"Oh, I think we can safely leave everything to him," said Billy. "What do you think of the discoverer, anyway?"
"I"m for the discoverer first, last and always," said Townsend. "He has only to lead and I"ll follow. Now that we"ve met him I feel that life without the discoverer would not be worth living. I"m glad that next week is Easter vacation, because we couldn"t think of school and the discoverer at the same time. He"s more than a scout, he"s an inst.i.tution.
"Do you know, Charlie, I think we"re moving? We were almost opposite that old railroad car a few minutes ago. Either Bridgeboro is going down or we"re going up. Do you feel the climate changing? You don"t suppose this island is going to go up the river again and join old Trimmer"s orchard, do you?"
"Maybe it"s homesick," said a boy they called Brownie.
"I hope the discoverer will discover it," said Billy.
"We"d better scatter something in our trail," said Townsend soberly, "so that he can follow. I think that"s the regulation thing for scouts to do, isn"t it?"
He had been whittling a stick and now with a sober look he began throwing the chips into the water as if to indicate the path of the departing island. "That"s what you call blazing a trail," he said; "if he"s a scout he can follow."
The little island was now moving slowly upstream by the incoming tide.
It caught on the flats, performed a slow pirouette like some drowsy toe-dancer or exhausted merry-go-round, then extricated itself and floated majestically in the channel till the little apple tree became involved with the foliage along sh.o.r.e.
"Do you know this seems like a very funny kind of an island to me?"
Townsend Ripley drawled. "I wonder what makes it hold together? It ought to disintegrate."
"Dis what?" asked Billy.
"Disintegrate--that"s Latin for falling to pieces."
"Maybe the roots hold it together," said Roland.
"It ought to dissolve," said Townsend. "This land doesn"t seem to be soluble in water. The coast all around ought to wash away. There is something mysterious here. This island is as solid as a pancake; I don"t understand it. By all the rules of the game there shouldn"t be anything left here but the tree by this evening. There doesn"t seem to be any process of erosion."
"What will we do If the island washes away from under us?" asked the boy they called Brownie. "The tree"ll fall over sideways, won"t it? I don"t want to camp on an island that keeps getting smaller all the time. It"s bad enough to have a tent shrink after a rain, but _an island_!"
"I think this island is warranted not to shrink," said Townsend.
"Warranted nothing," said Billy; "look how muddy the water is all around it. It"ll be about as big as a fifty cent piece by midnight.
The river is eating it all away."
"Speaking of eating," said Townsend, "here comes the discoverer."
The discoverer and his companion were indeed approaching and apparently they had sacked the town of Bridgeboro. Their gallant barque labored under a veritable mountain of miscellaneous paraphernalia and out of the pile projected a long bar with a device on the end of it which glinted red and green in the sunshine.
"It looks like a weather-vane," said Billy.
"There"s something printed on it," said Roly.
"It says _STOP_," said the boy they called Nuts.
"It says _GO_" said the boy they called Brownie.
"I think," said Townsend, scrutinizing the approaching transport in his funny way, "I think, I _think_, it"s a traffic sign. You don"t see any automobiles in the canoe, do you?"
"There"s something sticking out on the left side," said Billy; "I think it"s a Ford. I hope the island isn"t going to be overrun by motorists."
"It"s not a Ford, it"s a dishpan," said Brownie.
"They"re the same thing," said Townsend. "What is that on the duffel bag--a license plate?"
Suddenly the voice of the discoverer floated across the expanse of sun-flickered water. "We"re going to have hunter"s stew for supper and I"m going to make it and my mother says I can stay all through Easter vacation and I got a lot of things out of our attic. Do you like bananas? I"ve got a whole bunch and I"ve got a lot of new ideas--dandy ones! I know how to fry them! I know how to slice them and fry them!"
"I"d like to try some fried ideas," said Townsend. "I don"t think I ever ate them sliced before."
It may be said that Pee-wee"s ideas, whether fried or baked or boiled or roasted, were usually underdone and required to be put back into the oven.
Be that as it may, he soon proceeded to unload these, as well as the interesting junk which he had gathered, the most surprising object of which was the dilapidated revolving traffic sign lately discarded by the Bridgeboro police department in favor of a lighthouse or silent cop, so called.
This acquisition was the pride of Pee-wee"s life; its heavy metal stand had long since gone the way of all junk and it could not stand unsupported. As Pee-wee plunged it heroically in the earth and stood holding it with one hand he looked not unlike Columbus planting the flaunting emblem of Ferdinand and Isabella on the sh.o.r.e of San Salvador, except that this tableau of the well known historical episode was somewhat marred by the fact of his holding a half eaten banana in his other hand. But his new friends stared with all the amazement shown by the natives upon the landing of that other great discoverer.
Only a specific inventory can do justice to the provisions and furniture which Pee-wee brought.
One revolving police traffic sign One large phonograph horn One dishpan full of crullers (taken in a masterly a.s.sault upon the Harris pantry) One tent One duffel bag with cooking set Part of a vacuum cleaner One scout belt axe One Thanksgiving horn One automobile siren horn.
One lantern Two long clothesline supporters A towel-rack that opened like a fan A skein of clothesline A small kitchen-range shovel Two boxes filled with canned goods One box filled with loose edibles One ice cream freezer
"Didn"t you bring a cow?" Townsend asked. "We can never make ice cream without cream."
"We"re in reach of the mainland, aren"t we?" Pee-wee retorted thunderously. "It isn"t as if we were going out of sight of land; gee whiz, then I"d have brought quite a lot of stuff."
"Oh, I see," said Townsend.
"I just picked up a few odds and ends," Pee-wee explained. "I"m going to make a couple of more trips to-morrow."
"If you happen to think of it bring a lawnmower," said Townsend; "they come in handy. And a few life preservers if you happen to have any, in case the island goes to pieces."
"How can it go to pieces?" Pee-wee demanded. "Islands don"t go to pieces, do they? Australia is an island, isn"t it? It"s just where it always was, isn"t it? You"re crazy! All we need is one more scout and I know one by the name of Keekie Joe, and I"m going to try to get him and then we"ll be a full patrol and I decided to name it the Alligators, because they belong on land and water both and we"re sea scouts on the land kind of, so maybe I"ll decide to name it the Turtles, maybe."
"Discoverer," said Townsend, "we"re with you whatever you do, but there is a mystery about this island which I would like to fathom before we organize----"
"I fathomed lots of mysteries," shouted Pee-wee.
"I don"t know whether you know what erosion means----"
"Sure I know what it means," said Pee-wee; "it means getting rusty, kind of."
"It means land being washed away by water. If you put a piece of land in the water, the water will dissolve it and it won"t take long either.
It isn"t like an island that has always been where it is--a kind of hill sticking up out of the water. This is just a piece of land and the roots of this little tree won"t hold it together long.
"The question is, should we go hunting for new members under those conditions? Pretty soon we"ll have a full patrol and no island under us; we"ll be in the water. That"s perfectly agreeable to me and all the rest of us. But does Keekie Joe know how to swim? We really have no _grounds_ for forming a patrol. See?"
"Do you call that an argument?" Pee-wee thundered. "It shows how much you know about geography because look at an ice cream soda! Does that corrode? Let"s hear you answer that? Or erode or whatever you call it. A chunk of ice cream floats in the soda, doesn"t it? Maybe after a while it melts, but this land isn"t ice cream, is it?
"That shows how much you know about logic. This island has been here ever since early this morning, hasn"t it? And it"s just as big as it was, isn"t it? An island is an island and the water won"t melt it unless it"s hot--like a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee. You"ve got to stir it up to melt it. Is North America corroding? Or Coney Island? Is this island any smaller than it was?"
"No, it isn"t, and that"s the funny part," said Townsend. "We"ve explored the coast but we haven"t explored the depths. Let"s have that little shovel a minute, will you?"