“Count me out, please,” Nick remarked. “I don’t believe I care enough about it; and, besides, somebody ought to stay here, to keep the fire going, so you can tell where to come back.”
“Huh! he’s clean filled up to the top, that’s what,” remarked Josh; “and when Nick gets that way, you just can’t coax him to budge an inch. But I’m with you, boys.”
It was presently decided that all the others would go in the three tenders. As Nick was given a shotgun, this time fully loaded, and ready for business, he expressed himself as willing to stand guard.
“Anyhow,” he observed, with a wide smile, “I don’t reckon on having any bear for a visitor this time. He couldn’t get on this island, could he, Jack?”
“Not in a thousand years,” was the reassuring reply.
“And you can stay aboard the Tramp until we come back,” George went on to say. “Only don’t let that fire go out a minute, or perhaps you’ll be minus all your chums. A nice time you’d have here, all alone, wouldn’t you? Why, you’d starve to death before long with that appetite of yours, Nick.”
“Shucks! there ain’t much danger of your getting lost while Jack’s along. If it depended on you, George, I’d be scared right bad now,” the fat boy got back at him as the party moved away.
They took the lighted lantern with them, and expected to be very cautious how they managed, not wanting to lose their bearings in the darkness. Jack had made a mental map of the vicinity, and behind that he could find his way back to where the fire showed.
He led off, paddling with one of the oars, for when the little dinky held two these could not be used in the ordinary fashion.
And it was not very long before the others knew that again Jack had shown more than ordinary skill, for they reached an island where, from the sounds, it was evident that the roost of the birds could be found.