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 sh.o.r.e 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), it _seemed_ as 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-gla.s.s 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 it _plunk_.
"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 . . .
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MISSIONARY LANDS ON FOREIGN Sh.o.r.eS
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, b.u.mping against the sh.o.r.e, was somebody or other"s gra.s.s-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 gra.s.s 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-b.a.l.l.s 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 alongsh.o.r.e 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, _way_ off.
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.
CHAPTER XXV
RETURN OF THE HERO
The lawn party was over, two score or more of famished guests had gone to their homes, the lights in the Skybrow house were out, the sputtering candles in the j.a.panese lanterns were dying one by one, the grounds were still and dark except for the merry moon which smiled down upon the scene of revelry and tragedy.
At the edge of the lawn where the Isle of Desserts had been, six figures sat in the darkness. They sat in a row, their legs drawn up and held by their clasped hands. They sat waiting and watching in the silent night.
"The river is going to eat the edge of this lawn all away if they don"t face it with stone," said Roly Poly.
"Will you please stop talking about eating?" said Brownie.
"I know, but you"d think a rich man like Mr. Skybrow would make provision for a thing like that," said a boy they called Shorty.
"Will you please stop talking about provisions?" said Townsend.
"I know, but Nuts was saying----"
"Will you please stop talking about nuts?" said Townsend.
"Well, what shall I talk about then?" Brownie asked.
"Talk about the rhododendron bushes," said Billy. "Look where a big clump was pulled away. Look at that one--all broken. These bushes will have to be all pruned."
"Will you please stop talking about prunes?" said Townsend.
"I know, but seven or eight----"