“We’re all r-r-right here,” says he, “if we keep quiet and they don’t go p-p-prowlin’ around. They think we’re below them.”
“I’d feel more comfortable farther away,” I says; but I could see it wouldn’t be safe to move. “Wonder how they’re gittin’ along?”
We craned our necks to see, but it wasn’t any use. There was a hummock in the way, and considerable high grass and bushes.
“And we can’t eat,” I says. “We dassent make a fire.”
That was the worst of it.
Mark crawled down to the canoe, though, and came back with a loaf of bread and some butter. The butter was soft and squashy, but we didn’t object to that. We wouldn’t have objected to anything we could chew and swallow. A meal of bread and butter don’t sound like you’d be very interested in it, but, all the same, you’d be mistaken if you thought we weren’t. We enjoyed it. Between us we ate that whole loaf and looked around for crumbs.
I said before that a fellow is braver when his stomach’s full than when he’s had to tighten his belt. I felt bolder a lot, and more curious to know what Collins and Jiggins were up to.
“I’m goin’ to see if I can’t git a squint at ’em,” says I.
“B-better stay still,” says Mark.
“I got to try it,” I says, and started crawling on my stomach across the point and through the underbrush. I went slow and cautious, and I don’t believe a wild Indian could have done a great deal better when it came to making noise. I didn’t make any. I didn’t know I could move so quiet, and it made me sort of proud of myself. I said to myself I’d show the other fellows what a still one I could be in the woods, and did considerable bragging to myself. And then my heart came up into my mouth so sudden I almost bit it.