Snip would scamper ashore whenever they touched the bank and he had the most wonderfully exciting times of his life. He explored every foot of the ground, pursued real and imaginary scents, and treed mythical bears. Those three days were jolly ones, even if nothing really happened. There was so much to talk about, so many things to relate, that the conversation never languished for a minute. Harry learned to steer after a fashion, learned to tell time by the ship’s clock in the wheel-house, and helped Dick prepare the meals. She made the beds, too, and went religiously around the rooms with a dustcloth every morning in a vain endeavor to find dust.
But on the fourth day Harry’s mania for progress palled. It was a gray morning, foggy and damp. Oddly enough it was the Doctor who first voiced a desire for change.
“I wonder,” he remarked, looking at the unbroken margin of forest which stretched along the shore, “if there is any fishing to be found about here?”
“I think we could catch something from the tender, sir,” replied Roy.
“I was thinking of trout,” murmured the Doctor. Chub went into the wheel-house and consulted his map.
“There’s a good-sized stream about a mile up,” he announced. “Let’s go and try it.”
“Oh, let’s!” cried Harry. “I never caught a trout.”
“You should have seen the one I caught,” said Chub. “It was a regular whopper. It was as long—”
Roy and Dick groaned.