A sob, half hysterical, burst from the gathering spectators on the bank.

"If--if the Lord hadn't been with him, he couldn't have hung on to him that time!" muttered Captain Andy, the old life-saver, who had limped to the scene.

And, indeed, it did seem as if the Lord was with Leon Chase and made his strength in this desperate minute--like that of one of the famous knights of the Round Table--as the strength of ten because his heart was pure!--Purified of all but the desire to help and save!

"Starrie's got him! Starrie's holding on to him!" came in an exultant cry from a group of boys rigid upon the river-brink; in their midst gleamed the face, pale and fixed as the ice itself, of G.o.dey Peck; and from G.o.dey's eyes streamed the first ray of ardent hero-worship those rather dull eyes had ever known--leveled at the Tin Scouts.

"Keep cool, boys! Take it easy an' you'll land him now!" shouted Captain Andy.

Afraid, for their sakes, to burden farther the ice with his ma.s.sive body, he, too, stretched himself, breast downward, on the more solid crust near the bank, and seizing Colin's ankles directly they came within reach added another link to that human chain by means of which Jack's half-conscious body was finally drawn ash.o.r.e and placed in his mother's arms.

"You saved him, Leon. I'll thank you as well--as well as I can--Leon!"

quavered the grandmother's broken voice.

"Aw! that's all right," came in an embarra.s.sed shiver from between the chattering teeth of the foremost rescuer, from whom the water ran in rivulets that would freeze in another minute.

"I'll forward the names of you four boys to National Headquarters, to receive the scout medal for life-saving!" proudly cried Scoutmaster Estey, who at this minute appeared upon the river-bank, while he plucked Jack's numbed body from his mother's shaking arms and set off at a run with it toward the nearest house.

Leon was hustled in the same direction by an admiring crowd.

But whence came that shrill challenge waking the echoes of the Christmas Eve? Did G.o.dey's lips utter the cry: "What's the matter with the Boy Scouts? They're all right!"

And a score of throats gave back the answer:--

"Three cheers for the Boy Scouts of America! Three cheers--an' a tiger--for the Owl Patrol."

"Say, Mister!" Half an hour later, as Scoutmaster Estey issued from the cottage where, with the help of Kenjo Red and another scout, he had been turning his first-aid knowledge to account in the resuscitation of little Jack, he heard himself thus addressed and felt a hand pluck at his sleeve. Looking down, in the twilight, he saw G.o.dey Peck.

"Say! it hasn't made 'softies' of 'em, this scout business," declared G.o.dey oracularly. "I want to be a scout too. Us boys all want to come in!" He glanced behind him at his gang who had const.i.tuted him their spokesman.

"Really? Do you _all_ want to enlist in the Boy Scouts of America?"

"Sure! We want to come in now at the rate of sixty miles an hour, you bet!" G.o.dey chuckled.

"Oh! well, if you're in such a hurry as that, come round to my house to-night; we're going to have a Christmas celebration there." And the tall scoutmaster walked off, laughing.

Thus on Christmas Eve did G.o.dey drop off the fence on the side of the boy scouts, whose code of chivalry is only an elaboration of the first Christmas message: "Peace on earth, good will to men!"

CHAPTER XIV

A RIVER DUEL

With the enlisting of G.o.dey and his gang, who mainly represented whatever tendency there might be to youthful rowdyism in the demure little town, the whole vicinity of the tidal river was won over to the Boy Scout Movement.

The new recruits, those who gave in their names on Christmas Eve as would-be scouts, together with one or two later additions, were formed into a second patrol, of which G.o.dey became patrol leader, called the Foxes in honor of the commonest animal of moderate size to be found in their woods; the red fox being prevalent, too, among the white sand-hills, the Sugarloaf Dunes, that formed part of the wild coast near the mouth of the Exmouth River.

Those milky dunes, formed of pale sand which was popularly supposed to have drifted down from New Hampshire to the sea and to have been swept in here by the winds and tides of ages, were a sort of El Dorado to the boys of the little town far up the tidal river.

Pirates' treasure was confidently believed to be buried there; each lad who made the trip by steam launch, motor-boat, or plodding rowboat downstream for several miles to the dunes, was certain that if he could only hit upon the right sand-hill and dig deep enough, he would find its whiteness richly inlaid with gold.

Other wild tales centred about the romantic dunes, of smugglers and their lawless doings in earlier and less law-enforcing times than the beginning of the twentieth century.

It was even hinted that within recent years there had been unlawful importations at rare intervals of certain dutiable commodities, such as intoxicating liquors and cigars, by means of a rowboat that would lie up during the day in the sandy pocket of some little creek that intersected the marshes near the white dunes, stealing forth at night into the bay to meet a mysterious vessel.

The latest report connected the name of Dave Baldwin, the _vaurien_, as Toiney contemptuously called him, with this species of petty smuggling.

Wiseacres, such as Captain Andy and the doctor, were of opinion that no such lawless work could be carried on to-day under the Argus eyes of revenue officers. But it was known that Dave spent most of his vagrant days hanging round the milky dunes and their neighborhood, sleeping on winter nights in some empty camp or deserted summer cottage, and occasionally varying the pale monotony of the dunes by sojourning in the woods at the opposite side of the river.

The possibility of running across him during a visit to the Sugarloaf Sand-Hills, or of seeing his "pocketed" boat reposing in some little creek where the mottled mother-seal secreted her solitary young one, had little interest for the boy scouts.

Toiney's contempt for the skulking vagrant who had caused his mother's heart to "break in pieces," had communicated itself to them. They were much more interested in the prospect of pursuing acquaintance with the spotted harbor seal, once the floundering despot of the tidal river, now scarcer and more shy.

As winter merged into spring a third patrol of boy scouts was formed, composed of boys from farms down the river, who had recourse to this harbor mammal for a name and called themselves the Seals.

Thus when April swelled the buds upon the trees, and the salt-marshes were all feathery with new green, there were three patrols of boy scouts who met in the little town hall of Exmouth, forming a complete scout troop, to plan for hikes and summer camps; and to go on their cheery way out of meeting, ofttimes creating spring in the heart of winter by doing the regulation good turn for somebody.

In especial, good turns toward the sorrow-bowed old woman, Ma'am Baldwin, were in vogue that season, because a first-rate recipe for sympathy is to perform a service for its object. The greater and more risky the service, the broader the stream of good will that flows from it!

So it was with the four members of the Owl Patrol who had received the boy scout medal for life-saving--the silver cross suspended from a blue ribbon, awarded to the scout who saves life with considerable risk to himself--for their gallant work in rescuing the old woman's grandson from the frozen waters of the tidal river. Their own moved feelings at that the finest moment of their young lives were thereafter as a shining mantle veiling the peculiarities of her who, solitary and defenseless, had once been regarded as fair game for their most merciless teasing.

She was not so solitary now. Much shaken by the accident to her grandchild, she was in no fit state to return to her baldfaced house on Christmas Eve or for many days after; so Public Opinion at length took the matter into its own hands and decreed that henceforth she must find a home with her daughter.

There, in a little dwelling on the outskirts of the town, she often watched the khaki-clad scouts march by. Invariably they saluted her. And Jack, the rescued nine-year-old, would strut and stretch and stamp in a vain attempt to hasten the advent of his twelfth birthday when he might enlist as a tenderfoot.

The Sat.u.r.day spring hikes were varied by trips down the river when each patrol in turn was taken on an excursion in Captain Andy's motor-boat.

It was on such an occasion that Nixon Warren, who had begun his scout service as a member of the Peewit Patrol of Philadelphia, obtained his coveted chance of seeing Spotty Seal at close quarters.

"You stay round Exmouth during the spring an' summer, Nix, and I'll take you where you'll see a seal close enough for you to shake his flipper,"

promised the sea-captain; and he kept his word, though the pledge was fulfilled after a fashion not in accordance with his intentions.

It was a glorious day, when the power-boat Aviator, owned by Captain Andy, left the town wharf with six of the Owls aboard in charge of the a.s.sistant scoutmaster, Toiney Leduc, and with the absurd little rowboat that danced attendance upon the Aviator, and which was jocosely named the Pill, bobbing behind them on the tidal ripples at the end of a six-foot towrope.

Spring was on the river to-day. Spring was in the clear call of the greater yellow-legs as it skimmed over the marshes, in the lightning dart of the kingfisher, in the wave of the tall black gra.s.s fringing each marshy bank, showered with diamonds by the advance and retreat of a very high tide tickled into laughter by the April breeze.

And spring was in the scouts' hearts, focusing all Nature's joy-thrills, as they glided down the river.

"_Houp-e-la!_ I'll t'ink heem prett' good day for go on reever, me,"

announced a.s.sistant Scoutmaster Toiney, his black eyes dancing.

And he presently woke the echoes, while they wound in and out between the feathery marshes, with a gay "Tra-la!" or "Rond'! Rond'! Rond'!"

that seemed the very voice of Spring herself bursting into song.

"Goodness! I can hardly wait for the end of August when our scoutmaster will get his vacation and we're to camp out on the Sugarloaf Dunes,"

said Leon Chase. "You can see the white dunes from here, Nix. It's a great old Sugarloaf, isn't it?" pointing across broad, pearly plains of water which at high tide spread out on either side of the central tidal channel, at the crystalline sand-pillar, guarding the mouth of the tidal river.