Preparations
When the Hardy boys returned home after their visit to Elroy Jefferson
they hastened to tell their father about the munificent reward the
antique dealer had given them for recovering his automobile. Then came
the momentous matter of securing permission for the vacation outing.
Fenton Hardy listened with a smile.
“So you want to leave us during the Christmas holidays,” he said. “You
don’t mind missing Christmas dinner, with the turkey and the pudding and
the nuts and raisins and candy. You don’t mind going without your
presents this Christmas. You’d rather go camping.”
“Would we _have_ to miss our presents?” asked Joe anxiously.
“Well, you know that Christmas presents are usually given out on
Christmas morning in this house. If you’re not here——”
“Couldn’t we get them before we go away?”
Mr. Hardy laughed. “You want presents and outing both, I see. Well, I
suppose it can be arranged. I have no objections to letting you go
camping, seeing Mr. Jefferson has been good enough to allow you the use
of Cabin Island. If you take proper equipment with you, plenty of food
and blankets, you should be comfortable enough. As a matter of fact,” he
murmured, “I wouldn’t mind going with you myself.”
“Will you come, Dad?” shouted Frank.
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get away. Go ahead with your
outing—if your mother agrees.”
Mrs. Hardy, it appeared, had no objections, although at first she was
reluctant in view of the fact that the boys would be absent from the
family circle over Christmas Day. “It won’t seem like Christmas without
my lads,” she said.
Aunt Gertrude, of course, insisted on contributing her “two cents’
worth,” as Joe expressed it.
“Camping in the winter time!” she sniffed. “I never heard the like of
it. They’ll freeze to death.”
“We’ll be just as comfortable as if we were in town, Aunt Gertrude,”
said Frank. “The cabin is well built and warm, and we’ll have plenty of
heavy blankets with us.”
“You’ll need ’em. As for being comfortable, I’ll warrant you’ll be glad
to come humping back home where everything is nice and cosy. You’ll find
a big change, my fine young men, when you get away down in that rickety
shack, with the wind blowing through the chinks and the snow drifting in
on the floor. If you stay there longer than one night, it will be a big
surprise to me.”
“Of course,” put in Joe, “if you think you will miss us so very much—if
you really think it would spoil your Christmas not to have us here, why
we won’t go.”
Aunt Gertrude laughed mirthlessly.
“Spoil my Christmas! The idea! It will be a real merry Christmas again,
without two noisy boys making life a botheration to me.”
“In that case, then, we’ll go camping,” said Frank.
When they told Chet Morton of their interview with Elroy Jefferson, that
youth was loud in his delight. He insisted promptly on being included in
the proposed outing.
“The family is going to Boston for the holidays,” he said. “They were
going to leave me at home alone. It looked like a fine Christmas! But
now—oh, boy! When do we start?”
“Three days before Christmas.”
“Great! Who else is coming?”
“We promised Biff Hooper.”
“Sure! Biff’s a good scout. But don’t make the party too large. That
cabin won’t hold very many.”
“We figured on just the four of us,” said Frank. “The ice-boat won’t
hold any more, anyway.”
“Fine. We’d better get together to-morrow and decide how much grub we
should take along. We’ve got to eat, you know.”
“You _would_ bring that up,” laughed Joe. “No fear of going short of
supplies when you’re in the party. You’ll see that we take enough.”
“I must keep up my strength,” returned Chet, unabashed.
When the boys met Biff Hooper and told him that the outing was assured
and that Cabin Island was available, the pugilistic lad turned several
handsprings in the snow by way of expressing his delight.
“Yeah!” he shouted. “That let’s me out. My Uncle Oscar and his five kids
are coming to spend Christmas at our place, and it would have been up to
me to entertain the little pests. Now I’m out of _that_! Hurray!”
“This trip seems to be popular,” remarked Frank. “Well, you’d better
start figuring out what you can contribute in the way of grub. We each
carry our own blankets.”
“Suits me. I’ll take _all_ the grub, if you want.”
Next day, the four gathered at Biff Hooper’s home and, in a very
businesslike manner, drew up a list of requirements for the trip, and
apportioned what would be required of each. Inasmuch as Frank and Joe
had secured the privilege of Cabin Island and were also giving the use
of the ice-boat, Chet and Biff insisted on looking after the matter of
food. Each boy was to take along whatever cooking utensils he could beg
or borrow from home.
In this manner, with conferences after school and during the noon hours,
the boys made their preparations for the outing, and the last days of
the autumn term slowly dragged past. They had decided to leave Bayport
three days before Christmas, almost immediately after school closed, and
the intervening time was occupied by putting the ice-boat in readiness
and accumulating everything they would need.
“We don’t want to keep trotting back to the city every day for something
we’ve forgotten,” Chet pointed out.
At last, everything was in readiness. The food supplies were packed, the
blankets were stowed away, the ice-boat had been overhauled, the boys
had loaded skates, skis, and snowshoes on their craft, and everything
had been checked over so that nothing would be forgotten. News of the
proposed outing had circulated among the other boys at the Bayport high
school and the Hardy boys were besieged with requests from many of their
chums who wanted to accompany them. But they were obliged to refuse. The
cabin was large, but it would not accommodate everybody.
Finally, school closed. There were the usual closing exercises, which
the lads sat through impatiently, and then they raced toward home, for
the trip to Cabin Island was definitely scheduled for the morrow.
Mrs. Hardy had taken liberties with the calendar, and when the boys came
home that night they found, to their unbounded delight and astonishment,
that the Christmas dinner had been set ahead. There was a turkey in the
oven and the kitchen was redolent with the savory odors of a Christmas
feast.
“Whoopee!” cried Joe. “We shan’t miss our Christmas after all!”
The dinner, being in the nature of a surprise, surpassed all previous
Christmas dinners. Somehow, the turkey was more succulent, the mince pie
had a better flavor, simply because the boys had been resigning
themselves to missing the good things that year. The mere fact that the
calendar indicated Christmas Day as being actually four days off seemed
to matter little.
Mr. Hardy had even ordered a Christmas tree and, after dinner, when the
boys went into the library and found that even this crowning touch had
not been omitted, they felt that life had little more to offer. The tree
glittered with lights and there were certain mysterious packages in
tissue paper that aroused speculations. Frank and Joe immediately dashed
upstairs and returned with the presents they had bought for their
parents and for Aunt Gertrude, which they distributed at the base of the
tree.
“I think we’re lucky,” said Frank, when they went to bed that night.
“Lucky! I never expected to have Christmas and our outing too,” returned
his brother.
“Christmas dinner, a tree, and our presents!”
“I hope Chet and Biff get off as well.”
They fell asleep, happy.
In the morning, the usual Christmas ceremony of opening the presents was
observed. Frank and Joe were unusually fortunate. The usual gifts of
clothing, which included neckties, scarfs, socks and shirts came first,
then for each of the lads came a complete outing costume of breeches,
mackinaw shirts and short coats. To top it all came two small calibre
rifles, each with a box of ammunition.
“Don’t kill too many rabbits,” laughed their father.
Christmas was complete. Frank and Joe had given their parents one of the
newest and finest radio sets and to Aunt Gertrude they gave several
volumes of poems, as that lady was very fond of reading. For once in her
life, their aunt did not sniff.
“Just what I wanted!” she beamed. “I have always adored Longfellow!”
At that moment the telephone rang. Chet was calling.
“All set!” he reported. “Biff and I are down here waiting.”
“We’ll be with you in a minute,” said Frank.
So the Hardy boys set out on their vacation outing to Cabin Island.
Little did they dream of the many strange happenings in store for them.