The Adventure Club Afloat | Page 5

you'd better beat it, Perry. It's after ten. If you meet a
proctor close your eyes and make believe you're walking in your
sleep."
Perry reached his own room, on the floor above, without being sighted,
however, and subsequently spent a sleepless hour in joyous anticipation
of at last finding some of those adventures that all his life he had
longed for. And when he did at length fall asleep it was to have the
most outlandish dreams, visions in which he endured shipwreck, fought
pirates and was all but eaten by cannibals. The most incongruous phase
of the dream, as recollected on waking, was that the Cockatoo had been,
not a motor-boat at all, but a trolley-car! He distinctly remembered that
the pirates, on boarding it, had each dropped a nickel in the box!
Fortunately for the success of the Adventure Club, the next morning
held no duties. In the afternoon the deciding baseball game was to be
played, but, except for gathering belongings together preliminary to
packing, nothing else intervened between now and the graduation
programme of the morrow. Hence it was an easy matter to hold what
might be termed the first meeting of the club. Besides the originators
there were present Messrs. Fairleigh, Hanford and Brazier. After Steve
had locked the door to prevent interruption, he presented to the
newcomers a summary of the scheme. It was received with enthusiasm
and unanimous approval, but Neil Fairleigh and Oscar Brazier sadly
admitted that in their cases parental permission was extremely doubtful.
George Hanford, whose parents were dead and who was under the care
of a guardian, thought that in his case there would be no great difficulty.
The other two viewed him a trifle enviously. Then, because one may
always hope, they had to hear the particulars and each secretly began to
fashion arguments to overcome the objections at home. Finally Oscar
Brazier inquired interestedly:
"Who is going to cook for you?"
"Oh, we'll take turns, maybe," answered Joe. "Or we might hire a

cook."
Joe stole a look at Steve. Oscar only shuffled his feet.
"I say hire," remarked Perry. "Any of us could do it after a fashion, I
dare say, but you get frightfully hungry on the water and need good
stuff well cooked, and lots of it."
"Yes," agreed Steve, "any of us would make an awful mess of it.
Cooking's an art."
Oscar cleared his throat and frowned. "You'd have to pay a lot for a
cook," he said. "It isn't hard, really. I could do it--if I were going
along."
"That's so," George Hanford confirmed. But the rest seemed
unflatteringly doubtful. The silence was almost embarrassing. At last
Joe said hurriedly:
"Well, we don't have to decide that now. Besides, if you can't come
with us--um--" His voice trailed off into a relieved silence. Oscar
smiled haughtily.
"That's all right," he said. "If you prefer a cook, say so. Only, if I did go
I'd be willing to do the cooking, and I'll bet I could do it as well as any
cook you could hire. Isn't it so, Han?"
"Yes, I call you a mighty nifty cook, Ossie. I've eaten your biscuits
more than once. Flapjacks, too."
"Well," said Joe politely, "camp cooking is um--different, I guess, from
regular cooking. Of course, I don't say Ossie couldn't do it, mind you,
but--we wouldn't want to take chances. On the whole, I think it would
be best to have a regular cook."
"We might let Ossie try it," suggested Perry judicially.
"Oh, I'm not crazy about it," disclaimed Oscar, piqued. "If you prefer to
pay out good money for a cook--"

"Not at all," interrupted Steve soothingly. "We want to do the whole
thing as cheaply as we can. I see no harm in leaving the cooking end of
it to you, Brazier; that is, if you can go."
"I'm going to make a big try for it," declared Oscar resolutely. "If my
folks won't let me, they--they'll wish they had!"
Whereupon, emboldened by Oscar's stand, Neil Fairleigh expressed the
conviction that he, too, could manage it some way. "I dare say that if I
tell my dad that all you chaps are going he will think it's all right. It
wouldn't be for all Summer, anyway, would it?"
"The idea now," responded Steve, "is to start out for a month's cruise
and extend it if we cared to. I suppose any of us that got tired could quit
after the month was up." He smiled. "We'd all have to sign-on for a
month, though."
"Right-o," agreed Hanford. "What about electing officers? Oughtn't we
to do that? Someone ought to be in charge, I should think."
"Sure!" exclaimed Joe. "We'll ballot. Throw that pad over here, Ossie."
"Wait a minute," said Steve. "I've