At last all were aboard, and they pushed off, rounded a point, and turned toward the upper reaches of the bay, the small trailer bobbing along in their wake. The skies were blue and the breezes just fresh enough to make the girls pull up the collars of their sweaters. Gulls were soaring and dipping, giving raucous screams when a fishing boat cast out undesired objects from the catch. Before five o’clock Goose Island was reached, and all scrambled ashore.
“There’s the fireplace,” cried Gertrude, plunging through the bushes to reach a point where, earlier in the season, a fireplace of stones had been built up. “Now you masculines go hunting for driftwood while we unpack the baskets.”
In a short time wood enough was gathered, the coffee was bubbling merrily, and the bacon sizzling in the pan. There were several dashes away from the fire to escape the puffs of smoke, and one pan of bacon was overturned, causing a mighty conflagration for the moment, but that was the only mishap. Hettie was chief cook, with Ellen as assistant, and the supper served did them credit.
“I don’t know why it is that everything always tastes so wonderfully good when we go on these picnics,” remarked Mabel, nibbling a sandwich; “and I eat twice as much as upon any other occasion.”
“So say we all of us,” Reed chimed in.
“In spite of what you say,” said Hettie, “we always bring too much. Just look at all this stuff. Shall we feed it to the fishes or lug it back?”
“My frugal mind would suggest that it would be a wicked waste to throw it away,” said Ellen. “‘What they could not eat that day they had the next day fried,’ remember.”
“All right,” returned Hettie, “we’ll obey your frugal mind’s suggestion and pack it away. Nobody can tell what the morrow may bring forth. You’d better begin to stow away these things in the boat, boys, for we must start right back if we want to get home before night. It gets dark so soon these days.”
The tide was out by now, and great stretches of slippery seaweed lay between the shore and the boat, but, by dint of using the board seats as a bridge, all were helped safely aboard, and the return trip began. The sun had set in a glow of amber light, and all seemed fair for the voyage.
“Let her go, Alvin,” cried Reed as he pushed off and then made a flying leap to land in the boat. He scrambled over to a place by Ellen. “I don’t like the look of that gray bank along the east,” he said in a low tone to her, “but I reckon we can make it. Whoop her up, boy,” he called to Alvin.