Looking down the river, Keekie Joe could see the boat-house, and the gilt ball on top of the flagpole shone dazzling in the early sunlight. The shores and river seemed fresh and new and clean, bathed in the growing light of the new day.
For a minute it seemed to Keekie Joe as if he were a sentinel again, "layin' keekie" while his friends slept. In the trees along shore the birds were already chirping, a merry fish (that did not have to go to school) flopped out of the water and went splashing into the dim coolness again, from very excess of joy, as it seemed. Perhaps he had just looked out to see what kind of a day it was going to be. In the field on the farther shore from town stood several cows, like statues of contentment.
Suddenly, Keekie Joe remembered that Pee-wee's palatial cruising boat _Alligator_ had been drawn, not up on the shore of the island but up on the shore nearby. Therefore, it was not at the island now. It was a mile upstream, drawn up under a willow tree at the edge of the woods. Keekie Joe scanned the shore as far as he could see, but he could not discover any sign of it. However, he knew where it was.
He wondered how his friends and he would get to shore to go to school. He knew they could swim, but they would get their clothes soaked and could not go to school in such condition. Poor Keekie Joe! It never occurred to him that some boys have two suits of clothes, and that his dripping friends might go home and change their clothes before going to school.
Keekie Joe knew (or at least thought) that this situation would become serious when school time neared. He was anxious to know what time it was. You see, Joe was not a regular full-fledged scout and he could not tell time by the sun nor by forty-eleven other ingenious means known to Scout Harris.
His whole standing capital now was a knowledge of how to swim, and a dawning consciousness that scouting meant helping people and all that sort of thing. Thanks to a long course of disobedience to his poor mother, he had learned to swim like a water rat. He had had somewhat the advantage of other boys in this respect for he had gone swimming Mondays when they were in school.
But he could not determine even approximately what time it was and he had no watch. He knew that it was early, but he also knew that a mile was a long distance, especially against the tide.