Ned was eager to see what Roy could do in the culinary department when he had every convenience. He had proved himself such a success as a cook on the evening previous with nearly everything lacking that the breakfast should be a marvel, and he started on without waiting to hear what Vance had to say on the subject.
Lying on her beam-ends as the little steamer was, the task of getting the stove ashore was not a difficult one.
The kitchen was on the port side, and she had been flung upon the starboard rail, consequently they would not be impeded by the water. It was only necessary to pull the small range up, and then let it slide down the almost perpendicular deck.
Roy had not brought his labors as a fisherman to a close when the stove was in position near one end of the tent, and Ned began making a swinging-cap to the pipe in order that it might not be necessary to move the entire apparatus whenever the wind shifted.
Vance brought another supply of provisions on shore, and marked out a site for the cook-tent, saying as he did so:
“The sooner we get a second camp up, the sooner we can begin to bring the stuff ashore from the steamer. I figure that we’ve got enough canvas to make another tent as big as the first, and it will give us ample room for all our supplies.”
“And we can’t get them on shore any too soon, according to my way of thinking,” Roy added as he finished cleaning the fish. “No one knows when another storm may spring up, and I don’t believe the poor old Zoe would stand a second such beating as she got yesterday. It may be we haven’t many days left in which to strip her.”
“We’ll begin as soon as breakfast is over. It won’t take more than two hours to put up the other tent, and by nightfall there should be enough here to last us a good many months, if we don’t get too extravagant and serve bacon with our fish,” he added laughingly as he saw what Roy was preparing to do.
“If you knew very much about cooking you wouldn’t grumble at anything like this. All first-class cooks, including myself, serve bacon with fish.”
“Not when they are cast away with no chance of replenishing their stores.”