"You won't catch them," said Bert; "they're probably miles away by this time, and they've probably eaten up all our snacks. Wow, but I'm hungry!"
"So say we all of us!" chorused the boys, as they flung themselves around in disconsolate attitudes.
"Not a snip-jack of anything," Jack went on, peering vainly into a few empty baskets that Sam had left behind him. "The nerve of them, to steal our coffee and then take our coffee pot to make it in! Honest, fellows, I never knew such a thing to happen before. I've been up here a lot of summers and I never struck a crowd that would do such a thing as this."
"That's so," agreed Bob Rose, "why, often a lot of strange chaps will share their grub with you, but I never knew 'em to hook it! Must be an awful mean crowd."
"Well, all the same," said Bert, "what are we going to do for lunch? I rousted out at sunup, and to be sure, I had my breakfast, but it's forgotten in the dim past."
"We can cook our fish," said one of the boys "but we'll miss the coffee and potatoes and bread and such various staffs of life. We haven't such a lot of fish anyhow."
"No; we depended on bacon and eggs for our mainstay. I move we go home."
"S'pose we'll have to," and Bob looked rueful, "We can't put in a whole afternoon on empty stomachs. What do you say, shall we cook the fish, or light right out for home?"
"Here's a cracker they dropped," cried Bert, who spied a soda biscuit on the ground and brushing it off, began to eat it.
"Aw, give a starving comrade a bite," and Guy held out his hand eagerly.