“That’s the right way to do,” I told him; “have a lot of different starts and if you can’t use one you can use another. Didn’t you ever hear of having two strings to your bow? A scout should never try to go anywhere without having two or three extra starts.”
Just then Hervey and Bert and Garry started moving the turntable around and, good night, you should have seen Pee-wee stare. All of a sudden he went up like a sky rocket.
“Now I know what you did!” he yelled. “You turned this around while I was asleep—you can’t deny it. You made the right direction the wrong one!”
I said, “The right direction is just as much right now as it ever was. You can’t blame us.”
“You’re all crazy!” he screamed. “Are we going to go home to camp and get something to eat or not? Do you think I’m going to starve?”
“Not while you’re conscious,” I said. “Would you like to lead the way foodward or shall we elect another leader? What say we all? Shall Pee-wee lead us to the promised land or not? Answer, not. You’re rejected by a large plurality.”
“Let Garry try it,” Hervey said. “Warde’s all right only he has too much sense.”
So that time we started in the right direction, following the old tracks toward the turnpike, with Garry leading us. We kept singing Follow your leader just the same as before.
CHAPTER XI
WE WAIT FOR THE BOAT
Now this is the chapter where we’re all so hungry. It’s dedicated to Hoover. The name of it was “The Famine” only I decided to use another name. But believe me, in this chapter we’re hungrier than war-torn Europe. All that morning we had been marching around the country singing those crazy rhymes and we were having so much fun that we didn’t realize it was past dinner-time. All we had had was one bite of chocolate each except the two bites that Pee-wee took. Seven bites isn’t much for six scouts.