"You remember that trip to the Florida Everglades, don't you?" asked Tommy, with a most satisfying yawn. "Well, if you haven't forgotten all about it, you'll remember that we didn't have any sleep there for a couple of nights, and that I actually began to grow thin because of being kept awake so much."
"It was your own fault," insisted Sandy.
"That may be," replied Tommy, "but, all the same, I'm not going to let anything like that happen on this trip. I'm going to bed right now, and there's nothing on the face of the earth that can get me out of bed again until morning."
"That's me, too!" declared Sandy.
The boys entered the tent recently vacated, drew down the flap and were soon in bed, and asleep. Will and George, sitting by the fire, discussing the unusual combination of circumstances, heard a succession of sounds which any member of the Beaver patrol, Boy Scouts of America, would have recognized instantly.
It was the beaver call which consists in slapping the open palms together violently in imitation of the play of the flat tail of the beaver upon the surface of the water.
"Slap, slap, slap!" came the challenge from the darkness.
"That's a Beaver!" exclaimed George.
"Slap, slap, slap!" went the reply from Will's open palms.
"Why doesn't he come in?" asked George in a moment.