Then they carried the baskets down to the boat and across to the island. Here Harry took command and directed the arrangement of the supplies in the packing-case in the tent. Butter and lard, they decided, would not keep hard there, so Chub built what he called a “larder” on the edge of the water. He dug away the sand until he had a small hole. At the bottom of this he placed a flat stone. Then he built up around with pieces of box cover driven into the sand. The butter firkin and lard tin were placed on the bottom and the water, passing in between the pieces of wood, came half-way up them, keeping them cold. A nice square piece of wood, selected from the pile which was drying on the beach, was placed over the top and a stone was rested on it to keep it from blowing off. Chub was very proud of his “larder” and straightway insisted that each member of the party should stop his or her labors and admire it. Each member good-naturedly did so.
By this time the sun was getting down and Dick started a fire in the stove and prepared to cook the evening meal. As it did not grow dark until quite late Harry had received permission to remain on the island for supper. Roy and Chub piled wood together for the camp-fire, and Harry, having stowed away the last of the groceries to her liking, furnished Dick with some slight assistance and much advice. He accepted both thankfully and paid no heed to the latter; for Harry’s way of cooking was not Dick’s. She was not too insistent with her advice; possibly with the doughnut fiasco still in mind she thought it behooved her to be humble. As a camp cook, Dick proved himself an unqualified success from the start. Even Harry acknowledged that he was a wonder. He possessed the knack of doing several things at once and not losing his head, and the easy, unflustered manner in which he boiled potatoes, made tea, and fried steak at one and the same moment was a source of wonderment to the others, who, washed and ready for supper, sat around and almost forgot their hunger in admiration.
Now when you have been busy out of doors all day long, steak sizzling in butter, potatoes steaming through burst jackets, thick slices of snowy bread, and tea glowing like amber when it is poured from the pot in the late sunlight, are just about the finest things ever fashioned. If the steak was a little bit overdone no one realized it, and if condensed milk wasn’t quite up to the fresh article it was too paltry a fact to mention. From where they sat, within, for Dick, easy reaching distance of the stove, they looked out upon the placid water of the river, hued like molten gold under the last rays of the setting sun, across to the green-black shadows of the tree-lined shore. High up above the slope of verdure a window in School Hall caught the radiance and shot it back, glowing ruddily. When for a moment, which was not frequently, the conversation paused there was only the leap of a small fish from the stream, the twittering of a bird, the distant screech of a locomotive, or the lazy creak of a boom as some small boat crept by the island, to mar the mellow stillness of the sunset hour.
But you may be sure the fish and the bird, the engine and the boat, had scant opportunity to make themselves heard at Camp Torohadik, for every one was in the best of spirits and there was so much to talk about that it required all of one’s politeness to keep from interrupting. The school year just closed was a never-failing subject, for there were dozens of incidents to be recalled. And there were plans to lay, marvelous plans for excursions and explorations. After every one had eaten as much as possible, and when there was no longer any excuse for remaining about the “table,” they cleaned up, washing the tin pans and plates in the water of the cove where an accommodating stone jutted out from the sand.
The sunlight lingered and lingered on the tops of the hills in the west and then the twilight filled the valley with soft shadows and toned the bosom of the river to shades of steely gray. And so it was almost eight o’clock before there was any valid excuse for lighting the camp-fire. A tiny breeze sprang up out of the east and fanned the flames into leaping forms of orange and ruby. Gradually the conversation died away, and finally Harry yawned frankly and sleepily. [Chub and Roy paddled her across the darkening water] to the landing, pausing now and then and letting the canoe drift while they gazed back at the point, where Dick’s shadow, monstrous and grotesque, moved across the side of the tent as he mended the fire. They went part way up the path with Harry, bade her good night, and scampered back to the landing and the canoe. As they glided softly into the shadow of the island Dick’s voice challenged them.
[“Chub and Roy paddled her across the darkening water”]
“Who goes there?”