When we told him that old Uncle Jimmy, the bridge tender, had sneaked
away to a Grand Army Convention, he kind of cooled down on account of
being an old veteran himself, and then some of us fellows fished up an
old key-bar that had been lost in the river and opened the bridge with
it. That's what they call the thing you open the bridge with--a
key-bar. It's like a crow-bar only different.

I'm not saying that was so much of a good turn, except it was turning
the bridge around and Connie Bennett said that was a good turn. He's
the troop cut-up. Anyway, old Captain Savage took me up to North
Bridgeboro with him and first I was kind of scared of him, because he
had a big red face and he was awful gruff. But wait till you hear about
the fun we had with him when we landed and took a peek at Peekskill.
Oh, boy!

Then he said how he liked the way we stood up for Uncle Jimmy, and I
guess besides he was glad about me diving and getting the key-bar, but
anyway, that was easy. So he said he was going to tow us up as far as
Poughkeepsie the next Saturday, and that if we refused on account of
scouts not being willing to accept anything for a service, he'd make a
lot of trouble for Uncle Jimmy, because he was away. He was only
fooling when he said that. Maybe you won't like him in the beginning,
but you'll get to like him pretty soon.

So that's how we got it all fixed to go to camp, or part of the way
anyway, in the house-boat. And believe me, we had some trip, and that's
mostly what I'm going to tell you all about. Talk about fun!

On Saturday morning all of the troop came down to the house-boat ready