The four went ashore. The Walcott Hall boys saw Joe Bootleg meet them at the edge of the water with a lantern. He had evidently been aware of their peril, and from the headland had watched the Spoondrift making her anchorage.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," muttered Red Phillips.
"All but the fat chap," Peewee observed. "He isn't such a bad sort."
"Most onery crowd of coyotes I ever saw," Cloudman acclaimed with force.
"Forget it!" advised Rex, with more tartness than he usually displayed. "Not worth talking about."
"Those chaps from the other camp have really gotten under his hide at last," Peewee whispered to Red.
They spent the night in some comfort. The summer wind-storm blew itself out before midnight, and in the morning they were able to sail around to the little cove below their camp. Nothing had been disturbed there. They found the tent-fly laced down as they had left it.
Kingdon insisted on taking his two pitchers to the top of the island for practice in the afternoon. Neither Horace Pence nor any of his chums appeared. The Walcott Hall boys caught only distant glimpses of the other campers-out during the day.
The morning following Kingdon was too busy with Midkiff, tinkering with the engine of the Spoondrift, to bother about the rival campers. The other Walcott Hall boys went fishing off the rocks in the still water, and caught a mess of cunners that made a nice change from the usual cod, or flounders.
"Never knew there were so many kinds of fish," Cloudman admitted. "Always thought, till I came East, that fish was just fish. All tasted the same. But even those squirmy eels taste better than Texas venison."