CHAPTER XI
ESTU PRETA!
"Hullo! here's Starrie. Well! it's about time you turned up. We waitedquarter of an hour for you before leaving town.--Hey! Starrie, we've gotour six cook-fires all going. I only used two matches in lighting mine;I've passed one half of to-night's test.--So've I! Whoopee! _I_ 'wentthe jolly test one better': I lit my fire with a single, solitarymatch."
Starrie Chase, bounding down the grassy side of Sparrow Hollow, withthese lusty cries of his brother Owls greeting him, stood for a momentin the brilliant glare of a belt of fires, as if dazed by the ruddycarnival, while his dog, making a wild circuit of the ring, bayed eachbouquet of flames in turn.
"Yaas; we'll get heem littal fire light lak' wink--sure! We ar-re deboy! We ar-re de scout, you'll bet!" supplemented the merry voice ofToiney, the assistant scoutmaster, who, with the tassel of his red capbobbing, and the flame-light flickering on his blue homespun shirt, wason his knees before Harold's cook-fire, using his lungs as a pair ofbellows.
"Hurrah! I'm in this: I'll light my fire with one match, too. Kenjo Redshan't get ahead of me: no, sir!" Corporal Leon Chase was now workinglike lightning, piling dry leaves, pine splinters, dead twigs into acarefully arranged heap in a gap which had been left for him in the ringof half a dozen fires kindled by six tenderfoot scouts, ambitious ofbeing admitted to a second-class degree.
But he, the behind-time tenderfoot, was abruptly held up in his tardylabors by the voice of the tall scoutmaster, who with Scout Warren, thepatrol leader of the Owls, was superintending the tests.
"I want to speak to you for a minute, Leon," said Scoutmaster Estey,with a gravity that dropped like a weighty pebble into the midst of thefun.
And Corporal Chase, otherwise Scout 2, of the Owls, obediently suspendedfire-building, approached his superior officer and saluted.
"I'd like to know where you have been for the last hour," began thescoutmaster with the dignity of a brigadier-general holding aninvestigation, while his keen eyes from under the drab broad-brimmedhat searched Leon's face in the sixfold firelight. "Jimmy Sweet,"nodding toward a squatting Owl, "said he caught a distant glimpse of younearly an hour ago over on the edge of the salt-marshes near Ma'amBaldwin's old house. I hope you haven't been plaguing her again?"
The voice of the superior officer was all ready to be stern, as if hehad visions of a corporal being requested to hand over his scout-badgeof chivalry until such time as he should prove himself worthy of wearingit.
"Have you?"
"No!" Leon cleared his throat hesitatingly. "No,"--he suddenly liftedsteady eyes to the scoutmaster's face,--"I have been chopping wood anddoing a few other little things for her; that made me late!"
A moment's breathless silence enveloped the six cook-fires. The face ofthe scoutmaster himself was set in lines of amazement: genially itrelaxed.
"Good for you, Corporal!" He clapped the late-comer approvingly on theshoulder, and in his voice was a moved ring.
For, as he scanned the boy's face in the sixfold glow, he read from itthat, to-night, Leon had really become a scout: that, back there on thesalt-marshes, the inner and chivalrous grace of knighthood, of which hisoath was the outward and heralding sign, had been consciously bornwithin him.
The scoutmaster was feeling round in his broad approval for other wordsof commendation, when Toiney's sprightly tones broke the momentarytension.
"Ha! dis poor ole oomans," he grunted, vivaciously pitying Ma'amBaldwin. "She's lif' all alone en she's burst she's heart for she hafsuch a _bad boy_, engh? She's boy, Dave, heem _canaille_,_vaurien_--w'at-you-call, good-for-nodings--engh?"
"I'm afraid he is," agreed the scoutmaster regretfully. "Yet I pity Davetoo. His elder brother went West when he was a little fellow; hisfather, who was a deep-sea fisherman, like Harold's father, was awaynearly all the year round. Dave grew up without any strong man's handover him; out of school-hours he had to work hard on a farm, and Isuppose in his craving for fun of some kind he played all sorts offoolish pranks. After he left school and was old enough to know better,he kept them up--ran a locomotive out of the little railway station onenight, came near killing a man and was sent to a reformatory!"
"Bah! heem jus' vagabond--_errant_--how-you-say-eet--tramp-sonne-of-a-gun--_vaurien_, engh?" declared Toiney, gutturally contemptuous, whilehe poked Harold's fire with a dry stick.
"Yes, he's a mere vagrant now, loafing about the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunesand the woods; and likely to get into trouble again through pettythefts, so people say. When he had served his sentence he seemed tothink there wasn't much of a future before him, and didn't stick to thejob he got. I pity his old mother! I think that every boy scout shouldmake it a point to do a good turn for her when he can."
"Ah! _oui_; shes break in pieces, engh?" murmured Toiney, theirrepressible, still punching up the fire, to prepare it for the cookingtests.
Somehow, his eloquent sympathy sent a stab through Leon--whom everybodywas at the moment regarding with admiration--for it brought a sharprecollection of an old woman backing away from him in fear, with herright arm laid across her breast in piteous self-defense.
"Gee! I wish I could do something more for her than choppingwood--something that would make up for being mean to her," thoughtCorporal Chase, as he returned to his fire-building, arranging the fuelmethodically so as to allow plenty of draught, and then triumphantlyrivaling Kenjo's feat by lighting his cook-fire with one match.
The tiny, snappy laughter of that matchhead, seeming to rejoice thatanother baby light was born into the world, as he drew it along a drystick, restored his towering good spirits.
"And now for the cooking test!" cried the scoutmaster. "Each scout toput his two potatoes to roast in the embers of his fire, and make acontrivance for broiling his beefsteak! And look out that you don't'cook the black ox,' boys, as Captain Andy would say!"
"What do you mean by 'cooking the black ox'?" from two or three excitedand perspiring scouts.
"Why! that's what the sailors say when their beef is burnt to the colorof a black-haired ox," laughed the superior officer. "Scout Chase,haven't you brought any beefsteak and potatoes?"
"No, I meant to go back to the town for them an' meet you there. Blinkan' I don't want any supper; we'll get it when we go home," returnedLeon nonchalantly, swallowing his mortification at not being able tocomplete the outdoor test, this evening.
"Oh! I'll share my rations with you, Starrie," volunteered Colin Estey."I shan't 'cook the black ox': I'm too nifty a cook for that; trust me!"Colin was concocting a handsome gridiron of peeled twigs as he spoke.
"Don't mind him, Starrie: I could cook better when I was born than Colcan now! I'll divide my beefsteak and 'taters' with you," came fromanother primitive chef, the offer being repeated more or less alluringlyby every boy scout.
"Well! you're a generous-hearted bunch," put in Nixon, the patrolleader, from his over-seer's post. "But the scout-master and I have morethan a pound of raw beefsteak here which we brought along for oursupper. As I'm not in these tests" (Nixon was now a full-fledgedfirst-class scout) "I'll cut off a piece for Leon so that he can cook ithimself; I guess we can spare him a couple of potatoes too; then he canpass the test, with the others."
During the supper which followed while each scout, sitting cross-leggedby his own cook-fire, partook of the meal in primitive fashion andToiney made coffee for the "crowd," more than one Owl shared in theopinion once enunciated by Leon that eating in the woods--or in a woodsyhollow such as sheltered them now from the breeze that drove keenlyacross the marshes--was the "best part of the business."
They modified that opinion later when the seven small fires, which hadsputtered merrily under the cooking, were reinforced by logs andbranches, and stimulated into a belt of vivacious camp-fires, eachrearing high its topknot of crested flame, and throwing wonderfulreflections through the stony hollow.
"I always wanted to be a savage. To-night, I feel nearer to it than everbefore," said Colin, listening with an ecstatic shiver to t
he wind as itchanted among the pines that formed their windbreak, capered round thehollow, flinging them a gust or two that made the camp-fires roar withlaughter, and then, as if unwilling to disturb such a jolly party,rushed wildly on to take it out of the trees in the woods. "And now forthe powwow, Mr. Scoutmaster!" he suggested, looking across the ring offires at his tall brother and superior officer.
"Hark! that's an owl hooting somewhere," broke in Coombsie. "It's theGrand Duke, I think--the big old horned owl! One doesn't hear him oftenat this time of year. He wants to be present at the Owl Powwow."
"Ah, la! la! I'll t'ink he soun' lak' hongree ole wolf, me," murmuredToiney dreamily.
But the distant hoot, the deep "Whoo-hoo-hoodoo hoo," or"Whoo-hoo-whoo-whah-hoo!" as some of the boys interpreted it, from thefar recesses of the woods, added a final touch of mystic wildness to thesevenfold radiance of the firelit scene which was reflected in thesevenfold rapture of boyish hearts.
And now the heads of human Owls were bent nearer to the golden flames asnotebooks were drawn out containing rough pencil jottings, and scoutscompared their observations of man, beast, bird, fish, or inanimateobject, encountered in the woods, on the uplands or marshes, or upon theriver during the past few days!
Kenjo Red offered the most important contribution.
"I went to Ipswich yesterday to spend the day with my uncle," he began,as he lay, breast downward, gazing reflectively into his fire. "In theafternoon we walked over to the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes and lounged aboutthere on the white beach, watching the tide go out. We didn't see manybirds, only a few herring gulls. But I'll tell you what we did see: twobig harbor seals and a young one, lying out on a sand-spit which thetide had just left bare. They were sunning themselves an' having a dandytime! One was a monster, a male, or big old dog-seal, my uncle said; hemust have been nearly six feet long, and weighed about half a ton."
"More or less?" threw in the scoutmaster, laughing at Kenjo's jestingimagination. "Generally a big male weighs almost two hundred pounds,occasionally something over. Hereabouts, he is indifferently called the'dog-seal' or 'bull-seal,' according to the speaker's taste; his head isshaped rather like a setter dog's, with the ears laid flat back,--forthe seal has no ears to speak of,--but the eyes are bovine," heexplained to Nixon, who knew less about this sea mammal than did hisbrother scouts, and who had never seen him at close quarters.
"Isn't it unusual to find seals high and dry at this time of year?"asked Coombsie. "In the spring and summer one sees plenty of them downnear the mouth of the river, sprawling in the sun on a reef or sandbar.But in the late fall and winter they mostly stay in the water."
"Not when the river is frozen over--or partially frozen," threw inLeon. "They love to take a ride on a drifting ice-cake, so Captain Andysays! Is there any bounty on their heads now, Mr. Scoutmaster?" headdressed the troop commander.
"No, that has been removed. The marbled harbor seal, so called becauseof his spots, was being wiped out, as he was wiping out the fish manyyears ago, before the Government put a price on his head. Now that he isno longer severely persecuted the mottled dotard, as he is sometimescalled,--I'm sure I don't know why, for I see no signs of senility abouthim,--is becoming tamer and more prevalent again. Still, he's wilder andshyer than he used to be."
"Yes, there's an old fisherman's shack on one corner of the SugarloafDunes, where a clam-digger keeps his pails and a boat," said Kenjo. "Helet my uncle take the boat and we rowed across to the sand-spit. Theseals let us come within thirty yards of them: then they stirredthemselves lazily, with that funny wabble they have--just like a personwhose hands are tied together, and his feet tied more tightlystill--lifting the head and short fore-flippers first and swinging themto one side, then the back part of the body and long hind-flippers,giving them a swing to the other side. Say! but it was funny. So theyflopped off into the water."
"Goodness! I wish that I'd been with you, Kenjo," exclaimed ScoutWarren. "I haven't seen a harbor seal yet, except just his head as heswam round in the water, when Captain Andy took me down the river in hispower-boat, the Aviator. We rowed ashore in the Aviator's Pill,"laughingly, "in that funny little tub of a rowboat which dancesattendance on the gasolene launch, but though we landed on the whitesand-dunes and stayed round there for quite a while, not a seal did wesee sprawling out on any reef."
"I'll see heem _gros seal_ on reever," broke in Toiney gutturally. "I'llsee heem six mont' past on reever _au printemps_--in spring--w'en, he gofor kill todder gros seal; he'll hit heem en mak' heem go deaded--engh?"
"Yes, the males have bad duels between themselves occasionally. Butthey're mild enough toward human beings. However, my father had astrange experience with them once," said the scoutmaster, pushing backhis broad hat, so that the sevenfold glow from the fires danced upon hisstrong face. "He's told me about it ever since I was a little boy, andColin too. When he was a very young man he rowed down to the mouth ofthe river one day with some sportsmen who went off to shoot ducks,leaving him to dig clams and get a clambake ready for them on the whitedunes. Well, sir! left alone, he pulled off to the clam-flats, drew uphis boat, stepped out, and the tide being at a low ebb, set to work todig up the clams which were here and there thrusting their long necks upfrom the wet sand, to feed on the infusoria--their favorite feeding-timebeing when it is nearly, but not quite, low water.
"The tide had receded altogether from the other side of the sand-flats,so that they joined the marshy mainland, and as my father landed he sawthat there was a big herd of twenty or thirty seals lying out on thoseflats. It was before a bounty was set upon their heads, when they werevery plentiful and tame. My father was not in the least afraid of themand was proceeding to dig his clams peacefully, when he suddenly sawthat the whole herd was thrown into a wild panic by the discovery that_he_ was between them and the water. They broke into a flounderingstampede and came straight for him--or rather for the water behindhim--at a fast clip, half sliding, half throwing themselves along. Afunny sight they must have been! Father says one big fellow came at himwith his mouth wide open: the four sharp white teeth in front, two upperand two lower, shining. So Dad just turned tail and ran for the water ashe had never run before; not waiting to jump into his boat, he plungedinto the channel up to his waist!"
"But the seals wouldn't have attacked him, would they?" incredulouslyfrom Nixon.
"No; I think not. But he might not have been able to keep his feet. Theywould, perhaps, have struck him with their heavy bodies and knocked himdown. And to feel a dozen or so of damp seals sliding over a fellow,their weights ranging anywhere from a hundred to two hundred and fiftypounds, wouldn't be a pleasant sensation, to say the least!"
"I guess not!" chuckled the Owls.
"I'd like to catch a creamy pup-seal--isn't that what you call the onlychild, the young one? 'Twould be fun to tame it," said Nixon. "PerhapsI'll get a chance to do so when we camp out on the Sugarloaf Dunes nextsummer. Aren't we going to have a camp there for two weeks during theend of August and beginning of September, Mr. Scoutmaster?"
"I hope so, if I can get permission from the landlord who owns thedunes."
"Maybe we'll run across Dave Baldwin too--the _vaurien_, as Toiney callshim--if he stays round there a part of the time?" This from Leon.
"That wouldn't be a desirable encounter, I'm afraid. Now! has any scouta suggestion to make that would be useful in planning our work for thiswinter?" Scoutmaster Estey looked round at the ring of boyish faces,reflecting the sevenfold glow, at Harold, lying on his face and hands,blinking dreamily under Toiney's wing, while the firelight burnished thelatter's swarthy features beneath the tasseled cap.
"Mr. Scoutmaster!" Nixon Warren sprang to his feet impulsively, "Marcooand I have a suggestion to offer,"--Nixon glanced at his cousinCoombsie,--"it hasn't any direct relation to our work, but we humblysubmit it as an idea that might be useful, not only to our boy scoutorganization here, but to the movement everywhere all over the world."
"Ho! Ho! What do you know about that? Out w
ith it, Nix, if it's worthanything," came the dubious encouragement of his brother Owls.
"I must tell a little yarn first. The day before yesterday Marcoo and Iwere in Boston. We lunched at a fine restaurant. At a table near us wasa gentleman--he looked like a Mexican or Spaniard--who couldn't speakany English and addressed the waiter by signs. There was a boy with him,a classy-looking fellow of about fourteen, his son, I guess. 'I'll wagerthat boy is a scout!' I whispered to Marcoo. 'His eyes take ineverything, without seeming to stare about him much--and see the way hecarries himself--straight as a string!'"
"So I suggested that we should try the scout salute on him as we passedout," struck in Marcoo. "We did! And fellows, he was on his feet like aflash, holding up his right hand, thumb resting on the littlefinger-nail, and the other three fingers upright, saluting back! Weguessed then that he was a Mexican boy scout, traveling with hisfather."
"He seemed jolly glad to see us," Nixon again took up the anecdote;"just beamed! But he didn't apparently understand a word of Englishexcept 'Good-day!' not even when we passed the scout motto to him as awatchword: 'Be Prepared!' We might all three have been mutes salutingeach other.
"We talked it over, coming home, Marcoo and I," went on the patrolleader. "And we arrived at the conclusion that it would be a great thingif our hearty motto, as Captain Andy calls it, could be taught to boyscouts all over the world, in some common form understood by all, aswell as in their mother tongue. So that when scout meets scout ofanother country he could pass it on as a kind of bond andinspiration--together with the Scout Sign which is understood in almostevery land to-day."
"So we looked it up in Esperanto--the only attempt at a world-languageof which we know, and in which my father is interested." Marcoo leapedto his feet, too, as he excitedly spoke. "And it sounded fine! Give itto them, Nix!"
"_Estu preta!_"
"Estu preta! Estu preta! BE PREPARED!" One and all these present-dayscouts took it up, shouting it to the seven fires, and to the wind whichcaught it from their lips like a silver feather to bear it away beyondthe hollow, as if it would girdle the world with that hearty motto, insome universal form, as Nixon had suggested.
"Estu preta!" it was still on their tongues when, camp-firesextinguished, they marched home. They flung it at each other in joyouschallenge as they said good-night.
It entwined itself with the drowsy thoughts of the patrol leader fromwhom it emanated when he lay down to sleep, eclipsing his interest inthe future summer camp, in marbled seals and cooing pup-seals--thoughsuch might not have been the case could he have foreseen how excitingwould be his first glimpse of the "gros seal" at close quarters.
It mingled with Leon's dreamy reminiscences too, as the first ripple ofslumber, like the inflowing tide, invaded his consciousness.
"Whew! this certainly has been a great day," he murmured, afterrepeating the Lord's Prayer with an elated fervor which he had never putinto it before.
Yet there was one smirch upon the day's golden face in the sudden memoryof an old woman shrinking away from him with uplifted arm.
"Gee! I wish I could do something for her beyond a few good turns." Hisdrowsy tongue half-formed the words.
And like a silver echo, stealing through his confused consciousness camethe automatic answer: "_Estu preta!_ Live up to your able motto! BePrepared!"