The Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island Part 12

CHAPTER XII

A CALL TO BREAKFAST

Every one came tumbling out in a great hurry. The moon was so situated that the forepart of the boat was somewhat in the shadow; and on this account they could not see plainly, save that there was some sort of an animal crouching there. As b.u.mpus had so loudly wailed that it was trying to carry off his prize trout, which had been left hanging in the air until needed at breakfast time, the rest of the boys understood the situation pretty well. Immediately they started to shout, and wave their arms, as well as hurl every sort of thing they could lay hands on.

Naturally enough this proved too much for even the bravest wild beast; and giving a savage snarl the thing suddenly bounded ash.o.r.e, and was lost to view. They had just a last glimpse of a shadowy figure skulking off along the sandy beach near by.

"Oh! tell me, did he get away with it?" cried b.u.mpus; and to hear the pain which he threw into these words one would have though a priceless treasure was involved; and so it was, the biggest speckled trout he had ever caught in all his life.

Giraffe scrambled forward, waving his arms in order to discourage any beast that might think to attack him, and "shooing" at a vigorous rate.

"Brace up, b.u.mpus!" he called out.

"Is it safe?" demanded the fat scout, joyously.

"Yes, he didn't dare carry it off when we got to shouting so lively; and here's your trout, but I reckon we had better take care to make it secure next time. These cats can climb some, and that's right."

"Was it really a wildcat?" asked Step Hen, curiously; just as though the beast had seemed so large to his excited fancy that he would have felt safe in calling it a panther.

"Looked mighty much that way," admitted Allan, who ought to know the breed, as considerable of his younger life had been spent up in the Adirondacks, and in Maine, where he must have seen many a specimen of the feline tribe.

"I thought at first it was a tiger," b.u.mpus admitted, faintly; at which there was a little laugh all around, for they could easily understand how a fellow's fears might magnify things, when suddenly aroused, and with only that deceptive moonlight to see by.

"Whatever it was, and we'll try and make sure in the morning," remarked Thad, "it's gone now."

"But it may come back, after smelling of my fine trout," b.u.mpus observed, seriously; "and rather than run any chance, I think I'll have to sit up, and play sentry the balance of the night."

"Joke!" chuckled Giraffe, chuckling again.

"Huh! mebbe, now, you think I couldn't do that same?" remonstrated b.u.mpus. "I know I'm a good sound sleeper, which fact I can't deny; but then there's such a thing as rising to an occasion, you see."

"Yes," scoffed the tall scout, "if we depended on you staying awake, chances are we'd have no trout for breakfast to-morrow morning."

"No need of anything like that," remarked the scout-master; "because we can fix it so that no wildcat could get that fish, let him try as hard as he wants. Just you leave it with me, b.u.mpus, and I'll guarantee that we have fish for breakfast, and without anybody having to stay up either, or lose another minute's sleep."

He tied a cord to the dangling trout, once more placed where it had been before, and then announced that he meant to fasten the other end to his arm. If anything pulled at the fish it would telegraph the fact down to him; and as Thad took the double-barreled shotgun to bed with him, and occupied the place Rumpus had vacated, they understood what the answer was going to be should he be aroused.

But evidently the beast thought discretion the better part of valor, for he did not come aboard again that night. Possibly the shouts, and the whooping of the boys had given him all the excitement he could stand.

He liked fish very much; as do all of the cat species, but if he must have a feast of trout it looked as though he would have to procure the same in some other way than stealing it from those on board the Chippeway Belle.

Strange to say b.u.mpus was the first to crawl out; and his labored progress over his comrades evoked a continual series of grunts and complaints.

"Hurrah! it's still there, and we ain't going to be cheated out of our treat after all!" he was heard to cry, as he gained the open air.

"Well, here's the first case on record of that fellow ever getting awake ahead of the rest of the bunch," said Step Hen.

"Yes, and he mighty near flattened me into a pancake when he crawled on top of me to get to the doors," grunted Giraffe.

"Say, where's my other shoe? Anybody seen my leather around? I bet you now some fellow just grabbed it up, and tossed the same to that pesky old cat last night; and if so, how'm I ever to limp around with only one shoe for my both feet; because some of the things went into the water, for I heard the splash?"

"If anybody threw it, you did yourself, Step Hen," a.s.serted Giraffe, not liking this thing of being accused of things promiscuously; "because I saw something that looked mighty much like a shoe, in your hand when you crawled out."

"Then why didn't, you tell me about it, Giraffe?" complained the other, with a doleful groan. "I think you're about as mean as you can be, to let a poor fellow in his excitement do such a thing."

"Why, however was I to know?" said the tall scout, chuckling as though it struck him as a joke that Step Hen, in his sudden anxiety to scare the prowler away, should have thrown his own shoe at the cat. "Besides, I had troubles of my own, just about that time, let me tell you. But mebbe you can find your old shoe again; because the water ain't so very deep up ahead there."

"No need to bother," sang out b.u.mpus, who was taking his trout down tenderly, and examining it to see how much damage the claws of the intruder had done, if any, "because there the shoe is right now, on sh.o.r.e, and all right."

That gave Step Hen reason to say he knew he could never have been silly enough to cast his shoe in such a way as to hurl it overboard; but all the same he was pleased to be able to recover it in a dry condition, after all.

"Who'll clean it while I get a fire started ash.o.r.e?" asked Giraffe, presently, when they had finished their dressing.

"No hurry," remarked Thad; "for while the sun's getting ready to come up, and the storm petered out after all, I guess the lake's a bit too rough for us to go out for some time yet. Such a big body of water can kick up some sea when it gets in the humor; and some of the party don't seem to hanker after that rising and falling motion."

b.u.mpus himself decided to do the last honors to his "n.o.ble capture," and taking the fish ash.o.r.e, with a hunting knife that had a keen edge, he looked for a good place to sit down, on a rock bordering the little beach. Here he kept industriously at work for quite some time.

Meanwhile the fire was a big success, for Giraffe certainly was a marvel when it came to knowing all there was about making them. He had found just the finest hole to serve as the bed of his cooking fire, where a body of red embers would after a little while invite them to place their frying-pan and coffee-pot on the iron grating they carried for the purpose, and which was really the gridiron-like contrivance belonging to a cast-off stove's oven.

"I say, Thad!" b.u.mpus was heard calling, after he had had plenty of time to finish his job with the trout.

"What do you want now, b.u.mpus?" replied the scout-master, cheerily.

"Come down here, won't you, and settle something for me."

So Thad hastened to accommodate him; and several of the other fellows followed at his heels, being consumed by curiosity, perhaps; or it might be they suspected something of the truth, and wished to hear Thad's decision in the matter.

"Now what?" asked the scout-master, as he reached the spot.

"I wish you'd tell me what sort of a critter that was last night,"

b.u.mpus remarked, as he pointed down near his feet; "because he ran along here when he skedaddled off; and you can see the prints as plain as anything."

"I should say it was a wildcat; but let's ask Allan, to make sure,"

replied the patrol leader, and upon reaching the spot, Allan instantly declared the same thing.

At that b.u.mpus appeared to be satisfied; and as the trout was now ready for the pan they adjourned to where the fire was waiting, with a hungry looking cook in readiness to get things going.

Just as they antic.i.p.ated, that trout was elegant--no other word b.u.mpus could conjure up would begin to do justice to the feast they had that morning. And the proud captor of the prize cast many a look in the direction of his rival, which of course the envious Giraffe construed to mean; "see what I can do when I set my mind on a job; and get busy yourself."

But then Giraffe had just had a pretty generous second portion of the salmon-colored fish steak, and was in no humor to get huffy.

He did start in right after breakfast to get several lines out, and attended to the same a.s.siduously all morning. Between the busy workers they managed to pull in five fish, of which b.u.mpus took two. So that thus far the score was even, as regards numbers, though the fat scout was still "high notch" when the question of size was concerned.

"I see that before we get back home we'll all have swelled heads," Thad remarked, with a broad, smile; and upon the others demanding to know what he meant, he went on to say: "why, don't you know, scientists unite in declaring that fish is the greatest brain food going; so if these fellows keep on loading us down with trout and white fish and every other kind that lives in this big lake, why, our hats will soon be too small for our enlarged craniums."