“Yes, and fish too. It won’t be easy to get them without a boat, but we’ll manage in some way.”
“We can easily make a raft to fish from,” suggested Dick.
“I had thought of that,” resumed Cal, “but it’s impracticable.”
“Why so?”
“Because we have no anchor and nothing that will serve as a substitute for one. Of course the tide would quickly sweep our raft away from any bar we might try to fish upon. No, what fish we get will have to be caught with the castnet at low tide, and in the mouths of sloughs where mullets feed, particularly at night. But there is game, and there are oysters, and no end of crabs. We shall not starve to death. We have no bread left, and Tom’s sweet potato patch is about exhausted, but we can live on the other things for the two or three weeks that we must stay here.”
“You’ve said something like that several times, Cal,” said Larry, with a touch of impatience. “What do you mean by it?”
“I mean that this is the beginning of September; that the college session will begin on the first of October—less than a month hence; that our honored parents expect us to be in attendance at that time; and that if we don’t get home in time to pack our trunks they will send out and search for us; and finally, that as Major Rutledge, of Charleston, whom I have the honor to call father, knew in advance that we intended to visit Quasi on this trip, Quasi will be the place at which he will first look for us. So we’ll have our little frolic out and it will be great fun to tell the fellows at college about it after we get acquainted with them.”
The spirits of the boys responded promptly to Cal’s confident prophecy, which indeed was not so much a prophecy as a statement of simple facts known to all of them, though in their half panic-stricken mood they had not thought of them before.
Presently Dick had something to say that added a new impulse to activity.
“Of course, Cal is right, and we’ll be rescued from Quasi before the end of the month, but I for one would like us to get away without being rescued. Think of the alarm and distress our mothers will suffer if we do not turn up in time, especially as this earthquake has happened. They will think we’ve come to grief in some way and—I say, boys, we simply must get away from here before they take the alarm.”