Now this is the chapter where we’re all so hungry. It’s dedicated to Hoover. The name of it was “The Famine” only I decided to use another name. But believe me, in this chapter we’re hungrier than war-torn Europe. All that morning we had been marching around the country singing those crazy rhymes and we were having so much fun that we didn’t realize it was past dinner-time. All we had had was one bite of chocolate each except the two bites that Pee-wee took. Seven bites isn’t much for six scouts. Pretty soon we came out into the turnpike and then we knew the way back to camp. It was a pretty long hike but we knew the way. All we had to do was to follow the turnpike south till we came to the blackberry road and that would take us into the road to camp.
I said, “I hope the camp is still there.”
Warde said, “If we get back in time for supper we’ll be lucky.”
“How about lunch?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Nothing about it,” I said; “it just isn’t.”
“Do you think I’m going to walk ten miles with nothing to eat?” he shot back. “You call this a funny-bone hike, it’s a famine hike, that’s what it is. They’ll find our skeletons some day marching around through these woods——”
“Following our leader,” I said.
“That’ll be a funny-bone parade,” Garry said.
“It’ll be a bone parade all right,” I told him.
“Maybe we’ll strike a farmhouse,” Bert said.
Hervey said, “I know a better idea than that. What time is it?”
“Two o’clock,” I told him.
He said, “Good, I thought it was later. Do you like fish?”
“How many fish?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“Oh just about,” Hervey said.
“If you’re asking me,” I told him, “I could even eat some fish-hooks I’m so hungry. I could eat a whole school of fish.”
“I could eat a whole university of them,” Garry said.
“Do you like them fried?” Hervey asked us.
“M-m-m-mm,” I said; “I can just hear them sizzling now. Lead me to them.”
He said, “We’ll have to wait for them. Let’s hang out on the bridge and pretty soon the fishing boat will come along; it always comes up from the Hudson about this time. I know the men on that boat, I’ve been out fishing with them. They’ll give us a couple of fish and we can cook them. You leave it to me, I’ll fix it.”
“What kind of fish do they catch?” Pee-wee wanted to know.
“S............