THE MISSIONARY LANDS ON FOREIGN SHORES
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, bumping against the shore, was somebody or other's
grass-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 grass 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-balls
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 alongshore 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.