"I've not been close to," said Charlie, "but you can see it very well from the top of the Scar. It looks a regular Robinson Crusoe desert island kind of a place, just given up to sea-gulls and rabbits. I don't believe a soul ever goes there."
"It would be grand if we were the first to set foot on it," said Isobel. "It would be our own island, and we'd claim it in the name of the club, like travellers do in Central Africa when they run up the Union Jack, and then mark the place pink on the map, to show it's a British possession."
"And then all the others could be settlers," added Hilda, "and we'd light a fire and cook fish and have _such_ fun!"
"It would be exactly like the coral island in 'The Young Pioneers,'" said Belle. "Perhaps I might become the queen, like the mysterious white lady they found living among the natives, and have a throne made out of sand and shells, and wear a garland of flowers for a crown."
"Oh, we won't go in for nonsense like that!" declared Charlie, who was not romantic, and, moreover, enjoyed squashing Belle on occasion. "But we might build a hut there, and rig up a sort of camp, and then, if the whole lot of us came, we could have a regular ripping time. It's worth while going to see, at any rate."
Armed with a mariner's compass, a tin pail full of biscuits, Isobel's botanical case for specimens, and a stout stick apiece, the four friends set out on their pioneering expedition with all the enthusiasm of a band of explorers penetrating into the heart of an unknown continent, or a Roman legion bent on the conquest of some distant Albion. As the geography books determine an island to be "a piece of land surrounded by water," the particular spot in question could only claim to justify its name at high tide, since at low water it was joined to the mainland, and by scrambling over the rocks and jumping a few channels which the sea had left behind, any one could reach it quite easily dry shod. The children marched sturdily along over the wet sands, with a pause here and there to dive after a particularly interesting crab, or to float a jelly-fish left stranded by the tide, in the deeper water. Charlie, however, would not allow many digressions, and hurried them as fast as possible towards the object of their journey. The island, on a nearer view, proved to be a bare, craggy spot, about half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth, bounded by steep cliffs which supported a rocky plateau covered with short rough grass and sea pinks, and honeycombed in every direction with rabbit burrows. It seemed the haunt of innumerable gulls, guillemots, and puffins, for whole flocks of them flew away, wheeling overhead in wide circles, and uttering loud, piercing cries in protest at the invasion of their rocky stronghold.