“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-là! Ça 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.