spellbound. Before him lay a miniature Pompeii buried under a kind of
lava of whipped cream and custard and chicken salad, amid which toppled
cakes and a frowning fortress of gingerbread lay sideways and upside
down. Bananas and oranges and nuts and raisins and olives littered the
scene of toothsome devastation. An empty square ice cream can,
disinterred from its quiet grave of ice, lay upon the ground. Another
was in Pee-wee's lap and our hero was armed with a deadly spoon.

"I know who you are," he said, as he annihilated a cocoanut macaroon.
"You're the feller I saw this morning. Didn't I tell you if you got to
be a scout you'd have all you want to eat? Now you see!"

Keekie Joe did see but he was too astounded to speak. He knew from
experience that this strange race of scouts carried jaw-breakers in
their pockets, and that they had a deadly aim. But he had not supposed
that they travelled in fairy barques which rivalled the windows of
bakery shops in their sumptuous appointments. He had not pictured them
as travelling on their private islands surrounded by mammoth icing
cakes five stories high, and towers of chocolate. He had not fancied
them sitting on ice cream freezers and tossing the emptied receptacles
from them.

Pee-wee had told his friend of the morning that they would both vote
for Keekie Joe and that Keekie Joe should be the patrol leader. If
this was the way an ordinary scout travelled, what would be the proper
equipment of a patrol leader? It staggered poor Keekie Joe just to
think of this. And a scoutmaster!

"Didn't I tell you how it was with scouts?" Pee-wee demanded. "Now you
see!"

Keekie Joe rubbed his eyes to make sure he was awake and scrutinized
Pee-wee shrewdly. For our hero was somewhat disguised by a villainous
moustache of chocolate which reached almost to his ear on one side and
made him look like a pirate.

"Do you like sardine sandwiches?" our hero asked at random, for he
hardly knew what to use for bait amid such crowding variety. "I was
stuck on the flats for over an hour and then the tide took me off.
It's coming in now. I'm going to stay on here all night and to-morrow
and all next week. So do you want to join? Only you have to be a
scout if you want to come on here. There are six other fellers but
they're at the party. They said I wouldn't have any fun at the party
because I can't dance, but I'm having more fun than any of them. I
foiled them. They're a