Boy Scouts on the Trail

by John Garth

His every muscle tense, he waited impatiently for the next flash. The instant it had come and gone, he began to edge backward, slowly, silently, with infinite care, over the wet, yielding sand. It took a long time to worm past the length of the canoe, but after that he made better progress. At length, a hundred feet or more from the end of the point and on the opposite side, he rose to his feet and hurried along the beach toward the mainland.

Anyone who has tried walking in the dark will realize something of his difficulties. Actually Steve could not see his hand before his face, and he had not gone twenty feet before he found himself splashing in the water. He edged away from that and presently tripped and almost fell over a hummock of beach grass. Then, very swiftly, all sense of direction left him. His only guidance was the splash of waves about his ankles and the tingle of salt spray against his face.

It was a nightmare, that blind struggle through the storm; a nightmare of pelting, lashing rain, of stumbling, falling, wading through surf, of pounding over hard sand. And like a nightmare little things grew big and big things little; time seemed to stand still or stretch out into infinity. Worst of all was the blackness, thick and suffocating, that pressed upon his eyeballs and tangled about his feet. And behind that blackness there was fear. Not fear for self so much; he was past that now. The thing that dominated and urged him on, that kept him going in spite of weariness and doubt and panting breath, was fear lest he should be too late to reach his goal before the others. And in the end he was too late!

His first inkling of it was the sight of those three spots of light twinkling low over to the left. At first they meant nothing to his weary brain. Then, watching them dazedly, he realized all at once that they were electric flashlights, and with a sudden, bitter pang he understood.

The men were almost opposite him, moving rapidly along the other side of Cobb’s Point, which here was some two hundred yards across. Unhampered by the darkness, they had caught up to him, were really ahead of him, in fact, for Steve had to cross the base of the point to reach the shipyard a mile or more to the westward.

With a discouraged droop to his shoulders, the boy plodded on mechanically for a little way and then halted. The spots of light had suddenly shifted. He could still make out a faint, luminous glow, but it was obscured by moving shadows. And then it came to him that for some minutes past he had felt no water sloshing around his feet.

“It’s the mainland,” he muttered. “They’ve left the point and turned up the other shore.”

It was no time for caution and delay, and Steve went after them at once. Though his attempt to reach the shipyard first had failed, there was still a chance, though not nearly so sure, of gaining his end by following close behind the plotters and giving the alarm before they had time to carry out the details of their plan.

In the brief interval of waiting a number of other possibilities had flashed through his mind, only to be discarded. He might make his way back to Shelbourne and get help. There was a good road leading through the woods from the village which was used by workmen going to and from their quarters; a motor car could make the distance in five minutes. But Shelbourne was quite as far from Cobb’s Point as the shipyard, and there were sure to be delays in rousing people and getting out a car. He thought, too, of pushing straight through the woods from where he was and trying to hit that road, but the chances of getting lost in even that short stretch of scrub and tangled undergrowth were too great to be risked. The open beach was really the only sure way, and Steve took it without hesitation.

With stumbling, uncertain steps he felt his way across the point and gained the other shore. Far, far ahead of him, it seemed, wavered the faint glow of the flashlights, and their apparent distance startled him. He had planned to follow as close behind the plotters as he dared; it had not occurred to him that they might outdistance him altogether. With a sharp catching of his breath, he plunged forward and began to run. A moment later the lights blinked out abruptly.