"Oh, my!" chortled Peewee. "Where you going to get buttermilk, Red?"
"We got canned milk and butter. Can't we combine 'em and make buttermilk? Nothing to it!"
"Listen to that!" cried Midkiff. "This red-headed lunatic will poison us before he gets through."
"Wish we'd hired an Injun to cook for us, same as that other crowd have," Cloudman said.
"Not a bad idea," Peewee agreed patronizingly. "You're pretty near as wild as any Indian, Cloud. I move you be made permanent cook."
"Like fun!" said the Colorado youth. "I cooked all the way over in that boat. No more."
"What do you know about this, Red?" Rex said. "Mutiny, hey?"
"And the worst kind," agreed Phillips. "It's a great deal worse to mutiny against the cook than against the skipper and other officers."
"Here we have both forms of the iniquity. What, ho! call the guard! Sentinels to their places! Let the pork and cabbage fall—I mean the portcullis! I sentence the entire mutinous gang to sharp practice at three o'clock. Let the dishes alone, Red, till later. I hanker for forty winks. Talk as you please, fellows, canned beans are filling."
The island, which had been steaming all the morning after the rain, was beginning to cool off by three o'clock. The five Walcott Hall lads climbed the stiff hill to the hidden lawn, and were delighted with it. It was not long before they discovered that others had been ahead of them.