landed and took a peek at Peekskill.
Oh, boy!

Then he said how he liked the way we stood up for Uncle Jimmy, and I
guess besides he was glad about me diving and getting the key-bar, but
anyway, that was easy. So he said he was going to tow us up as far as
Poughkeepsie the next Saturday, and that if we refused on account of
scouts not being willing to accept anything for a service, he'd make a
lot of trouble for Uncle Jimmy, because he was away. He was only
fooling when he said that. Maybe you won't like him in the beginning,
but you'll get to like him pretty soon.

So that's how we got it all fixed to go to camp, or part of the way
anyway, in the house-boat. And believe me, we had some trip, and that's
mostly what I'm going to tell you all about. Talk about fun!

On Saturday morning all of the troop came down to the house-boat ready
for the trip, and oh, you ought to have seen Skinny McCord. He's a
little fellow that lives down in the poor part of town, and he was a
new member. His mother is poor and she goes out washing, and Skinny was
sick and his clothes were all in rags, and even he didn't have any
shoes and stockings. But, anyway, he did me a good turn and so Westy
Martin and I got him into the troop, and we presented him to the Elk
Patrol, because they had a vacant place on account of Tom Slade being
away in France. So now you know about Skinny and you'll find out a lot
more about him, too.

Before Saturday came, Mr. Ellsworth made a bargain with Sandy Grober to
tow us down into the Kill Von Kull--that's near Staten Island, you
know. Sandy has a boat with a heavy duty motor in it, and he said he'd
do the job for ten dollars, because, anyway, he'd go to Princess Bay
fishing. Our troop was broke and we couldn't spare the money, because
we needed all we had for eats and things. So this is the way we fixed
it.

Mr. Ellsworth gave Sandy the ten dollars and then each one of the
patrol leaders gave Mr. Ellsworth a note saying his patrol would pay
back two dollars and a half as soon as they earned it. That would make
seven dollars and a half, and Mr. Ellsworth said he would pay the other
two fifty himself, so you see it was all divided up even between the
patrols and the scoutmaster.

Believe me, we had some fun earning that money, especially the Raving
Ravens--that's the Raven Patrol, you know.

We started early Saturday morning, and we knew just where we had to go,
because we had a letter from Captain Savage,