THE BOY SCOUTS
OF THE
SIGNAL CORPS
BY
ROBERT SHALER
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Sterling Boy Scout Books
_Bound in cloth_ _Ten titles_
1 Boy Scouts of the Signal Corps.
2 Boy Scouts of Pioneer Camp.
3 Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey.
4 Boy Scouts of the Life Saving Crew.
5 Boy Scouts on Picket Duty.
6 Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron.
7 Boy Scouts and the Prize Pennant.
8 Boy Scouts of the Naval Reserve.
9 Boy Scouts in the Saddle.
10 Boy Scouts for City Improvement.
_You can purchase any of the above books at the price you paid for this
one, or the publishers will send any book, postpaid, upon receipt of
25c._
HURST & CO., Publishers
432 Fourth Avenue, New York
Copyright, 1914, by Hurst & Company.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Great Expectations 5
II. Forming the Signal Corps 21
III. A Perilous Encounter 35
IV. A Fire in Camp 48
V. Reveille 65
VI. The Chosen Few 81
VII. The End of the Hike 97
VIII. An Unexpected Reproof 113
IX. The Sham Battle 128
X. Around the Council-Fire 140
XI. A Mountain Adventure 152
The Boy Scouts of the Signal Corps
CHAPTER I.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
“Hi! you, Billy Worth!” cried the leader of the Wolf patrol, a tall
youth of seventeen named Hugh Hardin, addressing his assistant.
“Scramble out of that bunky, my boy, in two wags of a Wolf’s tail, or
I’ll have scout’s law on you!”
“All right, chief! Coming!” was the prompt response, as Billy, thus
adjured, turned over in his bunk and thrust one long leg over the edge.
His bare brown foot, dangling perilously near the head of another boy
whose bunk was beneath Billy’s, proved too great a temptation for the
lad. Pulling a whisp of straw from his mattress, he proceeded to tickle
the sole of that foot, thereby causing Billy to elevate it hastily with
a loud squeal.
As he did so, Hugh made a dexterous sweep of his arms, and, grasping
Billy around the knees, almost flung him over one broad shoulder and
deposited him none too gently on the floor.
“Ouch!” whooped Billy.
His shout and the dull thump of his fall aroused other inmates of the
cabin who had not already wakened in time to witness the onslaught.
“Help! Murder!” yelled a scout of the patrol.
“Shut up!” another boy said, laughing, as he sprang from his bunk.
“What’s going on here, anyway?”
“Not hurt, are you, old man?” inquired Hugh, a trifle anxiously, for he
seldom cared to perpetrate practical jokes. “I didn’t mean to——”
No response from Billy. He lay where he had fallen, with one arm
outstretched, the other pillowing his head. His face was covered by a
limp hand, but between his fingers he slyly peeped out, and his
twinkling eyes sought the serious face of Hugh, who was bending over
him.
“Billy’s done for!” said the lad who had tickled him. “Let’s put him to
bed, chief, for he will be happier there.”
Ignoring this facetious suggestion, Hugh bent still lower; he even
dropped upon one knee, and put his hands on Billy’s shoulder.
“Wake up, son!” he urged, smiling and giving his chum a gentle shake.
“First round is over, and in ten seconds you will be counted out.”
This was the chance for which Billy had been waiting. Now he saw that
Hugh was completely off his guard. Suddenly his free hand shot out,
grasped Hugh’s ankle from behind, gave it a strong push—and the next
instant Hugh measured his length on the floor. Before Hugh could fully
realize what had happened to upset his equilibrium, Billy gathered up
his own sprawling limbs, and hurled himself upon his fallen leader.
“Down and out, am I?” he gurgled. “Who said so? Come on, we’ll——”
“Sure! We’ll see!” As he spoke, Hugh struggled free from the other’s
hold, and met the reprisal with his usual jolly laugh. “Good for you,
Billy! Good one on me! O-ho!”—he dodged nimbly a “half-Nelson” which
Billy had vainly attempted—“none of your famous strangle-holds, now!”
Then ensued a rough-and-tumble match, the outcome of which was awaited
in joyous suspense by every scout in the cabin. They all gathered in a
wide circle around the wrestlers, showering liberal encouragement. Had
the match been between Hugh or Billy and a member of the other patrol,
however friendly, it might not have been greeted with the same
impartiality.
The circle soon narrowed, for not more than three minutes elapsed before
both contestants were down on their sides, facing each other. Hugh,
being quicker and less stockily built than his chum, was the first to
make a final overthrow. In a trice, he pulled Billy under him; and,
though Billy put up a good fight, he crumpled flat under Hugh’s weight.
“You win!” he gasped. “Get off my arm,—it hurts!”
“Sorry, son,” said Hugh, when murmurs of applause had died away. “Shall
I put you back to bed now?”
“No, thank you; I——”
Laughter greeted Hugh’s query, for Billy Worth bore an undeserved
reputation of being a sluggard. On his part, he took the laugh
good-humoredly.
“Is that what you call doing a daily good turn?” he inquired of Hardin,
with a grin. “You’ve begun the day nicely, I must say!”
“_You_ did the good turn, old scout!” called Walter Osborne, of the Hawk
patrol, from across the room. “I never saw a neater tumble!”
“I’ll take a fall out of you for that, Walt!” threatened Billy,
cheerfully. “If we have archery practice to-day, you’ll miss a feather
from your wing!”
“Hear! Hear!” came a chorus of voices.
“Fly at him, Walt!” urged one of young Osborne’s patrol.
“Go to it, beak and claws,” added another.
“Billy the Wolf’ll catch you if you don’t watch out!” chanted a third,
in a sing-song voice, thumping his pillow as if to beat time to the
words.
Neither Billy nor Hugh made any response to this friendly taunt. Hugh
turned aside and, going to the rear of the room where a tier of lockers
stood, numbered to correspond with the bunks, he drew out a pair of
bathing trunks.
“Going for a swim before breakfast?” asked Billy, turning to a young
fellow who appeared in the doorway of the cabin and paused on the
threshold outside.
“Are you?” came the evasive answer.
“You bet! The Lieutenant gave us permission yesterday, and we’re off to
the lake, bright and early.”
“I see,” remarked the outsider, glancing around the cabin, which was
filled with boys in various stages of undress.
Something in the tone of his voice, a note of wistful bitterness, struck
the ears of Hugh Hardin, who was standing near enough to overhear this
brief colloquy. He looked up from the process of tying the strings of
his shorts tight, and was on the point of making some remark, when,
recognizing the visitor, he kept silence.
Billy Worth was not so tactful.
“Come along, Alec,” he urged. “The water’s fine!”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m on police duty, as punishment.”
“Punishment? For what?”
“Carelessness,” was Alec’s truthful, albeit sulky, reply. “Yesterday I
dumped ‘Buck’ Winter out of a canoe,—though it wasn’t all my fault. The
kid wouldn’t keep still, and he told me he could swim like a fish,—and
he was nearly drowned.”
“Gee! That little piker! Why, he _can_ swim! Didn’t he capture two
points from us last week, in the hundred yards?”
“Wrong again, Billy! It was his brother, who is the star swimmer of our
patrol.”
“Well, your Otters put it all over us, Alec, in those water games.”
“That is why we are so glad to have morning practice,” added Hugh, in a
tone which he honestly intended to be kind. “We Wolves want time to find
out what we can do.”
“Buck must have lost his head,” remarked Walter Osborne, who had drawn
near.
“He did,” said Alec, emphatically, “and he gave Chief Hardin a chance to
qualify in first-aid—at my expense.”
There was no mistaking the resentment that underlay those words. Walt
and Billy glanced uneasily at Hugh.
A flush stained Hugh’s bronzed cheeks and brow at the retort, and he
turned away scornfully, biting his under lip. It was hard to keep his
temper in control, as a scout should; but he managed to do so, and the
next moment he was outside the cabin, filling his lungs with deep
draughts of the pine-scented air and watching the mists roll up the side
of the opposite mountain. With the coming of the sun, he was able to
take fresh note of his surroundings, and his eager dark eyes dwelt
fondly upon the familiar scene in the first light of a new day.
Indeed, it was a scene to stir any red-blooded boy. As far as Hugh could
see through the lifting vapor lay the lake, a great silvery mirror
reflecting the heavily wooded shores so clearly that the inverted forest
appeared no less real than the original. From the shores of the lake, in
every direction, hills sloped ruggedly up into mountains, for the most
part clothed to their summits with the variegated green of a mighty
woodland. The side of one of the nearer mountains was scarred by exposed
ledges of bare rock, which, as Lieutenant Denmead, the Scout Master, had
said, would make fine strategic points for the Signalers’ Game.
“We’ll try it some day this week,” he had told Hugh on the previous
evening, as he sat with his assistant scout master, Rawson, and the
leaders of the four patrols around the camp-fire.
Hugh recalled that vague promise now, as his gaze wandered from those
rocky ledges to the deeper hollows not yet penetrated by the sun’s rays.
How dim and mysterious they looked! How Hugh longed to explore them and
to discover, by means of such woodcraft as he had already learned, the
treasures hidden in those shadowy nooks and ravines!
Several boys of his patrol followed him from the cabin. They saw that
something had vexed him, but they made no comments, even among
themselves. Presently they dashed away, down to the shore of the lake,
where most of the boys from the other cabins were gathered. These boys
belonged to the Otter and the Fox patrols.
Left alone for the moment, Hugh waited for Billy and Walter, to whom he
had decided to make an explanation of Alec’s thrust. As they walked down
to the lake together,—Alec having departed on his rounds to the
chip-basket,—he told them how he had happened to be on hand to give
assistance at the canoe accident.
“I didn’t help very much, really,” he finished, “and I don’t see why
Alec should be so sore.”
“Oh, never mind him, Hugh; he’ll get over his grouch after a while,”
declared Billy. “He is jealous of you because you qualified as a
first-class scout before he did, and because you are in line for a merit
badge as chief scout woodsman.”
“Hello, son!” exclaimed Walter, turning to greet an eager-faced boy,
Number 8 of his patrol, who had trotted up behind them. “What’s eating
you now?”
“Do-do you know why the Big Chief has called a m-m-meeting of the
patrols this morning?” panted the boy.
“No, I don’t,” admitted Walter. “But we will find out after breakfast.
Run along now, son, and mind: not more than ten minutes in the water!”
“All right, I’ll remember,” promised the younger boy, and he raced ahead
several yards. Suddenly he stopped short, turned around, and waited for
the trio to come up. “I-I say, Hugh, will you—will you do me a favor?”
he inquired hesitatingly. “Will you coach me on the crawl?”
“Surest thing you know! That’s what I’m here for,” Hugh responded
heartily.
A few more strides brought them to the shore of the lake, where they
stood for a moment, watching a group of boys swimming out to the raft.
Then, with a quick “Come on, now! Watch me!” Hugh leaped forward into
the water, followed by Walter and Billy. The boy whom he was coaching
stood knee-deep in the water, gazing with admiration not unmixed with
envy at the powerful yet easy overhand strokes that sent the swimmer
through the ripples without apparent exertion, yet at a speed that made
his own best efforts seem hopeless. In another moment he, too, was
breasting the lake, and soon he gained the raft and climbed upon it.
“That’s much better,” was Hugh’s brief comment, at which his admirer
glowed with pleasure. Praise from Hugh, who was usually so reserved, was
rare indeed!
Just as they were practicing swift dives, a bugle call rang clear and
full across the water.
“The ‘recall’,” gasped Billy. “Wonder what’s doing?”
“That means everybody report at once,” said Don Miller, leader of the
Fox patrol. “Back to shore, fellows.”
“Hit her up, son!” added Walter, and, suiting his action to his words,
he slid rapidly through the clear water, leaving a wake of swirling
ripples.
As soon as the swimmers reached shore, they hurried to their respective
cabins, dressed, attended to their beds, and then repaired to the larger
log-house, where a bountiful breakfast was served. During the meal the
talk was all of the eagerly anticipated meeting of the patrols, and
everyone wondered why it had been called.
Mess over, Don Miller and Walter Osborne took their stand at either side
of the cabin door, and as each boy passed out he saluted the two chiefs
with the scout’s salute, and was saluted in return. This was a point of
etiquette upon which Lieutenant Denmead, who was a retired officer of
the United States Army, always insisted, believing that it did much to
maintain discipline and to instill the scout virtues of courtesy and of
respect for superior officers.