EXPLORING THE ISLAND.
When all the property of our shipwrecked crew had been brought ashore
it made a very small heap, and the biggest part of that seemed to be
the bedding. Everybody noticed this, and it added a new gloom to the
feeling of discouragement caused by their weariness, by Katy's fright,
and, most of all, by the hunger of which their slight breakfast had
only taken away the edge.
"Before we do anything else at all," said Captain Aleck, "we must have
something more to eat. Do you feel strong enough to help us, Katy?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. I've got quite rid of my foolish weakness."
"That's good. Let us know if we can help you."
Nobody felt in the mood for talking, and Jim really took a nap between
the rock and the fire. Though the air was still cold, the sunshine was
bright, and under the lee of the little cliff it was very comfortable;
but poor Katy had hard work to keep her fingers from almost freezing.
What she made was chocolate, fried bacon, and "griddle" cakes, the
last cooked in the skillet, and consuming every bit of buckwheat flour
and a good share of the sugar. When the meal had been eaten to the
last scrap, and everybody had grown wide awake and cheerful, Aleck
rapped on a box, and made a speech:
"Attention, ladies and gentlemen! Though none of us have said much
about it, you all know well enough that we're in a regular scrape, and
the sooner we discover how we're to get out of it the better. Now, I
am going to propose a plan, and if any of you don't like it you can
say so."
"We'll do whatever you say," exclaimed Tug.
"But I don't want to _say_ till we've talked it over. I rather think
we're on a small island a good many miles from land. I judge so from
what I know of the chart of the lake, and what I can guess of where we
drifted on that ice-floe. If so, I do not think anybody lives here, or
ever comes here in winter."
"Regular desert island!" Jim was heard to mutter, in a tone that
showed his mind busy with the romantic memory of Robinson Crusoe.
"The first thing to do is to find out whether this is so or not. Now I
propose that Jim and Katy should stay here--"
"Oh, no, no," Katy interrupted, in an eager appeal. "Those dreadful
dogs might come back, and Jimmy is so little! I want you to stay with
me, or else let me go with you."
"That's rather rough on the boy," Aleck laughed. "However, I suppose
it won't matter. Well, then, Tug, I think you and Jim had better go
back in the country, and see what you can find, while I stay and watch
over the goods and the sister. What do you say?"
"Good plan," Tug replied. "I'm ready. Are you, Youngster?"
"Yes, siree! But you'll let us take the gun, won't you, Aleck?"
"Oh, yes, you can have the gun. If the dogs, or wolves, or whatever
they are, come at us while you're gone, Katy can fight them with
firebrands, and I--"
"Oh, _you_ can climb a tree!" said his sister, merrily.
"Yes, I can climb a tree."
While Tug and Jim were gone, Aleck and Katy busied themselves in
repacking their goods in snug bundles, and in talking over their
strange adventures. They were too anxious to feel very gay, but
thought it foolish to give way to fretting until they had lost all
hope. Two hours or more elapsed, and the sun had climbed to "high
noon" in the sky, before the explorers came back, bringing solemn
faces.
"Island!" both called out as soon as they came near; "and a small one
at that."
"Any people on it?" asked Katy.
"Not a soul that I could see," Tug said. "I allow they come here in
summer, though, for the trees have been cut down, and there's a rough
little shanty on the other side."
"Could we live in it?"
"Didn't go inside; don't know. It's half full of snow. Better than no
shelter at all, I suppose. It ain't far off. Suppose you all go over
there and look at it--Jim can show you where it is--while I guard the
grub against those pesky dogs. I don't wonder the brutes are savage,
for I don't see how they could get anything to eat here."
When the three had left the rocks at the beach, under Jim's guidance,
they found themselves in a brushy wood consisting largely of hemlocks
and pines, often closely matted together. A few minutes' walking
carried them through this and up to a ridge of jagged limestone rocks,
one point of which, a little distance off, stood up like a big
monument. This ridge ran about east and west, and they had come up its
southern side. Its northern face was very snowy, had few trees, and
sloped down an eighth of a mile to the water.
At one place on this northern beach several great rocks rose from the
water's edge, and among them stood a small grove of hemlocks and other
trees. In that thicket, Jimmy told them, the old shanty was placed.
They thought it must be very small, or else well stowed away, for
they could see nothing of it. To get down to it was no easy task, for
the crevices and holes in the rocky hillside had drifted full of snow,
and they were continually sinking in where they had expected to stand
firm, or finding a solid rock ahead when they tried to flounder out.
It was a chilled and ill-tempered trio that finally reached the beach,
and sought the shelter of the thicket.
Now it became easier to understand why the hut had been invisible from
above, for it was only a shanty propped up between two great rocks
that helped to form its walls and support its roof. From the broken
oars and many fragments of nets, the old corks and other rubbish lying
about, they saw at once that it had been built by fishermen, who
probably came there to spend the night now and then, or, perhaps,
stayed a week or so at a time in the summer.
The door stood half open, and a snowdrift lay heaped upon the
threshold. Edging their way in, they found that the roof and walls
were tight, the little window unbroken, and several rough articles of
furniture lying about. An old, rusty stove, one corner propped up on
stones, and the pipe tumbled down, stood against the chimney of mud
and sticks that was built up against one of the rocky walls.
"This is splendid!" Katy cried. "Just look at that dear old stove!"
"Yes, sis; I think we must move over here. But are you sure,
Jim--how did you find out?--that this is an island, and not the
mainland?"
[Illustration: THE CABIN ON THE ISLAND.]
"From the top of that high point of rocks you can see the whole of it.
I don't believe it is more than a mile up to the farther end, and not
half that down to the other. The island is shaped something like a
dumb-bell, only one end is a good deal bigger than the other. We are
on the little end here."
"Well, Youngster, you're quite a geographer; but we can't stop to talk
about it now. Let's go back as quickly as we can, and bring part of
our goods over this afternoon; don't you think that's best?"
"Oh, yes." And twenty minutes later, rosy and panting, Katy astonished
the sleepy Tug by rushing into camp, followed closely, not by wild
beasts, as he thought would be the case, but by both the brothers she
had outsped.
"It's so good!" she exclaimed, catching her breath, "to feel something
besides slippery ice under your feet! Now, what shall we take first?"
By hard work and little resting the coming of twilight found them
established in their new home. The last journey had been made after
the bedding, by Tug and Aleck, while Jim and Katy cleared the snow all
away from the cabin door and off the bending roof, straightened up the
rickety old stove, and set a fire going. By the time the larger boys
came back, raising a whoop far up the hillside as they saw the smoke
curling up between the hemlocks, the old hut was warm, and the tin
cover of the little iron pot was dancing, in its effort to hold back
the escaping steam.
"Ugh!" said Tug, as he pushed the door open and threw down his bundle
of blankets; "I'm as hungry as a wolf!"
"If you think you can wait fifteen minutes, Mr. Montgomery, you'll
have a bee-yutiful supper. Can you do it?"
"I 'low I can. I ain't a epi--epi--What d'ye call it?"
"Epicure?"
"That's the chap. I read the other day that the Tartars say he digs
his grave with his teeth. I don't want a grave as bad as that yet."
"I suppose that means that a man who lives on too rich food will die
by it."
"Yes, I reckon so. But I 'low there's no danger in our case; eh,
Aleck? Do you think dried beef and snow-birds too rich for your
delicate stomach, my boy?"
* * * * *
That night all bunked down on the floor, for they were too weary to
care much for anything but a chance to sleep, and the sun was high
before any of them found out, in their shady house, that it was
morning. When breakfast was ready, and they had all sat down at the
rough shelf-table which the fishermen had fastened at one side of the
cabin, Aleck called "Attention!" and said that it was time they were
looking the situation squarely in the face.
"It's all very funny," he said, "to think ourselves Crusoes, and feel
that we are all right because we have a roof over us and a stove to
keep warm by. But Crusoe didn't need a roof nor a stove, for he was in
a warm climate; and he had goats and birds, and shell-fish along the
rocks, and cocoanuts, and lots of other things. Crusoe was a king in
his palace beside us."
The circle of faces grew rather grave.
"Here we are, in midwinter, on an island in a fresh-water lake--and
not even water, but solid ice--where there are no oysters nor clams,
no fruit-trees, and no animals--"
"Except those dogs," Jim interrupted.
"Even _they_ seem to have disappeared," Aleck went on; "and they are
starved almost to skin and bone. If a pack of dogs can't get anything
to eat, what are we four going to do? I tell you, it's a serious
case."
"Well," Tug rejoined, stoutly, "I, for one, don't give in yet. Look
what we did out on the ice! We can fish, and trap snow-birds--I saw a
flock last evening; and maybe we can find some mussels near the beach,
and so stick it out till the ice breaks up and the birds begin to come
in the spring."
"Tug, you're a brick, and I was wrong to feel so lowspirited," said
Aleck, heartily. "I think you're a better fellow to be captain here
than I am. I resign."
"Not by a long chalk!" exclaimed Tug. "Here, I'll put it to vote.
Whoever wants Aleck to go out, and me to take my innings as captain,
hold up his hand."