Seven Little People and their Friends

by Horace Elisha Scudder

"Are there any of those big animals here? you know that long name," asked Bo.

"Hippopotamuses?" said Yulee, promptly, delighted at the opportunity of using the word. "Oh, no! there are no hippopotamuses in Clearwater; the hippopotamuses only live in Africa."

"You never saw one, did you?" said Bo, who didn't like to use the word.

"No," said Yulee. "I never saw a hippopotamus, but I've seen an elephant in the menagerie and I guess it's something like it. There's a picture of one in the Castaways," and she showed it to Bo.

While they were talking, the wind and the current had been gently drifting the boat away from the shore; they were quite a distance from the stake now, and really going toward the island, which lay in the lake not very far off. They had never been there for their father said there was nothing to see on it; but Yulee was very certain in her own mind that there was something on the island very wonderful. She had made up a great many stories about it, which she had told over to herself so often that she believed them as much as if some one else had told them to her. She was sure that there were goats there at any rate and possibly a parrot; and she was ready to believe in a cave, and perhaps even a small mountain with a rope ladder up to the top like the one in "the Castaways," though she rather thought she would have seen that if there had been one, from the shore. The island could not be seen from the house, nor from the boat-landing; it was round a curve in the lake.

The boat followed the current which led it slowly toward the island, and Yulee was in ecstacies as they neared the shore. She sat in the bows of the boat looking eagerly toward the island and trying to make out a good place for a cave. But the land looked rather unpromising; it was low, rising but little above the water, and covered with grass, a few low bushes and one clump of trees. The boat did not seem able to get much nearer the island, after it was within a few yards of it, and even appeared to be drifting away. Yulee noticed this and began to be alarmed lest they should not be cast away after all.

"Why don't we get wrecked?" asked Bo at this juncture, leaning over the boat side and looking into the water which was hardly a foot deep here.

"There ought to be a great wind," explained Yulee, "and a storm, and the ship ought to go to pieces, and then we should be thrown on shore, and in the morning we should go out to the wreck and get the carpenter's chest and all sorts of things; at least that's the way it usually happens, but we're in a boat you see, and that makes a difference. I think, Bo," she added, "you'd better take off your shoes and stockings, and get out and pull the boat ashore, or we never shall get there."

So Bo rolled up his trousers, and with some difficulty got over the side of the boat into the water. The boat moved easily, and Bo in great glee pulled it to the island, to a place where there was a little beach, till the bottom of the boat grated on the gravel.

"Here we are!" said Yulee. "Now, Bo, we must get the things ashore before the Little Madras goes to pieces." Bo stood on the beach by the boat while Yulee handed to him the various stores and provisions, not forgetting Miss Phely, who was still as wide awake as ever, staring before her without winking and keeping her fingers stiffly apart in the same uncomfortable fashion. Bo took her by the arm and tossed her upon the ground in a very unfeeling manner. Last of all came Yulee, holding fast her precious range and dividing her attention between the dangerous matches and the disembarking from the boat.