“And look at ’em rushing around, would you?” added Ralph Kenyon. “I’d say they’re right excited as it is, and when they glimpse us coming it’s going to be worse still.”
“There, they’ve done it already!” cried Arthur; “see that man rushing around and shouting like he was crazy! I’ve heard screech-owls make a row like that, but never a human being. What will we do, Hugh?”
“Steady, fellows!” cautioned the scout leader. “We must make them understand that we come in peace and not in war. Slow down to a walk, and let me go on ahead with this white flag!”
Hugh was waving the makeshift flag of truce furiously over his head as he continued to walk toward the camp of the strikers. A near-panic had broken out there when the ignorant foreigners suddenly discovered what they thought must be the advance guard of the soldiers charging their village. Men, women and children were rushing to and fro in the wildest manner imaginable, many of them shrieking at the top of their voices, so that it seemed as though Bedlam had broken loose.
“Hold up!” called Hugh, suddenly, “we’d be foolish to go any closer while all that row is keeping on. Let’s take a stand here and keep on waving this rag. Sooner or later someone who’s got a more level head than the rest must understand that all we want is to talk with one of the lot. We’ve got to avoid a mix-up; and that’s what might happen if we allowed some of those half-crazed women to get their hands on us. They’d tear the clothes from our backs, and beat us black and blue.”
No one offered the least objection to Hugh’s plan. Indeed, if the truth must be told they secretly heaved sighs of relief upon hearing that the leader did not contemplate advancing directly into that maelstrom of shouting humanity. It was only a short time before that they had been reading in history what terrors the Amazons of Paris had shown themselves to be during the Revolution; and consequently they felt a certain amount of respect for excited women’s prowess as fighters.
All at once there was a shot, and the scouts plainly heard the “ping” of a bullet singing over their heads, and not so very far away, either.
“Hugh, they’re starting to shoot at us!” gasped Billy.
It was really the first time in their lives these boys had experienced the strange chilly feeling of being under fire. To their credit it must be said that not a single one of them flinched, even though they may have turned a bit pale, and no one could blame them for that.
“Steady!” said Hugh, continuing to move his flag back and forth. “Hold up both hands, every fellow, to show them we have no guns, and have come to them unarmed.”