trouble serious. For he had come safely through so
many scrapes, not a few being of his own making, that I had nicknamed
him in my mind "indestructible Ike."

At last, congratulating myself that I had arrived without any untoward
happenings, I rapped loudly on his door, expecting to hear his
squeaky, perpetually broken voice bid me enter. Much to my surprise,
therefore, the door opened itself, and smiling in the doorway stood
our blind friend.

"Good Heavens! Emile, how on earth did you get here? And why did you
ever want to come, anyhow?"

"Why, I thought it was a good plan for me to go fishing," he replied,
addressing apparently a huge rock, so accurately poised over the hut
that it suggested any moment an annihilating assault upon it. "Ike's
going to be pilot and I'm to do t' rowing. We're to be partners for t'
summer, and Karlek's going to look after t' family and help out when
he can. It feels like being young again to be on t' water with a
fishing-line. And, mind you, Ike knows a few tricks with a line that's
worth more'n another leg to we, once we be on t' grounds. They all
'lows he be as good as t' next man for hauling in fish, so be as
there's any around."

Ike's indisposition, as I had surmised, was not of a serious nature,
and I learned subsequently that it was the proper ratification of the
terms of the new triple alliance that had more to do with the sick
call than any undue foreboding of impending dissolution on Ike's part.
There had been some hitch in coming to terms, and Emile had put the
only one point in them to his credit, when he saw through the trick,
and "plumped for a magistrate," feeling also that he could trust me
for more than mere legal technicalities.

It was obviously an offensive campaign on which I found them bent. Ike
had himself carefully repaired the boat's structure, having always a
keen eye to comfort and safety; while from Emile's hands I could see
that the task of tarring their warship, owing to Ike's temporary
indisposition and the need for immediate preparedness, had fallen to
him. His only method for finding out where he had applied that hot and
adhesive liquid had left very apparent evidences of both his energy
and his zeal. To Emile also had fallen the rearrangement of the big
rocks, so as to form as level a surface as possible on which to dry
the fish. It was a Sisyphean task, and poor Emile had spent much sweat
and not a little blood in his efforts. But, as Ike told him