“Aye,” said Seth, “I’ll bring un, but we have no tent stove.  Pop took un to the huntin’.”

“Obadiah or Micah may bring a stove.  You have one, haven’t you?” Doctor Joe asked.

“Aye,” said Obadiah, “I has one.  I’ll bring un along.”

“You three fix up an outfit amongst you.  There’ll be three in a tent,” Doctor Joe explained.  “Andy can go in with Peter and Lige, and I’ll tent with Davy and Jamie.”

There was little else than the proposed camping expedition talked about on the return to The Jug, and in the days that followed David, Andy and Jamie devoted every spare moment to the study of first aid and signalling.  Doctor Joe, with no end of patience, drilled them so thoroughly in first aid that they were soon really expert in applying bandages.  He even instructed them in improvising splints and reducing fractures.  In this secluded land, where for three hundred miles up and down the coast there was no other surgeon than Doctor Joe, it was not unlikely that some day they would be called upon to set a leg or an arm.

Doctor Joe was as ignorant, however, of the art of signalling as were the lads, and he must needs take it up from the very beginning and study with them.  It was decided that they should learn both the semaphore and Morse codes, and Doctor Joe insisted that neither he nor the lads should consider the Second Class test satisfactorily passed until they had not only learned the codes but could send and receive messages at the rate of speed designated in the handbook as required for the First Class test.

“It wouldn’t be fair to the scouts in the big cities,” he declared.  “They have to learn a great many things that we already know how to do, like building fires, using the axe and knife, and tracking.  Those are things we’ve been doing all our lives and won’t have to practise.  We must make it just as hard for ourselves to become Second Class Scouts as it is for the city lads.  So we’ll make the signalling test that much more difficult.”

“I’m thinkin’ that’s fine now,” enthused David, “and when we learn un we’ll know that much more.”

“That’s the idea!” said Doctor Joe.  “And we’ll not only learn the sixteen principal points of the compass, but we’ll learn to box the compass to the quarter point as navigators do.”

“I can box un now,” grinned David.

“So can I box un!” Andy exclaimed.  “Dad told me how, same as he told Davy.”

“And I can learn to box un easy,” promised Jamie.

Margaret joined them one fine day in the forest behind the cabin when they took their Second Class cooking test, and a jolly day they made of it.  It was easy enough to roast a spruce grouse on the end of a stick.  Even Jamie had done that many times.  But Doctor Joe was called upon to solve the problem of cooking potatoes without cooking utensils, and he did it so satisfactorily that the lads practised it every day afterward for a week.