THE LONG ARM OF THE SCOUT
As Tom spoke, there came rushing into Roy's memory as vivid as the
searchlight's shaft, a certain dark night a year before when Tom Slade,
hoodlum, had stood by his side and with eyes of wonder watched him flash
a message from Blakeley's Hill to the city below to undo a piece of
vicious mischief of which Tom had been guilty. He had turned the heavens
into an open book for Westy Martin, miles away, to read what he should
do.
A thrill of new hope seized Roy.
"So you see it _will_ be you, Roy."
"It has to be you to remind me of it."
"Shut up!" said Tom.
They ran for the boat at top speed, for, as they both realized, it was
largely a fight against time.
"That train was dragging along pretty slow when it passed _us_," said
Tom.
"Sure, 'bout a million cars," Roy panted. "There's an up-grade, too, I
think, between here and Poughkeepsie. Be half an hour, anyway, before
they make it. You're a wonder. We'll kid the life out of Pee-wee for
riding on a train after all. 'Spose he did it on purpose or got locked
in?"
"Locked in, I guess," said Tom. "Let's try scout pace, I'm getting
winded."
The searchlight which had been an important adjunct of the old _Nymph_
had not been used on the _Good Turn_, for the reason that the boys had
not run her at night. It was an acetylene light of splendid power and
many a little craft Harry Stanton had picked up with it in his nocturnal
cruising. Pee-wee had polished its reflector one day to pass the time,
but with the exception of that attention it had lain in one of the
lockers.
Reaching the boat they pulled the light out, connected it up, and found
to their delight that it was in good working order.
"My idea," said Roy, now all excitement, "is to flash it from that hill,
then from the middle of the river. Of course, it's a good deal a
question of luck, but it seems as if _somebody_ ought to catch it, in
all these places along the river. Be great if we could find him
to-night, hey?"
"They'd just have to hold him till we could get there in the boat--they
couldn't get him back here."
"No sooner said than stung," said Roy; "hurry up, bring that can, and
some matches and--yes, you might as well bring the Manual anyway,
thought I know that code backwards."
"You're right you do," said Tom.
He was glad to see Roy himself again and taking the lead, as usual.
"If there was only one of these telegraph operators--guys, as I used to
call them--star-gazing, we'd pass the word to him, all right."
"A word to the guys, hey? Come on, hustle!"
A strenuous climb brought them to the brow of a hill from which the
lights of several villages, and the more numerous lights of Poughkeepsie
could be seen.
"Now, Tomasso, see-a if you know-a de lesson--queeck! Connect that up
and--look out you don't step on the tube! I wish we had a pedestal or
something. When you're roaming, you have to do as the Romans do, hey?
Open your Manual to page 232. No!" he said hurriedly looking over Tom's
shoulder. "_Care of the fingernails!_ That's _259_ you've got. What do
you think we're going to do, start a manicure parlor? _There_ you
are--now keep the place to make assurance doubly sure. Here goes! Hello,
folks!" he called, as he swung the long shaft fan-wise across the
heavens. "Now, three dots for S?"
"Right," said Tom.
Roy sent three short flashes into the night, then paused and sent a
longer flash of about three seconds. Another pause, then three of the
longer flashes, then a short one, two long ones and a short one.
"S-T-O-P--stop," he said.
"Right-o," concurred Tom.
"Now F--two shorts, a long and a short--is it?"
"You know blamed well it is," said Tom.
Thus the message was sent.
_"Stop freight going north; boy locked in car. Hold. Friends coming up
river in boat flying yellow flag."_
They had on board a large yellow flag with TEMPLE CAMP on it, and Roy
thought of this as being the best means of identifying the boat for
anyone who might be watching for it along the shore.
Three times they flashed the message, then hurried back to the boat and
chugged out, anchoring in midstream. The course of the river is as
straight as an arrow here. The lights in the small towns of Milton and
Camelot were visible on either side; tiny lights flickered along the
railroads that skirted either shore, and beyond in the distance twinkled
the lights on the great bridge at Poughkeepsie.
"We're right in the steamer's path here," said Tom; "let's hurry."
Roy played the shaft for a minute to attract attention, then threw his
message again and again into the skies. The long, bright, silent column
seemed to fill the whole heaven as it pierced the darkness in short and
long flashes. The chugging of the _Good Turn's_ engine was emphasized by
the solemn stillness as they ran in toward shore, and the splash of
their dropping anchor awakened a faint echo from the neighboring
mountains.
"Well, that's all we can do till morning," said Roy. "What do you say to
some eats?"
"Gee, it's big and wild and lonely, isn't it?" said Tom.
They had never thought of the Hudson in this way before.
After breakfast in the morning they started upstream, their big yellow
camp flag flying and keeping as near the shore as possible so as to be
within hail. Now that the black background of the night had passed and
the broad daylight was all about them, their hope had begun to wane. The
spell seemed broken; the cheerful reality of the morning sunlight upon
the water and the hills seemed to dissipate their confidence in that
long shaft, and they saw the whole experience of the night as a sort of
fantastic dream.
But Pee-wee was gone; there was no dream about that, and the boat did
not seem like the same place without him.
The first place they passed was Stoneco, but there was no sign of life
near the shore, and the _Good Turn_ chugged by unheeded. They ran across
to Milton where a couple of men lolled on a wharf and a few people were
waiting at the little station. They could not get in very close to the
shore on account of the flats, but Roy, making a megaphone of an old
newspaper, asked if a flash message had been received there. After much
shouting back and forth, he learned that the searchlight had been seen
but had been thought to be from one of the night boats plying up and
down the river. It had evidently meant nothing to the speaker or to
anyone else there. Roy asked if they would please ask the telegraph
operator if he had seen it.
"He'd understand it all right," he said, a bit disheartened. But the
answer came back that the operator had not seen it.
At Poughkeepsie they made a landing at the wharf. Here expressmen were
moving trunks about, a few stragglers waiting for some boat peered
through the gates like prisoners; there was a general air of bustle and
a "city" atmosphere about the place. A few people gathered about,
looking at the _Good Turn_ and watching the boys as they made their way
up the wharf.
"Boy Scouts," they heard someone say.
There was the usual good-natured curiosity which follows scouts when
they are away from home and which they have come to regard as a matter
of course, but the big yellow flag seemed to carry no particular meaning
to anyone here.
They walked up to the station where they asked the operator if he had
seen the searchlight message or heard anything about it, but he had not.
They inquired who was the night watchman on the wharf, hunted him out,
and asked him. He had seen the light and wondered what and where it was.
That was all.
"Foiled again!" said Roy.
They made inquiries of almost everyone they saw, going into a nearby
hotel and several of the stores. They inquired at the fire house, where
they thought men would have been up at night who might be expected to
know the Morse code, but the spokesman there shook his head.
"A fellow who was with us got locked in a freight car," Roy explained,
"and we signaled to people up this way to stop the train."
The man smiled; apparently he did not take Roy's explanation very
seriously. "Now if you could only get that convict that escaped down
yonder----"
"We have no interest in him," said Roy, shortly.
He and Tom had both counted on Poughkeepsie with its police force and
fire department and general wide-awakeness, and they went back to the
_Good Turn_ pretty well discouraged, particularly as the good people of
whom they had inquired had treated them with an air of kindly
indulgence, smiling at their story, saying that the scouts were a
wide-awake lot, and so forth; interested, but good-naturedly skeptical.
One had said, "Are you making believe to telegraph that way? Well, it's
good fun, anyway." Another asked if they had been reading dime novels.
The patronizing tone had rather nettled the boys.
"I'd like to have told that fellow that if we _had_ been reading dime
novels, we wouldn't have had time to learn the Morse code," said Roy.
_"The Motor Boat Heroes_!" mocked Tom.
"Yes, volume three thousand, and they haven't learned how to run a gas
engine yet! Get out your magnifying glass, Tom; what's that, a village,
up there?"
"A house."
"Some house, too," said Roy, looking at the diminutive structure near
the shore. "Put your hand down the chimney and open the front door,
hey?"
But as they ran in nearer the shore other houses showed themselves
around the edge of the hill and here, too, was a little wharf with
several people upon it and near it, on the shore, a surging crowd on the
edge of which stood several wagons.
"Guess they must be having a mass meeting about putting a new spring on
the post-office door," said Roy. "Somebody ought to lay a paperweight on
that village a windy day like this. It might blow away. Close your
throttle a little, Tom and put your timer back; we'll run in and see
what's up."
"You don't suppose all that fuss can have anything to do with Pee-wee,
do you?" Tom asked.
"No, it looks more as if a German submarine had landed there. There
wouldn't be so much of a rumpus if they'd got the kid."
But in another moment Roy's skeptical mood had changed as he saw a tall,
slender fellow in brown standing at the end of the wharf with arms
outspread.
"What's he doing--posing for the movies?"
"He's semaphoring," Tom answered.
"I'll be jiggered if he isn't!" said Roy, all interest at once.
"C--O--M--E---- I--(he makes his I too much like his C)--N. _What do you
know about that!_ Come in!"
The stranger held what seemed to be a large white placard in either hand
in place of a flag and his motions were not as clear-cut as they should
have been, but to Roy, with whom, as he had often said, the semaphore
code was like "pumpkin pie," the message was plain.
As they ran alongside the wharf the khaki-clad signaler greeted them
with the scout salute.
"Pretty brisk out on the water this morning?" he said. "We got your
message--we were out canoeing last night; you use the International
code, don't you?"
"Have you got him?" Roy asked anxiously.
"Oh, yes, he's here; pulled in somewhere around midnight, I guess. He
stayed all night with one of our troop; he's up there now getting his
breakfast. Great kid, isn't he?" he laughed. "He was telling us about
rice cakes. We're kind of out of date up here, you know. I was a little
balled up on your spacing," he added as they went up the wharf. "I
haven't got the International down very good. Yes, we were drifting
around, a couple of us, telling Ford jokes, when you sprung it on us."
"Have you got the signaling badge?" said Roy.
"Oh, yes, I managed to pull that; I'm out for the star now."
"You'll get it," said Tom.
"Is the kid all right?" Roy asked.
"Oh, sure; but he had some pretty rough handling, I guess. It was quite
a little movie show when we dragged the other one out. Lucky the station
agent and the constable were there. He's up there now waiting for the
men from Ossining."
Through the surging crowd Tom and Roy could see, sitting on a bench at
the station, a man in convict garb, with his hands manacled together and
a guard on either side of him. In the broad light of day he was a
desperate-looking creature, as he sat with his ugly head hanging low,
apparently oblivious to all about him.
"I don't understand," said Roy.
"Didn't you know about him?"
"Not a thing--except we did know someone got away from Sing Sing the
other night--but we never thought----"
"Didn't you know he was in the same car? That's why the little fellow
couldn't get away. He'd have come back to you, sure."
Roy doubted it, but he said nothing and presently the mystery was
cleared up by the arrival on the scene of Pee-wee himself, accompanied
by several scouts. They were laughing merrily and seemed greatly elated
that the boat had come; but Pee-wee was rather embarrassed and held back
until Roy dragged him forward.
"Kiddo," said he, looking straight into the boy's face, "the _Good Turn_
couldn't have lived another day without you. So you did hit the railroad
after all, didn't you? Gee, it's good to see you; you've caused us more
worry----" he put his arm over Pee-wee's shoulder and turned away with
him, and the others, being good scouts, had sense enough not to follow.
"Pee-wee," said Roy, "don't try to tell me--that can wait. Listen,
kiddo. We're in the same boat, you and I. We each wrote a letter that we
shouldn't have written, but yours was received and mine wasn't--thanks
to Tom. We've got to forget about both those letters, Pee-wee. I was
ashamed of mine before I'd finished writing it. There's no good talking
about it now. You're with us because we want you with us, not because
Mary Temple wanted it, but because _I_ want you and Tom wants you; do
you hear? You know who it is that's always doing something for someone
and never getting any credit for it, don't you? It's Tom Slade. He saved
me from being a crazy fool--from sending that letter to Mary. And I came
to my senses the next day. He tracked you to that car, only it always
seems to work around so that someone else gets all the glory. It makes
me feel like a---- Listen to them over there now, talking about
_signaling_. Pee-wee, you gave us an awful scare. It didn't seem natural
on top of the cabin last night without you--you little mascot! We're not
going to have another word to say about this, kid--I'm your patrol
leader, remember. We're going to hit it straight for camp now--the three
of us--the Big Three--and you're with us because we can't do without
you. Do you get that?"
"Roy," said Pee-wee, speaking with difficulty. "I--I had an--adventure."
"Well, I should think you did."