HERVEY WILLETTS
HIS ADVENTURES
[Illustration: HERVEY, TREMBLING IN EVERY NERVE, FACED THE APPROACHING
TRAIN.]
HERVEY WILLETTS
BY
PERCY KEESE FITZHUGH
Author of
THE TOM SLADE BOOKS
THE ROY BLAKELEY BOOKS
THE PEE-WEE HARRIS BOOKS
THE WESTY MARTIN BOOKS
ILLUSTRATED BY
HOWARD L. HASTINGS
Published with the approval of
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Here he is with his hat and his ruffled up hair.
Reckless, happy-go-lucky and new;
And because he is crazy and won’t take a dare.
They liked him—and I like him too.
He’s wild and all that and as blind as a bat,
And he drives them distracted it’s true;
But one look at that hat and I say for all that,
I like him, that’s all, I just do.
He’s never at rest and he may be a pest,
And the gods cannot say what he’ll do;
He can’t take a test, yet above all the rest,
I like him—and you’ll like him too.
CONTENTS
I Happy-Go-Lucky
II The Sentence
III The Last Stunt
IV The Perfect Gentleman
V Chance Acquaintance
VI The Inspired Dare
VII Gone
VIII Safety in Silence
IX Stranded
X Trapped
XI The Jaws of Death
XII Held
XIII A Noise Like a Scout
XIV At the Bar
XV Chesty, Ambassador
XVI To Pastures New
XVII Over the Top
XVIII Guilty
XIX The Comeback
XX Ominous
XXI Distant Rumblings
XXII Words and Actions
XXIII Diplomacy
XXIV In the Silent Night
XXV Life, Liberty——
XXVI Out of the Frying Pan
XXVII At Last
XXVIII The Law Again
XXIX The White Light
XXX Stunt or Service
XXXI Hopeless
XXXII Ups and Downs
XXXIII Storm and Calm
XXXIV Summer Plans
XXXV Hervey’s Luck
XXXVI Reached?
HERVEY WILLETTS
CHAPTER I
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
If Hervey Willetts were lacking many qualities which a scout ought to
have (and it is to be feared he was), he certainly had one quality truly
scoutish; he had nerve. It was not the sort of nerve commonly
recommended to scouts, but it was one kind.
And indeed Hervey had all kinds. He was always brave, he was often
reckless, he was sometimes blithely heroic. But he was always wrong. His
bizarre courage never paid him any interest because, somehow or other,
it was always mixed up with disobedience. Thoughtful boys saw this and
were sorry for him. More, they had a sneaking admiration for him.
Once, in the wee hours of the night, Hervey saved a boy from drowning.
He should have had the gold medal for that; but you see he had no right
to be out swimming in the middle of the night. And there you are.
All his spectacular deeds went to waste so far as scout advancement was
concerned. The deed was always clouded by the escapade. And sometimes,
as you shall see, there was an escapade containing none of the
ingredients of heroism. Hervey’s heroic deeds were always byproducts.
He did not fit into Temple Camp at all. Why he had ever chosen it as the
theatre for his stunts of glory was a puzzle. Many scouts, captivated by
his effrontery, said kindly that Temple Camp did not fit into _him_.
Assuredly there was misfit somewhere.
To give you an example of his nerve (and it is the episode on which this
whole story hinges) he went back to Temple Camp the season following his
summary expulsion therefrom. To appreciate the magnitude of his
effrontery you must know something of the circumstance of his dismissal.
During that summer which had ended so ingloriously for him, he had
pursued a course as free as life on the ocean wave. He was always in hot
water. He would come strolling in late for meals, his outlandish little
rimless hat at a rakish angle, swinging a stick or doing stunts with it
for his own amusement as he ambled past the group assembled for
camp-fire, or the after dinner stragglers lolling on the pavilion porch.
They seldom asked him where he had been. They knew he was on friendly
terms with every farmer in the neighborhood, a crony at every rural
wayside garage, the volunteer comrade of wandering pedlers, of gypsies,
and even of tramps who made camp in secluded hollows and regaled him
with dubious reminiscences. There was something about Hervey....
Yes, that was the worst of it; _there was something about him_. Tom
Slade was under the spell, and if Tom Slade liked you, you could go a
long way along the trail of disobedience. It was not that Hervey was
popular, in the sense that Roy Blakeley was popular. He did not grace
the camp with his presence enough to be popular.
But was it not an amazing thing that he was so much liked even though he
was so seldom among the big camp family? He had no friends, yet
everybody was his friend. If ever a boy was a host unto himself, as they
say, Hervey Willetts was that boy. Certainly he was never lonesome.
You know him; he was slender and good looking, with a kind of dancing
deviltry in his eyes. When they reprimanded him he looked at them as if
he just did not understand. He was hopeless. There was an unconscious
effrontery about him. The woods belonged to him. You could not scold him
any more than you could scold a squirrel.
He certainly was not without feeling for he held in deep affection his
little rimless hat cut full of holes and decorated with every sort of
campaign and advertising button which had ever come his way. These
little celluloid trinkets did not proclaim Hervey’s principles. One of
them said _Keep to the Right_, a thing which Hervey never did. Another
(I know not its origin, nor did he) said _Be good and you’ll be happy_.
Well, at all events, he was happy.