nute the horn blows and that's more than the rest of you do. Sit
down, and help yourselves to batter. The grease is already in the pans.
You can each fry your own fritters."

"I refuse to fritter away my time," said Uncle Teddy, hungrily helping
himself to hominy.

The rest made a grand rush for the frying pans and in a few minutes the
fryers were retiring to the sidelines with golden brown cakes on their
plates.

"How do they taste?" asked Katherine modestly of the Bottomless Pitt,
who had his mouth full.

"A bit thick," replied Pitt, "but bully."

"They don't taste just like those Aunt Clara made the other day," said
Gladys, chewing her mouthful somewhat doubtfully.

Aunt Clara hastily took an experimental bite. "Why, Katherine!" she
exclaimed with a little shriek of laughter, "you haven't put any baking
powder in them. I thought mine looked awfully flat when I was frying it.
Did you think the dough would rise of itself, like the sun?"

And then they all laughed uproariously at Katherine's cooking, but she
didn't mind at all, and calmly mixed the baking powder with a little
more flour and stirred it into the batter, whereupon it blossomed out
into the most delicious corn fritters they had ever eaten.

"Too bad Harry had to miss this," said the Captain, looking around at
the family sitting on stumps and eating their second and improved
edition of fritters. Harry Raymond was the only one of the Sandwich boys
who could not come along on this camping trip. All the rest were there;
the Captain, Slim, the Bottomless Pitt, Munson McKee, popularly known as
the Monkey, Dan Porter and Peter Jenkins, all ready for the time of
their lives. The Winnebagos were also six in number: Gladys, Hinpoha,
Sahwah, Migwan, Katherine and Nakwisi.

Last but not least of the campers was Sandhelo, the "symbolic" donkey.
He had been brought along because they thought he might be useful for
carrying supplies if they should want to go on a long hike. He was so
small and nimble that he could go up and down the path to the beach
without any trouble. It was not necessary to tie him, as it was
impossible for him to run away, and the first night he wandered into the
boys' tent and brayed into Slim's ear, who gave such a startled jump
that his bed went down over the side of the flooring, and Slim landed on
the ground outside. After that Sandhelo was tied at night, but allowed
to roam the island by day.

After breakfast the campers scattered t