A SURPRISING ADVENTURE
The captain's prophecy was literally fulfilled, and the boys had no
opportunity for fairweather games the next day. Instead, clad in
oilskins, they lounged about the wet decks, watching the captain's
skillful handling of the boat, ringing the big fog bell when the
atmosphere grew thick, and clinging to the railing when the sloop
pitched and tossed restlessly on the heaving sea.
Dave retired as usual in rough weather into sullen silence, coming
on deck most reluctantly only when his services were demanded by
the captain.
Late in the day, the storm increased to a gale of some little
violence, and the captain decided to make for the nearest harbor.
He had hoped to reach the home haven that night, but his policy
was to meet disappointment rather than to run risks.
"Mebbe I hev a surprise up my sleeve fer you boys," Captain Lem said,
his eyes twinkling as he saw their long faces on hearing the news
of delay. "Wouldn't mind addin' a little excitement ter the end of
the trip, would ye?"
"We're aching for it," returned Billy promptly. "This has been an
awfully long day, you know, captain."
"Wal', ef I've got my bearin's all right, we'll spend the evenin' in
a right cheerful place. That's all I kin say now, but you boys go
collect your belongin's, so's we kin land fer the night ef my
calc'lations hold good."
Just as the early darkness of the rainy night shut down over the
rolling sea, the boys discovered a gleaming light, high and steady,
not far off toward the Florida coast.
"Jimmy!" cried Billy excitedly. "Bet the captain is going to take us
to a lighthouse for the night!"
"Can't be your uncle's light, Mark, where we saw the spongers on the
way down," commented Chester thoughtfully. "We're too near home for
that."
"I have an _idea_---" began Hugh slowly.
"And so have I!" interrupted Alec, glancing at Mark.
At that moment, Roy Norton began to ring the fog bell under the
captain's directions.
"Ding! Ding! Ding, ding, ding!" resounded the heavy iron tongue.
There was a pause, and then the signal was repeated. A longer
silence followed and again the slow, clear signal was twice repeated.
By this time, the captain had guided his dauntless little vessel
into slightly quieter waters, although she still pitched and tossed
in a way that would have alarmed a "landlubber."
Then came a new sound, louder than the noise of the pounding waves,
deeper than the clang of the iron bell.
"Boom! Boom! Boom, boom, boom!" An answering signal had broken the
silence where the steady light shone.
Mark started, as though recognizing the sound.
"Why, that-----" he began bewilderedly, "that is the signal gun at
Red Key! Captain, are you signaling to my father?"
"Jest so," Captain Vinton replied. "Keeper Anderson knows my knock
on his door!"
"How shall we land?" asked Chester excitedly, as he saw Dave making
ready to drop anchor.
At that moment a rocket went streaking up toward heaven and a second
later a slender rope fell writhing across the deck, where Roy stood
swinging a torch.
"Hurray!" called Hugh, seizing the rope just as Norton, at the
captain's orders, also grasped it. "Hurray! It's the breeches
buoy!"
It will be recalled by those who followed the adventures of "_The
Boy Scouts of the Life Saving Crew_," that Hugh and Billy, Chester
and Alec had been at the Red Key Station on the night of a thrilling
rescue. They had accompanied and in a slight way assisted the
life-savers on their patrols, at the launching of the life boat,
and in the final use of the breeches buoy.
It was most exciting to return to the scene of their memorable
experience in this unexpected fashion.
The boys hauled willingly on the rope and soon it was taut, the odd
conveyance swinging by the deck railing.
"You go first, Mark. While yer father knows my knock and realizes
that I didn't give my danger signal, still he may be a mite anxious
to see you, knowin' you was comin' home with me on the _Arrow_."
Obeying the captain's directions and grasping his waterproof bundle
of clothes, Mark thrust his legs into the breeches buoy, the signal
was given, and the trip through the waves began.
Soon the strange vehicle was back again, and this time Chester,
buttoning his oilskins about him closely, was ordered ashore.
In a brief time Hugh, and then Billy, Alec, and Norton had followed
the others.
Meanwhile, Captain Vinton, with Dave's help, had made everything
shipshape on board the _Arrow_. Then, sending Dave shoreward in
the breeches buoy, the captain himself, true to tradition, waited to
be the last to leave his ship.
Although they had not encountered a moment of real danger, the boys
had been given an experience of actual rescue. When Captain Vinton
joined them on shore, they greeted him enthusiastically and then
stood back to watch his meeting with Keeper Anderson.
The latter grasped the captain's hand in a hearty grip.
"Good for you, Lem, you old sea-dog!" cried the keeper. "You didn't
scare us any and it was great fun for my boy and his friends. Mark
has gone in to see his mother---she'll be some surprised---and to
tell her to fix up some hot coffee and things for you 'survivors.'"
"Haw! haw! haw!" laughed the old captain. "This was the easiest
shipwreck I ever managed to survive! He! he! he!"
In great good nature the two men walked toward the keeper's house,
while the boys followed, eagerly renewing their acquaintance with
the stalwart men of the life-saving crew.
Roy Norton was an interested observer, and when he, too, had met Mrs.
Anderson and Ruth, and heard the story of their first exciting
encounter, he no longer wondered at the boys' enthusiasm.
That night the crowd slept, as four of them had before, in hastily
arranged shakedowns; and when morning dawned, they looked out upon a
sea so blue and sparkling they could scarcely realize that it was
the gray, angry, heaving expanse of the night before.
The _Arrow_ dipped and rose jauntily on the sapphire water, giving
no sign that she, too, had spent a restless night pulling and tugging
at her deeply embedded anchor.
After an early breakfast, the four boys said their farewells to Mark
and Ruth and their parents, and, with the captain and Norton, went
out to the _Arrow_ in boats manned by members of the life-saving crew.
Not many hours later, they reached Alec's home in Santario, and
there they found Mr. Sands, waiting a little anxiously for their
safe return. He had learned from the morning papers that the
previous night's storm had been severe at sea, and he had not
known how or where the _Arrow_ might have weathered the gale.
When he had been told of the "rescue" off Red Key Life Saving
Station, he exclaimed impatiently, "Why in the name of sense, didn't
you telephone me from Red Key? Here I have spent many hours in
needless anxiety."
The boys looked at one another in silence.
"It simply never occurred to us that we were back within communicating
distance," replied Alec at last. "We haven't seen or heard a
telephone since we left home."
"And really, Mr. Sands," said Roy Norton quickly, "when you hear
what strange, unusual experiences the boys have had, you will not
wonder at their forgetting the convenience of a little, every-day
matter like the telephone. For myself, I offer no excuse. I
should have been more thoughtful. But I, too, have dropped the
customs and responsibilities of home life about as thoroughly as
have the boys, I am afraid."
"That is all right, Norton," said Mr. Sands. "I spoke hastily,
for my nerves were a little frazzled.
"Now, boys, make yourselves comfortable and clean, and then come out
on the veranda and tell me the tale of the exciting trip."
It was an eager quartette of boys who responded to this invitation;
and when they finally started to relate their experiences, Mr. Sands
found it necessary to hear them in turn in order to get any clear
idea of connecting events.
At length, however, he had followed them on their trip south, in
imagination; had seen the panting tarpon on the deck of the _Arrow_;
had taken the winding waterways into the Everglades; had encountered
the revenue cutter and the filibuster; had watched through a night
of adventure with the scouts on picket duty; and had finally swung
safely through the dashing waves to the Life Saving Station.
"Well, boys, I little thought when I put you aboard Captain Lem's
sloop for a little cruise south that you would see so much variety
and excitement. But if you are not sorry, I am not. You are all
home again, safe and sound, and none the worse for your experiences.
Take it easy, now, for the rest of your stay here and have the best
time you can."
This advice the boys were not at all reluctant to follow. For a day
or two they lounged about the broad piazzas in hammocks and easy
chairs, reading books from Mr. Sands' well stocked library or from
Alec's own bookshelf.
On the second evening of this quiet home life, however, Billy's
uneasy spirit led him to say:
"Fellow scouts, I move you, sirs, that we take to the road. My hiking
muscles are aching for use. We have sailed and paddled and motored.
Now I propose, sirs, that we tramp."
"Second the motion!" echoed Chester.
"What do you think of the idea, Alec?" asked Hugh, turning to their
young host. "Will your father think we are ungrateful guests if we
go off for a day or two so soon after the cruise?"
"We'll plan a trip," replied Alec readily, "and submit the scheme
to him to-night. If he has no objections, we will telephone Mark
and ask him to join us, and perhaps Norton can go along, too."
Alec's suggestion was carried out, and Mr. Sands not only approved
the plan but added interest to it by producing some excellent road
maps and proposing a tour of adventure.
"Suppose," said he, "instead of traveling as one company, you divide
your forces, three of you taking one route and three another to
your night's camping place. Here is a good spot to camp,"
indicating it on the map, "and I will send the machine there with
the essential supplies so that you can 'hike' without being heavily
burdened. How does that strike you?"
"As being far better than our first plan," applauded Billy.
The other boys agreed enthusiastically, and the details were promptly
arranged.
Early the next morning, as the arching sky and gray waters began to
take on a rosy glow from the approaching sunrise, the automobile shot
out of the driveway between the palms and down the shell road in the
direction of Red Key, carrying Alec and Chester to meet Mark Anderson.
The whir of the motor drowned the twitterings of the awakening birds,
but could not dull the fresh odor of the jasmine, nor the beauty of
the flowering vines and dew-wet hedges.
Even Chester was stirred by the "newness" of the whole world.
"Cripes, Alec, as Captain Vinton would say, this morning air and the
view are worth crawling out at an unearthly hour to enjoy!" he
exclaimed. "That ocean looks about a million miles wide, too; you
can't even tell where the sky begins."
"There is Mark!" was Chester's next comment as the machine swung
around a curve that had hidden an intersecting road.
"'Morning, Mark," called Alec in greeting as the two boys jumped out
of the car to join the waiting lad. "Now we're off!"
He turned to the chauffeur, assuring himself that the man understood
the directions for reaching their camp with supplies late that
afternoon, and then fell into step with the other scouts for their
all-day hike. Beneath their feet the broken shells of the road
crackled, overhead the towering palms waved, near the roadside the
stiff grass bent noisily in the breeze, and around them momentarily
day grew clearer and brighter.
As the morning advanced and the boys strode on nearing the pine woods,
robins and bluebirds, shrikes and chewinks greeted them; and as they
stopped for luncheon near a broad, open trail in the barren woodland
a buzzard sailed above the tree-tops and peered at them curiously.
In the meantime Norton, Hugh and Billy had started promptly twenty
minutes after the departure of the machine. Billy was in high
spirits and declared that he scented adventure in the air. For
an hour, however, nothing occurred to disturb the peaceful sway
of Nature, and Billy was about to abandon his attitude of expectation.
Suddenly the stillness was broken by the uneven rattle of rapidly
moving wheels over the shell road. Then the clatter of pounding hoofs
further shattered the silence.
"It comes!" shouted Billy dramatically. Around a bend in the road
came a galloping white horse, old and lean, dragging at its heels a
reeling hurdy-gurdy cart.
Billy sprang for the horse's head. Almost at his touch the old
creature stopped submissively.
"The poor old nag is all in," said Billy sympathetically, patting
her quivering neck.
Meanwhile Hugh and Roy Norton had righted the music cart, and Hugh
impulsively seized the handle of the machine and turned it to test
its condition.
"Hi---yi---yi!"
A dark-skinned foreigner came into sight, running toward them down
the road.
He frowned at them darkly and dashed up to the old horse, swinging
a short whip threateningly. Before the lash could fall on the
still trembling beast, however, Hugh and Billy had sprung simultaneously
upon the man.
"None of that!" cried Hugh, wresting the whip from the man's grasp.
The infuriated foreigner turned upon him with an avalanche of rapid
words, struggling to break away from his captors.
At that Norton stepped into view before him. With a few gestures,
a few faltering Italian and French words, and with great calmness
and good nature, he managed to tell the man that his wagon was safe,
and that the boys were willing to let him go if he would not beat
the poor, tired, old horse.
Norton's manner, more than anything else, impressed the angry man.
His scowls gave way to a pleasant expression and he nodded
smilingly. The boys stepped back and the hurdy-gurdy driver busied
himself at once, testing the harness and wheels and even patting
the thin old nag.
Then he climbed upon his seat and gathered up the reins. Hugh
picked up the fallen whip and handed it to him. The dark foreigner
smiled suddenly and, reaching over, put the whip into its socket.
Then, clucking to his horse, he moved slowly down the road.
"Well, what do you think of that?" cried Billy, puzzled at the
sudden capitulation.
"That?" returned Norton. "That is a bit of southern Europe---tempest
and sunshine, rage and child-like faith combined."
"Like a small boy, he needed to be managed," said Hugh, "and you
knew how to do it."
With a new respect for Roy Norton, the two scouts joined him again
on their inland hike. But they did not forget the incident, nor did
they fail to relate it that evening to the other three boys, whom
they found already established at camp around a blazing fire.
The next morning the returning parties exchanged routes for the
homeward trip, but nothing more exciting was encountered than
glimpses of orange groves, of pine barrens, of cypress swamps,
and of numberless birds.
But their "hiking muscles" had been well exercised and they felt
nearer to the heart of Florida because of their long tramp.
There were a number of letters waiting for the boys, some from their
home people and others from the scouts who were enjoying the
"Geological Survey" at Pioneer Camp. These the boys shared, eagerly
discussing the news and wondering what plans would be made for the
fall and winter.
Some of the things that actually did happen the following fall are
related in "The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty, by Robert Shaler