“I expect to take a good stock of films along,” Will said, “and that new-fangled flashlight apparatus, too, so I can try to get pictures of game taken at night time by themselves. That’s a stunt I’ve been reading up lately, and I’m as anxious as can be to see what I can do.”
“Well, if we want to get off by morning,” Frank warned them, “we ought to be at work. Let’s sit down for a few minutes and figure out just what we want to take along.”
“How about the grub?” asked Bluff; for it would be strange indeed for him not to consider that important subject the first thing.
“We’ll make sure to get some things here, because we know what the quality is,” Frank commented, “such as tea and coffee and a few others; but the heavier stuff we ought to pick up after we get to the jumping-off place. That’ll save us lots of carrying, you see.”
“Why, yes,” Jerry agreed, “we wouldn’t want to have our trunk so heavy it couldn’t be lifted without a derrick. That was the trouble with the first boat old Robinson Crusoe built, remember? I’ve heard of other cases just as bad. A fellow was telling me about a time he went off on a trip with another chap and they kept adding this and adding that to the things that they thought they must have on their outing, till at last they had to take two tents along and hire a team to draw the stuff up and back.”
With that Jerry ran off, and both Frank and Bluff were not long in following his example. Each of them had made out a long list of things he must personally attend to in the time that remained before night.
Frank’s positive declaration that everything necessary must be completed before they went to bed had been accepted by his chums without a single murmur.
“Don’t try to load any shells until the last thing,” Frank had told them all. “If there’s no time for that, we can buy what we want. As a rule, though, all of us much prefer to get our own powder and shot, for then we know what’s coming; and sometimes we’ve been fooled when we used machine-made shells.”
Frank was a little anxious until he had received calls over the telephone from both Bluff and Jerry. After they assured him that full permission had been given by their parents, so that the last possible doubt was removed, Frank’s spirits grew lighter.
Nothing remained to be done but get in readiness, and on the coming morning start upon the long railroad trip to Maine.