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Fantasy Football Challenge presents
The Adventure Club Afloat

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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. 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. The rain, although now little more than a very heavy mist, limited their vision to a hundred yards or so in any direction. Steve hazarded the opinion that they were not more than two miles from the mainland, although he made no attempt to give a name to the island they were on. The fate of the _Follow Me_ worried them all, but Phil, always the most sanguine in times of stress, pointed out that as the other craft had not followed them onto the island she was probably safe. "She may be piled up further along somewhere," suggested Joe. "I say we'd better have a look. It would help a bit to know what sort of a place we've struck, anyway. For all we know there may be a house just around the corner!" So they set out in two parties, Steve, Ossie and Phil going one way and the rest the other. It was agreed that they were to be back in an hour at the most. Twenty minutes later, each exploration party having stuck to the beach, they came together again, much to their mutual surprise. "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. Just how big it was was difficult to determine since the haze of driving mist allowed but little view. From the beach, at a point presumably directly opposite the place where they had come ashore they climbed by the aid of rocky footholds and bushes to a broken but generally level summit clad with a tangled growth of blueberry and briars and sprinkled most liberally with boulders. The ground arose gradually as they advanced, guided by Steve's pocket compass, and before very long they reached the wind-swept edge of the cliff against which they had spent the night. From the summit they could see dimly at brief intervals the form of the _Adventurer_ far below. "Well, I don't see that we've accomplished much," said Han. "We're here, but where are we? And how the dickens are we going to get back again? If anyone thinks that I'm going to risk my neck sliding down here he's mistaken." "We don't ask you to, Ossie dear," said Han. "Your little neck is much too precious. One thing is certain, anyway, I guess: there's no hotel on the place!" "Hotel!" said Joe. "Gee, I'd be satisfied with a--um--cow-shed!" Nevertheless, they made the return journey in better spirits, for they had walked the aches from their limbs and warmth into their bodies. On the way Steve made them gather fagots of dead branches and they found a number of larger pieces of wood on the beach. By the time they were once more "at home," as Perry put it, they had all the material for a fire save paper or some other form of kindling. Steve experimented with twigs from the fir trees on the ledge, but they were too wet to burn. No one had any paper, or if they had it was too damp. "What would Robinson Crusoe have done?" asked Steve, frowning thoughtfully. Joe, who had seated himself tiredly on the wet sand and was digging his stockinged heels into it, sneered at Mr. Crusoe. "He'd have made a trip on his raft," he said, "and fetched ashore a bundle of kindling. If it hadn't been for that wreck to draw on Robinson Crusoe would have starved to death in twenty-four hours!" "Of course!" exclaimed Steve. "That's the idea!" "What, starve?" asked Joe distastefully. "No, you idiot, go out to the _Adventurer_ and get some gasoline!" "Sure!" agreed Ossie. "Only--just when we were getting dry at last--" "What's the matter with stripping," asked Steve cheerfully, suiting action to word. "Is there a can or anything I can put it in, Ossie?" "There's a jug in the starboard locker. There's about a pint of vinegar in it, but I guess we can sacrifice that." "Drink it, Steve, and save it," suggested Perry. The tide had retreated further by now and the bow of the cruiser was almost beyond the breakers and Steve's journey was not difficult. When he got back, with the vinegar jug filled with gasoline hung around his neck, he reported the _Adventurer_ waist-deep in water at the stern. "You fellows start the fire," he said, "and I'll go back and bring some grub ashore. There's no reason for starving with food handy." Joe volunteered to accompany him, and, after disrobing and putting his damp clothes under a stone to keep them from blowing away, he and Steve plunged back into the water. Meanwhile success met the efforts of the firemen and soon a good-sized blaze was roaring in spite of wind and mist. They had located it as near the foot of the cliff as possible and, although the smoke made itself disagreeable by billowing out in their faces, it was thereby somewhat sheltered from the elements. Steve and Joe made three trips and brought back frying-pan, coffee-pot and smaller utensils, as well as provisions, and a half-hour later they were beginning a supplementary breakfast of bacon and coffee. And if anything in all the wide world, from the time of Noah to that of the Adventure Club, ever tasted sublime to a shipwrecked mariner it was that same bacon and coffee! When they had finished, Phil's watch--the only one of six which had neither run down for lack of winding or been incapacitated by immersion in salt water--gave the hour as twenty minutes past seven. Comforted by food and drink, they warmed themselves at the fire and waited for the tide to recede far enough to allow a survey of the _Adventurer_. The comfort was too much for Perry and he fell asleep with his feet almost in the embers and his head on a rock and slumbered emphatically. At last the line of breakers was well astern of the cruiser and the boys, leaving their stockings to dry by the fire and rolling their trousers

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