CHAPTER XXIX
“Fool!” I cried aloud in my vexation.
I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the beach, where I had set about making a camp. There was driftwood, though not much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had taken from the Ghost’s larder had given me the idea of a fire.
“Blithering i***t!” I was continuing.
But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a blithering i***t.
“No matches,” I groaned. “Not a match did I bring. And now we shall have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!”
“Wasn’t it—er—Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?” she drawled.
“But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked men who tried, and tried in vain,” I answered. “I remember Winters, a newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and
