“What’s that you’re singing, Nix?” Coombsie was catching at a straw to divert thought from Bishop’s grave.
“Oh! go on, let’s hear it. Sounds lively!” urged Leon, whose temper had sunk beneath the realization of their plight, a quenched flash.
The scout sidetracked his pebble between right cheek and gums and began to sing with what cheerfulness he could muster, as much for his own encouragement as that of his companions, a patrol song, the gift of a poet to the boy scouts of the world:—
“Look out when your temper goes
At the end of a losing game;
And your boots are too tight for your toes,
And you answer and argue and blame!
It’s the hardest part of the law,
But it’s got to be learned by the scout,
For whining and shirking and ‘jaw,’
All patrols look out!
These are our regulations,
There’s just one law for the scout,
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,
And the future and the perfect is look out!”
Before Nixon had finished the chorus his three companions were shouting it with him as a spur to their jaded spirits.
“Ours is a losing game in earnest—all because we didn’t look out and take proper precautions so that we might have some chance of returning by the way that we came,” remarked the soloist with a grim laugh. “Now, we ‘jolly well must look out!’ as the song says. I’m going to climb the next tree that’s good an’ tall, and see whether I can discover any faraway smoke that would show us where a house might be,—or a gap in the woods,—or anything.”
“Good idea! I’ll climb too,” seconded Leon. “You choose one tree; I’ll take another, and see what we can make out!”
But they were toiling through a comparatively insignificant part of the fine woods now, where the foamy undergrowth billowed about their ears. Here the birch-trees, hickories, and maples, with an occasional pine and hemlock, only averaged from thirty-five to forty feet in stature. Not for another half-mile or so did Nixon sight a tall stately trunk towering above its forest brethren, its many-pointed leaves proclaiming it to be a fine red oak.