Читать книгу The Wolf Patrol: A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts - Finnemore John - Страница 3

One Saturday afternoon Chippy, the leader of the wharf-rats of Skinner's Hole, was crossing the heath on his way home. He had been with a message to a village some three miles from Bardon, and was taking a short cut over the heath, which he knew from side to side and corner to corner. Suddenly he stopped. He had heard a strange noise – a sound as of chanting or singing – and he wondered where it came from. In a moment he had fixed the place.

'That's in the old sand-'ole,' he muttered to himself, and he shuffled across the heath in his big, clumsy, hob-nailed boots towards the spot. In a couple of minutes he had wormed his way between two gorse-bushes growing at the edge of the deep hollow, and was looking with much interest at the sight beneath him.

It was the Wolf Patrol practising the scouts' war-dance. The old deserted sandpit made a splendid place for their patrol meetings for open-air work. They had come there that afternoon for practice in Test 12 – fire-laying and lighting, and cooking flour and potatoes without utensils. But, first of all, they were practising the war-dance. The strange words of the Scouts' Song floated up to Chippy's ears, but he could make nothing of them:

But though Chippy did not understand the words, he understood that those fellows down there looked splendidly smart, and were having a fine time. He admired their uniform immensely; it looked so trim and neat compared with his own ragged garb. He admired their neat, quick movements as they stamped in unison with the words of the song, and moved round in a circle. The 'Ingonyama' chorus ended, and then the fire practice began. Chips and sticks were carefully piled, and a scout was allowed two matches to make a rousing fire of the gorse-stems and dried sticks to be found in the coppices on the heath. Then he went to work with his flour and potatoes.

Finally the patrol organized a hunt to finish the afternoon. George Lee was sent off on tracking-irons, and given ten minutes' start. When the time was up, the others went after him, and the sandpit was deserted. No one had observed Chippy, for the latter was a scout without knowing it, and had kept himself carefully hidden. He didn't know they were boy scouts, and on their honour to treat him and everyone else fairly; he only knew them as 'chaps we've slugged with,' as he put it to himself.

'Wot's the game, I wonder?' muttered Chippy to himself, as the last scout vanished behind a hazel thicket. 'Jolly good fun they're havin'. I should just like to know wot it all comes to.'

He slid down the side of the sandpit to examine the place where the scouts had built their fires, and soon was on the road to find out what it all meant. His sharp eyes, running over every mark the boys had left, saw something white in a long tuft of dried grass. He pounced upon it and picked it up. It was a book with a picture on the cover.

'Wot's this?' thought Chippy. 'A kid watchin' a ship round a rock. Wot for? "Scouting for Boys." Wot's inside?' He opened it at page 42, and at once recognized the scouts' uniform. 'Why, these chaps 'ad all got togs on like this,' said Chippy to himself. 'I'll bet this book's all about the game.'

He began to read, and was fascinated at once. Chippy talked badly because he had been brought up among people who talked badly, but he could read as well as any Grammar School boy, and had plenty of intelligence behind his freckled face to grasp what he read. He was deep in the little volume, when he heard the patter of running feet behind him. He turned, and saw Dick Elliott coming up to him. They knew each other at once.

'Hallo!' said Dick. 'It looks as if you'd found my book. I felt sure I had dropped it here.'

'Yus, I found it,' replied Chippy. 'It wor' in that 'ere patch o' stuff, an' I picked it up. I've bin a-lookin' at it.'

'That's all right,' said Dick cheerfully. 'You won't hurt it.'

Chippy had rather expected that Dick would take a scornful tone to him, as most of the Grammar School boys did to the wharf-rats. He did not know that Dick was in honour bound to obey Scout Law No. 5, and be courteous to all whom he met. But Dick's friendly voice encouraged Chippy to speak out something which he had on his mind.

'Look 'ere,' said Chippy, 'I ain't in wi' that crowd as tried to chuck yer into the mud t'other day. That ain't playin' the game.'

'Well, you certainly didn't help 'em,' replied Dick, with a merry grin.

'No,' agreed Chippy. 'I was outed that time, proper. Lor! my 'ead sung for 'alf a day! But it was Carrots as put 'em up to that mud game, an' I've booted 'im out o' the crowd. As long as I'm a-runnin' the show, I'll slug wi' anybody ye like, but I'll slug fair. Here's yer book.'

There was a touch of reluctance in Chippy's manner, which did not escape Dick's quick eye.

'Have you read some of it?' asked Dick.

'Yus; I read quite a bit,' replied Chippy.

'How did you like it?'

'Oh, it's pross!' returned Chippy in his deepest, hoarsest note.

'All right,' laughed Dick. 'Take the book and keep it.'

'D'yer mean it?' cried Chippy eagerly.

'Of course I do,' answered Dick. 'Tuck it into your pocket. I can easily get another. Well, I must be on, or I shall never catch our fellows up. Good afternoon!' And away he went, leaving Chippy to growl hearty thanks after him.

Chippy walked slowly home, his eyes glued to page after page. The little book went straight to Chippy's heart. The wharf-rat felt all the delightful romance attached to being a boy scout as keenly as any member of the Wolf Patrol, and his mind was made up swiftly.

'This 'ere's a long sight ahead o' sluggin',' he reflected. 'It's chock-full o' good fun all the time. I'll turn my crowd into a patrol, blest if I don't!'

He made a beginning that night. He begged a candle-end from his mother, and gathered his followers into a corner of an old deserted storehouse on the quay, and read and explained, and so filled them with his own enthusiasm that each was resolved to become a boy scout, or perish in the attempt.