"How can it go to pieces?" Pee-wee demanded. "Islands don't go to pieces, do they? Australia is an island, isn't it? It's just where it always was, isn't it? You're crazy! All we need is one more scout and I know one by the name of Keekie Joe, and I'm going to try to get him and then we'll be a full patrol and I decided to name it the Alligators, because they belong on land and water both and we're sea scouts on the land kind of, so maybe I'll decide to name it the Turtles, maybe." "Discoverer," said Townsend, "we're with you whatever you do, but there is a mystery about this island which I would like to fathom before we organize----" "I fathomed lots of mysteries," shouted Pee-wee. "I don't know whether you know what erosion means----" "Sure I know what it means," said Pee-wee; "it means getting rusty, kind of." "It means land being washed away by water. If you put a piece of land in the water, the water will dissolve it and it won't take long either. It isn't like an island that has always been where it is--a kind of hill sticking up out of the water. This is just a piece of land and the roots of this little tree won't hold it together long. "The question is, should we go hunting for new members under those conditions? Pretty soon we'll have a full patrol and no island under us; we'll be in the water. That's perfectly agreeable to me and all the rest of us. But does Keekie Joe know how to swim? We really have no _grounds_ for forming a patrol. See?" "Do you call that an argument?" Pee-wee thundered. "It shows how much you know about geography because look at an ice cream soda! Does that corrode? Let's hear you answer that? Or erode or whatever you call it. A chunk of ice cream floats in the soda, doesn't it? Maybe after a while it melts, but this land isn't ice cream, is it? "That shows how much you know about logic. This island has been here ever since early this morning, hasn't it? And it's just as big as it was, isn't it? An island is an island and the water won't melt it unless it's hot--like a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee. You've got to stir it up to melt it. Is North America corroding? Or Coney Island? Is this island any smaller than it was?" "No, it isn't, and that's the funny part," said Townsend. "We've explored the coast but we haven't explored the depths. Let's have that little shovel a minute, will you?" CHAPTER XIII "STOP" The ice cream soda argument was not a good one at all, for no lump of ice cream ever remained long intact where Pee-wee was. Whether it melted or not, it disappeared. And why this freakish little island did not rapidly dissolve was a mystery.