Both boys seemed to waken at the same instant next morning. The
birds were singing all round them; the light was dancing on the
river; the Chase stood out before them framed in a cloudless blue
sky, and the camp-fire was practically out!
But a little energy soon put that right. A few red-hot cinders still
remained, and last night's heap of dead wood served as morning fuel.
Very soon the fire was crackling away merrily enough. "Isn't this A1
and O.K.?" shouted Peter, splashing in the river. "Hurray and
Hurroosh! Oh, isn't a night-camp grand? I could eat my breakfast,
though, at any minute you like to name."
"We'll have to catch and cook it first," said his brother. But when,
after a ten minutes' swim, the boys returned to the camp-fire it was
to find Jan, the good fairy, in charge. "Breakfast at the Cottage
for _me_!" she repeated indignantly; "what an idea! I'm camping out
as much as you are! I'm cook, too, aren't I? No,--if you'll only
just go off for five minutes and fetch fuel or something, I'll have
hot tea ready by then."
In five minutes she was as good as her word; a dixie full of hot tea
for each awaited them, and the remains of the loaf and the butter.
"There's not very much," Jan announced to the approaching pair, "but
I thought we wanted to be self-supporting now we've begun, so I just
brought a few tea-leaves along, and----"
"Right you are. So we will be"--the boys produced a pretty good
cupful of wild raspberries. "If we can't make a good breakfast on
these----!" they said. And the meal in the open air, of bread and
butter and wild fruit, was not to be despised. Hardly was it over
when the horn sounded on the other side of the water. "There's
Mother. We'll tidy up the camp and make up to-day's arrangements
when we've heard what she has to say," said Robin as they raced off.
The morning bulletin was good. Dick's attack was evidently
slight--he had had a good night; and it seemed a very mild sort of
scarlet fever, so the children's mother informed them. "He doesn't
seem to have caught cold on the journey, for which I am thankful; but
the queer thing is that Donald _hasn't_ got it, evidently, after all.
His headache was a bilious attack. Your aunt writes that he will
travel to-morrow. I shall have to wire to put him off, of course,
but it's just possible that he may escape altogether."
"I say, if he _does_, what a time he'll have! No Dick; no us; no
holiday; no nothing!" said Peter commiseratingly. "Poor chap, he's
worse off than us."
"Yes, indeed," Mrs. Vaughan smiled. "In fact you three look as
though you were enjoying yourselves. How is the camp prospering,
Robin, and how did you all sleep?"
"Jolly well." They were unanimous. "I saw your light, Mother,"
added Jan, "in the window."
"My _light_, dear!" Mrs. Vaughan looked surprised; "my room looks
out on the other side. I put out no lamp," she added when Jan had
told her story; "you must have been mistaken."
"Quite mysterious," said Peter teasingly.
"Something _else_ happened that seemed a bit mysterious at the time,
didn't it, old chap?" said Robin, paying off Jan's score. "What
about the noise at midnight?"
"Why, I'd forgotten all about it. So there was!" Peter broke into
his story, and the experience lost nothing in the telling: "Bang,
bang! Thump, thump! Ting, ting! it went," quoth he, "right through
my head."
His mother laughed. "The effect of the late supper, my dear;
probably both mysteries come from the same cause. Well, I must go.
Robin, remember you're in charge."
"All right, Mother, but everything's going spiffingly, really," her
eldest son assured her.
The day was a busy one. First of all, the camp had to be cleared as
the Captain commanded. Then came the making of the day's
arrangements, and the procuring of supplies. Potatoes could be
bought from a neighbouring farm; eggs also; butter and bread and tea
from the village shop over the river. Jan was anxious to try her
hand at a stew, and the meat for this had to be procured. Mrs.
Brown's chores had to be put in hand too; old Brown was away early
and the boys were anxious, as Scouts, to do as many good turns as
they could for the kind old dame in return for her good services to
them. Her wood was collected, and her kindling was chopped; her
stores were brought in from the neighbouring shop; half-an-hour's
work was put in on mending up the fence of her little garden. "And
we'll have a go at earthing up your potatoes, Brownie, while we're on
the Island," said Robin.
After dinner and a rest the making of the "regular" hut began; the
bivouac was only to be used until better accommodation was ready. A
solid piece of work the making of the "Pioneer Hut"--as the boys
called it--promised to be. First of all, a framework of tough ash
branches, each one carefully chosen, would be needed; the ends of
each must be pointed and fixed into holes in the ground, dug opposite
to each other in two parallel lines, so that the whole framework,
when completed, would look like a line of steady deeply-driven
half-hoops of ash. A very strong branch had to be lashed to the top
of the half-hoops to hold the whole together, and this must all be
tested and tried before the thatching was even begun.
"The whole thing will take some days at least," Robin remarked to his
fellow-campers as they sat round their fire.
"And when that's done, what'll we do next, I wonder?" remarked Peter.
But a great many things were going to be done that no one among the
campers had any expectation of whatever!