Keekie Joe gazed upon this scene of mouth-watering ruin with eyes spellbound.  Before him lay a miniature Pompeii buried under a kind of lava of whipped cream and custard and chicken salad, amid which toppled cakes and a frowning fortress of gingerbread lay sideways and upside down.  Bananas and oranges and nuts and raisins and olives littered the scene of toothsome devastation.  An empty square ice cream can, disinterred from its quiet grave of ice, lay upon the ground.  Another was in Pee-wee’s lap and our hero was armed with a deadly spoon.

“I know who you are,” he said, as he annihilated a cocoanut macaroon.  “You’re the feller I saw this morning.  Didn’t I tell you if you got to be a scout you’d have all you want to eat?  Now you see!”

Keekie Joe did see but he was too astounded to speak.  He knew from experience that this strange race of scouts carried jaw-breakers in their pockets, and that they had a deadly aim.  But he had not supposed that they travelled in fairy barques which rivalled the windows of bakery shops in their sumptuous appointments.  He had not pictured them as travelling on their private islands surrounded by mammoth icing cakes five stories high, and towers of chocolate.  He had not fancied them sitting on ice cream freezers and tossing the emptied receptacles from them.

Pee-wee had told his friend of the morning that they would both vote for Keekie Joe and that Keekie Joe should be the patrol leader.  If this was the way an ordinary scout travelled, what would be the proper equipment of a patrol leader?  It staggered poor Keekie Joe just to think of this.  And a scoutmaster!

“Didn’t I tell you how it was with scouts?” Pee-wee demanded.  “Now you see!”

Keekie Joe rubbed his eyes to make sure he was awake and scrutinized Pee-wee shrewdly.  For our hero was somewhat disguised by a villainous moustache of chocolate which reached almost to his ear on one side and made him look like a pirate.

“Do you like sardine sandwiches?” our hero asked at random, for he hardly knew what to use for bait amid such crowding variety.  “I was stuck on the flats for over an hour and then the tide took me off.  It’s coming in now.  I’m going to stay on here all night and to-morrow and all next week.  So do you want to join?  Only you have to be a scout if you want to come on here.  There are six other fellers but they’re at the party.  They said I wouldn’t have any fun at the party because I can’t dance, but I’m having more fun than any of them.  I foiled them.  They’re all dancing but they’re good and hungry.  Maybe they look happy but they’re not.”

“Do dey all go round in dem things?” Keekie Joe ventured to inquire.

“No, but I’m lucky,” said Pee-wee.

It seemed to Keekie Joe that Pee-wee was very lucky.