GODEY PECK
That stirring initiation meeting was the forerunner of others thereafter
held weekly in the small town hall, when the members of the new patrol
had their bodies developed, stiffened into manly erectness by a good
drill and various rousing indoor games, while their minds were expanded
by the practice of various new and exciting "stunts" as Leon called
them.
To Starrie Chase the most interesting of these in which he soon became
surprisingly proficient was the flag-signaling, transmitting or
receiving a message to or from a brother scout stationed at the other
end of the long hall. Spelling out such a message swiftly, letter by
letter, with the two little red and white flags, according to either the
semaphore or American Morse code, had a splendid fascination for him.
More exciting still was it when on some dark fall evening, at the end of
the Saturday afternoon hike, he gathered with his brother scouts around
a blazing camp-fire on the uplands, with the pale gray ribbon of the
tidal river dimly unrolling itself beyond the low-lying marshes, and the
scoutmaster would suggest that he should try some outdoor signaling to
another scout stationed on a distant hillock, using torches, two red
brands from the fire, one in each hand, instead of the regulation flags.
"Oh! but this is in-ter-est-ing; makes a fellow feel as if he were
'going some'!" Starrie would declare to himself in an ecstatic drawl,
as, first his right arm, then his left, manipulated the rosy firebrands,
while his keen eyes could barely discern the black silhouette of his
brother Owl's figure on its distant mound, as he spelled out a brief
message.
It certainly was "going." There was progress here: exciting progress.
Growth which made the excitement squeezed out of his former pranks seem
tame and childish!
And more than one resident of the neighborhood--including Dave Baldwin's
old mother, who lived alone in her shallow, baldfaced house, almost
denuded of paint by the elements, at a bleak point where upland and
salt-marsh met--drew a free breath and thanked God for a respite.
In addition to the indoor signaling there were talks on first-aid to
the injured by the busy doctor and on seamanship by Captain Andy whose
big voice had a storm-burr clinging to it in which, at exciting moments,
an intent ear could almost catch the echo of the gale's roar, of raging
seas, shrieking rigging and slatting sails--all the wild orchestra of
the storm-king.
Then there were the Saturday hikes, and once in a while the week-end
camping-out in the woods from Friday evening to Saturday night, whenever
Scoutmaster Estey, Colin's much-admired brother, could obtain a forenoon
holiday, in addition to the customary Saturday afternoon, from the
office where he worked as naval architect, or expert designer of
fishing-vessels, in connection with a shipbuilding yard on the river.
A notable figure in relation to the scouts' outdoor life was Toiney
Leduc, the French-Canadian farmhand. As time progressed he became an
inseparable part of it.
For Harold, the abnormally timid boy, for whom it was hoped that the new
movement would do much, was inseparable from him: Harold would not come
to scout meeting or march on hike without Toiney, although with his
brother Owls and their scoutmaster he was already beginning to emerge
from his shadowy fears like a beetle from the grub.
In time he would no doubt fully realize what impotent bugaboos were his
vague terrors, and would be reconciled to the world at large through the
medium of the Owl Patrol.
Already there was such an improvement in his health and spirits that his
grandfather raised Toiney's wages on condition that he would consent to
work all the year round on the little farm-clearing, and no longer spend
his winters at some loggers' camp, tree-felling, in the woods.
Moreover Old Man Greer, to whom the abnormal condition of his only
grandson had been a sore trial, was willing and glad to spare Toiney's
services as woodland guide to the boy scouts, including Harold, whenever
they were required for a week-end excursion.
And so much did those eight scouts learn from this primitive woodsman,
who could not command enough English to say "Boo!" straight, according
to Leon, but who understood the language and track-prints of bird and
animal as if they the shy ones had taught him, that by general petition
of all members of the new patrol, Toiney was elected assistant
scoutmaster, and duly received his emblazoned certificate from
headquarters.
His presence and songs lent a primitive charm to many a camp-fire
gathering; no normal boy could feel temporarily dull in his company, for
Toiney, besides being an expert in woodlore and a good trailer, was
essentially a _bon enfant_, or jolly child, at heart, meeting every
experience with the blithe faith that, somehow--somewhere--he would come
out on top.
In the woods his songs were generally inaudible, locked up in his heart
or throat, though occasionally they escaped to his lips which would move
silently in a preliminary canter, then part to emit a gay bar or two, a
joyous "Tra la la ... la!" or:--
"Rond', Rond', Rond', peti' pie pon' ton'!"
But on these occasions the strain rarely soared above a whisper and was
promptly suspended lest it should startle any wild thing within hearing,
while he led his boy scouts through the denser woods with the skill and
stealth of the Indian whose wary blood mingled very slightly with the
current in his veins.
Those were mighty moments for the young scoutmaster and members of the
Owl Patrol when they "lay low," crouching breathlessly in some thicket,
with Toiney, prostrate on his face and hands, a little in advance of
them, his black eyes intent upon a fox-path, a mere shadow-track such as
four of their number had seen on that first memorable day in the woods,
where only the lightly trampled weeds or an occasional depression in
some little bush told their assistant scoutmaster, whom nothing escaped,
that some airy-footed animal was in the habit of passing there from
burrow to hunting-ground.
The waiting was sometimes long and the enforced silence irksome to
youthful scouts; there were times when it oppressed one or other of the
boys like a steel cage against the bars of which his voice, like a
rebellious bird, dashed itself in some irrepressible sound, a
pinched-off cry or smothered whistle.
But that always drew a backward hiss of "Mak' you s-silent! W'at for you
spik lak dat?" from the advance scout, Toiney, or a clipped, sarcastic
"_T'as pas besoin_ to shoutee--engh?"
And the needless semi-shout was repressed next time by the reprimanded
one, many a lesson in self-control being learned thereby.
[Illustration: "MAK' YOU S-SILENT! W'AT FOR YOU SPIK LAK DAT?"]
More than once patience was at last rewarded by a glimpse of the
trotting traveler, the sly red fox, maker of that shadow-path: of its
sandy coat, white throat, large black ears, and the bushy, reddish tail,
with milk-white tip, the "flag" as woodsmen call it.
Instinctively on such occasions Leon at first yearned for his gun, his
old "fuzzee," with which he had worked havoc--often purposeless and
excessive--among shore birds, and from which he had to part when he
enlisted in the Boy Scouts of America, and adopted principles tending
toward the conservation of all wild life rather than to destruction.
Gradually, however, Starrie Chase, like his brother scouts, came under
the glamour of this peaceful trailing. He began to discover a subtler
excitement, more spicy fun--the spicier for Toiney's presence--in the
brief contemplation of that dog-fox at home, trotting along, unmolested,
to his hunting-ground, than in past fevered glimpses of him when all
interest in his wiles and habits was merged into greed for his skin and
tail.
Many were the opportunities, too, for a glimpse at the white flag of the
shy deer as it bounded off into some deeper woodland glade, and for
being thrilled by the swift drumming of the partridge's wings when it
rose from its dusting-place on the ground or on some old log whose
brown, flaky wood could be reduced to powder; or from feasting on the
brilliant and lowly partridge-berries which, nestling amid their
evergreen leaves, challenged November's sereness.
Each woodland hike brought its own revelation--its special
discovery--insignificant, perhaps--but which thereafter stood out as a
beauty spot upon the face of the day.
The hikes were generally conducted after this manner: seven of the Owls
with their tall scoutmaster would leave the town bright and early on a
Saturday morning, a goodly spectacle in their khaki uniforms, and, staff
in hand, take their way through the woods to the little farm-clearing
where they were reinforced by the assistant scoutmaster in his rough
garb--Toiney would not don the scout uniform--and by Harold, the still
weak brother.
Their coming was generally heralded by modified shouting. And the
impulsive Toiney would suspend some farm task and stand erect with an
explosive "_Houp-la!_" tickling his throat, to witness that most
exhilarating of present-day sights, a party of boy scouts emerging from
the woods into a clearing, with Mother Nature in the guise of the early
sunshine rushing, open-armed, to meet them, as if welcoming her stray
children back to her heart.
Then Toiney, as forest guide, would assume the leadership of the party,
and not only was his thorough acquaintance with "de bird en de littal
wil' an-ni-mal" valuable; but his fund of knowledge about "heem beeg
tree," and the uses to which the different kinds of wood could be put,
seemed broad and unfailing, too.
The most exciting discovery of that season to the boys was when he
pointed out to them one day the small hole or den amid some rocky ledges
near Big Swamp where the Mother Coon--as sometimes happens, though she
generally prefers a hollow tree--had brought forth her intrepid
offspring; both the one which had raided Toiney's hencoop, and Raccoon
Junior who had come to a warlike issue with the crows.
Toiney, as he explained, had investigated that deep hole amid the ledges
when the woods were green with spring, and had discovered some wild
animal which by its size and general outline he knew to be a coon,
crouching at the inner end of it, with her young "littal as small cat."
He had beaten a hasty retreat, not willing to provoke a possible attack
from the mother rendered bold by maternity, or to disturb the infant
family.
He was radiant at finding the coon's rocky home again, though
tenantless, now.
"Ha! I'll know we fin' heem den"; he beamed upon his comrades with
primitive conceit. "We arre de boy--engh? We arre de bes' scout ev'ry
tam!"
And that was the aim of each member of the Owl Patrol, with the
exception, perhaps, of Harold, not indeed to be the "best scout," but to
figure as the equal in scoutcraft of any lad of his age and a
corresponding period of service, in the United States. To this end he
drilled, explored and studied, somewhat to the mystification of boys who
still held aloof from the scout movement!
"Where are ye off to, Starrie?" inquired Godey Peck, a youth of this
type, one fair November afternoon, intercepting Leon about an hour after
school had closed. "Don't you want to come along with me? I'm going down
to Stanway's shipyard to have a look at the new vessel that they're
going to launch at daybreak to-morrow. She's all wedged up on the ways,
ready to go. Say!" Godey edged slyly nearer to Leon, "us boys--Choc
Latour, Benjie Lane an' me--have hit on a plan for being launched in
her. You know they won't allow boys to be aboard, if they know it, when
she shoots off the launching ways. But those ship carpenters'll have to
rise bright and early if they want to get ahead of us! See?"
Godey laid a forefinger against the left side of his nose, to emphasize
a high opinion of his own subtlety.
"How are you going to work it?" Leon asked briefly.
"Why! there's a vessel 'most built on the stocks right 'longside the
finished hull. Us boys are going to wake very early, trot down to the
shipyard before any of the workmen are around; then we'll shin up the
staging an' over the half-built vessel right onto the white deck o' the
new one that's waiting to be launched. 'Twill be easy to drop below into
the cabin an' hide under the bunks until the time comes for launching
her. When we hear 'em knocking out the last block from under her
keel--when she's just beginning to crawl--then we'll pop up an' be on
deck when she's launched; see?"
"Ho! So you're going to do the stowaway act, eh?" Starrie Chase, with
that characteristic snap of his brown eyes, seemed to be taking a mental
photograph of the plan.
"Only for an hour or two. You want to be in this too; don't you,
Starrie?"
Leon was silent, considering. The underhand scheme ran counter to the
aboveboard principles of the scout law which he had sworn to obey; of
that he felt sure. "On my honor I will do my best ... to keep myself
morally straight!" Voluntarily and enthusiastically he had taken the
chivalrous oath, and he was "too much of a fellow" to go back on it
deliberately.
"No! I don't want to play stowaway," he answered after a minute. "It's a
crazy plan anyhow! Give it up, Gode! Likely enough you'll scratch up the
paint of the new cabin with your boots, skulking there all three of
you--then there'll be a big row; and 'twould seem a pity, too, after all
the months it has taken to build an' paint that dandy new hull."
Such a view would scarcely have presented itself to Leon two months ago;
he certainly was "deepening the water" in which he floated.
"Well, let's pop down to the shipyard anyhow, an' see her!" urged Godey,
hoping that a contemplation of the new vessel, airily wedged high on the
launching ways, with her bridal deck white as a hound's tooth, would
weaken the other's resolution.
"No, I'll be down there to-morrow morning, on the river-slip, to see her
go. But I want to do something else this afternoon. I'm going home to
study."
"What?"
"Flag-signaling in the Boy Scout Handbook. I can send a message by
semaphore now, twenty letters per minute; I must get it down to sixteen
before I can pass the examination for first-class scout!" Starrie threw
this out impetuously, his face glowing. "We're going to have an outdoor
test in some other things this evening--if I pass it I'll be a
second-class scout. I don't want to be a tenderfoot for ever! Say! but
the signaling gets me; it's so interesting: I'm beginning to study the
Morse code now."
"Pshaw! You boy scouts jus' make me tired." Godey leaned against the
parapet of the broad bridge above the tidal river whereon the boys
stood, as if the contemplation of so much energy ambitiously directed
was too much for him. "Here comes another of your kind now!"
He pointed to Colin Estey who came swinging along out of the distance,
his quick springy step and upright carriage doing credit to the scouts'
drill.
Colin halted ere crossing the bridge to hail a street-car for an old
gentleman who was making futile attempts to stop it, and then
courteously helped him to the platform.
Godey shook his head over the action. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" he crowed
scornfully. "Ain't we acting hifalutin?"
Yet there was nothing at all bombastic about the simple good turn or in
Colin's bright face as he joined the other scout upon the bridge and
marched off homeward with him, their rhythmic step and erect carriage
attracting the attention of more than one adult pedestrian.
Godey lolled on the parapet, looking after them, racking his brain for
some derisive epithet to hurl at their backs; he longed to shout,
"Sissies!" and "Spongecakes!" But such belittling terms clearly didn't
apply.
The only mocking shaft in his quiver that would come anywhere near
hitting the mark of those well-drilled backs--straight as a rod--was one
which even he felt to be feeble:--
"Oh! you Tin Scouts," he shouted maliciously. "Tin Soldiers! _Tin
Scouts!_" sustaining the cry until the two figures disappeared from view
in the direction of the Chase homestead.