Now I'll start off. You remember about Mr. Donnelle saying that he had a wireless. Well, pretty soon after what I've been telling you about, the men went away and they were all laughing and good natured about it.

I heard one of them say that the Boy Scouts were a wide--awake lot.

Believe me, they wouldn't say that if they saw us sleeping after a day's hike at Temple Camp. If you heard Vic Norris snore, you'd think it was the West Front in France.

Well anyway, Mr. Donnelle wanted Pee-wee and me to stay at his house a little while, because he said he was kind of interested in us. He would listen to Pee-wee very sober like and then begin to laugh. And whenever Pee-wee tried to explain, it only made him laugh more.

"Anyway, I could see you weren't a very bad kind of a spy," Pee-wee said.

Jiminetty, I had to laugh.

Well, Mr. Donnelle asked us all about the Scouts and we told him all about them--Pee-wee mostly did that. He's a scout propagander let-- that's a small sized propagandist. We told him, how we didn't know how we are going to manage to get up to Temple Camp in our launch, because it would only hold about seven or eight boys and we had twenty-four, not counting Captain Kidd, the parrot.

"Well, now I have a little scheme," he said, smiling all the while, "and perhaps we can hit some sort of a plan. If I can only get you boys out of the way, away up at camp, I'll be able to carry on my German propaganda work." Then he winked at me and I knew he was kidding Pee-wee.

Well, believe me, we hit a plan all right; we more than hit it, we gave it a knockout blow. All the while we were talking, he was taking us across the lawn till pretty soon we came to a little patch of woods and as soon as I got a whiff of those trees, good night, I felt as if I was up at Temple Camp already. That's a funny thing about trees--you get to know them and like them sort of.

Then pretty soon we came to a creek that ran through the woods and I could see it was deep and all shaded by the trees. Oh, jiminy, it was fine. And you could hear it ripple too, just like the water of Black Lake up near Temple Camp. If I was a grown-up author I could write some dandy stuff about it, because it was all dark and spooky as you might say, and you could see the trees reflected in it and casting their something or other--you know what I mean.

"Can you follow a trail?", Mr. Donnelle asked us.

"Trails are our middle names;" I told him, "and I can follow one--"

"Whitherso'er--" Pee-wee began.

"Whither so which?" I said. Because he was trying to talk high brow just because he knew Mr. Donnelle was an author.

So he led us along a trail that ran along the sh.o.r.e all in and out through trees, and he said it was all his property. Pretty soon I could see part of a house through the trees and I thought I'd like to live there, it was so lonely.

"You mean secluded," Pee-wee said. Mr. Donnelle smiled and I told him Pee-wee was a young dictionary--pocket size.

Pretty soon we reached the house and, good night, it wasn't any house at all; it was a house boat. And I could see the fixtures for a wireless on it, only the wires had been taken down.

Then Mr. Donnelle said, "Boys," he said, "this is my old workshop and I have spent many happy hours in it. But I don't use it any more and if you boys think you could all pile into it, why you are welcome to it for the summer. It has no power, but perhaps you could tow it behind your launch. Anyway you may charter it for the large sum of nothing at all, as a reward for foiling a spy."

"I--I kind of knew you were not a spy all the time," said Pee-wee.

Well, I was so flabbergasted that I just couldn't speak and even Pee-wee was struck dumb. We just gaped like a couple of idiots, and after a while I said, "Cracky, it's too good to be true."

"So you see what comes from collecting books for soldiers and for keeping your eyes open," Mr. Donnelle said; "you have caught a bigger fish than you thought. N ow suppose I show you through the inside."

Now here is the place where the plot begins to get thicker and, believe me, in four or five chapters it will be as thick as mud. We were just coming up to the house-boat to go aboard it, when suddenly the door flew open and a fellow scampered across the deck and ran away.

I could see that he had pretty shabby clothes and a peaked cap and I guess he was startled to hear us coming. In just a few seconds he was gone in the woods and we all stood gaping there while the boat bobbed up and down, on account of him jumping from it. But I got a squint at his face all right, and I noticed the color of his cap and how he ran, and I'm mighty glad I did, because that fellow was going to come into our young lives again and cause us a lot of trouble, you can bet.

Mr. Donnelle said he was probably just a tramp that had been sleeping in the boat and he didn't seem to mind much, only he said it would be better to keep the door locked.

"Maybe he might have been a--" Pee-wee began.

"No siree," I said. "We've had enough of deep-dyed villains for one day, if that's what you were going to say."

"Maybe we'd better track him," said Pee-wee, very serious.

"Nix on the tracking," I said, "I've retired from the 'detective business, and now I'm going to be cook on a house-boat."

"We'll have a good anchor anyway if you make biscuits," Pee-wee said.

"They'll weigh more than you do anyway," I fired back.

And Mr. Donnelle began to laugh.

Well, we didn't bother our heads any more about the tramp, but I could see that Pee-wee would have been happier if we'd have thought it was the Kaiser or Villa, instead of just a plain ordinary tramp, looking for a place to sleep. But oh, crink.u.ms, you'll be surprised when you hear all about that fellow and who he was and I suppose you'd like me to tell you now, wouldn't you? But I won't.

I've got to go to camp meeting now, so goodbye, see you later--

CHAPTER V

LOST

Now I'm going to write until my sister begins playing the piano. Music and literature don't mix--believe me. There are two cruises in this book--a big one and a little one. You can take your pick. The little one is full of mud and the big one is full of pep. Anyway you get your money's worth, that's one sure thing.

This chapter is about the little cruise. But first I have to tell you about the house-boat, because it turned out to be our home sweet home for a couple of weeks. It didn't only turn out, but it turned in and it turned sideways and every which way. But I'm not going to knock it.

It got knocks enough going through the creek and up Bridgeboro River.

It knocked into two bridges, and goodness knows what all. But what cared we, yo ho? We cared not--I mean naught.

First Mr. Donnelle showed us through it and it was dandy, only in very poor shape. It's shape was square. But I wouldn't laugh at it because we had a lot of fun on it. Inside it had two rooms and a little kitchen and the roof had a railing around it and there was lots of room there. There was lots of room on the deck too. And there was a kind of little guard-house, too, to put Pee-wee in if he didn't behave. Some of the windows were broken, but I knew we could fix them easily. All we needed to do was eat some green apples and then we'd have plenty of panes. There were some lockers too, only one of them was locked and we couldn't get into it.

I guess the tramp didn't take anything, because there was nothing missing. I guess all he took was a look around. There were some cushions piled on one of the lockers and they looked as if someone had been sleeping on them.

Pee-wee said he could see the oil stove had been used by the smell--he's got such sharp eyes that be can see a smell. I told him he had a cla.s.sy eye because there was a pupil in it, and you ought to have seen Mr.

Donnelle laugh. I guess he thought we were crazy.

"Well we should worry about the tramp," I said, "especially now that we have a boat like this. The next thing to do is to bring the whole troop and get her fixed up."

One thing was easy anyway. Just below Bridgeboro, where we live, there is a kind of a branch flowing into the Bridgeboro River. We always called it the creek. Now we found out from Mr. Donnelle that it started along up above Little Valley. Over there they call it Dutch Creek. He said that at high tide we could float the houseboat right down into Bridgeboro River and then wait for the up tide or else tow it up to Bridgeboro. Cracky, I could see it would be a cinch ark! I was glad because we fellows didn't have money enough to have the boat carted by land. But, good night, this way was easy.

The next morning I sent a birch bark call to an the fellows in our troop. I sent them each a little piece of birch bark by courier. Connie Bennett, he's our courier. And that meant come to Special Meeting--W. S.

W. S. means without scoutmaster. So pretty soon they began coming up to Camp Solitaire. That's the name I gave the tent I have on our lawn. When they were all there, I told them about Mr. Donnelle and the houseboat, and we decided that we'd hike over to Little Valley and pile right in and get it ready instead of bringing it to Bridgeboro first. We decided that if we worked on it for about three days, it would be ready.

So we all started to hike it along the road to Little Valley. We had an adventure before we got there, and I guess I'd better ten you about it.

I made a map too, so you can see the way everything was. It's about five miles to Little Valley by the road.

Well, we were an hiking it along, sometimes going scout-pace and most of the time jollying Pee-wee, when all of a sudden I noticed a mark on a rock that I was sure was a scout mark. It was an arrow and it was marked with a piece of slate. Underneath the arrow was another mark like a pail, so I knew the sign meant that there was water in that direction.

I didn't know any scouts around our way that could be camping there, but whenever a scout sees a scout sign he usually likes to follow it up. So I told the fellows I was going to follow if there was any time. They said it was an old last year's mark, but go ahead if I wanted to, and I told them I'd meet them at Little Valley later. So now comes the adventure.

As soon as I left the fellows, I hit the trail into the woods just like you'll see on the map I made. It wasn't much of trail and I guess a fellow couldn't follow it if he wasn't a scout. It was all thick woods like a jungle kind of, and I could see where branches had been broken by somebody that pa.s.sed there. Pretty soon it began to get swampy and there wasn't any more trail at all.

Ill.u.s.tration #2

"A map"