IN CAMP
When they awoke in the morning they heard the steady patter of rain on
their little shelter. The downpour, broken by the friendly trees, fell
gently on the tent, but looking out they could see that the rain was
coming down in torrents. The sky was dull and cheerless.
“Rain before seven, clear before eleven,” said Pee-wee.
“Only it’s half-past eight, do you call that logic?” laughed Townsend.
“I bet Liz is good and wet; I should have turned the seats upside down
and tied my rain-coat over the hood. No matter. She ought to squeak fine
after this. Last year I had her singing the Star Spangled Banner after a
three days’ rain. What shall we do; eat?” he asked, rubbing his eyes and
surveying the woods. “How’d you sleep? Some rain, hey?”
“I’m going to start a fire and make coffee,” said Pee-wee.
“Now that’s what I call a _real_ inspiration,” said Townsend, sleepily.
“I didn’t hear the alarm clock, did you?”
“There isn’t any,” said Pee-wee.
“That’s probably why I didn’t hear it,” Townsend yawned. “Where are you
going to get dry wood?”
“Didn’t you see me roll that piece of log under the tent last night?”
Pee-wee asked him. “That’s one of the things you always have to do first
of all in case it rains next day. Now where would you be if I hadn’t
brought my belt-axe?”
“I’d be in tears,” said Townsend. “We haven’t got much gasoline to burn.
We might fry some griddle-cakes on the engine I suppose. I wonder if we
could beat eggs with the fan? You start getting things ready while I
trot over and wake Liz up.”
He soon returned, reporting that the car was all right and better for
sleeping in the fresh air. He found Pee-wee valiantly demolishing the
small end of the log which he had thoughtfully put under cover the night
before. A merry little fire was soon blazing away under a tree, defying
the rain.
And pretty soon the fragrant odor of coffee permeated the damp air. If
you ever hear any one say anything against coffee tell him that he has
probably never been stalled in a little tent in the woods on a rainy
day. If he continues to talk against it, don’t listen to him, walk away.
He is like a man who would slander a life preserver.
Some people put an egg shell in coffee, and I think that is good. But a
spool of linen thread is not so good. Pee-wee used a spool of linen
thread in his coffee. At all events there was a spool of linen thread in
the coffee-pot and several emergency buttons.
“Are these supposed to flavor it?” Townsend asked.
“They happened to be in there,” said Pee-wee.
“Hadn’t we better strain it for needles and hooks and eyes and things?”
“Don’t you know scouts have to economize space?” Pee-wee shouted. “You
put one thing in another when you’re packing camping things. See if
there’s a bottle of ink in it.”
Townsend fished around in the coffee-pot with a lead pencil and
pronounced it free of other contents. They drank their coffee, one out
of a collapsible metal cup, the other out of an empty mustard can.
Coffee is very good in such receptacles. It should never be sipped from
a respectable breakfast cup, _never_. But if you use a mustard can be
sure that there are no pieces of chalk or crayon in it. These things are
good in tracking and blazing, but not in coffee.
That morning, Pee-wee tried his hand at griddle-cakes, while his patrol
leader gazed wistfully on. They were not half bad. And when you come
right down to it, coffee out of tin cans, and griddle-cakes not too
delicate, form a toothsome repast on a dull, rainy morning, when the
drops patter down on your cosy little shelter and the little fire burns
merrily outside, and the landscape is hazy and you have no forks or
spoons. If you go to having forks and spoons you will spoil it all.
[Illustration: Pee-wee and Townsend watched the chipmunk.]