Part 16 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 210. A Poncho.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 211. Camp Bed in the Rain.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 212. Umbrella with Fly.]

As a precaution against rain, a tall post was set up at the head and another at the foot of the bed, and a rope was stretched over the posts with the ends fastened to stakes driven into the ground. Over this rope a rubber ”poncho” was laid to keep off the rain. A ”poncho,” by the way, is a blanket of rubber cloth about 4-1/2 feet wide and 6 feet long, in the center of which is a slit through which you can put your head; then the rubber cloth falls over you like a cape, as in Fig. 210, and makes a perfect protection against rain. The ponchos these men had were not quite long enough to cover the whole bed, so they fastened umbrellas to the head posts, as shown in Fig. 212. During a shower in the woods the rain comes straight down in large drops, caused by the water collecting on the leaves. To prevent these large drops from splas.h.i.+ng through the umbrellas, they laid pieces of cloth over the umbrellas, which served, like the fly of a tent, to check the fall of rain drops.

A NIGHTMARE.

I slept in the mummy case that night and Dutchy in the first sleeping bag. It must have been about midnight when I was awakened by a most unearthly yell. It sent the cold chills running up and down my back. A second scream brought me into action, and I struggled to throw back the head flap, which had become caught. It seemed an age before I could open it and wriggle out of the bag. Dutchy was sitting up in bed with a look of horror on his face, and his whole body was in a tremor of fear. One of the men dashed a gla.s.s of water in his face, which brought him back to his senses. It was only a nightmare, we found. Dutchy dreamed he had been injured in a railway accident and had been taken for dead to the morgue. He tried to let them know that he was alive, but couldn't utter a sound, until finally he burst out with the yells that roused the camp.

Then, as he awoke with the horror of the dream still on him, his eyes fell on the two stretcher beds that looked like biers and the black coffin-like sleeping bag. It was not much wonder that Dutchy was frightened. The camp did certainly have a most ghastly appearance in the vague moonlight that filtered through the trees, and it must have been still more gruesome to see the coffin and biers suddenly burst open and the corpses come running toward him. To prevent any further nightmare we set Dutchy's sleeping bag under the ”A” tent, where he would be saved the horror of again waking up in a morgue.

PACK HARNESS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 213. Pack Harness.]

In the morning our friends broke camp and started westward. Dutchy and I watched them packing up their goods into a couple of very compact bundles, which they strapped to their backs with a peculiar pack harness. I took careful note of the way the harness was put together, and when we returned to the island we made two sets for use on our tramping expeditions. A canvas yoke was first cut out to the form shown in Fig. 213. We used two thicknesses of the heaviest brown canvas we could find, binding the two pieces together with tape. The yoke was padded with cotton at the shoulders and a strap was fastened to each shoulder piece. These were arranged to be buckled to a pair of straps fastened to the back of the yoke and pa.s.sing under the arms. Riveted to these straps were a pair of straps used for fastening on the pack. The yoke straps were attached with the rough side against the yoke, while the pack straps were riveted on with the rough side uppermost, as indicated in the drawing.

RIVETING.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 214. Riveting the Straps Together.]

The method of riveting together the leather straps may need a word of explanation. A copper rivet was pa.s.sed through a hole in the two straps; then the washer was slipped over the projecting end of the rivet. This washer had to be jammed down tight against the leather, and to do this we drilled a hole of the diameter of the rivet in a block of wood, and putting this block over the washer, with the end of the rivet projecting into the hole, we hammered the block until the washer was forced down tight against the leather. Then taking a light tack hammer we battered down the end of the rivet onto the washer. Care was taken to do this hammering very lightly, otherwise the end would have been bent over instead of being flattened.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE LAND YACHT.

Only one thing of importance occurred between our Christmas holidays and Eastertide: this was Bill's invention of the tricycle sailboat or land yacht. We had returned to school with sailing on the brain. Our skate sail served us well enough while there was any ice, but as spring came on we wished we had our canoe with us, or even the old scow to sail on the lakes near the school. Once we seriously considered building a sailboat, but the project was given up, as we had few facilities for such work. But Bill wasn't easily baffled, and I wasn't surprised to have him come tearing into the room one day, yelling, ”I've got it! I've got it!” In his hands were two bicycle wheels, which I recognized as belonging to a couple of bicycles we had discarded the year before.

”What are you going to do with them?” I inquired.

”I'm going to make a tricycle sailboat.”

”What?”

”A tricycle sailboat, a land boat, or anything you've a mind to call it.

I mean a boat just like our ice boat only on bicycle wheels instead of skates. We can sail all over south Jersey on the thing. Come on down and help me build it.”

THE FRAME OF THE YACHT.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 215. The Backbone and Crosspiece.]

I followed him to the shed at the back of the school and found that he had already procured a couple of scantlings for the frame of the boat.