The Wolf Patrol: A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts

by John Finnemore

CHAPTER XLVIII

IN THE RAIN

The scouts were falling off to sleep once more when they were aroused again, this time by the divinest music. A nightingale began to sing in the little wood, and made it echo and re-echo with the richest song.

Suddenly a faint murmuring began to mingle with the lovely notes. The murmuring grew, and the bird's song ceased. The air was filled with the patter of falling rain.

'Rain!' cried Dick; 'that's rain, Chippy.'

'On'y a shower, p'raps,' said his comrade.

'I hope so,' returned the Wolf.

They felt nothing of the rain at present, for they were camped beneath a fir which stood as an outpost to the coppice, and its thick canopy was stretched above their heads. Chippy sprang up and threw fresh fuel on the fire, and looked out on the night.

'Theer's a big black cloud creepin' up from the sou'-west,' he said. 'That looks pretty bad for a soaker.'

In a short time the scouts knew they were in for a real drenching. The patter of the rain came heavier and thicker, until it was drumming on the fir-branches in steady streams. Soon great spots began to fall from the lower branches of the fir beneath which they lay.

'I've just had a big drop slap in my eye,' said Dick, sitting up. 'What are we going to do, Chippy?'

'Got to do summat,' said the Raven, 'an' quick, too, afore we're drownded out.'

'Let's rig up a shelter tent with the blankets,' suggested Dick; and they set to work at once. They pulled the four fence-rails which formed the framework of their bed from their places, and laid them side by side in search of the shorter ones. They proved much of the same size, so Chippy went to work with the hatchet to shorten a pair, while Dick began to dig the holes in which to step them. The ground was soft, and with the aid of his knife Dick soon had a couple of holes eighteen inches deep. While he did this Chippy had cut two rails down, and fastened a third across the ends of the shorter ones, with the scouts' neckties for cords. They had ample light to work by, for the fire had flared up bravely.

Now they swung up their framework of two posts and a cross-bar, and stepped the feet of the posts in the holes, throwing back the soft earth, and ramming it in with the short, thick pieces cut off the rails. This made a far stronger hold for the uprights than anything they could have done in the shape of sharpening their ends and trying to drive them down.

Next they took their blankets, and hung them side by side over the cross-bar, one overlapping the other by a couple of feet. With their knives they cut a number of pegs from the hard gorse stems, and sharpened them, and drove them through the blankets into the bar, pinning the blankets tightly in place. The tough gorse-wood went into the soft rail like nails, and the back of the tomahawk made a splendid hammer. They had a fourth rail, and they pegged the other ends of the blankets down to that, drew it backwards, and there was a lean-to beneath which they leapt with shouts of triumph.

'Done th' old rain this time,' yelled the Raven. 'Now we'll keep a rousin' fire goin', and sit here and listen to it.'

There was, luckily, no wind, or the scouts might not have been so jubilant; it was a heavy summer rain, pouring down strong and straight. The boys were pretty wet before they had got their shelter rigged up, but the fire was strong and warm, though it hissed vigorously as the heavy drops fell from the branches of the fir.

'Any chance of putting the fire out, do you think?' said Dick.

'Not if we keep plenty o' stuff on it,' replied his chum. 'Hark 'ow it's patterin' on the blankets!'

'They'll be jolly wet, and take some drying,' said Dick. 'Still, better for them to get wet than for us.'

'We ain't cut a trench,' said Chippy.

'To carry off the water,' cried Dick. 'No, we haven't. But we can dig that from cover, just round the patch we want to sit on.'

They went to work with their knives, and cut a trench six inches deep round the pile of bedding on which they were seated, and then had no fear of being flooded out with rain-water.

Down came the rain faster and heavier. The whole air was filled with the hissing, rushing noise of the great drops falling on the trees, the bushes, the open ground, but the scouts sat tight under their blanket lean-to, and fed the fire steadily from the heap of sticks and stems which the Raven had piled up.

'Weasels for weather-prophets for me arter this,' grunted Chippy; and Dick nodded his head.

'It was my Uncle Jim who told me that about the weasels,' said Dick. 'He said they're always very active before stormy weather.'

'Just about fits it this time, anyway,' remarked the Raven. The mention of Mr. Elliott brought to mind their chums in Bardon.

'I wonder how our patrols are getting on without us, Chippy?' said Dick.

'Oh, it'll gie the corporals a chance to try their 'ands at leadin',' returned the Raven. 'I wish they could just see us now. They'd gie their skins to jine us.'

'Rather,' laughed Dick; 'this is just about all right.'

It is possible that some persons might not have agreed with him, and at one o'clock in the morning might have preferred their beds to squatting on a heap of brushwood under the shelter of a blanket, the hissing fire making the only cheery spot in the blackness of the cloud- and rain-wrapped moorland. But the scouts would not have changed their situation for quarters in Buckingham Palace. There was the real touch about this. It seemed almost as romantic as a bivouac on a battlefield.

'Well, s'pose we try for a bit more sleep,' said the prudent Raven; 'long march to-morrer, yer know.'

'We've got to keep the fire up,' said Dick; 'it would never do to let that out.'

'O' course not,' replied Chippy; 'we must take turns to watch. Now, who gets fust sleep—long or short?'

He held up two twigs which he had plucked from the bedding; the ends were concealed in his hand.

'Short gets first sleep,' said Dick.

'Aw' right,' replied the Raven; 'you draw.'

Dick drew, and found he had the long draw.

'Wot's the time?' asked Chippy.

'Just turned one.'

'Right; then I'll sleep till three. Then you wake me, and I'll tek' a turn till five. Then we must be movin', for to-morrer's a long day.'

'To-day's a long day, you mean,' laughed Dick.

'So it is,' replied the Raven. 'It's to-day a'ready—o' course it is.'

He was about to coil himself round like a dog upon the hearth, when he cast a quick glance on the heap of firewood.

'Not enough theer,' he said; 'an' I ain't a-goin' to have ye hoppin' round on yer game foot.'

He sprang up again, and, in spite of Dick's protestations, caught up the axe and a flaming brand from the fire, and went down to the burnt gorse-patch, and hacked away till he had as many of the long stems as he could drag.

'They're a bit wet outside,' he said, as he returned; 'but they'll ketch all right if ye keep a good fire up, and theer's a plenty to last till I've finished my nap. Then I can fill in my time wi' cuttin' any amount.'

He curled himself up again, and was asleep in a moment.

Dick's watch was only two hours, but it seemed a long, long time. He kept a rousing fire going, such a fire as the rain could make no impression upon, and lost itself in the glowing depths in an angry spluttering. Once the heat made him so drowsy that he dreaded the terrible disgrace of falling asleep on his post. So he stuck his head from under the shelter, and washed the sleep out of his eyes in the slashing downpour. But even after that he was half asleep again, when a sluice of cold water came in at the point where the blankets overlapped, and very obligingly ran down his neck, and fetched him up with a jump. Now he had a job to do in arranging their cover, and he moved the ground rail a little back, and drew the blankets tauter. The simple shelter did its work nobly. It is true that towards the bottom the weight of water caused the blankets to sag, and there was a steady drip at that point; but it was beyond the spot where the scouts were crouching, and the sharp slant of the upper part ran the water safely over their heads.

Chippy woke upon the stroke of three in a manner which seemed to Dick perfectly miraculous.

'How did you do it?' asked the latter. 'I should never have awakened of myself in that style.'

'Yer must fix it on yer mind,' replied the Raven, 'and then somehow or other yer eyes open at the right time.'

'Well,' laughed Dick, 'I'm afraid it's no use my trying to fix five o'clock in my mind. You'll have to wake me, Chippy.'

'I'll wake ye fast enough,' returned the Raven. 'Now roll yerself up, an' go to bye-bye. It'll be broad daylight soon. Most likely the rain will stop at sun-up.'

Day was breaking, but grey and chill, and the rain still poured down in lines which scarcely slanted. The scouts, however, were quite warm, for there was no wind, and the leaping fire sent ample heat into the nook where they lay.

Dick placed his haversack for a pillow, and laid his head on it. The sleep he had been fighting off descended on him in power, and he knew no more until Chippy shook his arm and aroused him at five o'clock.

His eyes opened on a very different scene from that he had last gazed upon. The rain was over; the morning was bright with glowing sunshine; the new-bathed country looked deliciously fresh and green; a most balmy and fragrant breeze was blowing; and in copse and bush a hundred birds were singing, while the lark led them all from the depths of the blue sky.

'What a jolly morning!' cried Dick.

'Aw' right, ain't it?' grinned the Raven. 'The rain stopped a little arter four, an' the sun come out, an' it's been a-gettin' better an' better.'

Suddenly Dick looked up. The blankets had gone. Chippy laughed.

'Look behind,' he said.

Dick looked, and saw that the Raven had been very busy. He had built a fresh fire with a heap of glowing embers from the old one; the billy had served him as an improvised shovel. Over this fire he had erected a cage of bent sticks, and the blankets were stretched on the framework and drying in style; the steam was rising from them in clouds.

'That's great,' said his chum; 'I wondered more than once in the night what we should do with sopping wet blankets.'

'They'll be all right in a while again.' And the Raven gave them a turn. 'Now we've got to wire in and hunt up a brekfus.'

Dick turned out the haversack which held the food they had left, but it made a very poor apology for a meal.

'I could put that lot in a holler tooth, an' never know I'd had aught,' said Chippy. 'This scoutin' life mek's yer uncommon peckish.'

'Rather,' cried the Wolf, who was as hungry as the animal after which his patrol was named; and the two boys began to scout for their last wild, free breakfast-table.