"My lambs," he began (the funny word took the edge off the unfortunate look of affairs, as it was intended to do)—"my lambs, it is growing late, and it's doubtful if we can get this big boat down that pair of stairs before dark. Don't you think I'd better order Jim and Katy to pack up the small sled with tent and bedding and kitchen-stuff?"
"'Twon't hold it all!" interrupted Jim.
"Then, Youngster, you can come back after the bedding. Take the cooking things first, and you and Katy go back to the island where we lunched, and make a fire. Tug and I—eh, Tug?—will stay here and chop away till dark, and then we'll go back to camp with you when you come after the blankets, and help you carry the tent."
"Are you going to leave the boat here all night?" asked Jim, in alarm.
"Why, of course; what'll harm it? Now be off, and make a big fire."
So the younger ones departed, and by and by Jim returned for a second load. He found the two older boys cutting a sloping path through the little ice bluff on the farther side of the hummock, and pretty tired of it. They were not yet done—the shovel not being of much service in working the hard blue ice—but it was now getting too dark to do more, so they piled the snug bundles of blankets into Jim's sled box, and gave him the rope, while Tug and Aleck put their shoulders under opposite ends of the tent roll. Then together they all skated away through the thickening windy twilight, and over the ashy-gray plain of ice, towards where Katy's fire glowed like a red spark on the distant shore.
It was a weary but not at all disheartened party that lounged in the open door of the tent that night, while a big fire blazed in front, and supper was cooking. This was the first time the sail had been spread as a tent, and it answered the purpose nicely, giving plenty of room. The straw Katy had been so anxious about had to be left in the boat, so that they got no good of it. Jim chaffed his sister a good deal about this, and Tug rather encouraged him, thinking it was a fair chance for fun at Katy's expense; but when he saw that Katy really was feeling badly, not at Jim's teasing words, but for fear she had made the boys useless trouble, Aleck came to the rescue. Seizing The Youngster by the shoulder, he spun him round like a teetotum, and was going to box his ears, when Katy cried out, "Oh, don't!" and saved that young gentleman's skin for the present.
"Then I'll punish you in another way. Take your knife, go over there to the marsh"—it was perhaps a hundred yards away—"and cut as many rushes as you can carry."
The Youngster never moved.