Harry's Island

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“I like them that way,” laughed Dick from a safe distance. “If I had that motor-boat I could have saved you fellows—”

“If you mention that fool motor-boat again to-day,” cried Chub wildly, “I’ll—I’ll—”

But the threat was never finished, for a canoe with its bow grounded on the beach and its stern afloat is something you can’t take liberties with. Chub, balancing himself in the stern, forgot this fact for a moment, and when he remembered it he was sitting in the water and Roy and Dick were howling gleefully. Strange to say, this misadventure restored Chub’s good-nature, and, after sitting for a minute up to his waist in the water and laughing at his predicament, he jumped up dripping, and hauled the canoe up the beach. They unloaded the rowboat, depositing tent and poles and supplies on the sand, and then considered the matter of a site for the camp.

They had landed on Inner Beach where School Point curves toward the middle of the river. Above the beach there was a fringe of scrub-pines and a few low bushes, but beyond these all underbrush had been cleared away so that there was a full quarter of an acre of grass-carpeted ground interspersed with well-grown maples and birches. There were plenty of signs of former occupancy; here and there benches had been built between a couple of neighborly trees; some wooden pegs driven into the trunk above one of these benches showed where during the spring camping the towels had been hung. Paths crossed and recrossed the clearing, many of them converging at the beach.

“’Most any place here is all right,” said Chub.

“When we look for a camp site out our way,” observed Dick, “we think first about water.”

“Well, I guess we won’t suffer for that with the river so near,” said Chub dryly.

“I’d forgotten the river!” murmured Dick, looking foolish.

In the end they decided on a spot some ten yards back from the beach at Victory Cove. This, being well out on the point, Roy argued, would be cool and at the same time accessible from both sides. The sun would reach the tent for awhile in the afternoon, but not when it was hot enough to matter. The trees were well thinned out on both sides so that they had a clear view of the river to right and left. It was a good deal like camping out in one’s own back yard, said Roy, for there, just across the inner channel, was the float and the boat-house, and, further up on the hill, the familiar forms of the school buildings. Over their heads the branches of the trees almost met, and, as Chub pointed out, in case of a heavy rainstorm they would have a second roof above them. There were a few pines scattered near by toward the rising ground inland, and their resinous fragrance mingled with the aroma of damp earth and dewy foliage.

They brought the tent and poles up and, under the direction of Dick, who was quite in his element now, soon had them erected. Dick showed them how to drive the pegs in a line with the guy-ropes instead of at an angle, so that the straining of the tent in a wind would not loosen them. The tent was not a new one, as several patches proved, but it was made of good heavy duck and was quite tight. It was a wall tent, twelve by eight feet in size, and there was a shelter curtain which could be raised over the doorway. Chub called it the porch roof. Then they had brought a third piece of canvas which could be stretched over the little sheet-iron stove on rainy days. Dick, who had volunteered to do the cooking, selected a site for the “kitchen,” and, while the others went off for pine branches for the beds, he set up the stove. After the boughs were placed in the tent and the blankets spread over them they scooped out a trench around the outside of the tent to drain off the water in case of a heavy rain. Then the boys separated in search of firewood, Roy looking for dead branches in the “forest” and Chub and Dick going to the upper end of the island. Chub took the canoe and Dick the rowboat, and by the time they had met, after having paddled along opposite shores, each had accumulated a respectable quantity of driftwood. Much of it was too wet to burn, and so when they got back to camp they spread it out in the sun. Roy had meanwhile made several trips into the woods and a good-sized heap of dry branches lay beside the stove.