“A BOAT! A BOAT!”
The sun was high when Florence and Tillie woke on the island where for a
time they were Crusoes. Their first thought was of food. To Tillie, Goose
Island was no unknown land. She had been here often in winter. The time
had been when wild geese laid their eggs here. They came no more. There
would be no eggs for breakfast.
“Fish for breakfast,” Tillie declared. “It’s our only chance.”
“No line,” said Florence.
“Yes. Here’s one.” Tillie produced one from the pocket of her knickers.
“Got a can of worms in your pocket, too?” Florence asked with a laugh. To
her the affair was becoming a lark. The sun was bright and cheering, the
sea a glorious blue. There was not a cloud in the sky.
“Someone will find us,” she declared hopefully.
“We’re a long way off the ship channel,” said Tillie. “We may be here for
days. They’ll search the shores for our boats and our bodies.” She
shuddered. “They’ll beat the forest for miles before they think of
looking on Goose Island. And you may be sure enough that those villains,
whoever they were, will never whisper a word of it. They think we are at
the bottom of the lake. That’s what they hope, too.
“Florence.” Her tone became quite solemn. “It’s not whether you are rich
or poor that counts. It’s whether you are honest and loyal and kind. Take
Daddy Red Johnson. He was poor. But he was square and kind. Once when he
was fishing for trout he caught a ninety pound sturgeon. Mighty near
pulled him through the hole. He got over ten dollars for it. He called
that Providence. Said God sent the sturgeon so he could help out a poor
Indian who was sick and had only dried fish to eat.
“He was poor. But he was good and kind. Then there’s the Eries. They’ve
got millions; yacht worth a hundred thousand, big cottage up here,
sailboats, speed boat, everything. But they’re just as square as any poor
folks.
“Wait till we get back!” she exclaimed. “Somebody’ll suffer for this!
Cedar Point has had enough of that sort of thing. Crooks rob city folks
in the winter. Then they come up here to try and have a good time like
real people. Do you think they ever can? Not much! Man with a black heart
never has a good time anywhere. Cedar Point has had enough badness.
“But there’s the question of breakfast!” she exclaimed. “Plenty of
minnows if we can catch ’em. Pull off your shoes.”
For half an hour they labored on the sandy beach, in shallow water,
constructing a minnow trap of stones and sticks. They made a narrow pond
that could be closed quickly. After corralling a school of sand minnows,
they closed them in. One of them was soon flopping on Tillie’s hook.
“Have to swim for my breakfast,” she explained, rapidly disrobing. “Some
big old rock bass out there beneath that rock, I’ll bet.”
She plunged into the water, swam thirty yards, then mounted the rock.
Standing there in the morning sunshine, she seemed a statue of bronze.
The statue became a thing of great animation shortly after her minnow hit
the water. She had hooked a fish.
“He’s a whopper!” she shouted back. “We’ll get more, too.”
They did. Half an hour later four plump rock bass, spiked to a broad
plank, were roasting to a delicious brown.
“Nothing better than planked fish,” said Tillie, as she cleaned up the
last morsel and sucked her fingers. “Next problem is one of
transportation.”
“Tickets for two,” replied Florence, “and no return tickets, please.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tillie philosophically. “This isn’t half bad;
not near so bad as what was intended for us.”
“No,” Florence’s tone was a sober one, “it’s not.”
“Well,” Florence’s voice took on a more cheerful tone, “this appears to
be our island. We’d better explore it. There may be some ‘Man Friday’
just around the corner.”
They started out along the pebbly beach. Here and there they came upon
bits of wreckage from cottagers’ docks that had been carried away by the
high water. Two posts joined by cross pieces, long planks very full of
spikes, short bits of broken boards—such was the driftwood that
obstructed their path.
“Enough planks and nails to build a house,” was Tillie’s comment.
“Why not?” Florence became enthusiastic at once. “At least we could build
a three-sided shelter with one side open to the fire. That’s good sound
lumber.” She struck one plank a thwack with the small axe she carried in
her hand.
“We might,” admitted Tillie. “We’d better go farther. Find the best
place.”
They trudged on. Then, quite unexpectedly, as they turned a corner, they
saw something looming in the distance.
“A boat! A boat!” Florence fairly shrieked this as she went racing away.
She was not wholly wrong. It was a boat. But one of those heavy, flat
bottomed affairs, used only by commercial fishermen, it lay bottom up,
displaying three stoved-in planks.
“Let’s turn her over.” Tillie’s tone was wholly practical. She had been
brought up in a boat.
They put their shoulders to the craft, and over it went.
Tillie tapped it here and hacked at it there with the axe. “Not so bad,”
was her final judgment. “Sides are sound. Stern, too. Have to give her
three new planks in her bottom. We can calk up the seams with moss and
rosin. Make some oars out of cedar poles, and there you are. It’ll be a
stiff pull. All of two miles to shore. But we’ll make it.”
“How long will all that take?”
“Maybe two days.”
At once Florence became downcast. She was beginning to think of Petite
Jeanne. She had come to this place for rest. “Little rest she’ll get
while I am missing!” she thought gloomily. “We ought to get away from
here at once. But how can we?”
“All right,” she spoke in as cheerful a tone as she could command. “Let’s
get to work at once.”
They did get to work, and made famous progress, too. Lunch forgotten,
supper forgotten, they toiled on until, just as the sun was dropping low,
Tillie declared the clumsy craft would float.
“No oars,” objected Florence.
“Can pole her close to shore,” replied Tillie. “Try to take her down to
our camp.”
This proved a Herculean task. The boat was clumsy and hard to steer.
Three times she filled and all but sank. Bailing with a small wooden box
they found was slow work. They reached camp at last, tired, soaked to the
skin, and ravenously hungry.
“Ought to have caught some fish,” Tillie said remorsefully. “Too late
now. Only bullheads bite in the dark. They stay in the bullrushes. None
here.”
They made a fire, dried their clothes, then heated some water in a hollow
stone. To this water they added bitter willow leaves. As they sipped this
they pretended they were drinking tea.
“To-morrow,” said Tillie with a sigh, “I’ll catch a lot of fish.”
“To-morrow I would like to go home.”
“Well, maybe,” replied Tillie thoughtfully. “All depends on that old
boat. If she only soaks up so she don’t leak like a gill net, we might.”
There was nothing left for it but to attempt to round out the night with
sleep. They were tired enough for that, beyond question.
After building a hot fire, they curled up in their herring box shelter
and prepared to sleep.
Florence had all but drifted off to the land of dreams, when she fancied
she heard the throb of a motor. The impression was half real, half dream.
Reality struggled for a time with dream life. Dream life won, and she
slept.