A Scout of To-day Part 23

"Yes, that belongs to an old clam-digger," said Kenjo Red. "He keeps his pails there. Don't you remember my telling you about his letting us--my uncle an' me--have his boat one day last November, so's we could row over to the sand-spit opposite, and take a look at some seals that were sunning themselves there?"

"Oh! yes, _we_ remember, Kenjo; you've told about that at half a dozen camp-fire powwows, at least." Starrie Chase plucked off Kenjo's cap and combed his ruddy locks with a teasing forefinger. "They say Dave Baldwin, the _vaurien_," with guttural mimicry of Toiney's accents, "hangs out among the dunes here, when he isn't loafing in the woods up the river," added Corporal Chase, peering off among the white sand-hills, capped with biscuit-colored plumes of dry beach-gra.s.s, and the more verdant beach-pea, as if he expected to see young Baldwin's head pop up among them.

"I wonder if we'll run across him?" said Nixon. "He can't 'make camp'

among the dunes. n.o.body is allowed to camp out here, without special permission. Boy scouts are privileged persons; they know we won't set fire to the brush."

"Oh! when he needs a fire--when he knocks a woodchuck on the head and wants to cook it--I suppose he rows over to one of those little islands there; they say he has an old rowboat here." Leon pointed to two small islets rising from the plains of water a little higher up the river.

"Well, I don't envy him!" Marcoo shrugged his shoulders. "He must have a bitter time of it in winter, when the river is frozen over down to the bay, an' you don't hear a sound here beyond the occasional pop of a sportsman's gun, or the barking of the seals--and even they're pretty quiet in midwinter. Hey! Look at that spotted sandpiper. 'Teeter-tail'

we call him: see his tail bob up and down!" exclaimed Coombsie, who was an enthusiast about birds.

In watching the sandpiper rise from the white beach and dart across the water, in listening to his sweet, whistling "peet-weet!" note, speculations about the habits of the _vaurien_, the good-for-nothing young vagrant, were forgotten.

He, Dave Baldwin, faded completely from the campers' thoughts as the narrow skiff grounded its sharp nose for the fourth time on the beach, landing the remainder of their camp dunnage and commissariat; and the work began of selecting a site for the camp amid the milky sand-hills, interspersed with a few trees, slender and short of stature.

Those gray birches and ash-trees formed pleasant spots of shade amid the dazzling whiteness of the dunes. But there was other and more unique vegetable growth to be considered.

"Say! but will you just look at the cranberry patch, growing out of the white beach?" shrieked young Colin after an ecstatic interval, addressing no one scout in particular.

"Cranberries there near the tide!"--"Growing out of the sand!"--"Tooraloo!"--"Nonsense!" came from his brother Owls who were already getting busy, erecting tents.

But cranberries there were, in ripening beauty--as the workers presently saw for themselves--cranberries whose roots underran the dazzling beach, whose crimson creepers trailed delicately over its whiteness, whose berries nestled their rosy cheeks daintily, each upon its snowy pillow.

"_Gee!_" The one united e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n--the little nondescript, uncouth monosyllable which expresses so many emotions of the boyish heart, from panic to panegyric--was all that the scouts could find voice for in presence of this red-and-white loveliness secreted by Nature upon a lonely sh.o.r.e.

"Hey! fellows, Captain Andy is going," the voice of the busy scoutmaster broke in upon their bliss. "He's to bring the Foxes down to-morrow in his motor-boat," alluding to the Fox Patrol, of which G.o.dey was leader.

"The Seals will row over, to-morrow forenoon, from the other side of the river; so our scout troop will be complete. We owe a lot to Captain Andy. Don't you want to show him that you can make a noise: don't you want to give your yell, with his name at the end? Now, all in line, and together!"

And each scout with his arm around a comrade upon either side--Leon's clasping the back of Harold Greer who, a year ago, had cowered at sight of him--all in a welded line, swaying together where the ripples broke upon the milky beach, they proved their prowess as chief noise-makers and made the welkin ring with:--

AMERICA Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!

Rah! Rah! Rah!

Exmouth! Exmouth! Exmouth!

Captain Andy! Captain Andy! _Cap-tain An-dy!_

The weatherbeaten ex-skipper, standing "up for'ard" in his launch, which was just beginning its panting trip up the river, waved his hand in acknowledgment, while the Aviator's whistle returned a triple salute to that linked line upon the water's edge.

"They're fine lads!" A little moisture gathered in the captain's narrowed blue eye as he gazed back at the beach--moisture which did not come in over the Aviator's rail. "Some one has spoken of this Boy Scout Movement as the 'Salvation of England'--as I've heard! So here's to it again as the Future of America!" And he sounded three more whistles--and yet another three--giving the scouts three times three, until it seemed as if his power-boat would burst its steel throat.

Then comparative silence reigned again upon the sands and certain startled birds resumed their feeding avocations, notably that white-breasted busybody, the sanderling or surf-snipe, called by river-men the "whitey."

"See! the 'whitey' doesn't believe that 'two is company, three none': they're chasing after their dinner in triplets! They run out into the ripples and back again, pecking in the sand, so quickly that the larger waves can't catch them: don't they, Greerie?" said Leon Chase, pointing them out to Harold in the overflowing brotherliness established by that yell.

Harold was no longer the "Hare." That nickname had been forbidden by the patrol leader of the Owls under pain of dire penalties. The "poltron,"

or coward, as Toiney had once in pity called him, was "Greerie" now; and was gradually learning what mere bugaboos were the fears which had separated him from his kind and from boyhood's activities--something which might never have come home to him thoroughly, save in the stimulating society of other boys who aimed earnestly at helping him.

"We're going to have a splendid time here for the next two weeks, Greerie, camping among the dunes," Leon a.s.sured him. "To-morrow Nix an'

you and I will go out in the little rowboat, the Pill, and hunt up a creamy pup-seal and bring him back to camp for a pet. Now! you must come and do your share of the work--help to set up the other tents among the sand-hills."

One was already erected, a large canvas shelter, to contain four boys, another went up like unto it for the other four members of the patrol, then a smaller tent for the scoutmaster, and the cook-tent which sheltered the "commissariat," stocked with cans of preserved meats, vegetables, and all that went to make up the scouts' daily rations.

"Where are _you_ going to sleep, Toiney?" asked Patrol Leader Nixon.

"Me--I'll lak' for sleep out in de air, me--wit' de littal star on top o' me!" Toiney shrugged his shoulders complacently at the summer sky, now taking on the hues of evening, as if the firmament were a blanket woven for his comfort.

"Oh! I'll sleep out with you.--And I!--Me, too!" Each and every member of the patrol, from the leader downward, longed to feel the white sand beneath him as a mattress, to have the stars for canopy, to hear the night-tide as it broke upon the near-by beach crooning his lullaby.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN CAMP]

"You may take it in turns, fellows--each sleep out with him one night, when the weather is fine," decided the scoutmaster. "Now! I'm going to appoint Scouts Warren and Chase cooks for to-night."

A first-rate supper did those cooks turn out, of flapjacks and scrambled eggs, the latter stirred with a peeled stick, while the great coffee-pot, brooding upon its rosy nest of birch-logs, grinned facetiously when a stray flame wreathed its spout, then broke into bubbling laughter.

Night fell upon the pale dunes that turned to silver monuments under the smile of a moon in its third quarter. A gentle, lowing sound came to the scouts' ears from the tide at far ebb upon the silvery beach, as, the cook-fire abandoned, they gathered round a blazing camp-fire that cast weird reflections upon the surrounding white hillocks.

The holding of a calm powwow on this first night in camp, when each heart was thrilling tumultuously to the novelty of the surroundings, was impossible. Toiney sang wild fragments of songs that found a suitable accompaniment in the distant, hoa.r.s.e barking of the harbor seal, and in the plaintive "Oo-oo-ooo!"--the dove-like call of the creamy pup-seal to its marbled mother in some lonely tidal creek.

Once and again from the sh.o.r.e side of the scouts' camp-fire, from among the shimmering sand-hills, came the weaker, more snappy bark of the little dog-fox, as he prowled the dunes.

The dazzling Sugarloaf Pillar near the mouth of the river was wrapped in night's mantle. But lights flickered out in two of the handsome summer bungalows which the boys had noticed, standing at some distance from their camping-ground, looming high above the beach, erected upon stilt-like props driven into the sandy soil.

"Those houses were only built last spring; they're occupied for the first time this summer," said Kenjo Red, who was more familiar with this region than the others. "Say! let's chant our African war-song, fellows.

This is just the night for it." And the barbaric chant rang weirdly among the sand-hills, the leader shouting the first line, his companions answering with the other three, to the accompaniment of the flames'

crackle and the night calls of bird and beast:--

"Een gonyama--gonyama.

Invoboo!

Yah bo! Yah bo Invoboo!"

Presently the bark of the dog-fox was heard farther off. _He_ knew, the stealthy slyboots, that he was not the only lone prowler among the pale dunes that night who listened intently to the boisterous revelry round the scouts' camp-fire.

His keen sense of smell informed him that behind one plumed sand-hill, between his own trotting form and the noisy company in the firelight, there lurked a solitary man-figure.

But he, the sandy-coated little trotter from burrow to burrow, could neither hear nor interpret the sound, half groan, half oath, savagely envious, that escaped from the other night-prowler's lips as he listened to the boys' voices.

Silence, broken only by ringing s.n.a.t.c.hes of laughter, reigned temporarily over the dunes. Then once again it blossomed into song:--

"Hurrah for the brave, hurrah for the good, Hurrah for the pure in heart!

At duty's call, with a smile for all, The Scout will do his part!"

And the soft purr of the low tide, with the breeze skipping among pallid dunes that looked like capped haystacks in the darkness, flung back the cheer for the "Scouts of the U.S.A."

"_Aghrr-r!_" snarled the testy dog-fox, his distant petulant growl much resembling that of Leon's terrier, who, unfortunately, was not present upon the dunes to-night. Blink had already added the word "Scout" to his limited human vocabulary, but the wild fox had no such linguistic powers. The foreign music upon the lonely dunes was irritating, alarming to him.

It seemed to have something of the same effect upon his brother-prowler, upon the man who skulked among the sand-hills within hearing of the song: at any rate, the semi-articulate sound which from time to time he uttered, deepened into an unmixed groan that escaped from his lips again later when the clear notes of a bugle rang over the Sugarloaf Dunes, warning the scouts by the "first call" that fun was at an end for to-night, and sleep would be next upon the programme.

Then when lights were out, came the sweet sound of "Taps," the wind-up of the first day in camp, the expert bugler being Corporal Chase.