But he succeeded at last and as he dragged the muddy pole across the grass, the island turned slowly cornerwise to the shore.
In his preoccupation, Pee-wee did not notice this.

He tied his fishline to the end of the pole, bent another pin and provisioned it with a stuffed olive, requisitioned from a cutglass dish nearby.

How he intended to support this lengthy pole so that its end might reach the neighborhood of the coy eels is not a part of this narrative for Pee-wee's angling enterprise never reached that point.
He was presently startled by a splash and looking around he saw that the end of the scaffold had slipped off the island.

He was now aroused to the imminent peril of the Isle of Desserts and to the terrible responsibility which fell to the clothesline and the bushes.
As the island turned slowly outward the clothes-line strained but held fast.

But the rhododendron bushes had not the same heroic quality.
For a few moments they resisted, but the island, now at the mercy of the ebb, tugged and tugged, and presently a mass of bush gave up the struggle and came away, rope and all.