CHAPTER XXXIX
THE STORM—WHAT HAPPENED WHILE THEY DRIED THEIR CLOTHES
Within a mile again, the track they were following—a very ancient vicinal way—began to rise over a long stretch of moorland used mainly for sheep-walks, and covered in places with wide patches of low-growing bilberry-bushes. On some of these bushes the purple little berries were already ripe, and the boys gathered them in handfuls, and ate them as they walked.
Suddenly a low, heavy muttering called their attention to the western sky, and they saw a blue-black cloud rising swiftly.
'Thunder,' said Dick; 'that's what this terrific heat has meant.'
'Best step out,' remarked the Raven. 'No shelter about 'ere for a mile or two.'
They stayed no longer to gather bilberries, but pushed on at a steady swinging stride, looking back from time to time at the storm, which seemed to pursue them. A wind sprang up, and wild gusts raced past them, and howled across the moor. Light, swift clouds which seemed to be flying before the storm hurried across the sky, and the sunshine was swallowed up and the day darkened.
Dick looked back and whistled.
'Here comes the rain, Chippy,' he said. 'We'd better put our jackets on.' They did so, but the Raven shrugged his shoulders as if he was of the opinion that jackets would be but slight protection against the downpour now rushing upon them.
The thunder-shower was perhaps a couple of miles away, and marching across the country in a line as straight as if drawn with a ruler. A clump of pines stood out darkly against the white veil of the streaming rain. As the scouts looked, the pines were swallowed up, and the wall of water stalked swiftly on towards them.
They looked round, but there was not the faintest chance of gaining the least shelter. All round them the earth was covered with low-growing bushes; there was neither tree nor hedge nor fence to break the force of the torrential downpour. A mile in front the road topped the ridge and disappeared.
'There may be shelter beyond the ridge, Chippy,' cried Dick. 'Let's run for it.'
They ran, but in vain. Long before they gained the ridge the storm was upon them—first a few heavy drops, then a downpour which made the earth smoke again. In two minutes the scouts were wet to the skin, and the storm lasted twenty. Then it raced past them, hissing and roaring, and left them tramping down the farther side of the ridge, their boots full of water, and not a dry thread about them save for the blankets stowed in the waterproof haversacks.
When the rain passed away, the two scouts, who had been tramping steadily along without growling at the weather, stopped and looked at each other, leaning on their sticks.
'Well, Chippy,' laughed Dick, 'we look like a pair of drowned rats.'
'That's about it, Dick,' grunted the Raven, and tried to do a step or two of a dance. This set the water bubbling out over the tops of his shoes.
'We must dry ourselves somehow or other,' went on Dick. 'You know, B. P. says it's jolly dangerous to go on in your wet clothes.'
'Sat under a waggon wi' nuthin' on while he dried 'em when he'd been wet,' quoted Chippy.
'And you remember his dodge for drying his toggery?' said Dick.
'Rather,' returned the Raven; 'fire under a cage o' sticks.'
'Right,' said Dick; 'and there's a copse ahead. We'll halt in it, and dry ourselves.'
They marched briskly for the copse, hung their haversacks on the branch of a small, low-growing oak, and went to work at building a fire. It was no easy task, but by searching in corners where thick bushes had turned aside the worst of the downpour, they found odd handfuls of dry stuff to start their blaze. Luckily the matches had been in Dick's haversack, and were perfectly dry. A small dead larch afforded them twigs and sticks when once the fire was started, and Dick chopped the dead tree into small, handy pieces, and fed the flames with them. They did not want a lasting fire, but a heap of hot ashes, and this would be soonest afforded by small pieces of wood.
While Dick was busy with the tomahawk, Chippy attacked a thicket of tall, straight-growing hazels with his knife, and cut an armful of the springy rods. As soon as the fire burned down, the boys took the rods, sharpened each end, took an end each, bent the rod into an arch, and drove the ends deeply into the soft earth. In this way they had soon covered the fire in, as it were, with a great basket. Then they stripped off their sodden raiment, wrung it out, and spread it over the bent hazel-rods to dry.
The excellence of the plan was soon manifest. Clouds of steam began to rise from the wet clothes, and promised that they would soon be dry. But it was cool after the rain, and the clothes hid the fire, and the scouts felt no inclination to sit under a waggon, as their great leader had done; they felt more inclined to move about a little to warm themselves.
'It's jolly cold compared with the heat before the thunderstorm,' said Dick.
'Ain't it?' said Chippy. 'I'll race ye to th' end o' the copse an' back. That'll warm us a bit.'
'Right,' said Dick. 'Let's cut along where the larches and firs are. It'll be fun sprinting over the fir-needles, and soft to the feet. Where do we run to?'
'The big beech yonder,' said the Raven. 'I'll count. We'll go at three.'
He counted, and away bounded the two scouts, racing at their fastest for the big beech which they were to touch, then to return to their fire.
Now, the last thing they expected to have was a witness of their race. They believed that the copse was a lonely patch of wood on the lonely heath. So it was, save for one house which lay just beyond the wood where the ridge sloped away to the south. The house was that of a sheep-farmer, whose flocks fed over the moorland; and as the boys raced through the little wood, the shepherd left the farmsteading, where he had been sheltering from the storm, and came up through the copse to go about his business.
The scouts did not see him, but he saw the scouts. For a few moments he watched the race, his mouth gaping wide in true rustic wonder; then he turned, and hastily retraced his steps to the farm. He burst into the kitchen, where the farmer and his wife were seated at a round table in front of the wide hearth, taking their tea.
'Maister! maister!' cried the shepherd, 'theer's two bwoys a-runnin' about i' the copse wi' ne'er a stitch on 'em.'
'What's that ye say, Diggory?' cried the farmer's wife.
'Ne'er a stitch on 'em, missis, a-runnin' about there like two pixies, they be. A' niver seed such a sight afore in a Christian land. 'Tis like haythens, on'y they be white uns 'stead o' black uns.'
'What do ye make of it, Tom?' said the farmer's wife to her husband.
'Maybe 'tis nought but his simple-minded talk,' replied the farmer, taking a huge bite out of a slice of bread-and-butter.
'No, maister,' cried the shepherd. ''Tis Gospel true, ivery word. Ne'er a stitch on 'em.' And he waved his left hand like an orator.
Suddenly an angry flush sprang to the farmer's face, and he stood up.
'Then, 'tis gipsies!' he cried.
'I dunno,' said the shepherd. 'Brown they hain't, but white as milk.'
'I'll mark their white for 'em,' cried the farmer; and stepping quickly to the wall, he seized a long cart-whip which hung there, and strode from the house.
For years there had been a bitter feud between the sheep-farmer and a large family of gipsies of the name of King. The Kings went about the country in several small bands, and for generations the copse had been a favourite halting-place. But one spring the farmer lost some lambs, and was persuaded that the gipsies had been at the bottom of his loss. So he forbade them the use of the copse, and drove them out whenever he found they had dared to pitch their camp there. He was a hasty-tempered man, utterly fearless and quite unforgiving, so that a regular war had sprung up between himself and the Kings. Now he was persuaded that his enemies had sought the shelter of his copse, and he was off at once to attack them.
He arrived on the scene to find the scouts turning their clothes. Instead of heathens, they now looked like Red Indians; for they had remembered the dry blankets in the haversacks, had taken them out, and were wrapped in them like a pair of braves.
They saw nothing of the angry farmer till he burst upon them through a thicket of brambles within a dozen yards of the fire, so busy were they with turning their steaming clothes.
The farmer's wrath rose higher at sight of the steam and smoke. A fire was the very thing he had defied the gipsies again and again to make on his land. He cracked his whip with a vicious snap, and rushed upon the scouts.
'I'll larn ye to make a fire on my land arter the many times I've a-warned ye,' he bellowed.
The attack and the outcry were both so sudden that the scouts were taken by surprise. Dick was on the side of the rush. He saw that an onslaught was meant, though he knew not why, and grabbed at his staff. He forgot to keep hold of the blanket, and it slid to the ground, and left him defenceless. Down came the hissing thong, and wrapped itself right round him, a regular rib-binder.
A yell of pain burst from the Wolf's lips; then he shut his teeth tight. The surprise had forced that first cry from him, and he did not intend to utter another. But the whip was already hissing through the air, and flight was the only thing possible; he made a spring clean across the heap of drying clothes, and fled.
'Tom, Tom,' panted a shrill voice behind, 'why will ye be so franzy? These be no gipsy lads. Look at their clothes a-dryin'!'
The farmer's wife, well knowing her husband's impetuous temper, had followed up, and at sight of her Dick tucked himself away behind a wide-stemmed beech.
The farmer looked down at the heap of steaming clothes, and was struck with the force of his wife's remark.
'Why, 'tis a sort o' uniform,' he muttered.
'O' course it's a uniform,' cried Chippy, who had stood his ground wrapped in his blanket and flourishing the tomahawk. 'It's the uniform o' Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts, an' what ye want to come 'ere for an' fetch my mate one acrost the ribs I'm blest if I know.'
'Bring my blanket here, Chippy,' called out Dick from his refuge. 'I dropped it in my hurry.'
'Why, ye see, I thought 'twor gipsy tramps startin' a fire in this copse, an' I've forbid it,' said the farmer slowly, scratching his head, and gradually getting hold of the idea that he had made a full-sized mistake.
'Tramps!' snorted Chippy in scorn, taking Dick's blanket, and marching across to his friend. 'D'ye reckon we look like tramps?' He simply bellowed the question, for he was immensely proud of his new scout's uniform, and quite forgot that at present he was arrayed only in a blanket.
'They've been in the wet, and they're dryin' their clothes,' went on the farmer's wife. 'Come home, Tom, an' leave 'em be; they'll do no harm.'
The farmer was already regretting his hasty blow, but, being a man who could never be made to express the opinion that he was in the wrong, he said nothing, merely turned away, and beat a retreat.
'Here's your blanket, Dick,' said the Raven. 'I felt ready, I can tell ye, to chuck the chopper at that confounded old hayseed of a farmer.'
'He did fetch me one for luck,' said Dick, rubbing the weal which now began to show up on his body. 'It seems we're trespassing.'
'Not to do any harm,' growled the Raven. 'But he's off now; the wife's fetchin' him away. She seems a good sort.'
The two scouts went back to their fire, and again turned the clothes, which were drying fast. Before long they were able to dress again, and march on their way.