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ourselves: a camp stove and a bottle of gas to fuel it; a fork and spoon; a tin plate; a pot but no lid; a tiny lantern with a candle stub inside it.
    “Look for food,” said Frank. “There’s got to be food somewhere.”
    I pulled the mattress off the bed and found only a nest that mice had built. Frank kicked apart a pile of driftwood sticks, then dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. He reached in and pulled out big sheets of plastic that were ragged and torn, an empty bucket, a bit of wood. Then he looked again and shouted, “Yes!” and reaching even farther, brought out a dozen ziplock bags. They’d been labeled with a red Sharpie: rice, coffee, raisins. But each one had been nibbled open by mice or rats, and all of them were empty.
    Frank turned instantly from happy to furious. He hurled the bags onto the bed and looked around the little cabin. “See what’s up there,” he told me, pointing to a shelf high on the wall.
    I climbed onto the bed, reached up and ran my hand along the shelf. Down fell a toothbrush and toothpaste, a roll of toilet paper in another ziplock bag, and then a small black box that bounced off the mattress and landed in the ashes.
    We stared at that thing, for a moment too surprised to speak.
    Frank snatched it up. He held it tightly, as though he had captured an animal that might try to struggle away.
    “It’s a radio,” I cried.
    “No kidding, Marconi.”
    It was almost exactly the same as the one that Uncle Jack had tossed to me in his last moment. “Here, let me try it,” I said.
    I jumped down from the bed, but Frank turned aside to shield the radio. He pressed a button on top, and a red light came on. Numbers lit up on a small gray screen.
    We looked at each other, and for one instant we were a team, bound together by that radio and all that it offered.
    Frank licked his lips. He lifted the radio up to his mouth. He pressed the transmitter. “Mayday,” he said. “Mayday. Mayday.”
    He let go of the button. We both kept staring at the radio. A faint crackling came from the speaker.
    “Squelch,” I said, mimicking what Uncle Jack had taught us. “Turn the—”
    “Shut up,” snapped Frank. “I know what I’m doing.” He turned the knobs for squelch and volume, and the sound became a roaring hum. Then he called again, “Mayday. Mayday.”
    A woman answered. Her voice was faint and crackly, but oh so wonderful. “Station calling Mayday: this is U.S. Coast Guard radio.”
    I grinned at Frank; he grinned at me. Both of us grinned at the radio. We were like a pair of chimpanzees, all teeth and foolishness. The woman’s voice shattered with static. “What is the nature of your emergency?”
    “Tell them our names!” I shouted at Frank. “Tell them we’re lost.”
    “Shut up.” Frank pressed the button again and spoke into the radio. “We need help. We’re—”
    The radio beeped. The numbers went out; the screen turned black. The little red light faded away, and the radio switched itself off.
    Frank pressed every button; he turned every dial. Then he swore and hurled the radio across the cabin. It smashed against the wall. The back cover flew off; a battery ricocheted under the bed.
    “Piece of junk!” shouted Frank.
    “It’s not the radio; it’s the batteries,” I told him.
    “Who cares? It’s still useless!” He gave me a furious look, as though I was the one who had drained the batteries. “It’s all junk. A stove without matches.” He sent
that
flying across the room too. “A candle you can’t light.”
Wham
went the candle in its little holder. Then he folded his arms and dropped to the bed, pouting like a two-year-old.
    I felt just as angry. I wished we had never found the radio, that we had never found the cabin. It was worse to have had our hopes raised so high and dashed again. But I started picking up the things that Frank had scattered. I had to crawl under the bed to chase the parts from the radio.
    “Leave it,” said Frank.