He was feeling so weak and sputtering so on account of his lungs being all filled with smoke, that he couldn’t shout and after a while he drifted up on the bar near Second Bend. Then he got the dugout set right side up on the mud while he bailed it out by splashing in it with his hands and afterwards making them into a cup. After that it was easy drifting up stream and when he got to about a quarter of a mile below the boathouse, he managed to paddle over to the shore and then he pulled himself along by holding on to the weeds and things. “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 Bennett 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.