CHAPTER VIII
THE BOWLINE KNOT
Scout Nixon Warren, henceforth to be known as the patrol leader of theOwls, was himself possessed by the excited feeling that he was faringforth, into the October woods to tackle a dragon--the obstinateHobgoblin of confirmed Fear--when on the day following that first boyscout meeting in Exmouth he took his way, accompanied by Coombsie, overthe heaving uplands that lay between the salt-marshes and the woodland.
Thence, through thick grove and undergrowth, they tramped to the littlefarm-clearing, where they had come upon Toiney and the dead raccoon.
Nixon had arrayed himself in the full bravery of his scout uniformto-day, hoping that it might attract the attention of the frightened boywhose interest he wished to capture.
The October sun burnished his metal buttons, with the oxidized silverbadge upon his left arm beneath the white bars of the patrol leader,and the white stripe at his wrist recording his one year's service as ascout.
Because of the impression they hoped to produce, Marcoo too had donnedthe uniform, minus stripes and badge--the latter he would not beentitled to wear until after the all-important next meeting when, on hispassing the tenderfoot test, the scoutmaster would pin it on his shirt,but reversed until he should have proved his right to wear that badge ofchivalry by the doing of some initial good turn.
But Marcoo, like his companion, carried the long scout staff and wasloud in his appreciation of its usefulness on a woodland hike.
And thus, a knightly-looking pair of pilgrims, they issued forth intothe forest clearing, bathed in the early afternoon sun.
As before, their ears were tickled afar off by the sound of a tunefulvoice alternately whistling and singing, though to-day it wasunaccompanied by the woodchopper's axe.
"That's Toiney!" said Marcoo. "Listen to him! He's just 'full of it';isn't he?"
Toiney was indeed full to the brim and bubbling over with the primitive,zestful joy of life as he toiled upon the little woodland farm, cuttingoff withered cornstalks from a patch which earlier in the season hadbeen golden with fine yellow maize of his planting. His lithe, energeticfigure focused the sun rays which loved to play over his knitted cap ofdingy red, with a bobbing tassel, over the rough blue shirt of homespunflannel, and upon the queer heelless high boots of rough unfinishedleather, with puckered moccasin-like feet, in which he could stealthrough the woods well-nigh as noiselessly as the dog-fox himself.
As the two scouts emerged into the open he was singing to the sunbeamsand to the timid human "Hare" who basked in his brightness, a funnylittle fragment of song which he illustrated as though he had a sling inhis hand and were letting fly a missile:--
"Gaston Gue, si j'avais ma fron-de, Gaston Gue, je te l'aurais fron-de!"
This he translated for Harold's benefit:--
"Gaston Gue, if I haf ma sling, Gaston Gue, at you I vould fling!"
"Well! you needn't 'fling' at us, Toiney," laughed Nixon, steppingforward with a bold front. "Hullo! Harold!" he added in what he meant tobe a most winning tone.
"Hullo, Harold! How are _you_?" supplemented Marcoo in accents equallysugared.
But the abnormally timid boy, with the pointed chin and slightlyrodent-like face, only made an indistinguishable sound in his throat andslunk behind some bushes on the edge of the corn-patch.
Toiney, on the other hand, was never backward in responding vivaciouslyto a friendly greeting.
"Houp-e-la!" he explained in bantering astonishment as he surveyed thetwo scouts in the uniform which was strange to him. "_Houp-e-la!_ Wearre de boy! We arre de stuff, I guess, engh?" He pointed an earthyforefinger at the figures in khaki, his black eyes sparkling withwhimsical flattery. "But, _comment_, you'll no come for go in gran'foret agen, dat's de tam' you'll get los' agen--hein?"
"No, we're not going any farther into the woods to-day. We came to see_him_." Nixon nodded in the direction of Harold skulking timidly behindthe berry bushes. "We want to speak to him about something."
"Ah--misericorde--he'll no speak on you; he's a _poltron_, a scaree:some tam' I'll be so shame for heem I'll feel lak' cry!" returnedToiney, moved to voluble frankness, his eye glistening like a moistbead, now, with mortified pity. "Son gran'pere--hees gran'fader--he'sgo on town dis day: he's try ver' hard for get heem to go also--for tosee! Mais, _non_! He's too scaree!" And the speaker, glancing toward thescreen of bushes, shrugged his shoulders despairingly, as if asking whatcould possibly be done for such a craven.
Scout Nixon was not baffled. Persistent by nature, he had worked wellinto the fibre of his being the tenth point of the scout law: thatdefeat, or the semblance thereof, must not down the true scout.
"Then I'll talk to you first, Toiney," he said, "and tell you aboutsomething that we think might help him."
And in the simplest English that he could choose, eked out at intervalswith freshman French, he made clear to Toiney's quick understanding theaim and methods of the Boy Scout Movement.
The Canadian, a born son of the woods, was quick to grasp and commendthe return to Nature.
"_Ca c'est b'en!_" he murmured with an approving nod. "I'll t'ink datiss good for boy to go in gran' foret--w'en he know how fin' de way--forsee heem beeg tree en de littal wil' an-ni-mal, engh? Mais,miseri-corde,"--his shrugging shoulders pumped up a huge sigh as heturned toward Harold,--"mis-eri-corde! _he'll_ no marche as_eclaireur_--w'at-you-call-eet--scoutee--hein? He'll no go on meetin' oron school, engh?"
And Toiney set to work cutting down cornstalks again as if the subjectwere unhappily disposed of.
Such was not the case, however. At one word which he, the blue-shirtedwoodsman, had used in his harangue, Nixon started, and a strange lookshot across his face. He knew enough of French to translate literallythat word _eclaireur_, the French military term for scout. He knew thatit meant figuratively a light-spreader: one who marches ahead of hiscomrades to enlighten the others.
Could any term be more applicable to the peace scout of to-day who isstriving to bring in an advanced era of progress and good will?
Somehow, it stimulated in Scout Warren the desire to be an _eclaireur_in earnest to the darkened boy overshadowed by his bugbear fears, nowskulking behind the berry-bushes.
"I guess it's no use our trying to get hold of him," Coombsie was sayingmeanwhile in his cousin's ear. "See that old dame over there, Nix?" hepointed to a portly, elderly woman with an immense straw hat tied down,sunbonnet fashion, over her head. "Well! she took care of Harold'smother before she died; now she keeps house for his grandfather, andshe, that old woman, told my mother that up to the time Harold was sevenyears old he would often run and hide his head in her lap of an eveningas it was coming on dark. And when she asked what frightened him he saidthat he was 'afraid of the stars'! Just fancy! Afraid of the stars asthey came out above the clearing here!"
"Gee whiz! What do you know about that?" exclaimed Nixon with a ruefulwhistle: that dark hobgoblin, Fear, was more absurdly entrenched than hehad thought possible.
Yet Harold's seemed more than ever a case in which the scout who couldonce break down the wall of shyness round him might prove a true_eclaireur_: so he advanced upon the timid boy and addressed him with ahoneyed mildness which made Coombsie chuckle and gasp, "Oh, sugar!"under his breath; though Marcoo set himself to second his patrolleader's efforts to the best of his ability.
Together they sought to decoy Harold into a conversation, asking himquestions about his life, whether he ever went into the woods withToiney or played solitary games on the clearing. They intimated thatthey knew he was "quite a boy" if he'd only make friends with them andnot be so stand-offish; and they tried to inveigle him into a simplegame of tag or hide-and-seek among the bushes as a prelude to some moreexciting sport such as duck-on-a-rock or prisoner's base.
But the hapless "_poltron_" only answered them in jerky monosyllables,cowering against the bushes, and finally slunk back to the side of theblue-shirted farmhand with whom he had become familiar--whose merrysongs could charm away th
e dark spirit of fear--and there remained,hovering under Toiney's wing.
"I knew that it would be hard to get round him," said Marcoothoughtfully. "Until now all the boys whom he has met have picked on an'teased him. Suppose you turn your attention to _me_ for a while, Nix!Suppose you were to make a bluff of teaching me some of the things thata fellow must learn before he can enlist as a tenderfoot scout! Perhaps,then, he'd begin to listen an' take notice. I've got a toy flag in mypocket; let's start off with that!"
"Good idea! You do use your head for something more than a hat-rack,Marcoo!" The patrol leader relapsed with a relieved sigh into hisnatural manner. "I brought an end of rope with me; I thought we mighthave got along to teaching him how to tie one or other of the four knotswhich form part of the tenderfoot test. You take charge of the rope-end.And don't lose it if you want to live!"
He passed the little brown coil to his cousin and receiving in returnthe miniature Stars and Stripes, went through a formal flag-raisingceremony there on the sunny clearing. Tying the toy flag-staff to thetop of his tall scout's staff, he planted the latter in some soft earth;then both scouts stood at attention and saluted Old Glory, after whichthey passed and repassed it at marching pace, each time removing theirbroad-brimmed hats with much respect and an eye on Harold to see if hewas taking notice.
Subsequently the patrol leader stationed himself by the impromptuflagstaff, and delivered a simple lecture to Coombsie upon the historyand composition of the National Flag; a knowledge of which, togetherwith the proper forms of respect due to that starry banner, would enterinto his examination for tenderfoot scout.
Both were hoping that some crumbs of information--some ray of patrioticenthusiasm--might be absorbed by Harold, the boy who had never been toschool, and who had scantily profited by some elementary andintermittent lessons in reading and writing from his grandfather. Hisbrown eyes, shy as any rodent's, watched this parade curiously. Butthough Toiney tried to encourage him by precept and gesticulation tofollow the boy scouts' example and salute the Flag, plucking off his owntasseled cap and going through a dumb pantomime of respect to it, the"scaree" could not be moved from his shuffling stolidity.
The starry flaglet waving from the scout's planted staff, might havebeen a gorgeous, drifting leaf from the surrounding woods for all theattention he paid to it!
"Say! but it's hard to land him, isn't it?" Nixon suspended the paradewith a sigh almost of despair. "Well, here goes, for one more attempt toget him interested! Chuck me that rope-end, Marcoo! I'll show you how totie a bowline knot; perhaps, as his father was a sailor--a deep-seafisherman--knot-tying may be more in his line than flag-raising."
The next minute Coombsie's fingers were fumbling with the rope ratherblunderingly, for Marcoo was by nature a bookworm and more efficientalong lines of abstract study than at anything requiring manual skill.
"Pass the end up through the bight," directed Scout Warren when thebight or loop had been formed upon the standing part of the rope. "Isaid _up_, not down, jackass! Now, pass it round the 'standing part';don't you know what that means? Why! the long end of the rope on whichyou're working. Oh! you're a dear donkey," nodding with good-humoredscorn.
Now both the donkey recruit and the instructing scout had become for themoment genuinely absorbed in the intricacies of that bowline knot, andforgot that this was not intended as a _bona-fide_ lesson, but as mere"show off" to awaken the interest of a third person.
Their tail-end glances were no longer directed furtively at Harold tosee whether or not he was beginning to "take notice."
So they missed the first quiver of a peculiar change in him; they didnot see that his sagging chin was suddenly reared a little as if by theapplication of an invisible bearing-rein.
They missed the twitching face-muscles, the slowly dilating eye, thebreath beginning to come in quick puffs through his spreading nostrils,like the smoke issuing from the punky wood, heralding the advent of theruddy spark, when in the woods they started a fire with rubbing-sticks.And just as suddenly and mysteriously as that triumphant sparkappeared--evolved by Nixon's fire-drill, from the dormant possibilitiesin the dull wood--did the first glitter of fascinated light appear andgrow in the eye of Harold Greer, the prisoner of Fear, disparaginglynicknamed the "Hare"!
"I--I can do that! I c-can do it--b-better than he can!" Stuttering andtrembling in a strange paroxysm of eagerness, the _poltron_ addressed,in a nervous squawk, not the absorbed scouts, but Toiney, his friend andprotector.
"I can t-tie it better'n _he_ does! I know--I know I can!" The shrillboyish voice which seemed suddenly to dominate every other sound on theclearing was hoarse with derision as the abnormally shy and timid boypointed a trembling finger at Marcoo still, like a "dear donkey,"blundering with the rope-end.
Had the gray rabbit, which suddenly at that moment whisked out of thewoods and across a distant corner, opened its mouth and addressed them,the surprise to the two scouts could scarcely have been greater.
"Oh! _you can_, can you?" said Nixon thickly. "Let's see you try!" Heplaced the rope-end in Harold's hand, which received it with a fondlingtouch.
"Here you make a small loop on this part of the rope, leaving a goodlong end," he began coolly, while his heart bounded, for the spark inthe furtive eye of the twelve-year-old "scaree" was rapidly becoming ascintillation: the scouts had struck fire from him at last.
A triumph beside which the signal achievement of their friction fire inthe woods paled!
The intangible dragon which held their brother boy a captive on thislonely clearing, not permitting him to mingle freely with his fellowsfor study or play, was weakening before them.
"That's right, Harold! Go ahead: now pass the end up through the loop!Bravo, you're the boy! Now, around the standing part--the ropeitself--and down again! Good: you have it. You can beat _him_ every timeat tying a knot: he's just a blockhead, isn't he?"
And Scout Warren pointed with much show of scorn at Marcoo, the normalrecruit, who looked on delightedly. Never before did boy rejoice sounselfishly over being beaten at a test as Coombsie then! For right hereon the little farm-clearing a strange thing had happened.
In the gloom of every beclouded mind there is one chink by which light,more or less, may enter; and a skillful teacher can work an improvementby enlarging that chink.
Harold's brain was not darkened in the sense of being defective. And thegray tent of fear in which he dwelt had its chink too; the scouts hadfound it in the frayed rope-end and knot.
For while the timid boy watched Coombsie's bungling fingers, that drabknot, upon which they blundered, suddenly beckoned to him like a star.
And, all in a moment, it was no longer his fear-stricken mother wholived in him, but his daring fisherman-father whose horny fingers couldtie every sailor's knot that was ever heard of, and who had used thatbowline noose in many an emergency at sea to save a ship-wreckedfellow-creature.
The bowline was the means of saving the fisherman's son now from mentalshipwreck, or something nearly as bad. Harold's eager thoughts becameentangled in it, while his fingers worked under Nixon's directions; heforgot, for once, to be afraid.
Presently the noose was complete, and Nixon was showing him how totighten it by pulling on the standing part of the rope.
This achieved, the timid human "Hare" raised his brown eyes from therope in his hand and looked from one to another of his three companionsas in a dream, a bright one.
For half a minute a rainbowed--almost awed--silence held the three uponthe clearing. Toiney was the first to break it. He flung his armsrapturously round the hitherto fear-bound boy.
"Bravo! mo' fin," he cried, embracing Harold as his "cute one." "Bravo!mo' smarty. Grace a bon Dieu, you ain' so scare anny longere! You go forbe de boy--de brave boy--you go for be de scout--engh?" His eyes werewet and winking as if, now indeed, he felt "lak' cry"!
"Certainly, you're going to be a scout, Harold," corroborated Nixon,equally if not so eloquently moved. "Now! don't you want to learn how totie ano
ther knot, the fisherman's bend? You ought to be able to tiethat, you know, because your father was a great fisherman."
Harold was nothing loath. More and more his father's spirit flashedawake in him. Through the rest of that afternoon, which marked a new erain his life, he seemed to work with his father's fingers, while theOctober sky glowed in radiant tints of saffron and blue, and a lightbreeze skipped through the pine-trees and the brilliant maples thatflamed at intervals like lamps around the clearing.
"We'll come again to-morrow or the day after, Harold, and teach you more'stunts'; I mean some other things, besides knot-tying, that a boy oughtto know how to do," said Nixon as a filmy haze hovering over the edgesof the woods warned them that it bore evening on its dull blue wings.
"Aw right!" docilely agreed Harold; and though he shuffled his feettimidly, like the "poltron" or craven, which Toiney had in sorrow calledhim, there was a shy longing in his face which said that he was sorrythe afternoon was over, that he would look for the return of his newfriends, the only boys who had ever racked their brains to help and notto hurt him.
Before their departure he had learned how to tie three knots, square orreef, bowline and the fisherman's bend. He had likewise admitted twomore persons within the narrow enclosure of his confidence--the two whowere to liberate him, the _eclaireurs_, the peace scouts of to-day.
And, for the first time in his life, he had awkwardly lifted his cap andsaluted the flag of his country as it waved in miniature from theplanted staff.
That afternoon was the first of several spent by Scout Warren and hisaide-de-camp, Coombsie, on the little farm-clearing in the woods, tryingto foster a boyish spirit in Harold, to overcome his dread of minglingwith other boys, to awaken in him the desire to become a boy scout andshare the latter's good times at indoor meeting, on hike, or in camp.
When the date of the second meeting drew near at which seven newrecruits were to take the scout oath and be formally organized into theOwl Patrol, they had obtained the promise of this timid fledgling to bepresent under Toiney's wing, and enlist, too.
"I wonder whether he'll keep his word or if he'll fight shy of coming atthe last minute?" whispered Nixon to Coombsie on the all-importantevening when the other recruits led by their scoutmaster marched intothe modest town hall, a neutral ground where all of diverse creeds mightmeet, and where the members of the local council, including the doctorand Captain Andy, had already assembled.
"If he doesn't show up, Nix, you won't be able to pass the twelfth pointof test for becoming a first-class scout by producing a recruit trainedby yourself in the requirements of a tenderfoot," suggested Marcoo."You've passed all the active tests, haven't you?"
Scout Warren nodded, keeping an anxious eye on the door. Having beenduly transferred from his Philadelphia troop to the new patrol which hadjust been organized in this tide-lapped corner of Massachusetts--whereit seemed probable now that he would spend a year at least, as hisparents contemplated a longer stay in Europe--he had already passed themajor part of his examination for first-class scout before the ScoutCommissioner of the district.
He was an expert in first-aid and primitive cooking. He had prepared afair map of a certain section of the marshy country near the tidalriver. He could state upon his honor that he had accurately judged withhis eye a certain distance in the woods--namely, from the top of thattowering red-oak-tree which, when lost, he had chosen as a lookoutpoint, to the cave called the Bear's Den--on the never-to-be-forgottenday when four painted boys and a dog finally took refuge in that rockycavern; the boy scout's judgment of the distance being subsequentlyconfirmed by lumbermen who knew every important tree in that section ofthe woods.
He had passed tests in swimming, tree-felling, map-reading, and soforth! But he would not be entitled to wear, instead of the second-classscout badge, the badge of the first-class rank, beneath the two whitebars of the patrol leader upon his left arm, until he produced thetenderfoot whom he had trained.
But would that timid recruit from the little woodland clearing--thathalf-fledged Owlet--appear?
"Suppose he should 'funk it' at the last minute?" whispered Marcootragically to the patrol leader. "No! No! As I'm alive! here theycome--Toiney, with Harold in tow. Blessings on that Canuck!" he addedfervently.
It was a strange-looking pair who now entered the little town hall:Toiney, in a rough gray sweater and those heelless high boots, removinghis tasseled cap and depositing in a corner the lantern which had guidedhim with his charge through the woods, as facile to him by night as byday; and Harold, timidly clinging to his arm.
The brown eyes of the latter rolled up in panic as he beheld the biglighted room wherein the boy scouts and those interested in them wereassembled. All his mother's unbalanced fear of a crowd returning uponhim in full force, he would have fled, but for Toiney's firmimprisonment of his trembling arm, and for Toiney's voice encouraginghim gutturally with:--
"Tiens! mo' beau. _Courage!_ Gard' donc de scout wit' de flag on she'shand! V'la! V'la!" pointing to Nixon, the patrol leader, supporting theStars and Stripes. "Bon courage! you go for be de scout too--engh?"
His country's flag, blooming into magnificence under the electric light,had, to-night, a smile for Harold, as he saw it the centre of salutingboys.
Something of his brave father's love for that National Ensign, the"Color" as the fisherman called it, which had presided over so manycrises of that father's life, as when on a gala day in harbor he ran itto the masthead, or twined it in the rigging, at sea, to speak anothervessel, or sorrowfully hoisted it at half-mast for a shipmatedrowned,--something of that loving reverence now began to blossom inHarold's heart like a many-tinted flower!
"Well! here you are, Harold." Coombsie was promptly taking charge of thenew arrival, piloting him, with Toiney, to a seat. "I knew you'd come;you've got the right stuff in you; eh?"
It was feeble "stuff" at the moment, and in danger of melting into anopen attempt at flight; for Harold's eyes had turned from the benignantflag to the figure of Leon Chase.
But Leon had little opportunity, and less desire, to harass himto-night.
For, as the kernel of the initiatory proceedings was reached, the firstof the seven new recruits to hold up the three fingers of his right handand take the scout oath was Starrie Chase:--
"On my honor I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the scout law: To help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight."
Captain Andy cleared his throat as he listened, and the doctor wiped hisglasses.
Then, as corporal or second in command of the new patrol, Leon stoodholding aloft the brand-new flag of that patrol--a great, hornedhoot-owl, the Grand Duke of the neighboring woods, embroidered on a blueground by Colin's mother--while his brother recruits, having each passedthe tenderfoot test, took the oath and were enrolled as duly fledgedOwls.
Harold, the timid fledgling, came last. Supported on either side by hissponsors, Nixon and Coombsie, he distinguished himself by tying the fourknots which formed part of the test with swiftness and skill, and by"muddling" through the rest of the examination, consent having beenobtained from headquarters that some leniency in the matter of answersmight be shown to this handicapped boy who had never been to school andfor whom--as for Leon--the Boy Scout Movement might prove The Thing.
Captain Andy declared it to be "The Thing" when later that night he wascalled upon for a speech.
"Boys!" he said, heaving his massive figure erect, the sky-blue rift ofhis eye twinkling under the cloudy lid. "Boys! it's an able craft, thisnew movement, if you'll only buckle to an' work it well. And it's ahearty motto you have: BE PREPARED. Prepared to help yourselves, so thatyou can stand by to help others! Lads,"--the voice of the oldsea-fighter boomed blustrously,--"there comes a time to 'most every onewho isn't a poor-hearted lubber, when he wants to help somebody elsemore than he ever wanted to help himself; and if he hasn't made the mosto' what powers he has, why!
when that Big Minute comes he won't be 'init.' Belay that! Make it fast here!" tapping his forehead. "Live up toyour able motto an' pretty soon you'll find yourselves going ahead underall the sail you can carry; an' you won't be trying to get a corner onthe breeze either, or to blanket any other fellow's sails! Rather,you'll show him the road an' give him a tow when he needs it. God blessyou! So long!"
And when the wisdom of the grand old sea-scout had been cheered to theecho, the eight members of the new patrol, rallying round their Owlflag, broke into the first verse of their song, a part of which Nixonhad sung to them by the camp-fire in the woods:--
"No loyal Scout gives place to doubt, But action quick he shows! Like a knight of old he is brave and bold, And chivalry he knows. Then 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!"
"Sing! Harold. Do your part, and sing!" urged Nixon, the patrol leader."Oh, go on: that isn't a scout's mouth, Harold!" looking at the weakbrother's fear-tightened lips. "A scout's mouth turns up at the corners.Smile, Harold! Smile and sing."
A minute later Scout Warren's own features were wreathed by a smile,humorous, moved, glad--more glad than any which had illumined his facehitherto--for by his side the boy who had once feared the stars as theystole out above the clearing, was singing after him:--
"Hurrah for the sun, hurrah for the storm! Hurrah for the stars above!"
"He's going to make a good scout, some time; don't you think so, Cap?"Nixon, glancing down at the timid "poltron," nudged Captain Andy's arm.
"Aye, aye! lad, I guess he will, when you've put some more backbone intohim," came the optimistic answer.
But Captain Andy's gaze did not linger on Harold. The keen search-lightof his glance was trained upon Leon--upon Corporal Chase, who, judgingby the new and lively purpose in his face, had to-night, indeed, throughthe channel of his scout oath, "deepened the water in which he floated,"as he stood holding high the royal-blue banner of the Owl Patrol.