“He was, was he? Well, he’s the man for me. Just think of it, fellows, we’d never be camping here if this place hadn’t been discovered. I move you,” he added, “that the professor be invited to resume his falsehoods to-morrow evening, and that whenever we are seated before the embers of our glowing camp-fire, or can’t get asleep nights, that he soothe us with his fairy tales.”
The boys laughingly agreed to the proposal, and as they rose, Ben said, “I feel a craving in the inner man. Any of you got a ‘crave’ too?”
All four declared they were in suffering need of food, and at once began to prepare another supper. When their labors were ended, however, the results were far from satisfactory. Somehow the fish did not tempt them, and when Jock opened the coffee-pot he exclaimed: “I thought coffee was a liquid, fellows. Look at this, will you?”
With his fork he lifted from the interior of the pot long, stringy substances, which certainly were not inviting to the sight.
“What do you suppose is the trouble?” said Ben. “There must be something wrong with the coffee. Do you suppose it’s poison?”
“I don’t know. I’ll leave it and ask Ethan in the morning,” said Bob. “He’ll know all about it.”
However, the boys discovered the pies and other viands the boatmen had left in camp, “pies’n things” Bert termed them, mimicking Ethan’s dialect, and their immediate wants had, to all appearances, been satisfied when they sought their cots.
So tired were they that even the question of what Jock and Ethan had prepared for the morrow was soon forgotten, and the smouldering camp-fire burned low and lower, while the boys slept the sleep which can only be gained within the sound of the music of the mighty river.