And the enthusiastic replies of the scouts convinced the "movie" manager that he had hit the right idea.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRIZE CONTEST
"Well, fellows, there's this much about it, if we are going to build a real sure enough motorboat this year we've got to get a hustle on us and earn some money. With the rent we received from the Historical Motion Picture Company and the money we secured from the circus ticket wagon we have just $73.75. We need $94.00 to buy the motor alone, even with the reduction that Mr. Clifford can get for us. And added to that is the expense of extra lumber and fittings, which will be at least thirty dollars more. Now where do we stand, I'd like to know?"
Thus did Bud Weir unburden his mind to the other boys of the Quarry
Troop, sometimes called, because of their mechanical skill, the Boy Scout
Engineers.
All spring the scouts had been planning to build a motorboat to be used on Long Lake. They had had their summer camp on the shores of this lake for the past two years, and they intended to have a camp there as usual this year, but they had decided to make it a construction camp and spend most of their time building a thirty-foot power boat, which would be the largest vessel on the lake. The idea was to increase the troop's fund in the treasury as much as possible during the Winter and Spring and use the money to purchase a three horsepower gasoline motor, which they calculated would be large enough to drive the boat faster than any craft thereabout.
But somehow the months had hurried past and the fund had not increased at a proportionate pace. Indeed if it had not been for a windfall of forty odd dollars from the Historical Motion Picture Company, the treasury would have been in a very bad way. The scouts really could not understand it at all. They had worked hard, or at least they thought they had, and they had contributed every cent they had made toward the engine fund, but somehow the balance in the Woodbridge bank looked mighty small to the scouts.
"What the dickens is the matter with us anyway, are we lazy?" queried
Nipper Knapp, breaking the long silence that followed Bud's remark.
"By jiminy, it looks that way to me," said Jiminy Gordon emphatically.
"It's procrastination that—"