"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 shore 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 gratitude
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," ejaculated 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 grassy 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.