“The price of that egg would have bought you a bone, Captain Joe,” Clayton Emmett, better known as “Clay,” put in. “Take a bit out of him, just to teach him better manners!”
Captain Joe winked his red eyes at Teddy and walked away in a dignified manner, as if not relishing being made the executioner of the crew! The lads laughed at the animal’s attitude of offended innocence and went on with their preparations for breakfast.
The most of the cooking was done on the top of a coal stove, but the coffee was bubbling on an electric coil which stood on a table at the back of the cabin. After a dozen pancakes had been cooked Alex placed them close to the electric coil to keep warm, though, as he said, “The air was fit to keep them red hot anywhere.”
There was a small, square window over the electric stove, at the back of the cabin, a window which opened on about a yard’s width of deck at the stern of the boat. This small space concealed gasoline tanks, and was not in sight from either the deck or the cabin of the motor boat.
Indeed, it was rarely visited, except by Captain Joe and Teddy, who often took long siestas there when the bulk of the cabin cast shadows on the bare planks.
Case cooked heap after heap of brown buckwheat cakes and passed them on to Alex to be placed in the warming closet, as the boys called the ledge of the electric stove, “until they had enough to get a good eating start on,” as Witters observed. Finally he ceased his efforts and glanced at the place where the tempting heap of cakes had been placed.
There was not even a crumb of a pancake in sight! Alex was busy getting out plates and cups, his back to the electric stove and the window. The coffee was bubbling over the cherry-red coils.
Case advanced to the stove and looked over it, under it, around it, and even under the table it stood on. There wasn’t a pancake, or a part of pancake, anywhere! He rushed up to Alex and shook him by the arm.
“You never bolted ’em all?” he demanded. “Not every last one of them, did you? Two dozen of 'em! You never did!”
Alex dropped a plate on the table and looked quizzically at Case.