Nelson’s and Bob’s laughter drowned the line, but Tom, who had his face covered with his hands, continued to emit his piercing shrieks long after and had to be forcibly persuaded to desist. Then they went up on deck and set off Roman candles and firecrackers, a proceeding which sent Barry into paroxysms of excitement.
The next day, instead of continuing westward along the shore, they headed the Vagabond up the Thames River and had a Fourth-of-July excursion up to Norwich between smiling green hills against which nestled comfortable white farmhouses. Nelson grew reminiscent and retold the story of the only Harvard and Yale boat race he had witnessed, pointing out the quarters of the rival crews as they passed along. They spent a couple of hours in Norwich and came back in the afternoon. After they had passed under the railroad bridge and left New London behind Dan had an idea.
“Say, fellows,” he said, “instead of keeping on let’s stop along the shore here somewhere and camp out for the night. We can cook dinner on the beach and rig up a tent with the awning. What do you say?”
They said yes, instantly and enthusiastically. And at five they found a place that suited them, ran the launch into a little shallow cove and set about disembarking. Three trips were made in the tender, and before the last was completed Bob had a stone fireplace set up and Tom had gathered enough fuel to last a week. By mutual consent Bob became chef pro tem.
The cove was skirted by a little pebbled beach and in one place a tumble-down stone wall ambled out of the woods nearby and fell to pieces in the water, affording a very handy landing place for the tender. There was only one mishap, and that occurred when Tom strove to relieve Dan of a load of frying pans and dishes, lost his footing on a slippery stone and went into two feet of water with his burden. Luckily nothing was broken and Tom, by standing in front of the fire and turning slowly around, was soon able to get dry again. They locked the cabin on the Vagabond and made everything shipshape for the night. Then, at a little after six they squatted around the fire and ate fried eggs and bacon, baked potatoes and smoky toast and washed the repast down with smoky tea. But they all declared that it was the best supper they had tasted for a long time.
“It’s sort of a relief,” said Nelson, “to have things seasoned with wood smoke for a change. I was getting a little tired of Tom’s kerosene flavor.”
“It isn’t my fault,” defended Tom. “Your old stove smokes like the dickens.”
After supper they set to work with the deck awning and, not without several failures and many tribulations, at last rigged it up into the semblance of a tent. Then they discovered that they had left bedding entirely out of their scheme, and Bob and Tom rowed back to the launch for blankets. By that time it was twilight and the river and the Sound, just below them, were golden in the afterglow.
“Mighty pretty, isn’t it?” asked Bob as he drew in his oars and got ready to lay hold of the launch.
“Yes,” Tom answered without enthusiasm, “but I think it would be a heap more comfortable to sleep on the boat where we have decent mattresses than to lie on the ground.”