HERVEY WANDERS INTO THE STORY AND OUT AGAIN
Poor Tom; of all the ridiculous errands to be on, that one of tramping
down to Catskill Landing was the most ridiculous. Because Tom was a poor
young fellow, and was no more able to buy the boat than Hervey Willetts
(one of the young scouts of camp) was able to give an accurate and
rational account of it.
It was really Hervey who started this whole thing, Hervey Willetts who
started so many things. In his purposeless wanderings he had roamed to
Catskill Landing one day and (as usual) had not returned for dinner.
“Why didn’t you come back for dinner?” asked the young assistant, rather
annoyed.
“Slady, Catskill Landing is thirteen miles and you can’t hear the dinner
horn that far. Besides, thirteen is an unlucky number.”
“We’ll have to get a radio if we want you to come home for dinner,” said
Tom. “We’ll have to broadcast the dinner call.”
“Slady, don’t talk about radios, don’t mention the name; you ought to
see the radio on that boat—the big cabin cruiser that’s for sale. I’d
like to buy that boat, Slady, it’s a pipperino!” Probably he would have
bought it and sailed away to South Africa in it quite alone, but for one
trifling reason. The price of the boat was two thousand dollars, and
Hervey had exactly two nickels.
“A pretty big pipperino, hey?” asked Tom.
“Oh, about seventy-five feet—well, maybe fifty, say. If I had that boat,
Slady, I’d beat it for Japan and I’d come back by way of the Suez Canal.
Two thousand bucks, that’s cheap for that boat, Slady. If I had two
thousand bucks I’d buy that boat _in a minute_.
“You would, huh?”
“You tell ’em I would. It’s got everything in it, Slady, bunks, cook
stove, compass, _everything_. Why I’d give a couple of hundred bucks
just for that compass alone, I would.”
It is hard to say why Hervey would have paid such a price for a compass
since he never cared in which direction he went and when you are
climbing a tree or a telegraph pole, you need no compass to inform you
that you are going _up_.
“Why, that rich man must want to give it away, Slady,” Hervey continued.
“Two thousand bucks! Why it’s worth about, oh about ten or fifteen
thousand anyway—maybe twenty. It’s a regular ocean liner. There’s a
ladder up the side and everything; you just grab it and—”
“Oh, you swam out to it?” Tom asked. “It’s anchored off shore?”
“You can just kindly mention that I did. I swam out to it and all around
it and everywhere. There’s a _no trespassing_ sign; you just grab hold
of that and pull yourself right up, easy as pie.”
“I see.”
“Maybe a lot of us could club together and buy it, hey?” said Hervey.
Tom smiled. If the scouts at Temple Camp could have scared up twenty
dollars among them they would have been lucky. “We might club together
and buy the anchor,” Tom laughed.
“Don’t miss it, Slady; go down and look it over. You can crawl right in
through one of the port-holes—I did; it’s a cinch. Any dinner left?”
“You’d better go and ask Chocolate Drop,” said Tom.
With a stick which he always carried, Hervey removed his outlandish
rimless hat, cut full of holes, and revolving it upon the end of the
stick sauntered up toward the cooking shack singing,
“Oh the life of a scout is good,
so good;
He always does just what he should,
I would.
Big trees he can climb,
And he’s always on time;
The life of a scout is good.”