CHAPTER XV
THE CAMP ON THE DUNES
And when those fervently anticipated last days of August did in due timedawn, they brought with them many opportunities to Nixon and his brotherscouts of watching Spotty Seal and his kindred in the enjoyment of theirmundane paradise, whose pavement of gold was a wave-washed reef and itsharpings the mild bluster of a northwesterly breeze.
During the final week of August and the first of September theirscoutmaster, a rising young naval architect, had a respite fromdesigning wooden vessels, from considering how he could best combinespeed and seaworthiness in an up-to-date model; and he arranged todevote the whole of that holiday to camping out with his boy scout troopupon the milky Sugarloaf Dunes.
A more ideal camping-ground could scarcely have been found than amongthe white sand-hills, capped with plumy vegetation which formed thebackground for an equally dazzling line of beach, where thegray-and-white gulls strutted in feathered rendezvous, and were hardlyto be scared away by the landing in their midst of the first patrol ofscouts, put ashore from Captain Andy's motor-boat in a light skiff, amore capacious rowboat than the Pill.
But they had brought the tubby Pill down the river too, in tow of thelaunch; and Captain Andy, who was partial to scouts, had arranged toleave that rotund little rowboat with them, so that, two or three at atime, they might explore the tidal river with the creeks thatintersected the marshes in the neighborhood of the white dunes.
"Just look at that gray gull, will you?" laughed Patrol Leader Nixon, ashe landed from the skiff. "He's made up his mind that we Owls have norights here: that this white beach is his stamping-ground, and he won'tbe frightened away!"
Other gulls had reluctantly taken wing and wheeled off during theprolonged process of landing the eight members of the Owl Patrol, withtheir scoutmasters and camp outfit, in various detachments from thelaunch, which was too large to run right in to the beach.
But this one youthful sea-gull, a mere boy in plumage gray, held hisground, parading the lonely beach with head turning alertly from sideto side, as if he were admonishing his wheeling brothers with: "Theseare boy scouts! Look at me: I tell you, you have nothing to fear!"
So bold was his mien, so peaceful the attitude of the human invaders,that presently the regiment of sea-gulls fluttered back to a point ofrendezvous only a little removed from their former one.
"We won't have much company beyond ourselves and the birds, I guess!"remarked Nixon presently. "There are no houses in sight except thosethree fine bungalows about quarter of a mile off on the edge of thedunes. And the fisherman's shack on the beach below them!"
"Yes, that belongs to an old clam-digger," said Kenjo Red. "He keeps hispails there. Don't you remember my telling you about his letting us--myuncle an' me--have his boat one day last November, so's we could rowover to the sand-spit opposite, and take a look at some seals that weresunning themselves there?"
"Oh! yes, _we_ remember, Kenjo; you've told about that at half a dozencamp-fire powwows, at least." Starrie Chase plucked off Kenjo's cap andcombed his ruddy locks with a teasing forefinger. "They say DaveBaldwin, the _vaurien_," with guttural mimicry of Toiney's accents,"hangs out among the dunes here, when he isn't loafing in the woods upthe river," added Corporal Chase, peering off among the whitesand-hills, capped with biscuit-colored plumes of dry beach-grass, andthe more verdant beach-pea, as if he expected to see young Baldwin'shead pop up among them.
"I wonder if we'll run across him?" said Nixon. "He can't 'make camp'among the dunes. Nobody is allowed to camp out here, without specialpermission. Boy scouts are privileged persons; they know we won't setfire to the brush."
"Oh! when he needs a fire--when he knocks a woodchuck on the head andwants to cook it--I suppose he rows over to one of those little islandsthere; they say he has an old rowboat here." Leon pointed to two smallislets rising from the plains of water a little higher up the river.
"Well, I don't envy him!" Marcoo shrugged his shoulders. "He must have abitter time of it in winter, when the river is frozen over down to thebay, an' you don't hear a sound here beyond the occasional pop of asportsman's gun, or the barking of the seals--and even they're prettyquiet in midwinter. Hey! Look at that spotted sandpiper. 'Teeter-tail'we call him: see his tail bob up and down!" exclaimed Coombsie, who wasan enthusiast about birds.
In watching the sandpiper rise from the white beach and dart across thewater, in listening to his sweet, whistling "peet-weet!" note,speculations about the habits of the _vaurien_, the good-for-nothingyoung vagrant, were forgotten.
He, Dave Baldwin, faded completely from the campers' thoughts as thenarrow skiff grounded its sharp nose for the fourth time on the beach,landing the remainder of their camp dunnage and commissariat; and thework began of selecting a site for the camp amid the milky sand-hills,interspersed with a few trees, slender and short of stature.
Those gray birches and ash-trees formed pleasant spots of shade amid thedazzling whiteness of the dunes. But there was other and more uniquevegetable growth to be considered.
"Say! but will you just look at the cranberry patch, growing out of thewhite beach?" shrieked young Colin after an ecstatic interval,addressing no one scout in particular.
"Cranberries there near the tide!"--"Growing out of thesand!"--"Tooraloo!"--"Nonsense!" came from his brother Owls who werealready getting busy, erecting tents.
But cranberries there were, in ripening beauty--as the workers presentlysaw for themselves--cranberries whose roots underran the dazzling beach,whose crimson creepers trailed delicately over its whiteness, whoseberries nestled their rosy cheeks daintily, each upon its snowy pillow.
"_Gee!_" The one united ejaculation--the little nondescript, uncouthmonosyllable which expresses so many emotions of the boyish heart, frompanic to panegyric--was all that the scouts could find voice for inpresence of this red-and-white loveliness secreted by Nature upon alonely shore.
"Hey! fellows, Captain Andy is going," the voice of the busy scoutmasterbroke in upon their bliss. "He's to bring the Foxes down to-morrow inhis motor-boat," alluding to the Fox Patrol, of which Godey was leader."The Seals will row over, to-morrow forenoon, from the other side of theriver; so our scout troop will be complete. We owe a lot to CaptainAndy. Don't you want to show him that you can make a noise: don't youwant to give your yell, with his name at the end? Now, all in line, andtogether!"
And each scout with his arm around a comrade upon either side--Leon'sclasping the back of Harold Greer who, a year ago, had cowered at sightof him--all in a welded line, swaying together where the ripples brokeupon the milky beach, they proved their prowess as chief noise-makersand made the welkin ring with:--
AMERICA Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts! Rah! Rah! Rah! Exmouth! Exmouth! Exmouth! Captain Andy! Captain Andy! _Cap-tain An-dy!_
The weatherbeaten ex-skipper, standing "up for'ard" in his launch, whichwas just beginning its panting trip up the river, waved his hand inacknowledgment, while the Aviator's whistle returned a triple salute tothat linked line upon the water's edge.
"They're fine lads!" A little moisture gathered in the captain'snarrowed blue eye as he gazed back at the beach--moisture which did notcome in over the Aviator's rail. "Some one has spoken of this Boy ScoutMovement as the 'Salvation of England'--as I've heard! So here's to itagain as the Future of America!" And he sounded three more whistles--andyet another three--giving the scouts three times three, until it seemedas if his power-boat would burst its steel throat.
Then comparative silence reigned again upon the sands and certainstartled birds resumed their feeding avocations, notably thatwhite-breasted busybody, the sanderling or surf-snipe, called byriver-men the "whitey."
"See! the 'whitey' doesn't believe that 'two is company, three none':they're chasing after their dinner in triplets! They run out into theripples and back again, pecking in the sand, so quickly that the largerwaves can't catch them: don't they, Greerie?" said Leon Chase, pointingthem out to Harold in the overflowing brotherline
ss established by thatyell.
Harold was no longer the "Hare." That nickname had been forbidden by thepatrol leader of the Owls under pain of dire penalties. The "poltron,"or coward, as Toiney had once in pity called him, was "Greerie" now; andwas gradually learning what mere bugaboos were the fears which hadseparated him from his kind and from boyhood's activities--somethingwhich might never have come home to him thoroughly, save in thestimulating society of other boys who aimed earnestly at helping him.
"We're going to have a splendid time here for the next two weeks,Greerie, camping among the dunes," Leon assured him. "To-morrow Nix an'you and I will go out in the little rowboat, the Pill, and hunt up acreamy pup-seal and bring him back to camp for a pet. Now! you must comeand do your share of the work--help to set up the other tents among thesand-hills."
One was already erected, a large canvas shelter, to contain four boys,another went up like unto it for the other four members of the patrol,then a smaller tent for the scoutmaster, and the cook-tent whichsheltered the "commissariat," stocked with cans of preserved meats,vegetables, and all that went to make up the scouts' daily rations.
"Where are _you_ going to sleep, Toiney?" asked Patrol Leader Nixon.
"Me--I'll lak' for sleep out in de air, me--wit' de littal star on topo' me!" Toiney shrugged his shoulders complacently at the summer sky,now taking on the hues of evening, as if the firmament were a blanketwoven for his comfort.
"Oh! I'll sleep out with you.--And I!--Me, too!" Each and every memberof the patrol, from the leader downward, longed to feel the white sandbeneath him as a mattress, to have the stars for canopy, to hear thenight-tide as it broke upon the near-by beach crooning his lullaby.
IN CAMP]
"You may take it in turns, fellows--each sleep out with him one night,when the weather is fine," decided the scoutmaster. "Now! I'm going toappoint Scouts Warren and Chase cooks for to-night."
A first-rate supper did those cooks turn out, of flapjacks and scrambledeggs, the latter stirred with a peeled stick, while the greatcoffee-pot, brooding upon its rosy nest of birch-logs, grinnedfacetiously when a stray flame wreathed its spout, then broke intobubbling laughter.
Night fell upon the pale dunes that turned to silver monuments under thesmile of a moon in its third quarter. A gentle, lowing sound came to thescouts' ears from the tide at far ebb upon the silvery beach, as, thecook-fire abandoned, they gathered round a blazing camp-fire that castweird reflections upon the surrounding white hillocks.
The holding of a calm powwow on this first night in camp, when eachheart was thrilling tumultuously to the novelty of the surroundings, wasimpossible. Toiney sang wild fragments of songs that found a suitableaccompaniment in the distant, hoarse barking of the harbor seal, and inthe plaintive "Oo-oo-ooo!"--the dove-like call of the creamy pup-seal toits marbled mother in some lonely tidal creek.
Once and again from the shore side of the scouts' camp-fire, from amongthe shimmering sand-hills, came the weaker, more snappy bark of thelittle dog-fox, as he prowled the dunes.
The dazzling Sugarloaf Pillar near the mouth of the river was wrapped innight's mantle. But lights flickered out in two of the handsome summerbungalows which the boys had noticed, standing at some distance fromtheir camping-ground, looming high above the beach, erected uponstilt-like props driven into the sandy soil.
"Those houses were only built last spring; they're occupied for thefirst time this summer," said Kenjo Red, who was more familiar with thisregion than the others. "Say! let's chant our African war-song, fellows.This is just the night for it." And the barbaric chant rang weirdlyamong the sand-hills, the leader shouting the first line, his companionsanswering with the other three, to the accompaniment of the flames'crackle and the night calls of bird and beast:--
"Een gonyama--gonyama. Invoboo! Yah bo! Yah bo Invoboo!"
Presently the bark of the dog-fox was heard farther off. _He_ knew, thestealthy slyboots, that he was not the only lone prowler among the paledunes that night who listened intently to the boisterous revelry roundthe scouts' camp-fire.
His keen sense of smell informed him that behind one plumed sand-hill,between his own trotting form and the noisy company in the firelight,there lurked a solitary man-figure.
But he, the sandy-coated little trotter from burrow to burrow, couldneither hear nor interpret the sound, half groan, half oath, savagelyenvious, that escaped from the other night-prowler's lips as he listenedto the boys' voices.
Silence, broken only by ringing snatches of laughter, reignedtemporarily over the dunes. Then once again it blossomed into song:--
"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!"
And the soft purr of the low tide, with the breeze skipping among palliddunes that looked like capped haystacks in the darkness, flung back thecheer for the "Scouts of the U.S.A."
"_Aghrr-r!_" snarled the testy dog-fox, his distant petulant growl muchresembling that of Leon's terrier, who, unfortunately, was not presentupon the dunes to-night. Blink had already added the word "Scout" tohis limited human vocabulary, but the wild fox had no such linguisticpowers. The foreign music upon the lonely dunes was irritating, alarmingto him.
It seemed to have something of the same effect upon his brother-prowler,upon the man who skulked among the sand-hills within hearing of thesong: at any rate, the semi-articulate sound which from time to time heuttered, deepened into an unmixed groan that escaped from his lips againlater when the clear notes of a bugle rang over the Sugarloaf Dunes,warning the scouts by the "first call" that fun was at an end forto-night, and sleep would be next upon the programme.
Then when lights were out, came the sweet sound of "Taps," the wind-upof the first day in camp, the expert bugler being Corporal Chase.
For the Exmouth doctor had kept his word: Leon had been given the"bugle" literally and figuratively since he enlisted as a scout, symbolof the challenge to all the energy in him to advance along new lines,instead of the "foghorn" reproofs and warnings that had been showered onhim prior to his scouting days.
Then, at last, stillness reigned, indeed, upon the moonlit dunes.
The bark of the dog-fox melted into distance, becoming indistinguishablefrom the voice of the returning tide.
The man-prowler among the sand-hills slipped away to some lair as lonelyas the fox's.
And Toiney, with Scout Nixon Warren wrapped in his camper's blanketbeside him, slept out upon the white sands "wit' de littal star on topo' them!"