And the Scoutmaster’s cry was convincing.
Yet–yet, when boys and girls tumbled tumultuously through the cave entrance–the girls by some mysterious understanding, first–not a remote sign of a biplane, even a meager one, decorated the sky overhead.
No flying wires sent down their challenge. And the hum resolved itself into what it was: the rising, random mockery of Ta-te, the tempest, laughing at their searching looks, going north, south, east and west, aloft, skirmishing in bewilderment to all points of the horizon.
“Hum-m. There isn’t a sign of a buzz-wagon! Who pulled off that stunt–on–us?” bleated a few of the mystified younger boys, while Stud silently brushed moisture like cave-tears from his forehead.
So did the tall Scoutmaster, heavily breathing relief.
“Not an aëroplane in sight! Not a single one!” breezed the girls, all ready to be angry. “Who–who put that hoax over?”
“Varnish right–and aëroplane wrong!” It was the freakish voice of a nickum which answered. “No! No buzzer, as the boys say, but there was a rattler, in there, beside that rock. If some of you girls had gone ahead, you’d have stepped right on him!”
“A ‘rattler!’ A big rattlesnake! And–and you started the cry, to get us out quietly–quickly!”
“Not we! The Scoutmaster had the presence of mind to launch an aëroplane. We boomed it,” came the laughing reply, as Jack at a Pinch, second fiddle now, marched off with his companions.
“Who–is he?” Pemrose caught wildly at the arm of Stud, who was wishing that he and not those patronizing big boys had caught the Scoutmaster’s cue and created airdrawn aëroplanes by the corps. “Do you–do you know who he is; that biggest–that gaudiest–one among them?”