“Gee!” The one united ejaculation—the little nondescript, uncouth monosyllable which expresses so many emotions of the boyish heart, from panic to panegyric—was all that the scouts could find voice for in presence of this red-and-white loveliness secreted by Nature upon a lonely shore.
“Hey! fellows, Captain Andy is going,” the voice of the busy scoutmaster broke in upon their bliss. “He’s to bring the Foxes down to-morrow in his motor-boat,” alluding to the Fox Patrol, of which Godey was leader. “The Seals will row over, to-morrow forenoon, from the other side of the river; so our scout troop will be complete. We owe a lot to Captain Andy. Don’t you want to show him that you can make a noise: don’t you want to give your yell, with his name at the end? Now, all in line, and together!”
And each scout with his arm around a comrade upon either side—Leon’s clasping the back of Harold Greer who, a year ago, had cowered at sight of him—all in a welded line, swaying together where the ripples broke upon the milky beach, they proved their prowess as chief noise-makers and made the welkin ring with:—
AMERICA
Boy Scouts! Boy Scouts!
Rah! Rah! Rah!
Exmouth! Exmouth! Exmouth!
Captain Andy! Captain Andy! Cap-tain An-dy!
The weatherbeaten ex-skipper, standing “up for’ard” in his launch, which was just beginning its panting trip up the river, waved his hand in acknowledgment, while the Aviator’s whistle returned a triple salute to that linked line upon the water’s edge.
“They’re fine lads!” A little moisture gathered in the captain’s narrowed blue eye as he gazed back at the beach—moisture which did not come in over the Aviator’s rail. “Some one has spoken of this Boy Scout Movement as the ‘Salvation of England’—as I’ve heard! So here’s to it again as the Future of America!” And he sounded three more whistles—and yet another three—giving the scouts three times three, until it seemed as if his power-boat would burst its steel throat.
Then comparative silence reigned again upon the sands and certain startled birds resumed their feeding avocations, notably that white-breasted busybody, the sanderling or surf-snipe, called by river-men the “whitey.”
“See! the ‘whitey’ doesn’t believe that ‘two is company, three none’: they’re chasing after their dinner in triplets! They run out into the ripples and back again, pecking in the sand, so quickly that the larger waves can’t catch them: don’t they, Greerie?” said Leon Chase, pointing them out to Harold in the overflowing brotherliness established by that yell.
Harold was no longer the “Hare.” That nickname had been forbidden by the patrol leader of the Owls under pain of dire penalties. The “poltron,” or coward, as Toiney had once in pity called him, was “Greerie” now; and was gradually learning what mere bugaboos were the fears which had separated him from his kind and from boyhood’s activities—something which might never have come home to him thoroughly, save in the stimulating society of other boys who aimed earnestly at helping him.
“We’re going to have a splendid time here for the next two weeks, Greerie, camping among the dunes,” Leon assured him. “To-morrow Nix an’ you and I will go out in the little rowboat, the Pill, and hunt up a creamy pup-seal and bring him back to camp for a pet. Now! you must come and do your share of the work—help to set up the other tents among the sand-hills.”