BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS
"Do you know what I think?" said Archer. "If Alsace used to belong to
France, then the Rhine must have been the boundary between France and
Gerrmany and we'rre right on that old frontierr now--hey? I'm a smarrt
lad, huh? They used to have watch towers and things 'cause I got kept in
school once forr sayin' a poem wrong about a fellerr that was in a watch
towerr on the Rhine. I bet this towerr had something to do with that old
frontierr and I bet it was connected with that castle overr on shorre,
too. Therre was a picture of a fellerr in a kind of an arrmorr looking
off the top of a towerr just like this--I remember 'cause I marrked him
up with a pencil so's he'd have a swallerr-tailed coat and a sunbonnet."
Archer's education was certainly helping him greatly.
"If we could once get overr therre into that Black Forest," he
continued, scanning the Baden shore and the heights beyond with the
rescued glass, "we'd be on easy street 'cause I remember gettin' licked
forr sayin', 'the abrupt west slopes of this romantic region are
something or otherr with wild vineyards that grow in furious
thing-um-bobs----'"
"_What?_" said Tom.
"_Anyway_, there's lots of grapes there," Archer concluded.
"If that's the way you said it I don't blame 'em for lickin' you," said
sober Tom. "I think by tonight I'll be able to swim it. There seems to
be some houses over there--that's one thing I don't like."
The Baden side, as well as they could make out through the haze, was
pretty thickly populated for a mile or two, but the lonesome mountains
arose beyond and once there, they would be safe, they felt sure.
They spent the day in the dilapidated frontier tower, as Archer called
it, and he was probably not far from right in his guess about it.
Certainly it had not been used for many years except apparently by
fishermen occasionally, and the rotten condition of the seines showed
that even such visitors had long since ceased to use it. Perhaps indeed
it was a sort of outpost watch tower belonging to the gray castle which
they saw through the mist.
"Maybe it belonged to a Gerrman baron," suggested Tom.
"Anyway, it's a _barren_ island," said Archer; "are you hungry?"
Tom sat in the doorway, favoring his hurt knee, and watched Archer move
cautiously about among the sharp, slippery rocks, where he succeeded in
cornering and spearing several bewildered fish which the troubled waters
of the night had marooned in these small recesses.
"I'm afraid, you'll be seen from the shore," Tom said, but without that
note of assurance and authority which he had been accustomed to use.
"Don't worry," said Archer, "it's too thick and hazy. Just wait till I
spearr one morre. Therre's a beaut, now----"
They wasted half a dozen damp matches before they could get flame enough
to ignite the whisk stick which Tom held ready, but when they succeeded
they "commandeered" the broken door as a "warr measurre," to quote
Archer, and kindled a fire just inside the doorway where they believed
that the smoke, mingling with the mist, would not be seen through the
gray, murky atmosphere.
It is a great mistake to be prejudiced against a fish just because it is
German. Tom and Archer were quite free from that narrow bias. And if it
should ever be your lot to be marooned in a ramshackle old watch tower
on the Rhine on a dull, rainy day, remember that the same storm which
has marooned you will have marooned some fishes among the crevices of
rock--only you must be careful to turn them often and not let them burn.
The broken rail of an old spiral stairway, if there happens to be one
handy, can be twisted into a rough gridiron, and if you happen to think
of it (as Tom did) you can use the battery case of your flashlight for a
drinking-cup.
"If we couldn't have managed to get a light with these damp matches," he
said, as they partook of their sumptuous breakfast, "we'd have just had
to wait till the sun came out and we could a' got one with the lens in
the spy-glass."
Once a scout, always a scout!