You’ve won your feather fair—
You are a Del-a-ware!”
Then Walter was hauled forth and shaken hands with and thumped and pounded on the back by a whooping, laughing crew of boys in all stages of undress. It was broad daylight and, to his amazement, Walter found he was not in the haunted cabin but in his own wigwam, where he had spent the night on the floor underneath his own bunk. The boys, noting the expression of his face, shouted afresh and mercilessly guyed him till presently, realizing how completely he had been duped, he wisely joined in the laugh at his own expense.
Reveille had sounded. Buxby joined him at the wash bench, and on the way to mess explained how the initiation was worked. When he had been placed in the canoe they had simply paddled around near camp for half an hour. He had then been led over an old trail to an opening near, but out of sight of the camp, and there Woodhull, in the character of the Indian chief, had delivered the harangue. At its conclusion all but the guard had gone to the wigwam and at once turned in, one of them first slipping down to the lake and rattling the paddles, afterward giving the owl signal. The guard had then led him back to the wigwam and put him under his own bunk, where the floor had been strewn with chips and bark to fool him when he felt around, as they had foreseen he would.
“You’re all right, Upton, and say, wasn’t Louis a lulu?” concluded the garrulous Billy.
At mess Walter realized that he had “made good,” and was already accepted as one of themselves by the merry crew of sun-browned youngsters amongst whom he had come a total stranger less than twenty-four hours before. Most of all he prized Woodhull’s quiet “Good boy,” as he saluted him at the door.
CHAPTER V
THE RECALL
“Oh, you Delaware!”
“Come tell us that tale of the singing bird!”