I saw what he meant. He didn’t want to go back to the island empty-handed, to be laughed at by our companions. Nor did I, for that matter. It isn’t any fun to be called a coward in front of a girl. So I sort of gritted my teeth in dogged courage and joined the other on board the scow.
“What’s that out there?” I pointed, breathless.
“Where?”
“Between here and the channel. Looks like a rowboat.”
“I see what you mean.… It isn’t moving.”
We strained our eyes at the vague black spot on the water’s surface.
“Must be a floating log,” Scoop concluded.
I didn’t believe that it was a log—I could think of nothing else but a passengerless rowboat. But I didn’t argue the matter. I was too anxious to complete our errand on board the scow so that we could get back to shore.
Upon our arrival at the island with the food, the girl sort of took charge of things, in the way women do at picnics. Building a roaring fire on the beach, we had toast and cocoa and fried-cakes and bananas. It was a swell feed.
Watching the others running here and there in the red light of the fire, one with a piece of toast [[126]]and another with a fried-cake or a cup of cocoa, I was reminded of that part of the Robinson Crusoe book where the cannibals brought Friday to the island to make soup of him. They had built a fire, just as we had done, and had danced around the blaze while their soup was cooking. Robinson Crusoe, in watching them, had been filled with fear in their presence on the island. I wondered, in a whimsical turn of my thoughts, if, like the dancing cannibals, we were being covertly watched by eyes invisible to us in the darkness.