Isabel Hornibrook

“ The tide which had ebbed and flowed again since midnight—when the last excited scout had fallen asleep lulled by its full purr—broke high upon the beach, where the white sands gleamed through its translucent flood like milk in a crystal vase.
Far away in dim distance, higher up the tidal river upon its other side, beyond the plains of water, the woods which enclosed Varney’s Paintpot and the cave called the Bear’s Den smiled remotely through a pearly veil of haze. ”

“ Corporal Chase was already lying flat on his stomach, working himself out over the infirm ice where, here and there, within the white map of lines and circles traced by the skates of the small boys, were small holes through which the captive water heaved like Ma’am Baldwin’s breast, under a thin, glassy fretwork.
After him crawled Nixon, grasping his ankles in a strong grip. And, performing a like service for the patrol leader, came Coombsie, and after Coombsie Colin; the four forming a human chain, trusting their lives to the unstable, saline ice, and to the grip of each other. ”

“ Lighthouse men may take the glare in the sky to mean only a brush-fire,” added the scoutmaster, sotto voce, as he stationed himself upon the crest of the sandy slope that led from the burning shed to the dim lapping water.
That doomed shed was now blazing like a mammoth bonfire. The flames flung their gleeful arms out, seizing a solemn gray birch-tree for a partner in their wild dance, scattering their rosy fire-petals broadcast until they lodged in the roof of the wood-shed adjacent to the house, and upon the piazza of the bungalow itself. ”

“ Whence this feeling of prowess, of being a firebrand—a genial one—capable of kindling other and better lights in the world than a camp-fire?
Starrie Chase did not analyze his sensations of magnificence, which bloomed from a discovery back there on the marshes of the secret which is at the root of the Boy Scout Movement, at the base of all Christian Chivalry, at the foundation of golden labor for mankind in every age: namely, that the excitement of helping people is vastly, vitally, and blissfully greater than the spurious excitement of hurting them! ”

“ I think the woods are just dandy at this time o’ year!” Leon led a whistling onslaught upon the vividly laden black alder bushes, while the white gusts of the boys’ breath floated like incense through the coral and evergreen sanctuary of beauty, guarded by the silvery pillars of white birch-trees, where, in the bare forest, Nature had not left herself without a witness to joy and color.
“These berries are as red as Varney’s Paintpot,” laughed Colin by and by, as the two scouts retraced their steps across the salt-marshes, crunching underfoot the frozen spikes of yellow marsh-grass. ”

“ Now, Starrie Chase was by Nature’s gift more quick-witted than his companions, even than the trained boy scout.
“If we try to wade in toward him, we’ll sink ourselves!” he cried. “I’ll try to haul him out with that birch-tree.”
A leaping, plunging run, sinking to his ankles, and with the long bound of a gray squirrel he alighted upon the supple trunk of a tall white-birch sapling that grew within the borders of the swamp!
No squirrel ever climbed more rapidly than did he to its middle branches. ”

“ Camp-fires we light and by embers bright
We sleep the whole night through.
Hurrah for the sun, hurrah for the storm,
Hurrah for the stars above!
We feel secure, safe, sane and sure,
For we know that God is Love.”
“Why have you that knot in your tie?” asked Leon after the last note had died away in forest-echo, while the scout was wetting the bandages round his inflamed ankle before they crept into the cave to sleep. ”

“ But Marcoo, like his companion, carried the long scout staff and was loud in his appreciation of its usefulness on a woodland hike.
And thus, a knightly-looking pair of pilgrims, they issued forth into the forest clearing, bathed in the early afternoon sun.
As before, their ears were tickled afar off by the sound of a tuneful voice alternately whistling and singing, though to-day it was unaccompanied by the woodchopper’s axe.
“That’s Toiney!” said Marcoo. “Listen to him! He’s just ‘full of it’; isn’t he?” ”

“ They missed the twitching face-muscles, the slowly dilating eye, the breath beginning to come in quick puffs through his spreading nostrils, like the smoke issuing from the punky [Pg 132] wood, heralding the advent of the ruddy spark, when in the woods they started a fire with rubbing-sticks. And just as suddenly and mysteriously as that triumphant spark appeared—evolved by Nixon’s fire-drill, from the dormant possibilities in the dull wood—did the first glitter of fascinated light appear and grow in the eye of Harold Greer, the prisoner of Fear, disparagingly nicknamed the “Hare”! ”

“ Who cares if it’s cold?”
The boy scout, with an anticipatory glow all over him, felt impervious to any extreme of temperature as he bounded down the uplands, with the breeze—the freshening, freakish breeze—driving across the salt-marshes directly in his face, racing through every vein in him, stirring up a whirligig within, presently bringing waste things to the top even as it stirred up dust and refuse in the roadway.
“Hullo! there’s the old baldfaced house,” he cried suddenly to the dog. “Here we are on our old stamping-ground, Blink! Wonder if ‘Mom Baldwin’ is doing her witch stunts still? ”

“ Over the boys’ heads, having just risen from the feathery marshes, skimmed a feathered telltale, live counterpart of the one he touched, its legs golden spindles in the sunshine, its shrill joy-whistle: “Wheu! Wheu! Whe-eu!” proclaiming the thanksgiving which had rioted through Colin’s mind on the fragrant salt-marshes: “Glad I’m alive! Glad I’m alive! Glad—I’m alive!”
A smothered exclamation broke from Coombsie as he followed the finger and the flight.
Leon snatched up the gun.
“One can’t have too much of a good thing: I guess I could drop that ‘telltale,’ too!” ”

“ The triumphant scout lowered the flame-bud to the ground, piled over it some of the resinous pine-splinters and strips of inflammatory bark, fanning it steadily with his hat. In a few minutes a rollicking camp-fire was roaring in front of the old Bear’s Den.
“Now! we must gather some big chunks, dry roots and stumps, to keep the fire going through the night, cut sods to put round it and prevent its spreading into the woods, and break up some pine-tips to strew in the cave for a bed. There’s lots of work ahead still, fellows, before we can be snug for the night!” ”

“ No coveted log shanty, where at least they could encamp for the night, decorated it.
But on its opposite side there loomed before the boys’ eyes as they issued from the woods a great, lichen-covered rock, over twenty feet high, with a deep cavernous opening that yawned like a sleepy mouth at sunset as it swallowed the rays streaming into it.
“Glory halleluiah! it’s the Bear’s Den—at last,” ejaculated Leon, pain momentarily eclipsed. “Thanks, Nix: you’re a horse!” as he withdrew his arm from his comrade’s shoulders. “But that cave is about five miles from anywhere—from any opening in the woods! ”

“ Nixon looked pityingly at the boy who lived thus in his own shadow—the shadow of a baseless fear.
“Whew! it must be bad to be born scared!” he gasped. “I wish we could get Toiney to sing some more.”
At this moment there came a wild shout from Colin who had been exploring the clearing and stumbled upon something near the outhouses.
“Gracious! what is it—a wildcat?” he cried. “It isn’t a fox—though it has a bushy tail! It’s as big as half a dozen squirrels. Hulloo-oo!” in yelling excitement, “it must be a coon—a young coon.” ”

“ Colin had often longed to turn the pages of that book—to penetrate farther into the woods than he had dared to do yet. This longing was fanned by the tales of men who had hunted, trapped or felled trees in them, who could spell out each syllable of the woodlore to be studied in their golden twilight; and who, as they roved and read, could put a finger on many a colored [Pg 4] illustration of Nature’s methods set against a green background of branches or fluttering underbrush, like the flitting foliage of moving pictures. ”

“ The more fully one lives, the more joyously one adventures, the more quickly flutters the present into the past, like a sunny landscape flitting by a train! It had come to be the last night but one in camp. Within another two days the Sugarloaf Dunes would be deserted so far as campers were concerned.
School would presently reopen. And at the end of the month the Owls would lose their brother and patrol leader: during the first days of October Scout Nixon Warren’s parents were expected home from Europe, and he would rejoin his former troop in Philadelphia. ”

“ Three weeks after the September morning when an anxious search-party led by Asa Chase, Leon’s father, and by that clever woodsman Toiney Leduc, had started out at dawn to search the dense woods for four missing boys, and found a grotesque-looking quartette with faces piebald from the half-effaced smears of Varney’s Paintpot, breakfasting on blueberries and water by a still ruddy camp-fire,—three weeks after those morning woods had rung with Toiney’s shrill “Hôlà!” the first meeting for the formation of the Owl Patrol was held. ”

“ His presence and songs lent a primitive charm to many a camp-fire gathering; no normal boy could feel temporarily dull in his company, for Toiney, besides being an expert in woodlore and a good trailer, was essentially a bon enfant, or jolly child, at heart, meeting every experience with the blithe faith that, somehow—somewhere—he would come out on top. ”

“ Nixon had felt Leon’s hand as it slipped from his neck at the edge of the clearing, it was clammy as ice; his first-aid training as a scout told him that the injured lad would feel the cold bitterly during the night.
Starrie Chase would probably “stick it out without squealing,” as in such circumstances he would try to do himself. But it would be a hard experience. And young Colin’s clothing was still sodden from his partial immersion in Big Swamp. It was one of those moments for the Scout of the U.S.A. when the potential father in the boy is awake. ”

“ But he knew himself a trained force stronger than the “mad-cat” wind that clawed at him, than the tide which moaned behind him, even than the fire he combated; stronger always in the long run than these, for he was growing into a man who could get the better of them ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
He was a scout, in line with the world’s progress, [Pg 269] allied with rescue, not ruin, with healing, not harm, with a chivalry that crowned all. ”

“ I expect we’ll just have the ‘time of our lives’ when we camp out there!” came in blissful accents from the patrol leader.
“Well! we’re not going to land on the dunes to-day,” said Captain Andy, who was standing up forward, steering the gasolene launch, his keen eyes scanning the plains of water from under his visored cap, in search of Spotty Seal’s sleek dog-like head cleaving the ripples as he swam, with his strong hind-flippers propelling him along. ”

“ Leon was a wonderful climber; twining his arms and legs round one olive-green trunk of the divided pine he managed to reach the firm boughs above through whose needles the late afternoon breeze crooned a sonorous warning.
The scout, meanwhile, had clambered like a [Pg 75] squirrel nearly to the top of the splendid oak-tree. Presently the two boys upon the ground heard a shrill “Tewitt! Tewitt!” the signal-whistle of his peewit patrol, fully sixty feet above their heads, followed by Nixon’s voice shouting: “Can’t see smoke anywhere, fellows—or any sign of a real break in the woods. ”

“ I pity his old mother! I think that every boy scout should make it a point to do a good turn for her when he can.”
“Ah! oui; shes break in pieces, engh?” murmured Toiney, the irrepressible, still punching up the fire, to prepare it for the cooking tests.
Somehow, his eloquent sympathy sent a stab through Leon—whom everybody was at the moment regarding with admiration—for it brought a sharp recollection of an old woman backing away from him in fear, with her right arm laid across her breast in piteous self-defense. ”

“ I want to go farther into those old woods than I’ve ever gone before—far enough to find Varney’s Paintpot and the Bear’s Den—and the coon’s hole that Toiney Leduc saw among the alders an’ ledges near Big Swamp!”
He halted on the first footstep, whistling blithely to a gray-winged yellow-legs that skimmed above his head. The curly, boyish whistle, ascending in spirals, carried the musical challenge aloft: “I’m glad I’m alive and athirst for adventure; aren’t you?” ”

“ Leon Chase in particular made her rank little garden his nightly stamping-ground, and was the most ingenious in his persecuting attentions.
He it was who devised the plan of anchoring a shingle or other light piece of wood by a short string to the longest branch of the apple-tree that grew near her door.
When the wind blew directly across the marshes, as it did this evening, and drove against that paintless door, it operated the impromptu knocker; the wooden shingle would keep up an intermittent tapping, playing ticktack upon the painted panels all night. ”

“ Something about that stocky figure and in the expression of the face, half wistful, half savage, reminded him overwhelmingly of an old woman whom he had seen issuing, lantern in hand, from her paintless home, and who had raised her trembling arm to her breast at sight of him, Leon.
“Forevermore! it’s Dave Baldwin,” he ejaculated in a whisper audible only to Nixon. “That’s who it is—Nix! [Pg 251] ”
“Don’t you see that the tide is leaving you?” snapped the stranger again. “There won’t be a teaspoonful of water in this creek presently.” ”

“ Presently the bark of the dog-fox was heard farther off. He knew, the stealthy slyboots, that [Pg 241] 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. ”