“All right, then; we’ll make it Pat, if that’s your choice. I say, Pat, this juice is the stuff for wetness, but it makes a fellow remember his grub. Where’d you leave that fish?”
“Really, I can’t just say, but it must have been where I wrenched my ankle.”
“You cawn’t just say! And what are we going to eat?”
“Here are the cocoanuts.”
“Bright boy! go to the head of the class! Just take some more husk off those empty ones.”
Winthrope caught up one of the nuts, and with the aid of his knife, stripped it of its husk. At a gesture from Blake, he laid it on the bare ground, and the American burst it open with a blow of his heel. It was an immature nut, and the meat proved to be little thicker than clotted cream. Blake divided it into three parts, handing Miss Leslie the cleanest.
Though his companions began with more restraint, they finished their shares with equal gusto. Winthrope needed no further orders to return to his husking. One after another, the nuts were cracked and divided among the three, until even Blake could not swallow another mouthful of the luscious cream.
Toward the end Miss Leslie had become drowsy. At Winthrope’s urging, she now lay down for a nap, Blake’s coat serving as a pillow. She fell asleep while Winthrope was yet arranging it for her. Blake had turned his back on her, and was staring moodily at the hippopotamus trail, when Winthrope hobbled around and sat down on the palm trunk beside him.
“I say, Blake,” he suggested, “I feel deuced fagged myself. Why not all take a nap?”
“‘And when they awoke, they were all dead men,’” remarked Blake.