“Guess so,” he said, “you fellows rip open the ends of these cushions, but don’t tear the covering any, and somebody get the stove cleared out; see if there’s a damper in the pipe, and see if there’s any bilge under the flooring. It’ll take those fellows about twenty minutes to chug up to Bridgeboro.”
Well, in two seconds he had us all flying every which way, Elks, Silver Foxes and all.
We didn’t have to open more than one of the seat cushions and, lucky thing, we found it full of excelsior. That makes a good smudge.
“Only you’ve got to treat it,” Wig said.
“Treat it!” I said; “I’ll treat it to all the ice cream it can eat, if it’ll only help you to send the message.” I was feeling good now.
“Take it down in the bilge and treat it,” he said, very sober like, to one of his patrol.
“Don’t let it spend a cent,” I called after him. But I didn’t go because I could see he would rather have Ravens help him. You can’t blame him for that. In about half a minute they came upstairs and they had a lot of the excelsior all damp, but not exactly wet, and I don’t know how they got it that way, except I know there was bilge water down under the flooring. They’re a lot of cracker-jacks on signalling, I’ll say that much for them.
There was a stove in the main cabin with a stovepipe going straight up through the roof like a smoke stack and there was a damper in it right near the stove.
“Get a handbook or a pocket code,” somebody said, “so he’ll have the signs right near him.”
“He doesn’t need any signs,” Pee-wee shouted, disgusted like.