"I've got to swim for it," he commented, "and if I do that, Prudence Island should be my landing-place. Once there, I can get food, and doubtless a boat to take me over to the west shore."
With these words he walked along to the south-east point of the island, and looked across to its nearest and larger neighbor.
"It would not be much of a swim if I had a decent breakfast to work upon," he said to himself; "but I shall have to wait until I get over there before I get it.
"I presume I might wait awhile, and some boat would come along and take me off," he went on, gazing up and down the bay. "But the quickest way is to depend on myself, and it is time I was going, if I am going to put any one on Bagsley's track. I wonder where Judd is, and if he has started to look me up?"
There was no one to answer his question, and he did not stop long to deliberate.
Taking off his clothes, he wrapped them in as small a bundle as possible, and tying them together with his suspenders he fastened them on top of his head. He then entered the water, and swam slowly across the narrow channel that separated him from Prudence Island. He was quite used up when he crawled out on the beach and began to dress himself. Then he walked down along the narrow neck of land that is at the north end of the island until he came to a farm-house, where he stopped and asked for food.
He simply told the farmer that he had got left on Patience Island, and had remained there all night; that he had with the coming morning swam across to that island, and would like, first, some food, and then to secure a boat to take him across to the main shore. The farmer at once asked him into breakfast, which was already upon the table, but told him he would have to go farther down the island to obtain a boat.
Budd accepted the kind invitation, and ate with relish the food put before him; and if the greatest compliment that can be paid a housewife is to show an appreciation of her cookery, then that farmer's wife received from Budd that morning a stupendous compliment.
He had a little money with him, and on leaving he offered to pay his host for the breakfast; but the man refused.
"I may be in the same box some day," he remarked, "and it I'm not, some one else may be whom you can help. So just pass the favor on to him."