ings.

"You had a pretty narrow escape," Pee-wee said.

"It was a narrow boat, why shouldn't he have a narrow escape," I said;
"I had a good wide escape, anyway."

"Didn't you have your hat with you to bail with?" somebody asked Artie.

"All I had was my copy of Initiation Drill," he said.

"Why didn't you drill a hole in the boat then," I said.

"What for?", Pee-wee shouted.

"So the water could get out as fast as it came in".

"What are you talking about? You're crazy!" he yelled.

"There should be two holes in every boat," Connie Bennet said, in that
slow way he has; "one for the water to come in and the other so it can
get out."

Gee-williger! You should have seen Pee-wee.

Anyway, I suppose you think by this time that we're all crazy. I should
worry.

CHAPTER XIII

TRACKING

Anyway, you can bet I didn't stay there long, because I wanted to find
out if Wig's signal had been received. Maybe you won't understand, but
down the river it seemed all right and I was sure somebody must have
caught it. But after we landed and I started up home, it seemed as if
it was just kind of playing, after all, because that's the way some
people think about the scouts, so I hurried as fast as I could so that
my mother and father wouldn't be worrying. I felt awfully funny, kind
of, as I went up the lawn because I knew that if no one had come and
told them about the signal, they'd think I was dead.

They were sitting on the porch waiting for me and I knew from the way
my mother put her arms around me that they had been worrying. She asked
we what had kept me so late and my father said that I ought to send
them some word when I was going to stay out as late as midnight. I have
to admit he was right, too.

But anyway, I knew that they hadn't received any word about me from
anybody, and I was all up in the air about that. I could see that Jake
Holden hadn't been there at all and that nobody had come and told them
about the signal, either. I didn't exactly ask them, but I could tell
it all the same. So I told them all about everything that happened,
about how I got caught in the marsh and all that, and especially about
Wig being such a hero. Then she cried a little, kind of, and I said
there was no use crying because I was home all right. But anyway, she
cried just the same, and hugged me awful tight just as if everything
hadn't ended all right. That's a funny thing about mothers.

So then I went to bed and I lay a