The Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island Part 18

But how about our ham, is that gone, too!"

"Well, I should say, yes," declared Giraffe, an injured look on his face, as if he felt accusing eyes fixed upon him, "s'pose you think one poor lone ham with six hungry fellows to chaw away at it, could last forever, but it won't. If you want to know what we've got left I'll tell you--two cans of Boston baked beans, one of tomatoes, some potatoes, a package of rice, plenty of tea, sugar and coffee, three tins of milk, some chocolate, and three packages of crackers."

"Is that all?" gasped b.u.mpus.

"So you see right away to-morrow we've got to get busy trying to lay in some sort of supplies," Giraffe went on to say. "How about that, Thad?"

"You never said truer words," was the scoutmaster's comment.

"Yum, yum, I don't know when I've enjoyed a supper like I have this one," Step Hen acknowledged.

"I hope it ain't the last time I'll hear you say that," remarked Giraffe.

"Hope so myself," returned the other, "because it'd be too bad if I had to quit eating at my tender age."

"Thad, do you think this island could be inhabited?"

It was Davy who asked this question, but b.u.mpus must have been thinking along the same lines, for he nodded his head violently and smiled, as though he awaited Thad's answer with interest.

"Of course I couldn't say," the scout-master observed. "It's only a small rocky island, you know, and people wouldn't live here the year'

through."

"But they might come here, ain't that so?" Step Hen insisted.

"Why, yes, to fish, or shoot wild fowl in the season," Thad went on to say.

"Well, I sure do hope there may be some white fish netters here right now," Step Hen said.

"Or if their ain't, let's wish they'll be comin' along soon," b.u.mpus added with a fervency that was certainly genuine.

"I wonder," Davy broke in with, "what we could do if our boat was carried away, or we found we couldn't mend the same?"

"Huh! What did old Robinson do but build him a boat? Here are six boys, wide-awake as they make 'em--and I'd like to know why we couldn't do as much as one man!"

b.u.mpus said this rather boastfully, not that he had so much confidence in his own ability to do things as he felt satisfied that Thad and Allan would be equal to almost any emergency.

"Well, we might, under the same conditions," the former told him.

"Ain't the conditions the same," inquired Step Hen. "He was wrecked, and so are we, you might call it."

"Yes, but there's no tree on this rocky island big enough to make into a boat," Thad informed him.

"That's a fact, they do grow dwarf trees here," Step Hen admitted.

"And suppose there was, how could we ever chop one down with one little camp hatchet, and hollow out the log?" Thad asked.

"Might take a year," acknowledged the other.

"We'd freeze to death here in the winter time, because it gets awful cold, they say," Step Hen continued.

"Why, we could walk over the ice, and get ash.o.r.e," Davy suggested.

"Guess the old lake don't freeze over solid any time; it's too big, ain't it, Thad?" Giraffe went on to say.

"That's something I don't know," came the scout master's answer; "and what's more to the point I don't care, because we'll never stay here that long."

"Glad to know it," said b.u.mpus. "P'raps now our friends'll be looking us up, and come to the rescue."

"You mean Smithy and Bob White, don't you?" asked Step Hen.

"That's who."

And so they continued to discuss matters from every view-point possible, as only wide-awake boys may.

Meanwhile the scout-master, thinking that while the rain held off he might as well step out and take a little look around, proceeded to do so.

Allan Hollister was sitting there, resting, and listening to the arguments of the other boys, when he saw the scout-master beckoning just outside the full glow of light cast by the fire.

"What's up, Thad?" he asked, as he joined the other.

"I think I've made the discovery that we're not alone on the island,"

came the answer.

CHAPTER XVIII

WHAT THAD FOUND OUT

"That sounds good to me, Thad," remarked Allan.

"Hold on before you say that," the other went on to say, significantly.

"What about it?" demanded Allan.

"Because we don't know who they may be, if there are men out here,"

answered the cautious scout-master.

The other gave a low whistle that stood for surprise.

"I see now, what you mean," he observed; "but what makes you think there are others here, when they never lifted a hand to help us, and haven't as much as dropped in to sit at our fire?"

"Well, perhaps they don't want to see us," Thad told him.

"Oh! yes, we were talking about smugglers, and then we ran across that Mr. Stebbins who knew all about us, and he was one of a party looking up the slick men who fetch things over from Canada to escape the heavy duties. But Thad do you, really believe there could be a bunch of that stripe hiding out on Sturgeon Island?"

"I don't know anything yet, Allan, except that I've reason to know we're not alone out here, that's all."