CHAPTER XIII
"STOP"
The ice cream soda argument was not a good one at all, for no lump of ice cream ever remained long intact where Pee-wee was. Whether it melted or not, it disappeared. And why this freakish little island did not rapidly dissolve was a mystery.
By all the laws it should have melted away, leaving the deserted tree to topple over and form a new obstruction to boating. But there it was floating more easily as the tide rose, with apparently no intention of allowing itself to be absorbed by the surrounding waters. It is true that a belt of muddy water bordered its wild and forbidding coast and that its sh.o.r.e line was of a consistency suitable for the making of mud pies, but its body seemed as solid and resistant as a rock.
Pee-wee always claimed that it was he and he alone who discovered the mysterious secret of Merry-go-round Island; he and he alone who penetrated its unknown depths. In this bold exploration a courageous sardine sandwich played an important part and out of sheer grat.i.tude Pee-wee, from that time forward, was ever partial to sardine sandwiches, regarding them with tender and grateful affection.
He was standing near the apple tree holding the traffic sign like a pilgrim"s banner beside him and, as has been told, eating a banana with the other hand. That fact is well established. Little he thought that when Roly Poly, delving into a paper bag that was in a grocery box, handed him a sardine sandwich, it would mark an epoch in scout history.
In order to accept the proffered refreshment, Pee-wee was compelled either to relinquish the traffic sign or the banana. One moment of frantic consideration held him, then in a burst of inspiration he plunged the metal standard deep into the ground, and took the sardine sandwich in his free hand. The printed cross-piece on the traffic sign joggled around so that just as he plunged his mouth into the sandwich the word GO made an appropriate announcement to his comrades. It is hard to say what might have happened if Townsend Ripley had not turned the sign so that it said STOP just as Pee-wee consumed the last mouthful.
"Isstrucsmlikewood," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Pee-wee, consuming the last mouthful.
"Issoundlkbo--boards!"
Billy was quick to raise the bar of the traffic sign and plunge it down again. It was certainly no tentacle of root that the probing bar struck, but something hard, yet ever so slightly yielding, something which gave forth a hollow sound.
It was easy to explore America after Columbus had shown the way and it was a simple matter now for Townsend, with the little shovel, to dig a hole three or four feet deep about the traffic sign. The boys all kneeled about, peering in as if buried treasure were there, until an area of muddy wood was revealed. Roly Poly knocked it with a rock and the noise convinced them that the wood was of considerable area and that probably _nothing was beneath it_.
"Well--what--do--you--know--about--that?" Billy asked incredulously.
"Jab it down somewhere else," said Brownie.
Pee-wee moved the metal rod a yard or so distant and plunged it in the ground again. There was the same hollow sound. For a moment they all sat spellbound, mystified. Then, as if seized by a sudden thought, Brownie hurried to the edge of the little island, exploring with his hands. He lifted up some gra.s.sy soil that drooped and hung in the water, and tore it away. As he did so there was revealed a ridge of heavy wood over which it had hung. By the same process he exposed a yard or two of this black mud-covered edge.
"Well--I"ll--be--_jiggered_!" said Billy.
"It"s a scow or something!" said Brownie, almost too astonished to speak.
"The island seems to overlap it sort of like a pie-crust," drawled Townsend.
"The scow is the undercrust!" shouted Pee-wee, delighted with this comparison to his favorite edible. "We"ll call it Apple-pie Island and it can"t corrode or erode or whatever you call it, either, because it"s boxed in!"
That indeed seemed to be the way of it. Apparently the island reposed comfortably in and over the edges of a huge, shallow box of heavy timbers which had received it with kindly hospitality when it broke away and toppled over into the water. As we know, the river had eaten away the land under the little balcony peninsula, and the scow, or whatever it was, must have drifted or been moored underneath the earthy projection.
"Maybe it belonged to that big dredge that was working up here," said Pee-wee, "Anyway it"s lucky for us, hey? Because now our island has a good foundation and it can"t dis--what d"you call it."
"Only it complicates the question of ownership," said Townsend, apparently not in the least astonished or excited. "Here is a piece of land belonging to old Trimmer on a scow or something or other belonging to a dredging company or somebody or other and claimed by the boy scouts by right of discovery."
"Old Trimmer owned the land," Pee-wee fairly yelled, "but now the land isn"t there any more and now it"s an island so he doesn"t own it because he"s got a deed and it doesn"t say _island_ on the deed! _Gee whiz_, anybody knows that."
"But suppose the owner of the scow wants his property," Townsend said.
"Let him come and get it," Pee-wee shouted. "If we get a deed for this island the scow is covered by the deed!"
"You mean it"s covered by the island," Brownie said.
"Well, we seem to be standing still now, anyway," said Townsend; "it"s a relief to know that when we wake up to-morrow morning we won"t be floating in the water. Who"s got a match? Let"s start a fire and begin moving toward the hunter"s stew."
"We don"t need matches," Pee-wee said with a condescending sneer. "Do you think scouts use matches? They light fires by rubbing sticks.
Matches are civilized."
Whereupon Pee-wee gave a demonstration of not getting a light by the approved old Indian fashion of rubbing sticks and striking sparks from stones and so on.
"Here comes a man down the river in a motorboat," said Nuts; "turn the stop sign that way and we"ll ask him for a match."
Pee-wee, somewhat subdued by his failure, confronted the approaching boat with the red panel which said STOP, and held his hand up like a traffic officer.
But there was no need of requiring the approaching voyager to pause.
For he had every intention of pausing. Neither would there have been any use of asking him for a match. For he never gave away matches.
Old Trimmer never gave away anything. He would not even give away a secret, he was so stingy. To get a match from old Trimmer you would have had to give him chloroform. It was said that he would not look at his watch to see what time it was for fear of wearing it out, and that he looked over the top of his spectacles to save the lenses. At all events he was so economical that he seldom wasted any words, and the words that he did waste were not worth saving; they were not very nice words.
CHAPTER XIV
"GO"
Old Trimmer chugged up to the edge of the island in the shabbiest, leakiest little motor dory on the river, and grasped a little tuft of greensward to keep his boat from drifting.
"Well, now, what"s all this?" he began. "What you youngsters been doin" up the river, eh?"
"This used to be your land before it was an island," said Pee-wee diplomatically. "I bet you"ll say it"s funny how it used to be your apple tree and everything. But it broke away and kind of fell down and now it"s an island and we discovered it. It can"t--one thing--it can"t ever be a peninsula again, that"s sure. Islands, they"re discovered and then you own them, that"s the way it is. Findings is keepings with islands."
"Is that so?" said old Trimmer, half-interested and examining what might be called the underpinning of the island with keen preoccupation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The boys hold the island in spite of old Trimmer"s protest.]
"Well, you"ll just clear off"n this here property double quick. Pile in here and I"ll set you ash.o.r.e."
"Don"t you go," urged Pee-wee; "we"ve got a right here; we"re going to camp on this island."
"Sure we are," said Roly Poly.
"And you can"t make us get off, either, because it isn"t on your land."
Old Trimmer wasted no words. "Pile in here, all of you," he said, indicating the boat, "or I"ll have yer all up fer trespa.s.sin"."
"Do you own this old scow or whatever it is underneath us?" Townsend asked quietly.
"Look a"here, young feller, no talkin" back," said old Trimmer testily; "come along, step lively. I"m going to tow this whole business back up to where it belongs. Now d"ye want me ter set yer ash.o.r.e or not?"
"Not," said Roly Poly.