“That’s the stuff! What’ll we do to him?”
Sherlock, below them, stifled a gasp of horror. Here was mutiny, rank rebellion against the authority of a councilor of Lenape, a grown man and a scoutmaster! His jaw gaped as he listened.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Jerry slowly. “I bet old Colby could be scared out of his skin, even if he was a soldier once. You know that big bull-frog Spaghetti Megaro caught the other day? I know where he keeps it down in my tent. Let’s get it, and to-night, about twelve o’clock when everybody’s asleep, we’ll slide down to Colby’s tent and chuck old Mr. Frog into his bed! Talk about scared! Say, I’ll bet Old Discipline will let out a yelp you can hear a mile!”
“Boy, I can just hear it now!” agreed Jake, bursting into a laugh. “But how are we going to stay awake that long? Twelve o’clock’s pretty late.”
“I’ll fix that. I can wake up whenever I want to, you know. We can run a long string across from my tent over here. Tie one end to your foot before you go to sleep. When I wake up I’ll give it a pull and wake you up, then get the frog, and meet you here. Then we’ll go down to Fifteen and give Mr. Discipline the scare of his life!”
“All set. I got a ball of cord in my locker we can use. Come on, Jerry—we got time enough before swim to listen in on one of Sax McNulty’s stories. Let’s go!”
Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky—
The full, rich notes of Taps rolled over the pines of Lenape and echoed across the lake. Fat Crampton doused the Tent Ten lantern and climbed heavily into his creaking bunk.
“Good night, campers!” drawled the voice of Jim Avery, the lanky councilor. Sleepy voices answered from the darkness. There was a slight rustling from the direction of Jake Utway’s bunk. Sherlock Jones cocked an ear. He knew that Jake, following the plan he had overheard that afternoon, was attaching to his foot the cord which the twins had laid down after nightfall to connect Tent Ten with Jerry’s bunk in Tent Eight down the line. This method of communication was necessary because the Chief in his wisdom made it a point to separate the two devoted brothers into different tent-groups when the changes in tent assignments were made at the end of each two-week period of camp. Therefore Jake was given a place with Mr. Avery, while Jerry was nominally under the guardianship of Dr. Cannon in Tent Eight.