“Be sure you say Mollie and Betty,” snorted Mollie. “What’s the matter with your ‘looking the engine over?’”
“I’d feel sorry for the engine,” chuckled Betty, and even Grace joined in the laugh at her expense.
Having visited the island before, Betty knew the very spot where conditions were best for landing. This was a little inlet from the river, deep enough to allow the Gem to come close to shore.
As soon as they came near enough Grace and Amy grasped the overhanging branches of trees and swung themselves to firm ground, leaving Betty and Mollie in the boat to do the “dirty work.”
After considerable tinkering Betty announced that they were ready to start again but so much time had passed in the operation that Amy and Grace declared they were starving, despite the fact that it was not yet twelve o’clock.
“This is the best place ever for lunch,” Grace argued. “And we had our breakfast so early I really think we need something to eat.”
As the girls had thoughtfully brought along a picnic lunch in case they were not able to reach camp till later in the afternoon, Betty and Mollie brought it to light and then scrambled nimbly on to shore, the Little Captain with a rope in her hand with which she intended to fasten the boat to some sort of mooring.
“It would be a great thing, wouldn’t it,” she said, as she wound the rope about a stout tree and tied a seamanlike knot in it, “to wake up and find the Gem sailing out to sea with us marooned on a desert isle?”
“More thrilling in the movies than in real life,” drawled Grace. “Now let’s get busy, girls. I’m starved.”
“Oh, not down here,” Betty protested. “I know of a perfect duck of a place on the other side of the hill up there—flat rock for a table and everything.”