, since the rocks were piled up in a way to suggest that some convulsion of nature had heaved this island up from the bottom of the lake.