“But how do you know when the fish is done?” asked Ralph.
“A potato is as good a clock as you want to go by,” answered Joe.
“Yes. I brought several with me, intending to put them on the table after they had done duty as clocks, but they have gone off with the sugar, lemons and other good things I had in my bundle. As soon as your fish is covered up in the coals,” continued Joe, “put your potatoes in alongside of him and cover them up also. You can test them with a sharp stick at any time, and when they are done, which will be at the end of half an hour, if your fire is just right, poke them out, break them open and place them on a flat stone which you have previously washed, to cool. Then poke out your fish, take off the wrappings and fall to work. But we shall have to use boards this trip—there are plenty of them lying around loose on the point, unless Matt Coyle has carried them off to patch up his shanty—and make our noses do duty as clocks.”
Tom did not understand this, either; but believing that he had made a sufficient airing of his ignorance of woodcraft for one day, at least, he asked no more questions.
Half an hour’s steady paddling brought the boys to the point, on which they landed to prepare their meager breakfast. That it was a favorite resort for parties like their own was evident. Beds of ashes surrounding the mossy bowlder from beneath which the spring bubbled up, marked the places where roaring camp-fires had once been built, and the empty fruit and meat cans that had been tossed into the bushes told what good dinners had been eaten there.
Joe Wayring at once set off to hunt up a couple of suitable boards, another started a fire, two more fell to work upon the fish and squirrels, and the rest found employment in gathering a supply of fuel, and providing birch-bark plates and platters. Although Tom and his cousins did their full share of the work, they did not neglect to keep an eye on their more experienced companions; and they were astonished to see how easily one can get on without a good many things which the majority of people seem to think necessary to their very existence. When the fish had been cleaned and washed in the pond, they were spread out flat and fastened with wooden pins to the boards, which were propped up in front of the fire; while the squirrels were impaled upon forked sticks and held over the coals by Arthur Hastings and Roy, who turned first one side and then the other to the heat, until they were done to a delicious brown.