Chapter XVII: The Signalman

"Patrol leaders and corporals, muster your men!" The voice of the young scoutmaster rang sharply out upon the night.

The three boy patrols, Owls, Seals, and Foxes, who fell quickly into line at his order, were no longer surrounding their camp-fire amid the dusky sand-hills. That had been deserted even while Toiney was speaking, while he was pointing out the claims of a larger fire on their attention.

From the glare in the sky this was evidently a threatening blaze; its fierce reflection overhung like an intangible flaming sword the trio of recently erected summer residences about quarter of a mile from the scouts' camp--those handsome bungalows from which the summer birds had flown.

"That's no brush fire," Scoutmaster Estey had exclaimed directly he sighted the glare. "It's a building of some kind. Come on, fellows; there's work for us here!" And snatching one of the two camp-lanterns from its sandy pedestal he led the way across the dark wilderness of the dunes.

Nixon caught up the second luminary and followed his chief. In their wake raced the three patrols, down in a sandy hollow one moment, climbing wildly the next, tearing their way through the plumed tangle of beach-grass and other vegetation that capped each pale mound now swathed in blackness, Toiney keeping Harold by his side.

"It isn't one of the houses, thank goodness! Only a big shed!" cried the scoutmaster as they neared the scene of the fire, where golden flames tore in two the darkness that cowered on either side of them, having gained complete mastery of an outbuilding which had been used as a modest garage during the summer.

"_Whee-ew!_ Gracious!" Nixon vented a prolonged whistle of consternation. "Why! 'twas into that very shed that we saw Dave Baldwin--or the man whom we took for him--disappear a couple of hours ago."

But the demands of the moment were such, if the three houses were to be saved, that the remark, tossed at random into the darkness, was lost there amid the reign of fiery motes and rampant sparks that strove to carry the destruction farther.

"Luckily, the wind isn't setting toward the house--it's mostly in another direction!" The scoutmaster by a breathless wave of his blinking lantern indicated the largest of the three bungalows to which the blazing outbuilding belonged. "No hope of saving that shed! But if the little wood-shed near-by catches, the house will go too. We may head the fire off!"

It was then that he issued the ringing order to patrol leaders and those second in command to muster their men.

And as the boy scouts fell into line, while Toiney was muttering, aghast: "Ah, _quel gros feu_! She's beeg fire! How we put shes out--engh?" the alert brain of the American scoutmaster had outlined his plan of campaign; and the air cracked with his orders:--

"Toiney, take the Owls and break into that clam-digger's shack on the beach: get his pails! Foxes and Seals form a line to the beach; fill the pails as you get them an' pass 'em along to me! Tide's high; you need only wade in a little way! Hey! Leon,"--to Corporal Chase, who was obeying the first order with the rest of his patrol,--"you're good at signaling: take these lanterns, get up on the tallest sand-hill an' signal Annisquam Lighthouse; tell them to get help! Men there can probably read semaphore!"

"_We_ may not be able to prevent the fire's spreading. And if it attacks that bungalow, the others will go too--the whole colony! Lighthouse men may take the glare in the sky to mean only a brush-fire," added the scoutmaster, _sotto voce_, as he stationed himself upon the crest of the sandy slope that led from the burning shed to the dim lapping water.

That doomed shed was now blazing like a mammoth bonfire. The flames flung their gleeful arms out, seizing a solemn gray birch-tree for a partner in their wild dance, scattering their rosy fire-petals broadcast until they lodged in the roof of the wood-shed adjacent to the house, and upon the piazza of the bungalow itself.

But they had a trained force to reckon with in the boy scouts. In the clam-digger's shack were found more than a dozen pails which their owner had cleaned and set in order before he went home that evening. And among the excited raiders who seized upon them with wild eagerness was Harold Greer--Harold who a year ago was called "poltron" and "scaree" even by the friend who protected him--Harold, with the last wisp of bugbear fear that trammeled him burned off by the contagious excitement of the moment--acquitting himself sturdily as a Scout of the U.S.A!

Under his patrol leader's direction he took his place in the chain of boys that formed from the conflagration to the wave-edge of the beach, where half a dozen of his comrades rushed bare-legged into the howling tide, filled the pails and passed them along, up the line, to their scoutmaster on the hill.

And he held to his place and to his duty stanchly, did the one-time "poltron," even when Toiney, his mainstay, was summoned to the hill-top, to aid the commander-in-chief in his direct onslaughts upon the fire. Seeing which, Scout Warren touched his shoulder once proudly, in passing, and said in a voice huskily triumphant: "Well done, Harold! I always knew you were a boy!"

The dragon which had held sway upon that woodland clearing was slain at last, and the scars which he had left upon his victim were being cauterized by the fire.

"Go to it, boys! Good work! That's fine!" rang out the commanding shout of the scoutmaster above the sullen roar of semi-defeated flames and the hiss of contending elements.

"_Houp-la!_ _Ca c'est bien!_ Dat's ver' good!" screamed Toiney airily from his perch atop of a ladder which he had found in the wood-shed.

From this vantage-point he was deluging with salt water the roof of the smaller shed and also the walls of the bungalow wherever a fire-seed lodged, ready to take root. Like a huge monkey he looked, swarming up there, with the flame-light dancing deliriously upon his dingy red cap! But his voice would put merriment into any exigency.

"_Houp-e-la!_ We arre de boy! We arre de bes' scout ev'ry tam'!" he carolled gayly, as he launched his hissing pailfuls at each threatened spot. "_Continue cette affaire d'eau_--go on wit' dis watere bizness. We done good work--engh?"

So they were, doing very good work! But the issue was still exceedingly doubtful as to whether, without any proper fire-fighting apparatus, they could hold the flames in check, restricting their destruction to the large shed whose roof toppled in with a resounding crash, and a volcano-like eruption of sparks.

And what of Leon? What of Corporal Chase, alone upon the tallest sand-hill he could pick out, a solitary scout figure remote from his comrades with the dune breeze shrieking round him?

What were his feelings as he shook his two bright signaling lanterns aloft at arm's length, to attract the attention of the men who kept the distant lighthouse beyond the dunes at the mouth of another tidal river, and then spelled out his message with those flashing luminaries, instead of the ordinary signal-flags: "Fire! Get help! House afire! Get help!" calling assistance out of the black night?

Well! Starrie Chase was conscious of a monster thrill shooting through him to his feet which firmly pressed the sandy soil: breaking up into a hundred little thrills, it made most of the sensations which he had misnamed excitement a year ago seem tame, thin, and unboyish.

He stood there, an isolated, sixteen-year-old boy. But he knew himself a trained force stronger than the "mad-cat" wind that clawed at him, than the tide which moaned behind him, even than the fire he combated; stronger always in the long run than these, for he was growing into a man who could get the better of them ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

He was a scout, in line with the world's progress, allied with rescue, not ruin, with healing, not harm, with a chivalry that crowned all.

"Fire! Get help!" Thus he kept on signaling at intervals, his left arm extending one flashing lantern at arm's length, while the companion light was lowered to his knees for the formation of the first letter of the message. And so on, the twin lights held at various angles illumining the youthful signalman until he stood out like a black statue on a pedestal among the lonely dunes.

To Starrie Chase that sand-peak pedestal seemed to grow into a mountain and his uniformed figure to tower with it--become colossal--in the excitement of the moment!

While, not twenty yards distant, behind a smaller sand-hillock, crouched another figure whose half-liberated groan the wind caught and tossed away like a feather as he gazed between clumps of beach-grass at the gesturing form of the scout.

It was the same figure which had haunted the dunes, listening to the camp-fire revelry upon the boy scouts' first night in camp, the same which had so suddenly appeared upon the marshes near the pup-seal's creek.

But distress seemed now to lie heavier upon that vagrant figure, instead of diminishing. For, as he still studied the light-girdled form of the signalman, Dave Baldwin vented a groan full and unmistakable, and blew upon a pair of burned hands.