Hardly had the summer’s sport begun for the three boys with their motor boat, when the machinery broke down disastrously. It was plain that the craft would have to go to the repair shops in Portland before it could be of any further use to them. Accordingly, it was towed to that city, with the natural request that work should be rushed. The reply came back that there was such a congestion in the shops that it would require two or three weeks to complete the job. You know what that always means. The time is sure to be much longer than named, and it may be said the boys knew such would be the fact. It was a keen disappointment to them, but there was no help for it and they accepted the situation like true philosophers.
This incident, trifling of itself, brought consequences to our young friends of which none of them dreamed. Alvin and Chester while at home had become interested in the admirable Boy Scout organization, and had joined the Blazing Arrow Patrol, of which their old friend “Bert Hall” was Scout Master. He was arranging for an outing in the Adirondacks with the Stag and Eagle Patrols, when the plan was changed for reasons that will soon be explained. Their destination became Gosling Lake in southern Maine, a few miles back in the woods from the Kennebec River.
Alvin and Chester decided to bear them company as tenderfeet. They provided themselves with natty uniforms, and, knowing the size required for Mike, sent a suit by express to him with the request that he should join them in the hike to the cool twilight of the pine woods.
“It would never do to go without him,” said Alvin; “he will be the life of the camp and will make a model Boy Scout.”
“The hardest task will be to cure him of his love for fighting,” added Chester; “he can get up a first class shindy in ten minutes, no matter where he is placed.”
“There won’t be anything of the kind with the Scouts, for it is impossible; they are taught to detest fighting and Mike is always so chivalrous that he is never the aggressor. I prophesy there won’t be a more peaceable boy in camp than he.”
“It is to be hoped so,” commented Chester with a dubious shake of his head.
When the garments arrived Mike was mystified. He lifted them out of the box and held them up for the inspection of himself and parents. His father took his pipe from his mouth, squinted an eye as if aiming a gun and gravely remarked:
“It’s a Sunday suit meant fur me,—there’s no doubt of the same.”
“Ye’re mistook, dad, as much as ye were last night whin ye picked up that red hot coal thinking it was a cold pratie. The garments are intinded either for mither or mesilf, as will be told whin we try ’em on.”
It cannot be denied that Mike looked “nifty” in his uniform, which fitted him as if he had been melted and poured into it. The hat was of olive-drab felt, with eyelets in the crown for ventilation and enough stiffness to keep its shape; breeches of olive-drab khaki cut full and with legs laced below the knee and with belt guides and pockets; leggings or puttees of waterproof army duck; poncho; shirt of olive-drab flannel with two bellows pockets, open front, coat style; coat of same material as breeches, with four bellows pockets, straight collar, dull metal buttons with Boy Scout emblem; an ordinary belt; shoes, broad, high and strong and of soft tan leather; a haversack of waterproof canvas, with leather straps, buckles and separate pockets, scout emblem on the flap—these were the chief garments in which Mike Murphy carefully arrayed himself. He turned slowly around as if on a pivot for his parents to admire. At the same time, he strove to twist his head about so as to gain a view of the rear, but it cannot be said his effort was successful.
“It is sthrange that the lad didn’t sind any word of explanition,” remarked the father, after a search in the box and the different pockets failed to bring anything in the nature of a letter to light.
“He may have sint it through the mail—begorrah! how come I to furgit it?”
“What’s the matter wid ye?” asked the mother as her son leaped to the chair over which he had hung his discarded clothes and began a vigorous fumbling of them. From the hip pocket of his trousers he drew a creased and soiled envelope, glanced at it and handed it to his father.
“Is that yer name writ on the same?”
The astonished parent turned it over, held it off and then drew it closer.
“If me name is Pathrick Murphy the letter is for me, fur that is what is writ on the outside. How long have ye been toting that about the counthry?”
Mike reflected for a moment.
“Today is Wednesday; let me think,—yes, it was last Monday morning that I was handed the letter by the postmaster at Boothbay Harbor,—he being afeard to trust ye wid the same, fur fear ye would not give it to yersilf.”
“Why didn’t ye hand it to me before this?”
“I forgot, dad, as Tim O’Shaughnessy said after moving back the well curb and then slipping down the well. Shall I spell out the words fur ye?” asked Mike as his father ran his stubby finger under the flap of the letter and ripped it apart.
“If ye think ye’re able to know writing, ye may thry yer hand.”
Mike unfolded the slip and read aloud the contents. The letter was from Alvin Landon and had been mailed before the uniform was sent. All would have gone right had the missive been addressed to Mike, but Alvin, with his fine sense of propriety, had written directly to the parent, asking consent for his son to spend several weeks with the Boy Scouts in camp on Gosling Lake. There was no question in the writer’s mind as to such permission being granted.
Following this request were some sentences for Mike himself. After directing him how to reach the sheet of water, Alvin added:
“Chester and I have become ‘Tenderfeet’ as they are called, which is the lowest grade among the Boy Scouts. Your name has been proposed by us and we see no reason why you should not be accepted. But before that can take place, you must pass the examination, which with some studying I am sure you will be able to do. It isn’t likely you can find any one at Southport or Boothbay Harbor to help you, nor is it necessary. What you must know is:
“The Scout law, sign, salute and meaning of the badge (Chester and I can teach you that in a few minutes); the composition and history of our country’s flag and the usual forms of respect due it. (This is learned as easily as the other); and you must be able to tie four of the following knots: square or reef, sheet-bend, bowline, fisherman’s, sheepshank, halter, clove hitch, timber hitch or two half-hitches.
“I think you told Chester and me that on your trip across the ocean you made friends with several of the sailors, who taught you how to tie a number of knots. If this is so, you will have no trouble on that score. So you see you have not much preparation to make. I tell you, Mike, this is the finest thing of the kind in the world and is just what you need. You will have plenty of fun, which you know is your chief aim in life, with a fair prospect of becoming a gentleman (I trust).
“We expect to reach Gosling Lake in time to get into our quarters on Wednesday and shall look for you to be there to help us with our work.”
“And this is Wednesday morning!” repeated Mike in dismay; “what have the poor byes done widout me to give them suggistions?”
“They have done a good deal better than had ye been wid them,” replied his mother; “being ye have delayed so long, it’s best ye bide at home.”
With a start Mike looked at her, but the twinkle in her blue eyes showed from which parent the son inherited most of his waggishness.
“I must be off,” said he, springing to his feet. He would have been out of the house the next minute had not his father checked him.
“Show a little sinse even if ye niver had any; ate a big maal, which ye can do at any time no matter if it be in the middle of the night; put some money and yer knife, watch and compass in yer pocket. Take that buckthorn shillalah, with which I have cracked many a hid at Donnybrook; then hie ye to Boothbay Harbor and hire some one to take ye to the right spot up the Sheepscott and then thramp through the woods, as ye have been towld to do to Gosling Lake, comporting yersil
f like a gintleman, and not make yer father and mither ashamed of ye as ye have done many a time.”
This counsel was so wise that the impulsive youth could not object. Despite the completeness of his uniform and equipments more than one thing was lacking. He needed toilet articles, a change of underclothing, needles, thread and a number of trifling conveniences, which a thoughtful mother never forgets.
Thus it came about that early in the afternoon Mike walked to Southport and there boarded the little steamer Norman II, and soon thereafter landed at Boothbay Harbor, full of eager expectancy, and little dreaming of the remarkable experience that awaited him.
CHAPTER II
Lost In the Woods
At Boothbay Harbor, Mike Murphy hired Sherb Doloff to take him in his small motor boat Sunshine to Hailstone Point. It was the season when the days are long, and the sun was only a little past meridian as the small boat chug-chugged up beside the projecting finger of land and the eager Mike leaped ashore.
“There isn’t any path on this side of the point,” said Captain Doloff, “but you can’t miss your way. A few miles through the woods and you’ll be there.”
“Have no worriment for me; I’m not the bye to go astray, even if the country is new,” was the confident reply of Mike, who, having paid the young man the fee agreed upon, bade him good-by and plunged into the fragrant pine forest. He carried no firearms, not even his revolver,—a fact which caused him no misgiving, since it seemed impossible that he should run into any personal danger. This was not the section of Maine frequented by wild animals, and though there were a few Indians, here and there, all were civilized and they attract no more interest than those of the Caucasian race. A tramp of several miles on such a balmy day was enjoyable when there was just a tinge of crispness in the air to remind one that autumn was only a few weeks away. The pine cones and moss, and the many years’ accumulation of decaying foliage formed a spongy carpet, upon which the shoe pressed without giving back any sound, and made walking the pleasantest sort of gentle exercise.
Mike carried the heavy buckthorn cane which his father had brought with him from Ireland, but he did not need its aid. He twirled it as an officer dallies with his swagger stick and sang snatches of song in that wonderfully sweet voice, which no one could hear without being charmed. Of course it was impossible for the lad to be unaware of his amazing gift in this respect, and you have been told of some of the occasions when he used it for the delight of others. He frequently sang for his father and mother, and again, as in the present instance, the low delightful humming was for his own pleasure, since one of the blessed peculiarities of music is that it requires no “witnesses” for its perfect enjoyment.
Still, as has also been shown, Mike was never forward in displaying his unrivaled voice. Many a time he had listened to the singing of others and joined in the applause without a single one of the audience suspecting how infinitely superior he was to the foremost of the company, nor did Mike ever enlighten them.
With all his waggishness and pugnacity, he was devout in his religious belief and had won the commendation more than once of the priests at home, who knew all about him.
“I wonder why the Lord is so good to me,” he reflected with reverent emotion; “there ain’t a meaner rapscallion in creation than me, and yet He treats me as if I were a twin brother to Alvin and Chester and lots of other folks. I must try to remember all this, but I’m sartin to furget it on the first chance that comes to me.
“Now, about those Boy Scouts,—I wonder what they are; I never heard of ’em before; I s’pose they call themselves Scouts ’cause they’re always scouting for a row, and kick up a shindy whenever they git the chance. I’ll try to do me part, as I always did in the owld country, and since I set fut in Ameriky.”
Giving rein to his mental whimsies, Mike strolled forward until certain he had traveled the full distance. He halted and looked around. Several times a half dozen crows, perched in the treetops, catching sight of him dived away with loud cawing warnings to their comrades of an intrusion into their domain of a foe to be feared, but thus far he had noted no other species of birds. Now, however, when he peered upward through an opening among the branches, he saw a black speck gliding across the thin azure and vanishing in the ocean of ether beyond. It was an eagle, soaring so far aloft that its piercing vision had no knowledge of the tiny form thousands of feet below amid the firs and pines.
“Gosling Lake,” repeated Mike; “I must be near the same, as dad remarked whin his friend Jim Muldoon cracked his head wid the shillalah, but I obsarve it not.”
He listened keenly but caught no distinctive sound. The soft, almost inaudible murmur which is never absent in a wide stretch of forest, or when miles inland from the breathing ocean, brooded in the air and has been called the “voice of silence” itself.
Thus far the youth had not felt the slightest misgiving, and even now he was sure there was no cause for alarm. If he was astray it could not be for long. He was not far from some of the numerous towns and villages in that section, and if he could not find the Boy Patrol camp, he surely would not have to search far before coming upon friends. If the waning afternoon should find him in the woods, it would be no special hardship to pass the night under the trees, though he did not fancy the prospect and did not mean to stay out unless necessity compelled.
None the less it dawned upon him for the first time that his task was not likely to be as easy as he had supposed. Only an experienced woodsman can hold to a mathematical line in the trackless wilderness, which was what he must do to reach the camp of the Boy Patrol.
“It would be no task if there was a path or road, and I was sitting in an automobile, wid me hand on the steering gear or directing the Deerfut up the Kennebec, or if them byes had put up guide posts, which the same I’ll remind them to do.”
If there was one thing regarding which Mike felt certain it was that he had kept to a straight course after stepping ashore from the launch; but if such were the fact, how could it be explained that he had traveled all of this distance, and yet, so far as appearances went, was as far from his goal as when he started?
“It’s more than I can understand, as Maggie Keile said when her taycher told her ‘queue’ spelled ‘q.’ Now, if I could come upon the tracks of some person it would be all that I could ask—and begorra! here they be!”
Looking down at the ground, his eyes rested upon the very thing he wished to see: there was the impression visible in the soft leaves. Scarcely a rod from where he was standing was a yielding patch of moss where the trail showed with clearness. The outline of the broad sole of a shoe could be plainly traced until it became more obscure on the drier leaves. Mike stepped nearer and studied the “signs.”
“Now, that felly knowed where he wanted to go, and not being such a fool as me, he’s gone there. All I have to do is to keep to the course he took and I’ll come out somewhere. I’ll stick close, as the fly paper said to me whin I sat down on it.”
Not doubting that he had found the key to the problem, all anxiety vanished. It was not to be supposed that the individual who had preceded him was ignorant of the woods and the quickest ways of emerging from them. Mike even figured on coming upon him with the appearance of accident, and of keeping from him his own need of assistance in going to the Boy Patrol camp.
“It may be they’ve been here so short a time that he hasn’t obsarved the same, but Gosling Lake has been in these parts a good many years, and he’ll be sure to know where it is. I’ll draw it out of him as if I don’t care much.”
The youth had not forgotten that simplest of all expedients which is the first to come to an astray person. This was to shout at the top of his voice. More than likely he would be heard at the Boy Scout camp, and if not there, by the stranger whom he was trailing. But he was not ready to admit that he really needed help, and to ask for assistance would be a confession that he was frightened for his own safety. He would be ashamed to appear in such a plight, and Alvin and Chester wo
uld be sure to make the most of it. What more humiliating than to be introduced to a lot of strangers as one who did not know enough to travel a few miles through the woods without some person to lead him by the hand?
“Not yet,” he muttered, compressing his lips with resolve. “I wonder whether them Boy Scouts can tell by looking at a person’s footprints whether they were made an hour or a month ago. Howsumiver, I don’t see that it makes any difference here. He must have gone this way sometime and all I have to do is to folly him till I come upon him or the place where he wint, which will sarve as well.”
Less than half an hour later, the trailer abruptly halted with another wondering exclamation. Again he had come upon a velvety bed of moss, where he looked upon the imprint, not of one pair but of two pairs of shoes. They were side by side, with one set of impressions as distinct as the other, and all looking so much alike that Mike was struck with an absurd fancy.
“It can’t be that the man has growed four legs or is creeping along with shoes on his hands as well as his faat. Each print looks more like the others than it does like itself—”
A shiver ran down his spine and he gasped. He recoiled a step, scrutinized the footprints, and then advanced and compared them with what he had first come upon.
“Begorra! it was mesilf that made ’em all!”
It was the astounding truth. He was trailing himself. Instead of moving in a straight line as he believed he had been doing from the first, he had been walking—at least during the latter part of his tramp—in a circle. You know that when a person is lost in a trackless waste he is almost sure to do this, unless he is a master of woodcraft or uses the utmost precaution against going astray.
The Edward S. Ellis Megapack Page 297
