rugged beauty.

True, it had no bays or wooded coves where pirates might have lurked,
and it was fickle to any one spot. But wheresoever its wanton fancy
took it the dying sunlight flickered down through the little tree and
glazed the spotless blossoms so full of promise that clustered above
the little band of hardy adventurers.

Before they had finished their repast--a repast as strange and
surprising as the island itself--they had drifted half a mile upstream
with the incoming tide. Here the sturdy underpinning of the desert
isle caught upon a tiny reef and the island swung slowly around like a
sleepy carrousel and rested from its travels.




CHAPTER XVI

BEFORE THE PARTY

Meanwhile we must return to the mother country, to take note of important
happenings there. While our doughty explorers were eating their hunter's
stew in this strange land and sprawling beneath their tree in the
gathering twilight surrounded by unknown perils, the gay Silver Fox
Patrol returned from New York after a day spent in shopping and
sightseeing.

They proceeded at once to their railroad car down by the river where they
found the Ravens, who had just returned from a hike. Soon the Elks,