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ROY BLAKELEY
[Illustration: I BEGAN SINKING AS LOW AS MY WAIST.]
ROY BLAKELEY
His Story
Being the true narrative of his adventures and those of his
troop on land and sea and in the mud—particularly in the mud.
Taken from the Troop Book of the 1st Bridgeboro Troop B. S. A.
and arranged by himself with the assistance of Pee-wee Harris
and
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
Tom Slade, Boy Scout, Tom Slade at
Temple Camp, etc.
Illustrated by Howard L. Hastings
Published with the approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers : : New York
Copyright, 1920, by
Grosset & Dunlap
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. TROUBLES OF MY OWN—THE BIG CONCLAVE
II. SWATTING THE SPY
III. SWATTING THE SPY—CONTINUED
IV. THE PLOT GROWS THINNER—OR ELSE THICKER
V. LOST
VI. THE TIGHT PLACE
VII. WEETONKA, THE TERRIBLE CHIEF
VIII. RESOPEKITWAFTENLY
IX. THE LOST LETTER
X. THE RAVENS
XI. LOST
XII. ARTIE’S ADVENTURE
XIII. TRACKING
XIV. THE SLACKER
XV. DURING NOON HOUR
XVI. NOBLE RAGS
XVII. THE TWO CROSSES
XVIII. SCOUT LAW NUMBER THREE
XIX. THE END OF THE MEETING
XX. MOSTLY ABOUT SKINNY
XXI. SOMETHING MISSING
XXII. SHOWS YOU WHERE I DO THE TALKING
XXIII. IN THE WOODS
XXIV. TREASURE ISLAND
XXV. THE SHORT CUT
XXVI. IN MY OWN CAMP
XXVII. THE GENTLE BREEZE
XXVIII. JOLLYING PEE-WEE
XXIX. JIMMY, THE BRIDGE-TENDER
XXX. GONE
XXXI. THE CAPTAIN’S ORDERS
XXXII. I MAKE A DANDY FRIEND
XXXIII. SO LONG—SEE YOU LATER
ROY BLAKELEY
CHAPTER I
TROUBLES OF MY OWN—THE BIG CONCLAVE
Well, here I am at last, ready to tell you the adventures of our young
lives. Right away I have trouble with Pee-wee Harris. He’s about as easy
to keep down as a balloon full of gas. We call him the young dirigible
because he’s always going up in the air. Even at the start he must stick
in his chapter heading about a conclave.
Hanged if I know what a conclave is. It’s some kind of a meeting I
guess. He said it was something like a peace conference, but believe me,
the meeting I’m going to tell you about wasn’t much like a peace
conference. I told him I’d use my own heading and his too, just to keep
him quiet. I think he’s got his pockets stuffed full of chapter headings
and that he’ll be shooting them at me all the way through—like a
machine-gun.
I guess I might as well tell you about Pee-wee, before I tell you about
the conclave or whatever you call it. He’s Doctor Harris’s son and he’s
a member of the Raven Patrol. He’s a member in good standing, only he
doesn’t stand very high. Honest, you can hardly see him without a
magnifying glass. But for voice—_good night_!
He sings in the Methodist Church choir and they say he can throw his
voice anywhere. I wish he’d throw it in the ash barrel, I know that.
He always wears his belt-axe to troop meetings, in case the Germans
should invade Bridgeboro, I suppose. He’s the troop mascot and if you
walk around him three times and ruffle up his beautiful curly hair, you
can change your luck.
Well, now I’ll tell you about the meeting. We had a big special meeting
to decide about two things, and believe me, those two things had
momentous consequences. _Momentous_—that’s a good word, hey?
One thing, we wanted to decide about our campaign for collecting books
for soldiers, and another thing, we wanted to decide how we could all go
up to Temple Camp in our cabin launch, the _Good Turn_.
This large and what-do-you-call-it launch—I mean commodious launch—is
a dandy boat, except for one thing—the bow is too near the stern. If we
were sardines instead of boy scouts, it would be all right, but you see
there’s twenty-four of us altogether, not counting Captain Kidd, our
mascot—he’s a parrot.
So I got up and said, “How are we going to crowd twenty-four growing
boys and a parrot into a twenty foot launch?”
“It can’t be did,” Doc Carson shouted.
“Then some of us will have to hike it on our dear little feet,” I said.
“Or else we’ll have to get a barge or something or other and tow it,”
Artie Van Arlen said.
“What, with a three horsepower engine?” somebody else shouted.
“You can bet I won’t be one of the ones to hike it,” Pee-wee yelled;
“I’ll dope out some scheme or other.”
And _believe me_, he did.
Well, after we’d been talking about an hour or so on how we’d manage it,
Mr. Ellsworth, our scoutmaster, up and said there was plenty of time for
that as long as we were not going to camp for a couple of weeks anyway,
and that we’d better begin thinking of how we were going to start about
collecting books for soldiers.
All the while I had something very important to say, and I was kind of
trembling, as you might say, for I thought maybe Mr. Ellsworth wouldn’t
like the idea. Anyway I got up and began:
“The author that wrote all about ‘Tom Slade’s Adventures in the World
War’,” I said, “told me it would be a good idea for me to write up our
troop’s adventures and he’d help me to get them published.”
Then up jumped Pee-wee Harris like a jack-in-the-box.
“What are you talking about?” he shouted; “don’t you know you have to
have a command of language to write books? You’re crazy!”
“I should worry about a command of language,” I told him. “Haven’t I got
command of the Silver Fox Patrol? Anybody who can command the Silver Fox
Patrol ought to be able to command a few languages and things. I could
command a whole regiment even,” I kept up, for I saw that Pee-wee was
getting worked up, as usual, and all the fellows were laughing, even Mr.
Ellsworth.
“If you could command a division,” Westy Martin said, in that sober way
of his, “you ought to be able to command English all right.”
“I can command any kind of a division,” I shouted, all the while winking
at Westy. “I can command a long division or a short division or a
multiplication or a subtraction or a plain addition.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled. “You’re crazy!”
“I can command anything except Pee-wee Harris’s temper,” I said.
Well, you ought to have seen Pee-wee. Even Mr. Ellsworth had to laugh.
“How can a fellow your age write books?” he fairly screamed. “You have
to have sunsets and twilights and gurgling brooks and——”
“You leave the gurgling brooks to me,” I said; “I’ll make them gurgle
all right. There’s going to be plenty of action in these books. And
Pee-wee Harris is going to be the village cut-up.”
“Are you going to have girls?” he shouted.
“Sure I’m going to have girls—gold haired girls—all kinds—take your
pick.”
“_Good night!_” Pee-wee shouted, “I see your finish.”
Well, pretty soon everybody was shouting at the same time and Pee-wee
was dancing around, saying we were all crazy. Most of the Raven Patrol
were with him and they ought to be called the Raving Patrol, believe
_me_.
Then Mr. Ellsworth held up his hand in that quiet way he has. “This
sounds like the Western Front or a Bolsheviki meeting,” he said, “and
I’m afraid our young Raven, Mr. Pee-wee Harris, will presently explode
and that would be an unpleasant episode for any book.”
“Good night!” I said. “Don’t want any of my books to end with an
explosion.”
Then he said how it would be a good idea for me to write up our
adventures and how he’d help me whenever I got stuck and how he guessed
the author of Tom Slade would put in fancy touches for me, because he
lives in our town and he’s a whole lot interested in our troop. He said
that breezes and distant views and twilights and things aren’t so hard
when you get used to them and even storms and hurricanes are easy if you
only know how. He said girls aren’t so easy to manage though.
“I’ll help you out with the girls,” Pee-wee said; “I know all about
girls. And I’ll help you with the names of the chapters, too.”
“All right,” Mr. Ellsworth said, “I think Pee-wee will prove a valuable
collaborator.”
“A which?” Pee-wee said, kind of frightened.
So then we all laughed and Mr. Ellsworth said it was getting late and
we’d better settle about collecting books for the soldiers.
We decided that after we got to camp I’d begin writing up our adventures
on the trip, but we couldn’t decide how we’d all go in our boat, and
that was the thing that troubled us a lot, because the fellows in our
troop always hang together and we didn’t like the idea of being
separated.
Well, I guess that’s all there is to tell you about the meeting, and in
the next chapter I’m going to tell you all about how we collected the
books for the fellows in camp, and how the mystery about the boat was
solved. Those are Pee-wee’s words about the _mystery of the boat_. I
can’t see that there was any mystery about it, but there was another
kind of a mystery, believe me, and that kid was the cause of it. I guess
maybe you’ll like the next chapter better than this one.
So long.