A Scout of To-day Part 25

By dint of alternately propelling and rowing the three scouts, with their prize, finally reached the white beach of the dunes before the tide completely deserted them. They brought a full cargo of excitement into camp in their tale of the stranger who had warned them; who, with worthless vagrancy stamped all over him, they felt must be the _vaurien_, Dave Baldwin; and in their engaging prize, the flippered pup-seal.

The latter quite eclipsed the interest felt in the former. Never was there a more docile, fatter, or more amiable puppy. He enjoyed being fondled in a scout's arms, under difficulties, as, for a pup, he was quite a heavy-weight and slippery too, on account of the amount of blubber secreted under his creamy skin. His oily brown eyes were softly trustful.

But the tug-of-war came with feeding-time. Vainly did the boy scouts offer him of their best, vainly did Marcoo and Colin tramp a mile over the dunes to bring back a quart of new milk for him from the nearest farm, and try to pour it gently down his infant throat!

He set up a dove-like moaning that was plainly a call for his mother as he lay sprawled out on the white sands. And, at nightfall, by order of the scoutmaster, Scouts Warren and Chase rowed out into the channel and returned him to the water in which he was quite at home.

But he was possessed of a contradictory spirit, for he swam after the Pill, crying to be taken aboard again. They could hear his dulcet "Oo-oo-ooo!" as they gathered round their camp-fire in the white hollow among the sand-hills.

At the powwow to-night the encounter with Dave Baldwin, if the vagrant of the marshes was really he, came in for its share of discussion.

Guesses were rife as to the probability of the scouts running across him again, and as to how he might occupy his time in the lazy vagabond life which he was leading.

It was here that Harold broke through the semi-shy reserve which still encrusted him and contributed a remark, the first as a result of his observations, to the powwow.

"Well! he had an _awful_ sorry face on him," he said impulsively, alluding to the vagrant. "It just made me feel badly for a while!"

"You're right, Greerie, he had!" corroborated Leon. "Whatever he's doing, it isn't agreeing with him. We'll probably come on him again some time on the marshes or among the dunes."

But eleven days went by, eleven full days for the scout campers, golden with congenial activity, wherein each hour brought its own interesting "stunt," as they called it; and they saw no more of the _vaurien_, the worthless one, who had caused his mother's heart to "break in pieces."

And they gave little thought to him. For those breezy days, the last of August and the first of September, were spent in observation tours over marsh and dune or on the heaving river, in playing their exciting scout games among the sandhills, in clam-bakes, in practising signaling with the little red-and-white flags according to the semaph.o.r.e or wig-wag code--one scout transmitting a message to another posted on a distant hill--and in the various duties a.s.signed to them in pairs, of cooking, and keeping the camp generally in order.

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.

To-night, every one was bent upon making the end of the camping trip a season of befitting jollity. They sang their scout songs as they gathered round the camp-fire. They retailed the last good joke from their magazine. They challenged the darkness with their hearty motto,--both in the strong sweet mother tongue wherein it had been given to the world, and in the pretty _Estu preta!_ form, which two of their number thought might serve as a universal link.

But the night refused to rejoice with them. It was chilly, colder than on the same date one year ago when four lost boys camped out in the Bear's Den. The inflowing tide broke on the beach with sobbing clamor.

There was no moon, few stars. The white sand-hills were wild-looking sable mounds waving blood-red plumes of beach-gra.s.s or beach-pea wherever the light of camp-fire or camp-lantern struck them.

The cl.u.s.ters of gray birches and ash-trees scattered here and there among the dunes cowered like ebony shadows fearful of the rising wind.

"Bah! De night she's as black as one black crow," declared Toiney with a shrug as he threw another birch log on the camp-fire and set one of the two bright oil-lanterns on a sand-hill where it spied upon the gusty, secretive darkness like a watchful eye.

With the exception of a few small carbide lamps attached to tent-posts, those lanterns were the only luminaries in camp.

"An' de win' she commence for mak' noise lak' mad cat! Saint Ba'tiste!

I'll t'ink dis iss night for de come-backs--me." And Toiney glanced half-fearfully behind him at the sable mounds so milky in daylight.

"He means it's a night for spooks--ghosts! He doesn't believe much in 'come-backs,' though: look at his face!" Leon pointed at the a.s.sistant scoutmaster's black eyes dancing in the firelight, at the ta.s.sel of his red cap capering in the breeze. "By the way, Nix and I saw one 'come-back,' about an hour ago--a human one!" went on Corporal Chase suddenly, after a minute's pause: "that rough customer, Dave Baldwin, as we suppose him to be, turned up again this evening near the summer bungalows away over on the beach. He was acting rather queerly, too!"

"He certainly was!" chimed in Nixon, looking thoughtfully at a little topknot of flame that sprouted upon the blazing log nearest to him as he lay, with his brother Owls, p.r.o.ne upon his face and hands, gazing into the fire.

"What was he doing?" asked Jesse Taber, a member of the Seal Patrol.

"Why, he was up on the high piazza of the largest bungalow--that house built just on the edge of the dunes which looks as if it was standing on stilts, and getting ready to walk off! He seemed to be trying one of the windows when we came along as if attempting to get in."

"The summer people who own that house left there this morning; we saw them going," broke in G.o.dey Peck of the Fox Patrol. "I guess all the three houses are empty now; those dandified 'summer birds' don't like staying round here when the wind 'makes noise like mad cat'!" G.o.dey hugged himself and beamed over the wild noises of the night, and at the voice of the tidal river calling l.u.s.tily.

"Well! did he get into the house?" asked Jemmie Ahern of the Seals.

"No, as we came along over the dunes he saw us and scooted off!" Thus Corporal Leon Chase again took up the thread of the story. "But Nix an'

I looked back as we walked along the beach; it was getting dusk then, but we made out his figure disappearing into a large shed belonging to that bungalow."

"I hope he wasn't up to any mischief," said the scoutmaster gravely.

"Now! let's forget about him. Haven't any of you other scouts some contribution to make to to-night's powwow about things you've observed during the day?"

"Mr. Scoutmaster, I have!" Marcoo lifted his head upon the opposite side of the camp-fire where he lay, breast downward, on the sand. "Colin and I and two members of the Seal Patrol, Howsie and Jemmie Ahern, saw an _awfully_ big heap of clam-sh.e.l.ls between two sand-hills on the sh.o.r.e-edge of the beach. They were partly covered with sand; but we dug them out; and--somehow--they looked as if they had been there for ages."

"Likely enough, they had! The Indians used to hold clam-bakes here." The firelight danced upon the scoutmaster's white teeth; he greatly enjoyed the camp-fire powwow. "You see, fellows, this fine, white sand is something like snow--but snow which doesn't harden--the wind blows it into a drift; then, perhaps, another big gale comes along, picks up the drift and deposits it somewhere else. That's what uncovered your clam-sh.e.l.ls."

"Then how is it these white dunes aren't traveling round the country?"

Colin waved his arm toward the neighboring sand-hills with a laugh.

"Because they are held in place by the vegetation that quickly sprang up on and between them. That beach-gra.s.s has very coa.r.s.e strong roots which interlace under the surface. Now! let's listen to Toiney singing; we must be merry, seeing it's our second last night in camp." Scoutmaster Estey waved his hand toward his a.s.sistant in the blue s.h.i.+rt and ta.s.seled cap.

Toiney, tiring of the conversation which it was an effort for him to follow, was crooning softly an old French ditty wherewith he had been sung to sleep by his grandfather when he was a black-eyed babe in a saffron-hued night-cap and gown:--

"a la clair-e fontain-e M'en allant promener, J'ai trouve l'eau si belle, Que je m'y suis baigne!"

"Oh! you took a walk near the fountain and found the water so fine that you went in bathing!" cried one and another of the scouts who were in their first year in high school. "Must have been a pretty big fountain!

Go ahead: what did you do next, Toiney?"

But the singer had suddenly sprung to his feet and stood, an alert, tense figure, in the flickering twilight.

"_Gard' donc!_" he cried gutturally, while the cat-like breeze capered round him, flicking his short red ta.s.sel, catching at his legs in their queer high boots. "_Gard' donc!_ de littal light in de sky--engh? _Sapre tonnerre!_ I'll t'ink shee's fire, me. No camp-fire, _non_! Beeg fire--engh? _V'la! V'la!_"

He glanced round sharply at his scout comrades, and pointed, with excited gesticulations, across the sable dunes in the direction of those recently erected summer residences.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SIGNALMAN

"Patrol leaders and corporals, muster your men!" The voice of the young scoutmaster rang sharply out upon the night.

The three boy patrols, Owls, Seals, and Foxes, who fell quickly into line at his order, were no longer surrounding their camp-fire amid the dusky sand-hills. That had been deserted even while Toiney was speaking, while he was pointing out the claims of a larger fire on their attention.

From the glare in the sky this was evidently a threatening blaze; its fierce reflection overhung like an intangible flaming sword the trio of recently erected summer residences about quarter of a mile from the scouts' camp--those handsome bungalows from which the summer birds had flown.

"That's no brush fire," Scoutmaster Estey had exclaimed directly he sighted the glare. "It's a building of some kind. Come on, fellows; there's work for us here!" And s.n.a.t.c.hing one of the two camp-lanterns from its sandy pedestal he led the way across the dark wilderness of the dunes.

Nixon caught up the second luminary and followed his chief. In their wake raced the three patrols, down in a sandy hollow one moment, climbing wildly the next, tearing their way through the plumed tangle of beach-gra.s.s and other vegetation that capped each pale mound now swathed in blackness, Toiney keeping Harold by his side.