. They all said I had a narrow escape, and I admit it was only
about an inch wide.

Now, I have to tell you about how we floated the house-boat down to
Bridgeboro River, and maybe you'd better look at the map, hey? Oh, but
first I want to tell you about the name we gave it. Some name! We
christened it with a bottle of mosquito dope. It's regular name was all
rubbed off, so we decided we'd vote on a new name.

This is the way we fixed it. Each patrol thought of a name and then we
mixed the three names up and made one name out of them. Then you just
add a little sugar and serve.

The Ravens voted the name Sprite, the Elks voted the name Fly and the
Silver Foxes voted the name Weetonka, on account of me. Then we wrote
all these letters down and mixed them all up and arranged them every
which way, till we got this name:

RESOPEKITWAFTENLY

Oh, boy, some laugh we had over that name. We were all sitting around in
the two cabin rooms and believe me, it was some giggling match.

"It sounds like a Bolshevik name," Westy Martin said.

"You wait till the infernal revenue people get that name," I said, "it'll
knock'em out." Because, of course, I knew we'd have to send the name to
the infernal revenue people--I mean internal or eternal or whatever you
call it--because you have to do that to get your license number.

"It's a good name," I said, "you don't see it every day."

"Thank goodness for that," Doc Carson said, It's as long as a spelling
lesson or Pee-wee's tongue."

"It'll be a pretty expensive name; it'll take a lot of paint," Brick
Warner said.

"We should worry," I said.

So then I made some coffee, because I'm the troop cook, and we thought
it was best to eat before we started. That bunch is always hungry.

They said it was punk coffee, but that was because they didn't bring
enough to go around.

"Don't laugh at the coffee," I told them, "you may be old and weak
yourselves some day." I made some flapjacks, too, and then we started.

We didn't have to do much work because the ebb was running good and
strong, and we just sat around the deck with our feet dangling over,
and pushed her off with our scout staffs whenever she ran against the
shores. She didn't keep head on, but that was no matter as long as she
went, and pretty soon (I guess it must have been about seven o'clock)
we went waltzing into Bridgeboro River.

And then was when we made a crazy mistake.

Just for a minute we