The most destructive scourge to which all wooded sections of our country are exposed is that of forest fires. The last report of the Forestry Commission is that the loss in one year has amounted to five million dollars. A vast amount of property is thus annually destroyed, and the lamentable fact remains that in many instances the conflagrations are due to carelessness. A party of campers go into the woods, start a fire for cooking purposes and leave the embers smouldering, thinking they will die out in a little while and cause no harm. These embers, however, may stay alive for days, be fanned into a blaze by a gust of wind, and, scattering among the dry leaves and withered foliage, swell into a varying mass of flame which sweeps everything before it.
Many states thus exposed employ fire rangers who use incessant vigilance in saving their forests. Notices are posted throughout the Maine woods warning all against this peril. A few years ago, Congress passed a law imposing a fine of five thousand dollars or imprisonment for two years or both as a penalty for maliciously firing any tract, and a lesser punishment for causing a fire through carelessness.
When the morning meal was over, the Boy Patrols promptly extinguished every ember by pouring water over it until not a spark remained. Then the dishes were washed, dried and piled away on the shelves in the clubhouse; the bedding was aired and fuel gathered for the midday meal. By that time the sun was well up in the sky. Scout Master Hall put the troop through a brisk military drill, and then asked them to express their wishes.
The propositions offered almost equaled the number of boys. Some wished to paddle around the lake in the two canoes. True, most of them knew little about the management of such craft, but every one was sure he could quickly learn.
“All you have to do is to sit still and swing the paddle first on one side and then on the other,” was the self-complacent assertion of Kenneth Henke.
“That may be so,” assented the Scout Master, “but there is a right and a wrong way of doing everything, and, as a rule, a boy can be depended upon to begin with the wrong way. You never saw a quadruped which when thrown into the water will not swim on the first trial, as well as if he had spent months in training, but whoever heard of a man or boy who did it?”
“I have,” was the surprising reply of Alvin Landon.
In answer to the inquiring looks of the party, Alvin said:
“Chester and I have a friend, an Irish boy about our age, named Mike Murphy, that we expected would meet us here, who had never been able to swim a stroke. We have watched him try it many times, but he always failed. One day when he was asleep he was pitched overboard where the water must have been twenty feet deep, and straightway he swam like a duck to land.”
“I have heard of such instances, but they are exceedingly rare. It was not the case with me and I think with none of you.”