“Look out how you catch it,” Townsend called. The field-glass in its leather case went sailing accurately up through the window but for some reason unexplained, Pee-wee did not catch it. That is, he did not catch it in the sense of catching the field-glass. But he did “catch it.” The entrance of the leather case through the window was followed instantaneously by such a medley of noises intermingled with frantic shouts that for a moment Townsend feared he had set fire to the universe. Knowing Pee-wee’s propensity for packing unsympathetic articles together, he called: “What was in the case? Dynamite?” The only response was such a chorus of sounds as might have issued from Bedlam. “_You knocked down the wasps’ nest!_” Pee-wee roared. “_They’re all over!_” It seemed to Townsend, as he stared, that there were a dozen Pee-wees in the little tower house. Horrible thought—for surely one Pee-wee was enough! Now a head could be momentarily seen in one window, now two frantically waving arms in another, now a leg kicking, amid the fearful sounds of combat. A few wasps sailed out into the open air, but most of them stuck to their posts. At last, amid the frantic tumult, the voice of our young hero could be heard shouting, “_I’ve got an inspiration._” And this reassuring announcement was shortly followed by the frantic waving of a flag of fire amid which the legions of the enemy could be seen dispersing and fleeing pell-mell. “I poured kerosene on the signal flag and waved it,” Pee-wee shouted, as the upper part of him appeared in the window all but enveloped in oil smoke. He looked not unlike the pictures one sees of spirits. “I foiled them!” he shouted. “Did you get stung much?” Townsend called, laughing. He could not help laughing. “I triumphed over them,” Pee-wee shouted. “I got stung in three or four places. Put some engine oil in a bottle and throw it up here, quick. That’ll take out the information.” “You didn’t set fire to anything, did you?” Townsend asked. “I _foiled_ them!” Pee-wee shouted. CHAPTER XVI FIRST AID “Watch now, and catch it,” Townsend called, as an ink bottle drained of its former contents and filled with soothing cylinder oil sailed up through the window. With this Pee-wee soothed the feverish little mountains which had risen here and there on his face and hands, and his knowledge of this makeshift medicine and his prompt application of it saved him much suffering. When his face appeared, presently, in the window it presented a rather novel appearance. For enough ink had been left in the bottle to color the oil and our hero looked not unlike a new kind of circus clown, or perhaps a sort of human leopard. “That shows you how scouts have to be resourceful,” Pee-wee called. “All right, Kid,” laughed Townsend; “take a squint up the road with the glass and let’s try to find out if there’s any sign of a gas station.”