MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL COUNCIL
And thus the new patrol was started.
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 "Hola!" the first meeting for the
formation of the Owl Patrol was held.
In virtue of his being already a boy scout with a year's training behind
him, Nixon Warren was elected patrol leader; and Leon Starr Chase who
still limped as a result of his reckless descent of that freak
pine-tree, was made second in rank with the title of corporal--or
assistant patrol leader.
Among the half-dozen spectators, leading men of the small town, who had
assembled to witness the inaugural doings at this first meeting and to
lend their approval to the new movement for the boys, there appeared one
who was lamer than Leon, his halting step being due to a year-old injury
which condemned him to limp somewhat for the remainder of his life.
This was Captain Andrew Davis, popularly known as Captain Andy, who had
been for thirty years a Gloucester fishing-skipper, one of the
present-day Vikings who sail forth from the Queen Fishing City at the
head of its blue harbor.
He had commanded one fine fishing-vessel after another, was known along
the water-front and among the fishing-fleet as a "crackerjack" and
"driver," with other more complimentary titles. He had got the better of
the sea in a hundred raging battles on behalf of himself and others. But
it partially worsted him at last by wrecking his vessel in what he
mildly termed a "November breeze"--in reality a howling hurricane--and
by laming him for life when at the height of the storm the schooner's
main-boom fell on him.
He was dragged forth from under it, half-dead, but, "game to the last,"
refused to be carried below. Lashed to the weather main-bitt--one of
the sawed-off posts rising from the vessel's deck to which the
main-sheet was made fast--in order to prevent his being swept overboard
by the great seas washing over that deck, he had kept barking out orders
and fighting for the lives of his crew so long as he could command a
breath.
"And I didn't lose a man, Doc!" he said long afterwards to his friend
and admirer, the Exmouth doctor, the hard-working physician with whose
long-suffering bell Leon had mischievously tampered. "I didn't lose a
man--only the vessel. When the gale blew down we had to take to the
dories, for she was just washing to pieces under us. Too bad: she was an
able vessel too! But I guess I'll have to 'take my medicine' for the
rest of my life--an' take it limping!"--with a rueful smile.
But the many waters through which he had passed had not quenched in
Captain Andy the chivalrous love for his human brothers. Rather did they
baptize and freshen it until it sprouted anew, after he took up his
residence ashore, in a paternal love for boys which kept his great heart
youthful in his massive, sixty-year-old body; and which kept him
hopefully dreaming, too, of deeds that shall be done by the sons now
being reared for Uncle Sam, that shall rival or outshine the knightly
feats of their fathers both on land and sea.
So he smiled happily, this grand old sea-scout, as, on the occasion of
the first meeting for the inauguration of the Boy Scout Movement, he
heaved his powerful frame into a seat beside his friend the doctor who
was equally interested in the new doings.
"Hi there, Doc!" said Captain Andy joyously, laying his hand, big and
warm as a tea-kettle, on the doctor's arm, "we're launching a new boat
for the boys to-night, eh? Seems to me that it's an able craft too--this
new movement--intended to keep the lads goin' ahead under all the sail
they can carry, and on a course where they'll get the benefit of the
best breezes, too."
"That's how it strikes me," returned the doctor. "If it will only keep
Starrie Chase, as they call him, sailing in an opposite direction to my
doorbell, I'm sure I shall bless it! D'you know, Andy," the gray-bearded
physician addressed the weatherbeaten sea-fighter beside him as he had
done when they were schoolboys together, "when I heard how that boy Leon
had sprained his ankle badly in the woods and that the family had sent
for me, I said: 'Serve him right! _Let_ him be tied by the leg for a
while and meditate on the mischief of his ways; I'm not going to see
him!' Of course, before the words were well out, I had picked up my bag
and was on my way to the Chase homestead!"
"Of course you were!" Captain Andy beamed upon his friend until his
large face with its coating of ruddy tan flamed like an aurora borealis
under the electric lights of the little town hall in which the first boy
scout meeting was held. "Trust you, Doc!"
The ex-skipper knew that no man of his acquaintance lived up to the
twelve points of the scout law in more thorough fashion than did this
country doctor, who never by day or night closed his ears against the
call of distress.
"I'll say this much for the young rascal, he was ashamed to see me bring
out my bandages"; the doctor now nodded humorously in the direction of
Leon Chase, who made one of a semicircle composed of Nixon, himself and
six other boys, at present seated round the young scoutmaster whom they
had chosen to be leader of the new movement in their town.
"But by and by his tongue loosened somewhat," went on the grizzled
medical man, "and he began to take me into his confidence about the
formation of this boy scout patrol; he seemed more taken up with that
than with what he called 'the thunderstorm in his ankle.' Leon isn't one
to knuckle under much to pain, anyhow! Somehow, as he talked, I began to
feel as if we hadn't been properly facing the problem of our boys in and
about this town, Andy."
"I see what you mean!" Captain Andrew nodded. "Leon is as full of tricks
as a tide rip in a gale o' wind. An' that's the most mischievous thing I
know!" with a reminiscent chuckle. "But what can you do? If a boy is
chockfull o' bubbling energy that's going round an' round in a whirl
inside him, like the rip, it's bound to boil over in mischief, if there
ain't a deep channel to draw it off."
"That's just it! Ours is a slow little town--not much doing for the
boys! Not even a male teacher in our graded schools to organize hikes
and athletics for them! I am afraid that more than one lad with no
natural criminal tendency, has got into trouble, been ultimately sent to
a reformatory, owing to a lack in the beginning of some outlet safe and
exciting for that surplus energy of which you speak. Take the case of
Dave Baldwin, for instance, son of that old Ma'am Baldwin who lives over
on the salt-marshes!" The doctor's face took on a sorry expression.
"There was nothing really bad in him, I think! Just too much tide rip!
He was the counterpart of this boy Leon, with a craving for excitement,
a wild energy in him that boiled over at times in irregular pranks--like
the rip--as you say."
"And you know what makes _that_ so dangerous?" Captain Andy's sigh was
heaved from the depths of past experience. "Well! with certain shoals
an' ledges in the ocean there's too much water crowded onto 'em at low
tide, so it just boils chock up from the bottom like a pot, goes round
and round in a whirl, strings out, foamy an' irregular, for miles. It's
'day, day!' to the vessel that once gets well into it, for you never
know where 'twill strike you.
"And it's pretty much the same with a lively boy, Doc: at low tide, when
there's nothing doing, too much o' something is crowded onto the ledges
in him, an' when it froths over, it gets himself and others into
trouble. Keep him interested--swinging ahead on a high tide of activity
under all the sail he can carry, and there's no danger of the rip
forming. That's what this Boy Scout Movement aims at, I guess! It looks
to me--my word! it _does_ look to me--as if Leon was already 'deepening
the water some,' to-night," wound up Captain Andy with a gratified
smile, scrutinizing the face of Starrie Chase, which was at this moment
marked by a new and purposeful eagerness as he discussed the various
requirements of the tenderfoot test, the elementary knowledge to be
mastered before the next meeting, ere he could take the scout oath, be
invested with the tenderfoot scout badge and be enrolled among the Boy
Scouts of America.
"A movement such as this might have been the saving of Dave Baldwin,"
sighed the Doctor. "He was always playing such wild tricks. People kept
warning him to 'cut it out' or he would surely get into trouble. But the
'tide rip' within seemed too much for him. No foghorn warnings made any
impression. I've been thinking lately of the saying of one wise man:
'Hitherto there has been too much foghorn and too little bugle in our
treatment of the boys!' Too much croaking at them: too little challenge
to advance! So I said to the new scoutmaster, Harry Estey, Colin's
brother," nodding toward a tall young man who was the centre of the
eager ring of boys, "I said, 'give Leon the _bugle_: give it to him
literally and figuratively: you'll need a bugler in your boy scout camp
and I'll pay for the lessons; it will be a better pastime for him than
fixing my doorbell.'"
"I hope 'twill keep him from tormenting that lonely old woman over on
the marshes; the boys of this town have made her life a burden to her,"
said Captain Andy, thinking of that female recluse "Ma'am Baldwin," to
whom allusion had been made by Colin and Coombsie on the memorable day
which witnessed their headstrong expedition into the woods. "She has
been regarded as fair game by them because she's a grain cranky an'
peculiar, owing to the trouble she's had about her son. He was the
youngest, born when she was middle-aged--perhaps she spoiled him a
little. Come to think of it, Doc, I saw the young scape-grace a few days
ago when I was down the river in my power-boat! He was skulking like a
fox round those Sugar-loaf Sand-Dunes near the bay."
"How did he look?"
"Oh, shrunken an' dirty, like a winter's day!" Captain Andy was
accustomed to the rough murkiness of a winter day on mid-ocean
fishing-grounds. "He made off when he saw me heading for him. He's
nothing but an idle vagrant now, who spends his time loafing between
those white dunes and the woods on t' other side o' the river. He got
work on a farm after he was discharged from the reformatory, but didn't
stick to it. Other fellows shunned him, I guess! Folks say that he's
been mixed up in some petty thefts of lumber from the shipyards lately,
others that he keeps a row-boat stowed away in the pocket of a little
creek near the dunes, and occasionally does smuggling in a small way
from a vessel lying out in the bay. But that's only a yarn! He couldn't
dodge the revenue officers. Anyhow, it's too bad that Dave should have
gone the way he has! He's only 'a boy of a man' yet, not more'n
twenty-three. When I was about that age I shipped on the same vessel
with Dave's father--she was a trawler bound for Gran' Banks--we made
more than one trip together on her. He was a white man; and--"
"_Captain Andy!_" A voice ringing and eager, the voice of the
scoutmaster of the new patrol who had just received his certificate from
headquarters, interrupted the captain's recollections of Dave Baldwin's
father. "Captain Andy, will you undertake to instruct these boys in
knot-tying, before our next meeting, so that they may be able to tie the
four knots which form part of the tenderfoot test, and be enrolled as
scouts two weeks from now?"
"Sakes! yes; I'll teach 'em. And if any one of 'em is such a lubber that
he won't set himself to learn, why, I'll spank him with a dried codfish
as if I had him aboard a fishing-vessel. Belay that!"
And the ex-skipper's eye roved challengingly toward the scout recruits
from under the heavy lid and short bristling eyelashes which overhung
its blue like a fringed cloud-bank.
The threat was welcomed with an outburst of laughter.
"And, Doctor, will you give us some talks on first-aid to the injured,
after we get the new patrol fairly started?" Scoutmaster Estey, Colin's
elder brother, looked now at the busy physician, who, with Captain Andy
and other prominent townsmen, including the clergymen of diverse creeds,
was a member of the local council of the Boy Scouts of America which had
been recently formed in the little town.
"Yes; you may rely on me for that. But"--here the doctor turned
questioningly toward the weather beaten sea-captain, his neighbor--"I
thought the new patrol, the Owl Patrol as they have named it, was to
consist of eight boys, and I see only seven present to-night. There's
that tall boy, Nixon Warren, who's visiting here, and Mark Coombs, his
cousin; then there's Leon Chase, Colin Estey, Kenjo Red, otherwise
Kenneth Jordan," the doctor smiled at the red head of a sturdy-looking
lad of fourteen, "Joe Sweet, commonly called Sweetsie, and Evan Macduff.
But where's the eighth Owl, Andy? Isn't he fledged yet?"
"I guess not! I think they'll have to tackle him in private before they
can enlist him." The narrow rift of blue which represented Captain
Andy's eye under the cloud-bank glistened. "You'll never guess who they
have fixed upon for the eighth Owl, Doc. Why! that frightened boy, Ben
Greer's son, who lives on the little farm-clearing in the woods with his
gran'father and a Canadian farmhand whom Old Man Greer hires for the
summer an' fall."
"Not Harold Greer? You don't mean that abnormally shy an' timid boy whom
the children nickname the 'Hare'? Why! I had to supply a certificate for
him so that he could be kept out of school. It made him worse to go,
because the other boys teased him so cruelly."
"Jus' so! But that brand o' teasing is ruled out under the scout law. A
scout is a brother to every other scout. I guess the idea of trying to
get Harold enlisted in the Boy Scouts and thereby waking him up a
little an' gradually showing him what 'bugaboos' his fears are,
originated with that lad from Philadelphia, Nix Warren, who, as I
understand, showed himself to be quite a fellow in the woods, starting a
friction fire with rubbing-sticks an' doing other stunts which caused
his companions to become head over heels interested in this new
movement."
"But how did _he_ get interested in Harold Greer?" inquired the doctor.
"Well, as they trudged through the woods on that day when they made
circus guys of themselves at Varney's Paintpot, and subsequently got
lost, they passed the Greer farm and saw Harold who hid behind that
French-Canadian, Toiney, when he saw them coming. Apparently it struck
Nix, seeing him for the first time, what a miserable thing it must be
for the boy himself to be afraid of everything an' nothing. So he set
his heart on enlisting Harold in the new patrol. He, Nix, wants to pass
the test for becoming a first-class scout: to do this he must enlist a
recruit trained by himself in the requirements of a tenderfoot; and he
is going to try an' get near to Harold an' train him--Nixon's cousin,
Mark Coombs, Marcoo, as they call him, told me all about it."
"Well, I like that!" The doctor's face glowed. "Though I'm afraid
they'll have difficulty in getting the eighth Owl sufficiently fledged
to show any plumage but the white feather!" with a sorry smile. "I pity
that boy Harold," went on the medical man, "because he has been hampered
by heredity and in a way by environment too. His mother was a very
delicate, nervous creature, Andy. She was a prey to certain fears, the
worst of which was one which we doctors call 'cloister fobia,' which
means that she had a strange dread of a crowd, or even of mingling with
a small group of individuals. As you know, her husband, like Dave
Baldwin's father, was a Gloucester fisherman, whose home was in these
parts. During his long absences at sea, she lived alone with her
father-in-law, her little boy Harold and one old woman in that little
farmhouse on the clearing. And I suppose every time that the wind howled
through the woods she had a fresh fit of the quakes, thinking of her
husband away on the foggy fishing-grounds."
"Yes! I guess at such times the women suffer more than we do," muttered
Captain Andy, thinking of his dead wife.
"Well!" the doctor cleared his throat, "after Harold's mother received
the news that her husband's vessel was lost with all hands, on Quero
Bank, when her little boy was about five years old, she became more
unbalanced; she wouldn't see any of her relatives even, if she could
avoid it, save those who lived in the house with her. I attended her
when she was ill and begged her to try and get the better of her
foolishness for her boy's sake--or to let me send him away to a school
of some kind. Both Harold's grandfather and she opposed the latter idea.
She lived until her son was nine years old; by that time she had
communicated all her queer dread of people--and a hundred other scares
as well--to him. But in my opinion there's nothing to prevent his
becoming in time a normal boy under favorable conditions where his
companions would help him to fight his fears, instead of fastening them
on him--conditions under which what we call his 'inhibitory power of
self-control' would be strengthened, so that he could command his
terrified impulses. And if the Boy Scout Movement can, under God, do
this, Andy, why then I'll say--I'll say that knighthood has surely in
our day come again--that Scout Nixon Warren has sallied forth into the
woods and slain a dragon more truly, perhaps, than ever did Knight of
the Round Table by whose rules the boy scouts of to-day are governed!"
The doctor's last words were more to himself than to his companion, and
full of the ardor of one who was a dragon-fighter "from way back": day
by day, for years, he had grappled with the many-clawed dragons of pain
and disease, often taking no reward for his labors.
As his glance studied one and another of the seven boyish faces now
forming an eager ring round the tall scoutmaster, while the date of the
next meeting--the great meeting at which eight new recruits were to take
the scout oath--was being discussed, he was beset by the same feeling
which had possessed Colin Estey on that September morning in the Bear's
Den. Namely, that the Owl Patrol would have a big contract on hand if it
was to get the better of that mischievous "tide rip" in Leon and prove
to the handicapped "Hare" what imaginary bugaboos were his fears!
But Leon's face in its purposeful interest plainly showed that,
according to Captain Andy's breezy metaphor, to-night he was really
deepening the water in which his boyish bark floated, drawing out from
the shoals among which he had drifted after a manner too trifling for
his age and endowment.
And so the doctor felt that there _might_ be hope for the eighth Owl
chosen, and not present, being still a scared fledgling on that little
farm-clearing in the woods, having never yet shaken a free wing, but
only the craven white feather.