“Then let’s enjoy this vacation.  I’ve been thinking what we could do, and it occurred to me that it would be lots of fun for the Wireless Patrol to make a trip up the river to that old camp of ours.  It won’t be too cold to camp out if we take out our tents and our little collapsible stoves.  Suckers ought to be running good and we can catch a fine mess of fish, take a hike or two, and have a bully trip up the river and back.  Let’s go tell the rest of the fellows.”

Lew jumped up and started for the door.  Then he stopped suddenly and a look of disappointment came over his face.  “I’ll bet none of ’em can go,” he said.  “They’ve all got jobs for the vacation.  I’m glad we’ve got our money earned.”

“I just thought of another difficulty,” sighed Charley.  “Not one of us owns a boat.”

“We can borrow one,” said Lew.

“I hate to borrow things,” replied Charley.  “You remember how I borrowed old man Packer’s bob-sled and broke it and then had to pay to have it remade.  No more borrowing for me.”

“Why can’t we make a boat?  There’s plenty of time between now and vacation.  If we do the work ourselves, it oughtn’t to cost more than two or three dollars and then we’d have a boat of our own.”

“Bully!” cried Charley.  “We can make it as good as anybody.  We’ll do it.”

“All right.  I’ll go down-town and find the price of oars and rowlocks, and you go over to Hank Cooley’s and find out how his father made that boat of his.  It’s a dandy and just what we need.”

The two boys rushed off in opposite directions, each full of enthusiasm over the plan to build a new boat and make a trip up the river during their Easter vacation.

Chapter II

What Came of Them

A few hours later Charley Russell again sat before the bench in the little wireless house in his father’s yard.  Before him lay some patterns for a rowboat, and on a piece of paper Charley was trying to figure out how much lumber it would take to build the boat.

“We’ll need two sixteen-foot boards, each a foot wide for the sides,” he said, looking across the table at his chum, who sat ready, with pencil and paper, to jot down the figures Charley gave him.

“Thirty-two feet,” said Lew, setting down the number on his paper.

Charley bent over his patterns, measuring and estimating in silence.  “It’ll take three more like ’em for the bottom,” he said presently.

“That’s forty-eight more,” replied Lew, jotting down the number.

“And these cross braces,” added Charley, after another period of calculation, “will take ten feet more.”

Again Lew set down the number.

“That provides for everything but the decks,” said Charley.  “They will take seven or eight feet more.  Better call it ten.  That’s all.  What does it make?”

Lew put down ten and added the column of figures.  “One hundred feet exactly,” he said.