“Help yourself,” replied Zan.
Fred quickly selected a strip of bark about ten inches wide. This he folded end to end to form a round tube. The edges were stitched with wire-grass. Then he sewed a bottom on one end and it represented a bark pail. Next he plastered clay on the outside seams, and rubbed some gum from a wild cherry tree on the seams of the inside, saying: “If we had time to let the clay dry I wouldn’t use the gum on the inside, but now I need to make it water-proof.”
Then he filled this vessel with water and selected two red-hot stones of a smaller size than the others, and dropped them in the water. Instantly, the water began boiling and the rice, which Miss Miller had washed, was poured into the vessel and a cover placed over the top.
“When our dinner is ready, the rice will be steamed, too,” said Fred, placing the bark vessel on a flat stone near the fire-place.
“Well I never!” ejaculated some of the girls, while Elena hastily sketched the birch-bark holder and wrote down the rules for manufacturing it.
“Now girls, lay the cloth and have the dishes ready for the chowder,” called Elizabeth, tasting the liquid from the tip of a spoon.
“I wish those two boys were here to enjoy this scrumptious meal,” said Jane, sighing as she thought of their loss.
The chowder was dished up and eaten with sounds of many smacks and “Ahs!” Then the fish were removed from the oven and as the aroma of the flaky and sweet meat reached the nostrils of the Woodcrafters, a chorus of “Um’s!” echoed about the camp-circle.
Every morsel of that supper vanished like ice in the July sunshine and was declared the best ever tasted by the campers. The gray of evening crept over sky and sea and earth as the Woodcrafters sat about the dying embers of the camp-fire hoping for a call or signal from the two boys, which would warn them of their approach. But in spite of the torch Fred kept burning on the Cliff, nothing was heard or seen from the wanderers.
Eleanor had been very quiet and meek since her confession to the Guide, but old ingrained habits are not thrown off in one moment of repentance. When Fred returned from the Cliff with the report that he saw no sign of a fire or signal, she remarked: