THE BOWLINE KNOT
Scout Nixon Warren, henceforth to be known as the patrol leader of the
Owls, was himself possessed by the excited feeling that he was faring
forth, into the October woods to tackle a dragon--the obstinate
Hobgoblin of confirmed Fear--when on the day following that first boy
scout meeting in Exmouth he took his way, accompanied by Coombsie, over
the heaving uplands that lay between the salt-marshes and the woodland.
Thence, through thick grove and undergrowth, they tramped to the little
farm-clearing, where they had come upon Toiney and the dead raccoon.
Nixon had arrayed himself in the full bravery of his scout uniform
to-day, hoping that it might attract the attention of the frightened boy
whose interest he wished to capture.
The October sun burnished his metal buttons, with the oxidized silver
badge upon his left arm beneath the white bars of the patrol leader,
and the white stripe at his wrist recording his one year's service as a
scout.
Because of the impression they hoped to produce, Marcoo too had donned
the uniform, minus stripes and badge--the latter he would not be
entitled to wear until after the all-important next meeting when, on his
passing the tenderfoot test, the scoutmaster would pin it on his shirt,
but reversed until he should have proved his right to wear that badge of
chivalry by the doing of some initial good turn.
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?"
Toiney was indeed full to the brim and bubbling over with the primitive,
zestful joy of life as he toiled upon the little woodland farm, cutting
off withered cornstalks from a patch which earlier in the season had
been golden with fine yellow maize of his planting. His lithe, energetic
figure focused the sun rays which loved to play over his knitted cap of
dingy red, with a bobbing tassel, over the rough blue shirt of homespun
flannel, and upon the queer heelless high boots of rough unfinished
leather, with puckered moccasin-like feet, in which he could steal
through the woods well-nigh as noiselessly as the dog-fox himself.
As the two scouts emerged into the open he was singing to the sunbeams
and to the timid human "Hare" who basked in his brightness, a funny
little fragment of song which he illustrated as though he had a sling in
his hand and were letting fly a missile:--
"Gaston Gue, si j'avais ma fron-de,
Gaston Gue, je te l'aurais fron-de!"
This he translated for Harold's benefit:--
"Gaston Gue, if I haf ma sling,
Gaston Gue, at you I vould fling!"
"Well! you needn't 'fling' at us, Toiney," laughed Nixon, stepping
forward with a bold front. "Hullo! Harold!" he added in what he meant to
be a most winning tone.
"Hullo, Harold! How are _you_?" supplemented Marcoo in accents equally
sugared.
But the abnormally timid boy, with the pointed chin and slightly
rodent-like face, only made an indistinguishable sound in his throat and
slunk behind some bushes on the edge of the corn-patch.
Toiney, on the other hand, was never backward in responding vivaciously
to a friendly greeting.
"Houp-e-la!" he explained in bantering astonishment as he surveyed the
two scouts in the uniform which was strange to him. "_Houp-e-la!_ We
arre de boy! We arre de stuff, I guess, engh?" He pointed an earthy
forefinger at the figures in khaki, his black eyes sparkling with
whimsical flattery. "But, _comment_, you'll no come for go in gran'
foret agen, dat's de tam' you'll get los' agen--hein?"
"No, we're not going any farther into the woods to-day. We came to see
_him_." Nixon nodded in the direction of Harold skulking timidly behind
the berry bushes. "We want to speak to him about something."
"Ah--misericorde--he'll no speak on you; he's a _poltron_, a scaree:
some tam' I'll be so shame for heem I'll feel lak' cry!" returned
Toiney, moved to voluble frankness, his eye glistening like a moist
bead, now, with mortified pity. "Son gran'pere--hees gran'fader--he's
go on town dis day: he's try ver' hard for get heem to go also--for to
see! Mais, _non_! He's too scaree!" And the speaker, glancing toward the
screen of bushes, shrugged his shoulders despairingly, as if asking what
could possibly be done for such a craven.
Scout Nixon was not baffled. Persistent by nature, he had worked well
into the fibre of his being the tenth point of the scout law: that
defeat, or the semblance thereof, must not down the true scout.
"Then I'll talk to you first, Toiney," he said, "and tell you about
something that we think might help him."
And in the simplest English that he could choose, eked out at intervals
with freshman French, he made clear to Toiney's quick understanding the
aim and methods of the Boy Scout Movement.
The Canadian, a born son of the woods, was quick to grasp and commend
the return to Nature.
"_Ca c'est b'en!_" he murmured with an approving nod. "I'll t'ink dat
iss good for boy to go in gran' foret--w'en he know how fin' de way--for
see heem beeg tree en de littal wil' an-ni-mal, engh? Mais,
miseri-corde,"--his shrugging shoulders pumped up a huge sigh as he
turned toward Harold,--"mis-eri-corde! _he'll_ no marche as
_eclaireur_--w'at-you-call-eet--scoutee--hein? He'll no go on meetin' or
on school, engh?"
And Toiney set to work cutting down cornstalks again as if the subject
were unhappily disposed of.
Such was not the case, however. At one word which he, the blue-shirted
woodsman, had used in his harangue, Nixon started, and a strange look
shot across his face. He knew enough of French to translate literally
that word _eclaireur_, the French military term for scout. He knew that
it meant figuratively a light-spreader: one who marches ahead of his
comrades to enlighten the others.
Could any term be more applicable to the peace scout of to-day who is
striving to bring in an advanced era of progress and good will?
Somehow, it stimulated in Scout Warren the desire to be an _eclaireur_
in earnest to the darkened boy overshadowed by his bugbear fears, now
skulking behind the berry-bushes.
"I guess it's no use our trying to get hold of him," Coombsie was saying
meanwhile in his cousin's ear. "See that old dame over there, Nix?" he
pointed to a portly, elderly woman with an immense straw hat tied down,
sunbonnet fashion, over her head. "Well! she took care of Harold's
mother before she died; now she keeps house for his grandfather, and
she, that old woman, told my mother that up to the time Harold was seven
years old he would often run and hide his head in her lap of an evening
as it was coming on dark. And when she asked what frightened him he said
that he was 'afraid of the stars'! Just fancy! Afraid of the stars as
they came out above the clearing here!"
"Gee whiz! What do you know about that?" exclaimed Nixon with a rueful
whistle: that dark hobgoblin, Fear, was more absurdly entrenched than he
had thought possible.
Yet Harold's seemed more than ever a case in which the scout who could
once break down the wall of shyness round him might prove a true
_eclaireur_: so he advanced upon the timid boy and addressed him with a
honeyed mildness which made Coombsie chuckle and gasp, "Oh, sugar!"
under his breath; though Marcoo set himself to second his patrol
leader's efforts to the best of his ability.
Together they sought to decoy Harold into a conversation, asking him
questions about his life, whether he ever went into the woods with
Toiney or played solitary games on the clearing. They intimated that
they knew he was "quite a boy" if he'd only make friends with them and
not be so stand-offish; and they tried to inveigle him into a simple
game of tag or hide-and-seek among the bushes as a prelude to some more
exciting sport such as duck-on-a-rock or prisoner's base.
But the hapless "_poltron_" only answered them in jerky monosyllables,
cowering against the bushes, and finally slunk back to the side of the
blue-shirted farmhand with whom he had become familiar--whose merry
songs could charm away the dark spirit of fear--and there remained,
hovering under Toiney's wing.
"I knew that it would be hard to get round him," said Marcoo
thoughtfully. "Until now all the boys whom he has met have picked on an'
teased him. Suppose you turn your attention to _me_ for a while, Nix!
Suppose you were to make a bluff of teaching me some of the things that
a fellow must learn before he can enlist as a tenderfoot scout! Perhaps,
then, he'd begin to listen an' take notice. I've got a toy flag in my
pocket; let's start off with that!"
"Good idea! You do use your head for something more than a hat-rack,
Marcoo!" The patrol leader relapsed with a relieved sigh into his
natural manner. "I brought an end of rope with me; I thought we might
have got along to teaching him how to tie one or other of the four knots
which form part of the tenderfoot test. You take charge of the rope-end.
And don't lose it if you want to live!"
He passed the little brown coil to his cousin and receiving in return
the miniature Stars and Stripes, went through a formal flag-raising
ceremony there on the sunny clearing. Tying the toy flag-staff to the
top of his tall scout's staff, he planted the latter in some soft earth;
then both scouts stood at attention and saluted Old Glory, after which
they passed and repassed it at marching pace, each time removing their
broad-brimmed hats with much respect and an eye on Harold to see if he
was taking notice.
Subsequently the patrol leader stationed himself by the impromptu
flagstaff, and delivered a simple lecture to Coombsie upon the history
and composition of the National Flag; a knowledge of which, together
with the proper forms of respect due to that starry banner, would enter
into his examination for tenderfoot scout.
Both were hoping that some crumbs of information--some ray of patriotic
enthusiasm--might be absorbed by Harold, the boy who had never been to
school, and who had scantily profited by some elementary and
intermittent lessons in reading and writing from his grandfather. His
brown eyes, shy as any rodent's, watched this parade curiously. But
though Toiney tried to encourage him by precept and gesticulation to
follow the boy scouts' example and salute the Flag, plucking off his own
tasseled cap and going through a dumb pantomime of respect to it, the
"scaree" could not be moved from his shuffling stolidity.
The starry flaglet waving from the scout's planted staff, might have
been a gorgeous, drifting leaf from the surrounding woods for all the
attention he paid to it!
"Say! but it's hard to land him, isn't it?" Nixon suspended the parade
with a sigh almost of despair. "Well, here goes, for one more attempt to
get him interested! Chuck me that rope-end, Marcoo! I'll show you how to
tie a bowline knot; perhaps, as his father was a sailor--a deep-sea
fisherman--knot-tying may be more in his line than flag-raising."
The next minute Coombsie's fingers were fumbling with the rope rather
blunderingly, for Marcoo was by nature a bookworm and more efficient
along lines of abstract study than at anything requiring manual skill.
"Pass the end up through the bight," directed Scout Warren when the
bight or loop had been formed upon the standing part of the rope. "I
said _up_, not down, jackass! Now, pass it round the 'standing part';
don't you know what that means? Why! the long end of the rope on which
you're working. Oh! you're a dear donkey," nodding with good-humored
scorn.
Now both the donkey recruit and the instructing scout had become for the
moment genuinely absorbed in the intricacies of that bowline knot, and
forgot that this was not intended as a _bona-fide_ lesson, but as mere
"show off" to awaken the interest of a third person.
Their tail-end glances were no longer directed furtively at Harold to
see whether or not he was beginning to "take notice."
So they missed the first quiver of a peculiar change in him; they did
not see that his sagging chin was suddenly reared a little as if by the
application of an invisible bearing-rein.
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 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"!
"I--I can do that! I c-can do it--b-better than he can!" Stuttering and
trembling in a strange paroxysm of eagerness, the _poltron_ addressed,
in a nervous squawk, not the absorbed scouts, but Toiney, his friend and
protector.
"I can t-tie it better'n _he_ does! I know--I know I can!" The shrill
boyish voice which seemed suddenly to dominate every other sound on the
clearing was hoarse with derision as the abnormally shy and timid boy
pointed a trembling finger at Marcoo still, like a "dear donkey,"
blundering with the rope-end.
Had the gray rabbit, which suddenly at that moment whisked out of the
woods and across a distant corner, opened its mouth and addressed them,
the surprise to the two scouts could scarcely have been greater.
"Oh! _you can_, can you?" said Nixon thickly. "Let's see you try!" He
placed the rope-end in Harold's hand, which received it with a fondling
touch.
"Here you make a small loop on this part of the rope, leaving a good
long end," he began coolly, while his heart bounded, for the spark in
the furtive eye of the twelve-year-old "scaree" was rapidly becoming a
scintillation: the scouts had struck fire from him at last.
A triumph beside which the signal achievement of their friction fire in
the woods paled!
The intangible dragon which held their brother boy a captive on this
lonely clearing, not permitting him to mingle freely with his fellows
for study or play, was weakening before them.
"That's right, Harold! Go ahead: now pass the end up through the loop!
Bravo, you're the boy! Now, around the standing part--the rope
itself--and down again! Good: you have it. You can beat _him_ every time
at tying a knot: he's just a blockhead, isn't he?"
And Scout Warren pointed with much show of scorn at Marcoo, the normal
recruit, who looked on delightedly. Never before did boy rejoice so
unselfishly over being beaten at a test as Coombsie then! For right here
on the little farm-clearing a strange thing had happened.
In the gloom of every beclouded mind there is one chink by which light,
more or less, may enter; and a skillful teacher can work an improvement
by enlarging that chink.
Harold's brain was not darkened in the sense of being defective. And the
gray tent of fear in which he dwelt had its chink too; the scouts had
found it in the frayed rope-end and knot.
For while the timid boy watched Coombsie's bungling fingers, that drab
knot, upon which they blundered, suddenly beckoned to him like a star.
And, all in a moment, it was no longer his fear-stricken mother who
lived in him, but his daring fisherman-father whose horny fingers could
tie every sailor's knot that was ever heard of, and who had used that
bowline noose in many an emergency at sea to save a ship-wrecked
fellow-creature.
The bowline was the means of saving the fisherman's son now from mental
shipwreck, or something nearly as bad. Harold's eager thoughts became
entangled in it, while his fingers worked under Nixon's directions; he
forgot, for once, to be afraid.
Presently the noose was complete, and Nixon was showing him how to
tighten it by pulling on the standing part of the rope.
This achieved, the timid human "Hare" raised his brown eyes from the
rope in his hand and looked from one to another of his three companions
as in a dream, a bright one.
For half a minute a rainbowed--almost awed--silence held the three upon
the clearing. Toiney was the first to break it. He flung his arms
rapturously round the hitherto fear-bound boy.
"Bravo! mo' fin," he cried, embracing Harold as his "cute one." "Bravo!
mo' smarty. Grace a bon Dieu, you ain' so scare anny longere! You go for
be de boy--de brave boy--you go for be de scout--engh?" His eyes were
wet and winking as if, now indeed, he felt "lak' cry"!
"Certainly, you're going to be a scout, Harold," corroborated Nixon,
equally if not so eloquently moved. "Now! don't you want to learn how to
tie another knot, the fisherman's bend? You ought to be able to tie
that, you know, because your father was a great fisherman."
Harold was nothing loath. More and more his father's spirit flashed
awake in him. Through the rest of that afternoon, which marked a new era
in his life, he seemed to work with his father's fingers, while the
October sky glowed in radiant tints of saffron and blue, and a light
breeze skipped through the pine-trees and the brilliant maples that
flamed at intervals like lamps around the clearing.
"We'll come again to-morrow or the day after, Harold, and teach you more
'stunts'; I mean some other things, besides knot-tying, that a boy ought
to know how to do," said Nixon as a filmy haze hovering over the edges
of the woods warned them that it bore evening on its dull blue wings.
"Aw right!" docilely agreed Harold; and though he shuffled his feet
timidly, like the "poltron" or craven, which Toiney had in sorrow called
him, there was a shy longing in his face which said that he was sorry
the afternoon was over, that he would look for the return of his new
friends, the only boys who had ever racked their brains to help and not
to hurt him.
Before their departure he had learned how to tie three knots, square or
reef, bowline and the fisherman's bend. He had likewise admitted two
more persons within the narrow enclosure of his confidence--the two who
were to liberate him, the _eclaireurs_, the peace scouts of to-day.
And, for the first time in his life, he had awkwardly lifted his cap and
saluted the flag of his country as it waved in miniature from the
planted staff.
That afternoon was the first of several spent by Scout Warren and his
aide-de-camp, Coombsie, on the little farm-clearing in the woods, trying
to foster a boyish spirit in Harold, to overcome his dread of mingling
with other boys, to awaken in him the desire to become a boy scout and
share the latter's good times at indoor meeting, on hike, or in camp.
When the date of the second meeting drew near at which seven new
recruits were to take the scout oath and be formally organized into the
Owl Patrol, they had obtained the promise of this timid fledgling to be
present under Toiney's wing, and enlist, too.
"I wonder whether he'll keep his word or if he'll fight shy of coming at
the last minute?" whispered Nixon to Coombsie on the all-important
evening when the other recruits led by their scoutmaster marched into
the modest town hall, a neutral ground where all of diverse creeds might
meet, and where the members of the local council, including the doctor
and Captain Andy, had already assembled.
"If he doesn't show up, Nix, you won't be able to pass the twelfth point
of test for becoming a first-class scout by producing a recruit trained
by yourself in the requirements of a tenderfoot," suggested Marcoo.
"You've passed all the active tests, haven't you?"
Scout Warren nodded, keeping an anxious eye on the door. Having been
duly transferred from his Philadelphia troop to the new patrol which had
just been organized in this tide-lapped corner of Massachusetts--where
it seemed probable now that he would spend a year at least, as his
parents contemplated a longer stay in Europe--he had already passed the
major part of his examination for first-class scout before the Scout
Commissioner of the district.
He was an expert in first-aid and primitive cooking. He had prepared a
fair map of a certain section of the marshy country near the tidal
river. He could state upon his honor that he had accurately judged with
his eye a certain distance in the woods--namely, from the top of that
towering red-oak-tree which, when lost, he had chosen as a lookout
point, to the cave called the Bear's Den--on the never-to-be-forgotten
day when four painted boys and a dog finally took refuge in that rocky
cavern; the boy scout's judgment of the distance being subsequently
confirmed by lumbermen who knew every important tree in that section of
the woods.
He had passed tests in swimming, tree-felling, map-reading, and so
forth! But he would not be entitled to wear, instead of the second-class
scout badge, the badge of the first-class rank, beneath the two white
bars of the patrol leader upon his left arm, until he produced the
tenderfoot whom he had trained.
But would that timid recruit from the little woodland clearing--that
half-fledged Owlet--appear?
"Suppose he should 'funk it' at the last minute?" whispered Marcoo
tragically to the patrol leader. "No! No! As I'm alive! here they
come--Toiney, with Harold in tow. Blessings on that Canuck!" he added
fervently.
It was a strange-looking pair who now entered the little town hall:
Toiney, in a rough gray sweater and those heelless high boots, removing
his tasseled cap and depositing in a corner the lantern which had guided
him with his charge through the woods, as facile to him by night as by
day; and Harold, timidly clinging to his arm.
The brown eyes of the latter rolled up in panic as he beheld the big
lighted room wherein the boy scouts and those interested in them were
assembled. All his mother's unbalanced fear of a crowd returning upon
him in full force, he would have fled, but for Toiney's firm
imprisonment of his trembling arm, and for Toiney's voice encouraging
him gutturally with:--
"Tiens! mo' beau. _Courage!_ Gard' donc de scout wit' de flag on she's
hand! V'la! V'la!" pointing to Nixon, the patrol leader, supporting the
Stars and Stripes. "Bon courage! you go for be de scout too--engh?"
His country's flag, blooming into magnificence under the electric light,
had, to-night, a smile for Harold, as he saw it the centre of saluting
boys.
Something of his brave father's love for that National Ensign, the
"Color" as the fisherman called it, which had presided over so many
crises of that father's life, as when on a gala day in harbor he ran it
to the masthead, or twined it in the rigging, at sea, to speak another
vessel, or sorrowfully hoisted it at half-mast for a shipmate
drowned,--something of that loving reverence now began to blossom in
Harold's heart like a many-tinted flower!
"Well! here you are, Harold." Coombsie was promptly taking charge of the
new arrival, piloting him, with Toiney, to a seat. "I knew you'd come;
you've got the right stuff in you; eh?"
It was feeble "stuff" at the moment, and in danger of melting into an
open attempt at flight; for Harold's eyes had turned from the benignant
flag to the figure of Leon Chase.
But Leon had little opportunity, and less desire, to harass him
to-night.
For, as the kernel of the initiatory proceedings was reached, the first
of the seven new recruits to hold up the three fingers of his right hand
and take the scout oath was Starrie Chase:--
"On my honor I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my
country, and to obey the scout law: To help other people at all
times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally
straight."
Captain Andy cleared his throat as he listened, and the doctor wiped his
glasses.
Then, as corporal or second in command of the new patrol, Leon stood
holding aloft the brand-new flag of that patrol--a great, horned
hoot-owl, the Grand Duke of the neighboring woods, embroidered on a blue
ground by Colin's mother--while his brother recruits, having each passed
the tenderfoot test, took the oath and were enrolled as duly fledged
Owls.
Harold, the timid fledgling, came last. Supported on either side by his
sponsors, Nixon and Coombsie, he distinguished himself by tying the four
knots which formed part of the test with swiftness and skill, and by
"muddling" through the rest of the examination, consent having been
obtained from headquarters that some leniency in the matter of answers
might be shown to this handicapped boy who had never been to school and
for whom--as for Leon--the Boy Scout Movement might prove The Thing.
Captain Andy declared it to be "The Thing" when later that night he was
called upon for a speech.
"Boys!" he said, heaving his massive figure erect, the sky-blue rift of
his eye twinkling under the cloudy lid. "Boys! it's an able craft, this
new movement, if you'll only buckle to an' work it well. And it's a
hearty motto you have: BE PREPARED. Prepared to help yourselves, so that
you can stand by to help others! Lads,"--the voice of the old
sea-fighter boomed blustrously,--"there comes a time to 'most every one
who isn't a poor-hearted lubber, when he wants to help somebody else
more than he ever wanted to help himself; and if he hasn't made the most
o' what powers he has, why! when that Big Minute comes he won't be 'in
it.' Belay that! Make it fast here!" tapping his forehead. "Live up to
your able motto an' pretty soon you'll find yourselves going ahead under
all the sail you can carry; an' you won't be trying to get a corner on
the breeze either, or to blanket any other fellow's sails! Rather,
you'll show him the road an' give him a tow when he needs it. God bless
you! So long!"
And when the wisdom of the grand old sea-scout had been cheered to the
echo, the eight members of the new patrol, rallying round their Owl
flag, broke into the first verse of their song, a part of which Nixon
had sung to them by the camp-fire in the woods:--
"No loyal Scout gives place to doubt,
But action quick he shows!
Like a knight of old he is brave and bold,
And chivalry he knows.
Then hurrah for the brave, hurrah for the good!
Hurrah for the pure in heart!
At duty's call, with a smile for all,
The Scout will do his part!"
"Sing! Harold. Do your part, and sing!" urged Nixon, the patrol leader.
"Oh, go on: that isn't a scout's mouth, Harold!" looking at the weak
brother's fear-tightened lips. "A scout's mouth turns up at the corners.
Smile, Harold! Smile and sing."
A minute later Scout Warren's own features were wreathed by a smile,
humorous, moved, glad--more glad than any which had illumined his face
hitherto--for by his side the boy who had once feared the stars as they
stole out above the clearing, was singing after him:--
"Hurrah for the sun, hurrah for the storm!
Hurrah for the stars above!"
"He's going to make a good scout, some time; don't you think so, Cap?"
Nixon, glancing down at the timid "poltron," nudged Captain Andy's arm.
"Aye, aye! lad, I guess he will, when you've put some more backbone into
him," came the optimistic answer.
But Captain Andy's gaze did not linger on Harold. The keen search-light
of his glance was trained upon Leon--upon Corporal Chase, who, judging
by the new and lively purpose in his face, had to-night, indeed, through
the channel of his scout oath, "deepened the water in which he floated,"
as he stood holding high the royal-blue banner of the Owl Patrol.