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"About eighteen feet, Steve, I should say," he called. "Sixteen," corrected the Captain gravely. Joe smiled. "Mean it?" he asked. Steve nodded and put a finger on the chart. "We're right here," he said. Then he covered the compass and drew down the lid of the chart box and stretched his arms luxuriously. "That's over with," he added, "and I'm glad of it! How about dinner, Ossie?"
Ossie nodded and glanced darkly at Perry. "If he stays around we will," he answered. "We've got enough for three or four days yet, though. Better have some canned stuff, I guess. And some flour and sugar." "How's the treasury, Phil?" inquired Han. "Still holding out. Where's the next stop, Steve?" "We said Portsmouth, but Harry wants to put in at Salem. I don't suppose it matters much."
"The pesky thing isn't more than a few acres big!" exclaimed Joe disgustedly. "And it's entirely surrounded by water," added Perry brightly. "Most islands are," said Ossie. "We can get up on top easily enough here, fellows. Let's see what it looks like." Their island was little more than a rock stuck out of the water.
He complained of intense pains in his chest and Steve had horrible visions of pneumonia until Ossie, asked to locate the trouble more definitely, laid a trembling hand on a portion of his anatomy and muttered "Here" through chattering teeth. "That's not your chest, you idiot," said Steve, vastly relieved. "That's your stomach!" "Is it?" returned the sufferer miserably.
Ossie tugged at Perry's sleeve, but Perry failed to notice it. "One look at that face of yours is enough, old top," continued Perry. "It's got crook written all over it!" "It has, has it?" gasped the man. "Let me tell you that my name is Drummond, sir, and that this is my house, and that is my safe, and and if you'll mind your own business " "What!" asked Perry weakly.
"I'll go if they've got Charlie Chaplin," said Han. "Ossie, ask him if they have, please." "He says he doesn't know," responded Ossie after an exchange of remarks. "I told them we'd go, though," he added, dropping to the floor. "They're going to wait for us on the landing in half an hour." "Half an hour!" grumbled Perry. "You told them that so I couldn't get enough to eat, you stingy beggar!
There are heaps of minnows in the Delaware River. Or young shad. A shad's awfully decent eating when he's grown up, and so it stands to reason that he'd make a perfectly elegant sardine." "Nothing but bones," objected Ossie. "A young shad, say a week-old one, wouldn't have any bones, you chump. At least, they'd be nice and soft. It's a dandy business, Ossie.
We might have stayed on her, as it's turned out, but the boat didn't look very homelike to me yesterday!" "How the dickens were we to know that it would hold together, or even stay on its keel?" asked Joe disgustedly. "Don't talk like a sick goldfish, Ossie!" As soon as they had consumed breakfast they scrambled down to the beach with many groans and stretched their cramped and aching limbs.
I dare say any of us can fry an egg and make coffee; and you can buy almost everything ready to eat nowadays." "Tell you who's a whale of a cook," said Perry eagerly. "That's Ossie Brazier. Remember the time we camped at Mirror Lake last Spring? Remember the flapjacks he made? M-mm!" "I didn't go," said Steve. "What sort of a chap is Brazier? I don't know him very well."
"Where are those crackers?" They got Ossie awake with difficulty and Steve doled out six crackers to each. The tin cup came in handy, for there was a pool of rain water in a ledge below them. "What I can't see," grumbled Ossie, "is why we didn't stay on board the boat. It would have been a lot drier than this place." "You may think so now," replied Steve, "but wait till you get aboard again.
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