"I don't care who it is or what it is," said Dora Dane Daring; "I'm not afraid of the biggest bandit that ever lived. I'm going to find out what those men are doing lurking about here."
Without another word she strode forward, parted the rhododendron bushes, and confronted the marauders.
"Well, I—never—in—allmylife," she cried. "It's little Walter Harris! What onearthare you doing here?"
"I discovered this island," said Pee-wee; "we're exploring it. One of these fellers is a native because he was on it before it was an island."
"Look out you don't get your feet wet on the stern and rock-bound coast," said Townsend. "Hold the lantern, Brownie."
"Did you everseesuch a thing!" said Minerva Skybrow, emerging through the bushes, accompanied by her official staff. "Walter Harris, what in goodness' name are you doing here? I thought you were robbers. What inall creationare you up to? And how did you happen to get here?"
"We've been going around quite a little lately," said Townsend quietly.
"This is Townsend Ripley," said Pee-wee; "he's a friend of mine; these fellers are all friends of mine. We're exploring."
"We're very glad to meet you, Mr. Ripley," said Minerva, while Miss Daring whispered in the ear of Miss Timerson, "Isn't he nice? So tall."
"We thought we'd come to the party," said Pee-wee.
"Have you any parking space for islands?" Townsend asked.
"Oh,indeedwe have," said Minerva, "and you're going to be the star guests. May we step on the island?"
"Yes, indeed, it's very steady," said Townsend, helping them one after another onto the frowning coast while Brownie held the lantern. "Wherever we go we take our island with us; it's like ivory soap, it floats. Will you have a piece of wild chocolate, out of the heart of the interior?"
"Isn't he justlovely," whispered Miss Daring.
"So can we stay?" asked Pee-wee.
"Stay? I wouldn't let you go for anything," said Minerva. "Listen, girls, I've got aninspiration——"
"I have lots of those," said Pee-wee.
"They grow wild here," said Townsend.
"Listen," said Minerva, "I have a perfectlymarvellousidea."
She sat down on the grocery box and in her joy and excitement fairly drowned out Pee-wee who was struggling with a vehement running narrative of the day's adventures.
"Oh, it will be simplydivine," said Minerva. "Listen—don't interrupt me—I'm going to have the refreshments served on this island. I'm going to have the old painter's scaffold for agang-plankleading to it——"
"There are refreshments then?" Townsend asked quietly.
"Refreshments? Aren't you perfectlyterrible! Of course there are—oceansof them."
"No more oceans for me," said Townsend. "Hereafter I'm going to live on shore. My sailing—flopping—days are over."
"You're too funny for anything," said Minerva. "Listen, do you see that little tent? The refreshments are all in there. There's just time before the guests all come to move everything over here. I want you boys to help me. We're going to call it thedessert islandinstead of thedesert island. Isn't that adorable? Isn't it odd? Everyone will go into raptures over it, you see if they don't. You'll let us use your island, won't you?"
"We'll make you a present of it," said Townsend.
"My idea," said Miss Timerson, "would be to tie it to these bushes that stick out over the water. It ought to be far enough away from the—the mainland—to be romantic. How far away do you think it should be, Mr. Ripley?"
"The way I feel about it I think it should be at least two thousand miles off."
"Silly!" said Miss Daring. "Please be serious. Do you think about three yards would be romantic?"
"I never measured romance by the yard," said Townsend, "but I should think about three yards and a half of romance would be enough. If we have any left over we can give it to the discoverer. He eats it alive."
"And I'll tell you what I'll do," shouted Pee-wee; "it's an inspiration."
"Another?" Townsend asked.
"I'll—I'll—I'll stay on the island——"
"I thought so," said Townsend.
"And—and—I'll stand right here by the traffic sign and after somebody that's eating has had enough, I'll turn the sign so it says STOP; I'll turn it so it's facing him."
"Did you ever hear anything so absurd?" said Minerva.
"I think it would be picturesque," said Dora.
"And sensible, too," said Margaret, "because some of those scouts will just stay here and gorge themselves and won't dance at all."
"I think it's a very good idea," said Townsend; "it will relieve congestion here. A food traffic cop."
"I'll be it," shouted Pee-wee.
"Where is this romantic scaffold?" Townsend asked.
"The painters left it in the cellar," said Minerva. "Let's hurry, I'll show you where it is."
There was, indeed, just time enough to arrange this novel life-saving station with its picturesque gang-plank before the guests began to arrive.
"And this is the end of our wild adventures on a foreign shore," said Townsend, as he carried one end of the old scaffold across the dim-lighted lawn accompanied by the group of excited maidens; "we wind up at a lawn party. This is what the discoverer has brought us to."
"Don't you think he's justkilling?" Minerva asked.
"More than that," said Townsend; "his hunter's stew is more than killing. Did you ever try any of it?"
"Never mind, you're going to have some delicious chicken salad," said Minerva.
The boys, under Minerva's enthusiastic supervision, tied the island about six feet from shore. The romantic gang-plank kept it from drifting closer in while two clothes-poles driven into the bottom of the river just below it prevented it from drifting with the ebbing tide. Pee-wee's trusty clothesline was stretched between the little apple tree and the overhanging rhododendron bushes as an auxiliary mooring and to hold the island steady.
Thus secured and free from the prosaic shore, the romantic isle presented an inviting scene, with the little tent upon it and Japanese lanterns shedding a mellow light from the bushes and the securing clothesline. The rippling water flickered with a gentle and undulating glow and inverted paper lanterns could be seen reflected beneath the surface, as if indeed the beholder could look down and see romantic and picturesque Japan on the opposite side of the earth.
The scaffold, forgetting its prosy usage, was resplendent in a winding robe of bunting and on its railing where cans of white lead and linseed oil had disported hung lanterns of every color in the rainbow. To this enchanted isle would stroll dance-weary couples and famishing scouts to regale themselves in this dim, detached, earthly paradise.
"Wait a minute, oh, just wait a minute!" cried Minerva in the spell of such an inspiration as comes only once in a lifetime. "Oh, just waitone minute."
She hurried across the lawn, returning presently with a huge, spotless apron with strings of goodly dimension which, in a very glow of inspired joy, she tied around the waist of Pee-wee Harris. It was necessary to shorten it by a series of pokes and pushes by which it was tucked up under its own strings and lifted clear of the adventurous feet of the scout. Nor was that all, for somewhere out of the mysterious depths of the house, Minerva had brought a starched and snowy chef's cap with which she crowned our hero.
"You be right here when they begin coming down," Minerva said, "and stand close to the traffic sign and if any boy stays here too long turn the STOP sign on him."
"And turn it on yourself if necessary," said Townsend.
"I won't let anybody eat more than about—about—five helpings. That'll be enough for them, hey?" said Pee-wee.
"Goodness gracious, yes," said Dora Dane Daring.
"You're the steward, remember," said Minerva. "Do you know what a steward is?"
"He's—he's named after a stew," said Pee-wee, hitching up his spreading apron. "You leave the people to me, I'll handle them."
The steward (or the stew, as Townsend thenceforth called him) did not attend the party. A preliminary tour of the grounds convinced him that adventures of his particular kind were not to be found there. Dancing was not in his line. Music (except the clamorous music of his own voice) he did not care for. And he did not care to hear what Mrs. Wild had to say about the Camp-fire movement.
To him the crucial part of the whole party was the eats and he lingered near them like a faithful sentinel. The artistic quality of these saved them from devastation. Those pyramids of luscious beauty could not be defiled by human hands without showing the indubitable signs of vandalism. Their very splendor saved them.
It is true that he skilfully extracted an olive from the symmetrical mound of chicken salad and took an almond and a macaroon and other detached dainties that were not made sacred and secure by their own architecture. But for the most part Pee-wee was faithful to his trust. He knew his time would come. And then, oh, then, that proud tower of interlaced sandwiches would look like Rheims Cathedral.
Thus an hour passed and the merry throng emerged upon the lawn and made a direct assault upon the dancing platform, lured by strains of irresistible music. Some strolled about but none out of the radius of that melodious magnetism, and Pee-wee remained undisturbed on the romantic isle of eats.
He sat upon the edge of the island, the extreme western coast, fishing for eels, with a string, a bent pin and a salted almond. It seemed that the eels did not care for salted almonds, so Pee-wee endeavored to tempt them with a chocolate bonbon but the bonbon dissolved on the pin, forming a sort of subterranean chocolate sundae, and the eels ignored it.
"I bet I know what's the matter," said Pee-wee; "they're afraid to come near the island on account of the lights." At all events the eels appeared to shun the neighborhood of the party; they were not in society.
Just then Pee-wee had an inspiration. In the light of its consequences it was probably the most momentous inspiration that he ever had. "I know what I'll do," he said. "I'll use a long, long stick that'll reach way, way, way out." And he glanced about him in quest of a "long, long stick" with which to beguile the bashful eels. His inquiring eye lit upon one of the long clothes-line supporters which Townsend had driven into the river bottom to help hold the island in position.
It is necessary to understand the strategical position of this prospective fishing rod. These two poles had been forced down into the muddy bottom just south of the island and the southern edge of the island lay against them and was thus prevented from drifting down with the ebbing tide. The makeshift gang-plank, gay with bunting, held the island off shore and the ropes between the island and the bushes steadied it. This crude engineering was quite sufficient. BUT——
There is a church somewhere in Europe of which it is said that if a certain brick were removed the whole edifice would fall in ruins. Pee-wee was not even an amateur engineer. That world-stirring consequences could flow from an act so casual and trivial as securing a fishing rod never entered his innocent and pre-occupied mind. He did not know that in the hasty calculations of Townsend all the component parts of this system of props and fetters were necessary one to another. He removed the brick and the cathedral fell and there followed a catastrophe compared to which the World War is a mere incident. If he had pulled the north pole out of the earth the sequel could hardly have been more momentous.
Sublimely innocent of the fact that he was unhinging the universe, Pee-wee arose, advanced to the outer pole and began tugging on it. It did not come up easily for the force of the rapidly ebbing tide caused the island to press against it like a brake. 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. The earthly paradise with its luscious store of cake and chicken salad, its commanding pyramid of sandwiches flanked by icing cakes, its plates of dates and olives and candy of every variety, its mound of jellied doughnuts, and a mammoth freezer full of ice cream, floated majestically down the moonlit river, trailing a huge clump of rhododendron bush after it like the tail of a comet.
And now out of the still and moonlit night arose peal after peal of thunder imparting a note of terror to this world catastrophe. Never before had the thunderous voice of our hero rent the heavens as it did now.
"Help! Help! I'm floating away with the eats."
It is no wonder that the man in the moon smiled at what he saw on the river that night. Seeing the laden board, the pyramid of sandwiches rearing its luscious pinnacle toward heaven, he seemed to wink at Pee-wee—with what purport who shall say? Sufficient that our hero saw him not.
"He-e-e-elp! I'm drifting downstream with the refreshments," he called. "He-e-elp!"
They heard him amid their revels. Townsend Ripley who had suffered the assaults of the hunter's stew heard him. The scouts who had eaten a "light supper" heard him. Warde Hollister who had pled with Roy for a safety first policy heard him. Minerva Skybrow heard him and paused aghast in the midst of a two-step. For what was a two-step now compared to the one-step which Pee-wee had taken? Roly Poly and Brownie, also victims of the hunter's stew, heard him as they waited patiently, and were struck dumb with terror. Only the man in the moon smiled, and winked at Pee-wee.
"He-e-e-e-e-e-el-l-l-p! I'm floating away with the eats!"
But did he really need any help?
They rushed to the shore pell-mell and some hurried to the barn for the only means of rescue—an old disused skiff and a leaky, discarded canoe. Others gazed in wistful silence out upon the glinting water.
"Hurry! Hurry!" cried Minerva. "I can see it! Don't you see the lanterns down there?"
"He's on the flats, I think," said Warde.
"He's on the table," shouted Roy.
"He's in the channel!"
"He's in the ice cream!"
"Listen, he's calling!"
"His mouth is full, I can't hear him."
"Hurry! Hurry! Oh, hurry!" cried Minerva.
"I'll tell you what let's do," Roy said.
"You told us once," said Warde; "that's enough."
"I saved the ice cream freezer from rolling off," shouted Pee-wee.
"A lot of good that does us," shouted Doc Carson.
"Put it where it will be safe," shouted Townsend.
"All right, I will," shouted Pee-wee.
"Gracious goodness, he isn't going to eat it, is he?" Margaret Timerson asked.
"He'll have to finish whatever else he's eating first," said Doc Carson. "Push that boat off, we have only a minute to act in."
"How long does it usually take him to finish a sandwich?" Minerva asked.
"Three-tenths of a second," said Roy.
"He'll be too frightened to eat," said Dora Daring.
"He's never too frightened to eat," said Connie Bennett.
"He consumes pie while he's consumed with fear," Roy said.
"He consumes everything," said Warde.
"Oh, what will we everdo?" Minerva wailed, wringing her arms in desperation.
"The thing to do is to reach him before he gets really started," said Doc Carson, who was ever thoughtful and far-sighted. "When he starts he works fast. I don't think he's really begun yet. He believes in fair play and he wouldn't start before ten o'clock—that's refreshment time, isn't it?"
"It was to be," said Minerva.
"That's the time we were waiting for," said Brownie.
"Has he a watch?" Margaret asked.
"Yes, it's usually about twenty minutes fast," said Roy.
"Oh, isn't that perfectlyterrible!" said Dora.
"He'll make terrible inroads on it," said Connie Bennett.
"Inroads!" said Roy. "You mean turnpikes and highways."
"Well, then, why don't you boys hurry?" Minerva asked excitedly. "It isn't too late.Oh, do hurry!"
"We can never tow that island back against the tide," said Dorry Benton.
"We can remove the stuff to the boat though," said Artie Van Arlen.
"I'm going to 'phone to Mr. Speeder to get his motor-boat and go after him; he can tow it back."
"Listen—shh—he's calling," said Townsend.
"Shh—shhhh!"
"Listen."
From down the river, a little farther than before, came a voice spent by the distance. "I'm on the flats, I'm stuck."
"Thank goodness!" said Minerva. "Now we can reach him."
"Are you going around?" Townsend shouted.
"The sandwiches are all falling down," called the voice. "The doughnuts are rolling out."
"Save them," shouted Roy.
"All right, I will," screamed Pee-wee.
"Oh, such a relief," said Minerva. "Do you think he's stuck fast?"
"We can only hope," said Townsend. "Come on, let's hustle."
Words cannot describe the haste and excitement with which the skiff was launched and manned by a little band of doughty pioneers. Roy, Warde Hollister and Townsend Ripley were the crew, two rowing while the other steered.
"Can we help ourselves?" Warde asked, as they glided out on the river.
"Yes, yes, yes, help yourselves toanything," called Minerva, "only bring them back—pile them in the boat—it doesn't make any difference how—only hurry, he may drift off again."
"Now you see," said Roy, addressing Warde, "the harder you work and the longer you wait the hungrier you'll be. Everything is working out fine, thanks to me."
"Oh, sure," said Warde, already breathless from his strenuous rowing, "they give you roast turkey up at Skybrows; they give you chicken salad and sandwiches and—only try to get it. I'm so hungry I could eat the island, thanks to you. I could eat a whisk-broom. Follow you and I'll starve."
"Did you ever eat any of that kid's hunter's stew?" Townsend asked as he rowed.
"Did we?" said Roy. "It's the best thing I know of if you want to stay home from school."
"It's kind of queer," said Townsend.
"Oh, yes, mysterious," said Warde.
"Let's talk of something pleasant," said Roy.
"Well, I'm pretty hungry, too," said Townsend.
"We'll soon be there," said Warde. "We had something of a scare, didn't we?"
"All's well that ends well," said Townsend.
"Oh, sure," said Roy, "only you don't end sowellafter eating hunter's stew. We should worry, we'll have all the stuff pretty soon now. Narrow escape, hey?Oh, boy, it would have been terrible to lose all that stuff. It looked like an altar, didn't it?"
"It'll look like a vacuum when we get through with it," said Warde.
"Do you think we can get it all in the boat?"
"If we can't, we'll tow the icing cakes behind," said Roy. "WhatI'mthinking fond thoughts about is the ice cream."
"Same here," said Townsend.
"Same here," said Warde.
And meanwhile the man in the moon winked down at Pee-wee.
Now the tide is a funny thing, especially in a small suburban river. The banks of a river being for the most part sloping, the river bed is narrower at the bottom than at the top. You don't have to wear glasses to see that. That is why the tide, as it recedes, runs faster and faster; because during the last hour or two of its recession it flows in narrower confines. This has been the settled policy of nature for many centuries, and it was so ordered for the benefit of Pee-wee Harris.
When the Merry-go-round Island floated leisurely against the Skybrow lawn the tide had been flowing out for about an hour. When this same rechristened island broke loose disguised as an earthly paradise, the tide was in a great hurry. And when the earthly paradise caught upon the flats the little remaining water was running as if it were going to catch a train.
Rapidly, ever so rapidly, the water slid down off the flats to join the hurrying water in the channel. And, presto, all of a sudden there was the Isle of Desserts high and dry surrounded by an ocean of oozy mud while the river, narrowed to a mere brook, rushed in its channel some fifty feet distant. And there you are.
That is why the man in the moon (who knows all about the tides) winked at Pee-wee. At least, I suppose that is why he winked.
You could not have reached the Isle of Desserts with a boat or with snow-shoes or with stilts or with anything except an airplane. Swimming to it was out of the question. Shouting and screaming to it was feasible, of course. Radio operations were conceivable. But reach it no one could. The adventurer would have been swallowed in mud. This safe isolation would continue for a couple of hours and then the playful water would come rippling in again spreading a glinting coverlet over the flats once more and lifting the island upon its swelling bosom.
Down the narrowing river rowed our rescuing crew, and as they rowed the river narrowed. Soon the lantern light on the island was abreast of them, some forty or fifty feet distant.
"Hello, over there," called Warde.
"I'm pretty well," called Pee-wee.
"What are we going to do?" asked Townsend. "The tide has beat us to it. He's safe enough."
"Oh, he couldn't be safer," said Warde. "Our name is mud. All our rowing for nothing."
"How about the eats over there, Kid?" Warde called.
"They're all right," called Pee-wee, "only the ice cream is starting to melt. I stuck my finger in through the ice and the cream is kind of oozing out. Maybe I better eat it, hey? It won't hold out till the tide comes in. I ate a sandwich and that made me thirsty and I didn't want to be drinking the lemonade so I ate a piece of ice out of the freezer and that made me more thirsty so I drank some lemonade anyway and that made me hungry again and I'm going to eat a sardine sandwich only I'm afraid that'll make me thirsty and——"
"This is horrible," said Townsend; "it's like an endless chain. Where will the end be?"
"Do you think it would be all right for me to eat some chicken salad?" Pee-wee shouted. "The tide won't be high enough to float this island for two hours."
"Don't!" called Warde, stopping up his ears. "Have a heart."
"Have a what?" called Pee-wee.
"Have a doughnut," shouted Roy.
"All right," called Pee-wee. "There's some dandy cheese here in a kind of a little jar—yum—yum!"
"Don't!" shrieked Warde.
"Doughnut?" called Pee-wee.
"No, I said 'don't'," called Warde. "You'll have me eating one of the oarlocks in a minute."
Soon a faint chugging could be heard; it ceased, presumably at the Skybrow lawn, then started again. Nearer and nearer it came until presently the racing boat of Dashway Speeder came to a stop alongside them. Half a dozen girls and as many hungry male guests of the party were in it clamoring for news.
"This is terrible!" said Minerva. "I neverdreamedof such a thing as this. Why, he'smarooned!"
"I'm all safe," shouted Pee-wee, "don't you worry."
"Safe! I should think he is," said Dora. "If he had the British navy all around him he couldn't be safer."
"The world is at his feet," said Townsend.
"You mean at his mouth," said Roy.
"I never heard of such a thing in all my born days," said Margaret.
"He's cornered the food market," said another hungry guest.
"For goodness' sake turn your search-light on him, Dashway," said Minerva, "and let's see what he looks like. This is simplytragic."
Dashway Speeder turned the search-light of his launch across the flats and there amid the surrounding mud, still bubbling from the effects of the departing tide, was presented a scene like unto a picture on a movie screen. There, bathed in light amid the surrounding gloom, like a film star in a disk of brightness, sat Scout Harris upon a grocery box surrounded by fallen sandwiches and with a goodly bowl securely held between his diminutive knees. It was a superb and mouth-watering close-up, to use the film phrase.
"I—I might as well eat some things, hey?" the lone voyager called. "Because it's past time for refreshments anyway and the tide won't carry me off for more than two hours and everybody'll be going home then and the ice cream is starting to melt, the lemon ice is getting all soft, so will it be all right to start eating the chicken salad and the sandwiches and things? I only kind of sort of tested them so far."
Warde Hollister stopped up his ears in an agony of torture while a dozen famishing boys flopped this way and that in attitudes of suffering despair.
"Yes, it will be all right," called poor Minerva in a kind of desperation. "It's the only thing, you might as well." She seemed resigned if not reconciled. "You might as well eat the ice cream anyway, it will only melt."
"And the chicken salad?" called the merciless hero, "and the sandwiches, too?"
"Oh, this is too much," moaned Connie Bennett.
"It isn't so much as you might think," shouted Pee-wee.
"He must be hollow from head to foot," said Margaret.
"Yes, eat everything," wailed Minerva in the final spirit of utter resignation.
"Yum—yum," called Pee-wee. "Oh, boy, it's good."
And still the man in the moon winked down, and smiled his merry scout smile upon Scout Harris.
On that night, in the back yard of Billy Gilson's tire repair shop, Keekie Joe, the sentinel of Barrel Alley, sat upon a pile of old Ford radiators, untangling a complicated mass of fishing-line. He was trying to follow a selected strand through the various fastnesses of the labyrinth.
The involved mass was really not a fishing-line but, in its untangled state, an apparatus for confounding and enraging pedestrians. Stretched across the sidewalk between two tin cans its function was to catch in the feet of passersby, thus pulling the clamorous cans about the ankles of the victim. Keekie Joe had always found this game diverting and he was wont to vary its surprises by filling the cans with muddy water.
But on this eventful night he was driven to dismantle the apparatus and consecrate it to a new use. For Keekie Joe was hungry and he dared not go home; so he was going fishing.
The hours following the crap game had not been golden hours for the sentinel of Barrel Alley. When he emerged from the tenement and rejoined Pee-wee after the episode of the crap game, he had ten cents that his father had given him with which to buy a package of cigarettes.
Keekie Joe was never able to consider consequences at a distance of more than ten minutes into the future. When he played hooky from school on Thursday it never occurred to him that he would be answerable to the powers that be on Friday. Notwithstanding that he was a sentinel he could never look ahead. And when Keekie Joe smoked several of his father's cigarettes on the way home, it never occurred to him that he would have to remain away from home through supper time, and until his father had retired for the night.
Thus it was that at nine o'clock or thereabouts, Keekie Joe realized that he was hungry and that four cigarettes stood between him and home, effectually barring the way. He measured the licking that he would get against the supper that he would get, and he decided to go fishing. No doubt his choice was well considered for the supper that he would get might not be a good one whereas the licking that he would get would be nothing short of magnificent.
Keekie Joe had not the slightest idea how to cook a fish and he could not think so far ahead as that. But food he must have. So he had dug some worms and put them in one of his trick cans and then proceeded to untangle the line. Having secured an unknotted length of five or six feet he equipped this with a fish-hook of his own manufacture and sallied forth toward the river. He was not only hungry, but sleepy, and it never occurred to him that this was the exorbitant price of four cigarettes.
Hunger and sleep vied with each other in the shuffling body of Keekie Joe as he crossed Main Street and cut across the fields toward the marshes.
Down by the river was a little shanty in which was a mass of fishing seine. It stood hospitably open, for the hinges of the door were all rusted away and the dried and shrunken boards lay on the marshy ground before the entrance. Keekie Joe had intended to make sure that there was nothing to eat in the shanty before casting his line in the neighboring water. For there was the barest chance that a petrified crust of bread, ancient remnant of some fisherman's lunch, might be in the place.
Once Keekie Joe had found such a crust there. But the place was bare now of everything except deserted spider-webs, black and heavy with dust. These and the mass of net upon the ground were all that Keekie Joe could see in the light of the genial moonbeams which shone through the open doorway and wriggled in through the cracks in the weather-beaten boards.
And now again Keekie Joe had to make a choice. He was hungry, oh, so hungry. But he was sleepy, too, to the point of blinking half-consciousness. The eyes which had so often watched for "cops," and which had won for Keekie Joe his nickname, were half closed and he could hardly stand. Such a price for four cigarettes!
The eyes which had been so faithful to a doubtful trust and won the pay of an apple core, could not be trusted now to stay open while he sat, a ragged, lonely figure, on the shore dangling his line in quest of a morsel to eat. It was funny how these eyes, which had served others so well, seemed about to go back on their owner now. But so it was. And then, in a moment, a very strange thing happened.
As Keekie Joe leaned against the doorway blinking his eyes, he happened to look up at the moon and it seemed (probably because his eyes were blinking), itseemedas if the man in the moon winked at him, in a way shrewdly significant as if he might have something up his sleeve. Anyway, he could not keep his eyes open; sleep, for a little while at least, had triumphed over hunger and the faithful little sentinel of Barrel Alley stumbled over to the pile of net and sank down, exhausted, upon it.
And Keekie Joe dreamed a dream. A most outlandish dream. He dreamed that the licorice jaw-breaker which that strange boy had thrown at him was the size of a brick, and that as it fell upon the ground it broke into a thousand luscious fragments like the pane of plate-glass through which Keekie Joe had lately thrown a rock. He picked up the fragments and ate them, and there before him stood the strange, small boy, who threw a sponge cake directly at his head and hit him with itplunk. "Wotcher chuckin' dem at me fer?" Keekie Joe demanded menacingly.
But the small, strange boy (apparently without either fear or manners) scaled a pumpkin pie at him and said, "Do you think I'm scared of you?" He then squirted powdered sugar at him like poison gas and Keekie Joe toppled backward off the fence and could not watch for cops, because his eyes were full of powdered sugar. "Quit dat, d'yer hear!" he screamed. But the small, strange boy threw a ham straight at him and it fell on the ground with a thunderous crash and broke into a million thin slices with mustard on them.
The noise of this falling meteor awoke Keekie Joe and he sat up, holding the two sides of his head, startled and dizzy from hunger. And shining through the doorway of the shack he saw a light. It was not the moonlight, but another light, and he crept, light-headed and fearful, toward the opening, ready to run in case it was a cop …
What Keekie Joe beheld caused him to rub his eyes and concentrate his gaze with more intensity than ever he had shown while at his official post. There, bumping against the shore, was somebody or other's grass-plot with a tree on it and a little tent. The frightened natives who had witnessed the arrival of Columbus could not have been more astonished than Keekie Joe.
He glanced out upon the river to see if any lawns or groves or back yards were floating around. Then his gaze returned to the miraculous scene before him. There was the small boy he had known in the morning, "the rich kid" who had been willing to sit as sentinel on the fence.
He was now sitting on an inverted ice cream freezer and all about him on the grass were sandwiches, hundreds of them. The tower had fallen and its ruins lay about Pee-wee's feet. A lantern hung in the tent and through the opening Keekie Joe caught a glimpse of a board covered with spotless white cloth and piled with such things as he had seen in the windows of bakeries. The laden board looked as if a cyclone had struck it but in the tumbled chaos his quick and startled glance could distinguish proud and lofty cakes rolled over on their brown or icy superstructures, and doughnuts looking indeed like the cannon-balls which might have laid low these beauteous edifices.
Keekie Joe gazed upon this scene of mouth-watering ruin with eyes spellbound. Before him lay a miniature Pompeii buried under a kind of lava of whipped cream and custard and chicken salad, amid which toppled cakes and a frowning fortress of gingerbread lay sideways and upside down. Bananas and oranges and nuts and raisins and olives littered the scene of toothsome devastation. An empty square ice cream can, disinterred from its quiet grave of ice, lay upon the ground. Another was in Pee-wee's lap and our hero was armed with a deadly spoon.
"I know who you are," he said, as he annihilated a cocoanut macaroon. "You're the feller I saw this morning. Didn't I tell you if you got to be a scout you'd have all you want to eat? Now you see!"
Keekie Joe did see but he was too astounded to speak. He knew from experience that this strange race of scouts carried jaw-breakers in their pockets, and that they had a deadly aim. But he had not supposed that they travelled in fairy barques which rivalled the windows of bakery shops in their sumptuous appointments. He had not pictured them as travelling on their private islands surrounded by mammoth icing cakes five stories high, and towers of chocolate. He had not fancied them sitting on ice cream freezers and tossing the emptied receptacles from them.
Pee-wee had told his friend of the morning that they would both vote for Keekie Joe and that Keekie Joe should be the patrol leader. If this was the way an ordinary scout travelled, what would be the proper equipment of a patrol leader? It staggered poor Keekie Joe just to think of this. And a scoutmaster!
"Didn't I tell you how it was with scouts?" Pee-wee demanded. "Now you see!"
Keekie Joe rubbed his eyes to make sure he was awake and scrutinized Pee-wee shrewdly. For our hero was somewhat disguised by a villainous moustache of chocolate which reached almost to his ear on one side and made him look like a pirate.
"Do you like sardine sandwiches?" our hero asked at random, for he hardly knew what to use for bait amid such crowding variety. "I was stuck on the flats for over an hour and then the tide took me off. It's coming in now. I'm going to stay on here all night and to-morrow and all next week. So do you want to join? Only you have to be a scout if you want to come on here. There are six other fellers but they're at the party. They said I wouldn't have any fun at the party because I can't dance, but I'm having more fun than any of them. I foiled them. They're all dancing but they're good and hungry. Maybe they look happy but they're not."
"Do dey all go round in dem things?" Keekie Joe ventured to inquire.
"No, but I'm lucky," said Pee-wee.
It seemed to Keekie Joe that Pee-wee was very lucky.
"I've got the best part of the party here," said Pee-wee, holding onto a tree alongshore to keep the island from drifting. "You better hurry up because I can't hold it here; I can only hold it here about—about—seven seconds. Only you can't come on unless you join because we need one more feller. So will you join? If you will you can have all the ice cream you want, because I got a right to all these things. And there's cake goes with it too, and everything. It includes chicken salad and sandwiches and everything. So will you join? I'm the boss of all these things, I am, you can ask Minerva Skybrow. I'm the boss of the olives and—and—everything."
"Did yer swipe 'em?" Keekie Joe asked, looking furtively around as if he thought that Pee-wee might be shadowed while in possession of such boundless wealth.
"I got them on account of being lucky," Pee-wee said. "I pulled a stick out of the ground and it was a dandy mistake so that shows you'd better stick to me, because I make lots of dandy mistakes. I make them every day; sometimes I make two in one day and I've got nine ideas for next week and all these eats besides. You needn't be afraid to get on," he added, "because it'll drift up the river now and it won't go past Bridgeboro on account of Waring's reef. There's where I want it to stick because if it sticks there it'll stay there, you can bet. Come on, don't you be scared."
Then, with sudden inspiration, he added, "This is a peachy place to lay keekie for cops, because you can see all around you away,wayoff. And when all this food is gone there'll be apples getting ripe on this tree and you won't have to speak for cores either, because you can have whole apples, all you want of them. That's what scouts do, they eat and they stay out all night and they're wild, kind of. And they don't care what happens, and anyway the ice cream is melting all the time, so will you join?"
Keekie Joe, still hesitating in profound astonishment, and a little fearful of this strange apparition with its presiding genius saw that if he were going to act he must act quickly for though Pee-wee was king of the island he seemed not able to govern its capricious fancy. Clutch the tree as he would, the gap between scout and hoodlum persistently widened, and the island seemed bent on hurrying upon its wanton career.
Keekie Joe, not altogether easy in his mind, still found it impossible to resist these enumerated benefits of scouting. Being wild and staying out all night and eating and eating and eating forever and forever under a profusion of blossoms which gave new promise, was too much for the sentinel of Barrel Alley to ignore.
So he ran away to sea as so many other boys had done before him and sailed out upon the briny deep in the good barque Merry-go-round. And he ate such a supper that night as he had never eaten in his life before. Pee-wee had already eaten his fill but he wished to be companionable and make his guest feel at home so he ate another supper with his new friend in accordance with the requirements of good manners.
A scout is polite.