f 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