Four Afloat: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the WaterBarbour, Ralph Henry
General
Four Afloat: Being the Adventures of the Big Four on the Water
Barbour, Ralph Henry
Boats and boating -- Juvenile fiction; Friendship -- Juvenile fiction
“No, one more. You’d better do it, Nel.” And Bob handed the precious
match over to him.
“If this goes out, too—!” muttered Nelson.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bob presently.
“The blamed thing hasn’t any head on it,” answered Nelson disgustedly.
“I’ve scraped it and scraped it and—oh, pshaw, it’s a toothpick!”
“Hang!” remarked Bob feelingly.
“And just when I had a fire all ready! Look through your pockets again,
Bob. Maybe you’ll find another.” There was a minute of silence during
which each searched from pocket to pocket, broken finally by an exultant
exclamation from Bob.
“Here’s a piece of one!” he cried. “And it’s the business end, too.
Who’s going to scratch it?”
“Me,” answered Nelson. “I know where the paper is. Hand it over. All
right. Now here goes!”
The match lighted and Nelson quickly tucked it under the edge of the
paper. There was a breathless moment and then success was assured. The
paper was in flames and the splinters were crackling merrily. Nelson
seized knife and wood again and frantically split off long pieces to
feed the flames.
“See if you can’t find some more wood, Bob,” he said. “Here, light one
of these pieces and look around.”
Armed with the small torch Bob explored.
“Fine!” he exclaimed presently from a distant corner of the shed.
“Here’s a whole box. Part of it’s kind of damp, but I guess the rest
will burn.”
He brought it over and knocked it to pieces and soon there was a
generous fire flaring up from the old forge. Nelson seized the bellows
and found that they still worked, though somewhat wheezily. “Sounds as
though it had the asthma,” he said. Presently the coke caught, too, and
when they could leave the fire they rummaged the place from end to end,
finding enough fuel of various sorts to last them all night if
necessary. A gunny sack in a corner held a few quarts of charcoal, there
was a loose beam which came away readily under Bob’s persuasion, and a
small box which had once held horse shoe nails was discovered under one
of the windows where it had done duty as a cupboard. They took off their
oilskins and wet shoes, placing the latter near the flames where they
soon began to steam prodigiously.
“Wish we had something to sit on,” lamented Nelson.
“That’s easy,” Bob answered. “Here’s this old anvil over here. If we can
get it to the fire it will do finely.”
After several minutes of the hardest sort of work they managed to edge
it over to the forge. Then they sat down on it, very close together of
necessity, and puffed and blew like a couple of porpoises.
“How long are we going to stay here?” asked Nelson, tossing another
piece of wood on the flames.
“I don’t know. Until it holds up a bit, I suppose. Listen to it now,
will you?”
The rain was pouring down on the roof like a hundred waterspouts.
“We could sleep here if we had to,” said Nelson.
“I suppose so,” Bob answered dubiously, “but I guess I’m a little bit
like Tommy; I have a weakness for mattresses and bedding. If——”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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