Boy Scouts in the Philippines Or, The Key to the Treaty Box   By: George Harvey Ralphson (1879-1940)

Or

The Key to the Treaty Box

By Scout Master G. Harvey Ralphson

Author of "Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam." "Boy Scouts In the Canal Zone; or The Plot Against Uncle Sam." "Boy Scouts in the Northwest; or Fighting Forest Fires."

Copyright 1911. M. A. Donohue & Company. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Eleotrotyped, Printed and Bound by M. A. Donohue & Co.

[Illustration: Boy Scouts in the Philippines; or The Key to the Treaty Box.]

CONTENTS

I. Black Bears and Wolves

II. It's Up to the Boy Scouts

III. The Midnight Visitor

IV. The Signals in Grass

V. On the Rim of the China Sea

VI. The Low Call of a Wolf

VII. A Missing Motor Boat

VIII. Wigwags from the Beach

IX. Two Keys to the Treaty Box

X. A Hot Night in Yokohama

XI. A Fairy History of Japan

XII. Pat Takes a Big Chance

XIII. Of the Wild Cat Patrol, Manila

XIV. The Senator's Son Seeks a Key

XV. Signal Lights in the China Sea

XVI. For Piracy on the High Seas

XVII. The Flare of a Rocket

XVIII. The Man Behind the Door

XIX. Boy Scouts Unearth Plot

Boy Scouts in the Philippines

OR

The Key to the Treaty Box

CHAPTER I.

BLACK BEARS AND WOLVES.

"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."

Frank's intentions were all right, but he did not go to sleep again. As he turned over and closed his eyes, Jimmie seized him deftly by the shoulders and dumped him out on the scarlet rug which covered the floor of the stateroom.

Frank was seventeen and Jimmie was younger, and so there was a mixture of legs and arms and vocabulary for a moment, at the end of which Jimmie broke away and made for the door, which he had thoughtfully left open as a means of retreat.

Left thus alone on the tumbled blankets of the bunk from which he had been hustled, Frank rubbed his eyes, threw a pillow at his tormentor, and began making his way toward his cozy nest, much to Jimmie's disgust.

"Aw, come on!" the boy urged, still standing in a safe place by the doorway. "It's hot enough to melt brass in here, an' the siren's been shoutin' for half an hour! That means land the Philippines! Perhaps you think you're lookin' for Battery Park, in little old New York! Get up an' look out of the port, over the rollin' sea, to the land of the little brown men!"

Looking through the doorway, over the boy's shoulders, Frank smiled serenely at what he saw and sat waiting for something to happen. Then Jimmie was propelled headlong into the room, where he landed squarely on top of the drowsy boy he had dragged out of bed. There was another scramble for points, and then two boys of about seventeen showed their faces in the doorway, laughing at the mix up on the floor.

The transport's siren broke out again in its long, shrill greeting of the land which lay above the rim of the sea, and Frank, catapulting Jimmie against the wall at the back of the bunk, hastened to the open port and looked out.

The boys who had entered the cabin so unceremoniously were Ned Nestor and Jack Bosworth, who were traveling with Frank and Jimmie to the Philippines, the party being under the direction of Major John Ross, of the United States Secret Service.