From the cloth, strongly twisted by Barry and the little sergeant, a stream of watery liquid dribbled into the bait can. When no more would come, Barry threw out the squeezed fish meat and put in more diced pieces. The final result was half a cupful of fish juice.
“It’s drinkable,” the young skipper declared after the first taste, “just as that naval officer on the flat-top told me it would be. There’s practically no salt taste, and it’s not as strong of fish as you’d imagine. Who wants to hint that Sergeant Mickey Rourke is a liar, now?”
Hap Newton shook his head solemnly.
“I take it all back, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ll never doubt your word again, Mickey, unless I see you wink behind my back. But please don’t ask me to guzzle your fish cocktail while I have a perfectly good still to make my own moonshine water. Pass me a match, Fred, and let’s get the thing started. I want to wet my whistle before Crayle, here, wakes up and demands a fresh water bath.”
“Now We’ll Wring out a Fresh Fish Cocktail.”
While their water stills boiled, the two raft crews began paddling toward the island. Their progress was less than a mile an hour, but that did not bother them. With darkness still several hours away, they dared not approach too near.
“The moon rises early tonight,” Curly Levitt informed his friends. “If we’re within two miles of land then, we should be able to see the shore line. The cloud ceiling isn’t so thick that it will shut out all the light.”
As a matter of fact, the clouds thinned as evening approached. A stiff breeze sprang up, drifting the rafts so rapidly toward land that the paddles were no longer needed. As the last daylight faded a faint glow above the eastern horizon told that the moon was up.
The rafts had been tied together all afternoon, to avoid drifting too far apart. Now, with paddles plying steadily, they were making good headway toward the dark line of jungle that marked the island. Barry Blake, in the leading “doughnut,” strained his ears for any sound of breakers that would indicate a dangerous landing place. There was none—only the rhythmical roaring of the surf on the smooth beach, and the slap-slap-slap of water against the rafts’ flat bottoms.