Billy, went ashore on Friday afternoon
and edified the people on Main Street with an imposing display.

[Illustration: Pee-wee becomes a sandwich man.]

They paraded up and down the sidewalk wearing large placards, the most
striking of which was the one that almost completely obscured the
diminutive form of our hero. It was appropriately in the form of a
sandwich of which he himself was the center, his head and legs
protruding from it like the head and legs of a turtle. Its glaring
announcement seemed to suggest the literary style of Townsend Ripley.

CUT RATE CRUISES TO ALLIGATOR ISLE

SEE THE WILD SCOUTS AND THE BOAT RACES

ENJOY A SEA VOYAGE IN THE PALATIAL ROWBOAT ALLIGATOR

ROUND AND SQUARE TRIP TEN CENTS.

SAILINGS FROM GILROY'S FIELD.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE

On Friday night it rained and the Alligators were driven into their
tent. It rained all night and was still raining when the momentous
Saturday dawned. They were compelled to eat breakfast in their tent,
the top of which was plastered with apple blossoms so that the
khaki-colored fabric looked not unlike a brown wall paper with a floral
design.

The tide being out, the rain pattered down on the surrounding mud and
shallow places, and the members of the patrol sat in the open doorway
of their cozy little shelter wistfully gazing at the downpour, and
watching the little holes that the raindrops made in the mud.

Each drop, like a bullet, drove a little hole in the oozy bottom, which
slowly closed up again. Schools of darting killies hurried this way
and that frantically seeking an avenue into the deeper places where
puddles would afford them a haven during the lowest ebb. Rain, rain,
rain.

On the porch of the boat-house a mile or so down-stream was gathered a
group of young fellows, also watching wistfully. Through the
intervening space of rain they seemed like pictures of spectres, misty
and unsubstantial.

"The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide," said Townsend cheerily. "I
think when it comes in it's going to stop raining, that's what I think.
It's going to clear up and be warm this afternoon, you see. Rain
before seven, clear before eleven. What do you say we catch some of
those killies and fry them?"

"That's what you call an inspiration," said Roly Poly.

They caught some killies with a bent pin and fried them and they were
not half bad.

Along about eleven o'clock the tide began running up, the ki