"It's brackish!" he called out, indignantly. "I can't drink that."
Spurling and the others were hard at work unloading the boats. Percy repeated his complaint:
Jim was staggering up the beach, a heavy box of groceries in his arms.
"Sorry!" he replied, indifferently. "That's what all the rest of us'll have to drink. It isn't Poland water, but I've tasted worse."
Percy slammed down the cover and tossed away the can in a huff. Lane was passing boxes and bundles ashore from the dory to Stevens and Filippo.
"Catch hold here, Whittington, and help tote some of this stuff up to the cabin," exhorted Budge.
Percy complied ungraciously; but he was careful not to tackle anything very heavy.
"I didn't come out here to make a pack-mule of myself," was his mental remark.
Jim unfastened the rusty padlock on the cabin door and stepped inside. Percy followed him, eager to get a glimpse of his new home.
The camp had not been opened for some weeks; it smelled close and stuffy. As Percy crossed its threshold his nostrils were greeted by a mingled odor of salt, tarred rope, and decaying wood, flavored with a faint suggestion of fish. Mastering his repugnance, he looked about.
He saw a single, low room, nine by fifteen, dimly lighted by three small windows, one in the farther end directly opposite the door, the remaining two facing each other in the middle of the long sides. Along the right wall on each side of the central window was built a tier of two bunks. On Percy's left, over a wooden sink in the corner near the door, was a rough cupboard. Next came a small, rusty stove with an oven for baking; then, under the window, an unpainted table; and on the wall beyond, a series of hooks from which were suspended various articles of clothing and coils of rope. Empty soap-boxes supplied the place of chairs.
With nose uplifted and a growing disgust on his features, Percy surveyed the cramped, dingy room.
"You don't mean to say that five of us have got to live in this hole?"
"Nowhere else, unless you want to stay out on the beach or in the fish-house."
"There!" Jim gestured toward the wooden framework on the right wall.
Percy thrust his hand into one of the bunks.
"Why, there's no mattress or spring here! It's only a bare box!"