“Slady, don’t talk about radios, don’t mention the name; you ought to see the radio on that boat—the big cabin cruiser that’s for sale. I’d like to buy that boat, Slady, it’s a pipperino!” Probably he would have bought it and sailed away to South Africa in it quite alone, but for one trifling reason. The price of the boat was two thousand dollars, and Hervey had exactly two nickels. “A pretty big pipperino, hey?” asked Tom. “Oh, about seventy-five feet—well, maybe fifty, say. If I had that boat, Slady, I’d beat it for Japan and I’d come back by way of the Suez Canal. Two thousand bucks, that’s cheap for that boat, Slady. If I had two thousand bucks I’d buy that boat _in a minute_. “You would, huh?” “You tell ’em I would. It’s got everything in it, Slady, bunks, cook stove, compass, _everything_. Why I’d give a couple of hundred bucks just for that compass alone, I would.” It is hard to say why Hervey would have paid such a price for a compass since he never cared in which direction he went and when you are climbing a tree or a telegraph pole, you need no compass to inform you that you are going _up_. “Why, that rich man must want to give it away, Slady,” Hervey continued. “Two thousand bucks! Why it’s worth about, oh about ten or fifteen thousand anyway—maybe twenty. It’s a regular ocean liner. There’s a ladder up the side and everything; you just grab it and—” “Oh, you swam out to it?” Tom asked. “It’s anchored off shore?” “You can just kindly mention that I did. I swam out to it and all around it and everywhere. There’s a _no trespassing_ sign; you just grab hold of that and pull yourself right up, easy as pie.” “I see.” “Maybe a lot of us could club together and buy it, hey?” said Hervey. Tom smiled. If the scouts at Temple Camp could have scared up twenty dollars among them they would have been lucky. “We might club together and buy the anchor,” Tom laughed. “Don’t miss it, Slady; go down and look it over. You can crawl right in through one of the port-holes—I did; it’s a cinch. Any dinner left?” “You’d better go and ask Chocolate Drop,” said Tom. With a stick which he always carried, Hervey removed his outlandish rimless hat, cut full of holes, and revolving it upon the end of the stick sauntered up toward the cooking shack singing, “Oh the life of a scout is good, so good; He always does just what he should, I would. Big trees he can climb, And he’s always on time; The life of a scout is good.” CHAPTER III THE BOAT