The handsome clubroom of the Black Bear Patrol, Boy Scouts of America, in the City of New York, was ablaze with light, and as noisy as healthy, happy boys could well make it. "Over in the Chinese Sea " shouted Jimmie McGraw from a table which stood by an open window overlooking the brilliantly illuminated city. "Do we go to the washee-washee land this time?" "Only to the tub " Jack Bosworth put in. "What's the answer?" asked Frank Shaw, sitting down on the edge of the table and rumpling Jimmie's red hair with both hands.

"After all, it is what's in a fellow's head, and not what's in his pocket, that counts in the long run." "That's true enough At least it proved so in our case. That time in the South we had nothing worth mentioning in our pockets, and yet we had the time of our lives." "I don't think you ever told us about that."

"Wow Look at that one That's a monster " "That must be the ninth wave." "What do you mean by the ninth wave, Jack?" "Why, Arnold, don't you know that every third wave is bigger than the two preceding it and that every ninth wave is bigger than the preceding eight?" queried Jack Stanley. "No, can't say that I ever knew that," replied Arnold Poysor leaning out of the pilot house of a sturdy motor boat plowing her way through the waters of that part of the Gulf of Mexico known as Mississippi Sound. "But I do know," he continued, "that if the Fortuna takes many more green ones over her bow,...

"Sure it's me that hopes we've seen the last tough old carry on this same wild-goose chase up to the Frozen North " "Hello there, is that you, Jimmy, letting out that yawp? I thought you had more sporting blood in you than to throw up your hands like that " "Oh well I sometimes say things that don't come from the heart, you know, Jack. Wait, me boy, till I get good and rested up, and mebbe I'll sing a different tune. Ask Ned here if it's me that often shows the white flag when trouble comes."

"But I say it's not fair " cried a red-headed lad, drawing himself up to his full height. "You're not playing fair with us " "Ach, it is not so " protested the one to whom the boy spoke. "We find you an enemy in our city, and you must take the consequences " "Just because you wear an officer's uniform," retorted the boy, beginning to lose his temper and gazing fearlessly into the pale blue eyes of the other, "is no sign you know more than we do. You may think that helmet and those stripes on your arm give you more brains than the common run of people, but it isn't so I say I protest "

"Fine country, this-to get out of " "What's the difficulty, kid?" Jimmie McGraw, the first speaker, turned back to the interior of the apartment in which he stood with a look of intense disgust on freckled face. "Oh, nothin' much," he replied, wrinkling his nose comically, "only Broadway an' the Bowery are too far away from this town to ever amount to anythin'. Say, how would you fellers like a chair in front of the grate in the little old Black Bear Patrol clubroom, in the village of N. Y.? What?"

Gates, the United States Secret Service man, closed the door gently and remained standing just inside the room, his head bent forward in a listening attitude. Ned Nestor and Jimmie McGraw, Boy Scouts of the Wolf Patrol, New York City, who had been standing by a window, looking out on a crowded San Francisco street, previous to the sudden appearance of the Secret Service man, turned toward the entrance with smiles on their faces.

"Wake up-wake up-wake up " Frank Shaw, passenger on the United States army transport Union, San Francisco to the Philippines, awoke in his cabin to find the freckled face of Jimmie McGraw grinning above him. "What's the use?" he demanded, sleepily and impatiently. "It will be only another roasting day on a hot deck on an ocean fit to stew fish in. What's the use of getting up? I'm going to sleep again."

"Two Black Bears " "Two Wolves " "Three Eagles " "Five Moose " "Quite a mixture of wild creatures to be found in a splendid clubroom in the city of New York " exclaimed Ned Nestor, a handsome, muscular boy of seventeen. "How many of these denizens of the forests are ready to join the Boy Scout Camera Club?" "You may put my name down twice-in red ink " shouted Jimmie McGraw, of the Wolf Patrol. "I wouldn't miss it to be president of the United States "