“I don’t blame you for not wishing me to see the machine,” he purred. “It is quite understandable; quite natural, after what occurred the other day. I deeply regret I lost my temper. It was the interest I felt in your welfare, though, that angered me when you refused my proposal.”
“Hum,” said Paul bluntly. “I thought you were mad with Rob Blake for butting in.”
“I may have seemed so; I may have seemed so,” said Mr. Hunt, with such regret in his tones that the soft-hearted Paul began to feel sorry for him. “I have a terrible temper, and when I saw that my good offer was likely to be rejected by you because of your willingness to listen to bad advice, I confess that my fury arose and mastered me. But, Paul, I am of a forgiving nature. I don’t cherish any more anger against you. I came here this morning to repeat my offer, and——”
Mr. Hunt broke off and dived into his overcoat pocket. Apparently, he had just recollected the yellow envelope he now drew out.
“Why, Paul, my boy, I almost forgot! I’ve a message here for you. Dibbs asked me to deliver it.”
“Thank you,” exclaimed the boy, taking the message. “Will you excuse me if I open it? It may be news from Washington.”
“News you little expect,” snarled Mr. Hunt to himself, his wolfish smile growing more pronounced. The envelope he had slipped to the lad contained the message he himself had scribbled after he had seen the real dispatch. Paul’s face blanched as he read the brief, short message, which appeared to be genuine enough. At least, he, of course, had no grounds for doubting its authenticity.
“Can do nothing more in regard to ice motor,” he read, with a sense of bitter shock. “Government declines to use it. Sorry, but negotiations are definitely closed. Merrill.”
“Not bad news I hope?” inquired Mr. Hunt solicitously. Paul raised a troubled face. He was a lad utterly unused to guile or deception, and he therefore blurted out his trouble. He even read off the contents of the message, which was hardly necessary, as Hunt himself had written it.
“Too bad; too bad,” said Mr. Hunt, wagging his head slowly and assuming a sympathetic leer. “But, Paul, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. If the government doesn’t know a good thing when it sees it, I do. My offer is still open. I’ll go five hundred dollars higher, in fact. What do you say to fifteen hundred dollars for the rights to the machine?”
“I—I hardly know what to say,” stuttered the confused lad. The sudden dashing of his hopes at Washington led him to be willing to accept almost anything. To people in the circumstances of the widow Perkins and her son, fifteen hundred dollars looked an immense sum.
Hunt noted the boy’s hesitation, and he hastened to strike while the iron was hot. He produced a fountain pen and a check book, with a wizard-like flourish.
“Come,” he said, persuasively, “say the word and I’ll write you a check now. You give me a receipt saying that you accept the money in consideration of all rights in the machine, and the thing is done.”
“I suppose I’d better,” hesitated Paul, miserably, “come inside, Mr. Hunt, and I’ll fix up the paper you want.”
“Good for you, Stonington, my boy!” chuckled the rascal to himself, as he turned to follow the boy into the house, “I guess this is where I get even on those brats who interfered the other day, and make a nice little sum besides.”
But as they had their feet on the lower step leading to the side door there came a hail from the street.
“Paul—oh, Paul!”
It was Rob Blake’s voice.
Hunt paled as he heard it, but recovered himself the next instant.
“Pshaw, he could never find it out,” he muttered. “I wish he had kept away till I put the business through, though.”
“Hul-lo, Rob, I’m glad to see you,” cried Paul, “come on in. I want to ask your advice in something.”
“Oh, I must protest against that,” sputtered Mr. Hunt, “this is a confidential matter, my boy. You have pledged yourself to sell——”
“I beg your pardon, I don’t think I have,” rejoined Paul, “and what’s more, I’m not going to sell till I ask Rob’s advice. He knows a lot more about business than I do.”
“Confound him, I think he does,” grunted Hunt, but he added aloud as Rob came through the gate, “Quite right, Paul, quite right. But independence in business is the keynote of success. Ahem, Mr. Blake, you are looking well.”
“I’m all right,” rejoined Rob, bluntly, taking no pains to hide his dislike of Mr. Hunt; then, without paying further attention to the leering plotter, he turned to Paul.
“Get your telegram, Paul? I dropped in at the telegraph office on my way down and Blinky told me he had sent a message to you by Mr. Hunt.”
“Yes, I got it,” said Paul, bitterly, “and—and——”
“Not bad news, is it?”
“The worst. Washington won’t touch the ice motor with a pair of tongs.”
“Let’s look,” said Rob, extending his hand for the message which Paul had drawn from his pocket as he spoke. But before the inventive lad could pass the paper to his chum, Freeman Hunt’s hand darted out and intercepted it.
“Let me look at it one moment,” he said. “There’s something that wasn’t quite clear when I saw it before.”
“But you didn’t see it before,” protested Paul. “You gave it to me and I told you what was in it. Then you made me your offer.”
“I guess you had better give me that dispatch, Mr. Hunt,” said Rob, quietly, but with an ominous glitter in his eyes.
“When I get ready, my young whipper-snapper,” was the rejoinder, “and now if you will clear out for a minute, Paul and I have some business together.”
“He wants to buy the rights to the machine for $1,500,” volunteered Paul.
“Oh, he does, does he?” snorted Rob. “Why, I’d give you more than that myself. This fellow is after you to make money out of you, Paul, and——”
“How dare you, you cub,” roared Stonington Hunt, once more losing his temper and springing forward, but something in Rob’s steady gaze made him lower his uplifted arm.
“Are you going to let me see that message?” demanded Rob, in whose mind a suspicion had now grown into a definite certainty. “Are you?”
Hunt’s answer was to tear the sheet of paper in two, but before he could reduce it to smaller bits and scatter them broadcast, Rob was upon him, and with one powerful wrench of the man’s wrists had gained possession of it.
“I’ll have you arrested for assault!” stormed Hunt. “I’ll see the constable, I’ll have you put in jail! I’ll appear against you as a dangerous character, I’ll——”
“Hold on a minute, there,” warned Rob, who had fitted the two torn bits of crumpled paper together. “If you go to doing anything like that I may have to turn the tables by appearing against you on a more serious charge.”
Hunt paled, and his eyes glittered strangely, but he tried to bluff it out.
“What charge, boy?” he demanded, his words seeming to choke him.
“That of forgery,” shot out Rob. “This message is a bit of rank deceit. It hasn’t even got a time stamp or an office number on it. You’d better get out of here, Mr. Hunt, and—quick, too!”
Hunt made a step forward, and then appeared to change his mind. He turned so white with rage that his face seemed like a bit of carved marble.
“You young cur,” he hissed. “This is the second time. You came near getting your deserts in the wood yesterday. Look out for the third time!”
Rob laughed as the fellow slunk off, but as Hunt strode up the street with as much bravado as he could assume the boy’s face grew grave.
“Like father, like son, dad says sometimes,” he murmured. “I heard in the village that Freeman Hunt had been after rabbits yesterday. Now I know who owns the pointer. What a pair of rascals!”
Paul looked blank. He had scarcely understood the scene that had just transpired. Unacquainted with the routine of a telegraph office he had failed to detect that the required marks were lacking on Hunt’s forged dispatch. He looked at Rob in a mystified way.
“What’s it mean, Rob?” he asked, wonderingly. “Was Hunt trying to bunco me?”
“I guess that’s the word, old fellow,” said Rob, throwing his arm affectionately around the younger boy’s neck, “but we checkmated him just in time.”
CHAPTER XV.
A BOY WHO FLEW.
One of the features of winter life at Hampton was the annual bob-sled races down the steep, long hill outside the town, known as Jones’s Hill. Other villages on Long Island, notably Huntington, had the same sort of carnivals, and they were always attended by people from a wide radius around. Neighboring villages sent teams and sleds to compete for prizes, and much merry sport resulted. For weeks beforehand the events were talked about, and sometimes—in the case of a spill—the contestants had reason to remember the day for weeks afterward. Although the “Bob Sled Carnival,” as it was called, would not come off till three days after Christmas, the boys of Hampton were busy over their preparations for some time before.
“Going to enter a sled this year, Rob?” asked Tubby, one afternoon in early December, as they were on their way home from the Academy.
“Of course,” rejoined Rob, “there’s that big ten-seater. We might enter her with an Eagle Patrol team, and race her against a Hawk sled.”
“Bully,” cried Merritt Crawford, “that would be a great scheme.”
“The very thing,” chimed in about a dozen lads, who were walking with our three boys.
“Why not send a challenge to the Aquebogue fellows?” piped up little Joe Digby; “they have a patrol over there now—The Wolves, they call themselves. Maybe they would enter a team against us.”
“I guess they would,” agreed Rob. “I’ll write a challenge to-night. Let’s see, Howard Major is their leader, isn’t he?”
“That’s right. He’ll be sure to accept, too. Howard steered the Aquebogue bob-sled last year.”
“Yes, when we let Aquebogue win the cup,” laughed Rob, referring to a silver cup, the gift of the village boards of six villages, which was annually contested for. “This year us fellows want to wake up and win it back.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s the stuff.”
“We’ll do it, too,” several of the lads assured him, as the group came to a point where they separated and went their several ways. Paul Perkins had been an interested, if silent, participator in the plans, but when he found himself alone with his three friends he launched enthusiastically into a description of the kind of sled with which he was going to startle the community and their guests at the carnival. The lad had been spending odd hours over the construction of his winged glider, and he was pretty certain, he told them, that he had it perfected.
A visit to the Perkins’s wagon shed resulted in the exhibition of a business-like looking sled, with a wheel connected to the flexible steel runners with which to steer. From each side of the contrivance, a pair of canvas wings, spread over stout frames, extended for a distance of about ten feet. The frame was made as light as possible, and Paul was confident the glider would work.
“Tell you what we’ll do,” said Tubby, as they stood regarding the odd looking contrivance, “there’s a good full moon to-night. We’ll slip out of the village after supper and try it out on Jones’s Hill.”
It was agreed that this would furnish some amusement and excitement. Soon the boys were enthusiastically making their arrangements. Paul said that he could detach the wings and so carry the sled without exciting undue attention.
“You see, I don’t know if it will work yet,” the young inventor confessed, “and I don’t want to be the laughing stock of the place in case a crowd is on hand to see me take a tumble.”
“No danger of that,” Merritt assured him. “We’ll sneak round by the back way up through Cryders Lane and then take that path through the scrub oak to the top of the hill.”
Like so many conspirators the lads met at Paul Perkins’s after the evening meal, and each bearing a portion of the load, they set out for the long, steep grade down which the test was to be made.
“I heard in the village to-night that Freeman Hunt and his crowd have a big bob they are going to enter for the cup race,” said Tubby, as they walked along.
“Too bad there is no way of keeping them out. They’ll be sure to be up to something crooked,” commented Merritt. “However, as it’s free for all, I suppose we can’t do anything.”
“Not a thing,” rejoined Rob. “By the way, Paul, did you hear anything further from the lawyer in Washington, since you received his dispatch telling you that Hunt’s message was, just as I supposed, a forgery?”
“Only that the outlook is very favorable,” was Paul’s response. “He says—it sounds like a fairy tale,” he interjected with a note of apology—“he said that if the government took it they would give five thousand dollars for the exclusive right to use the machine.”
“Bully!” cried Rob. “I guess that would set our friend Hunt back a peg or two if he heard of it.”
They met no one on their way to the hill, as the night was chilly and they stuck to their little-frequented route. The moonlight lit up the steep descent and made it as bright as day almost, throwing here and there sharp, black shadows on the white snow. It was an ideal night for sledding and the boys felt their pulses beat with excitement as they adjusted the wings and prepared the glider, of which so much was expected, for its initial flight.
At last the wings were firmly bolted on, and fixed in position with set screws. In addition, piano wires leading to eyelets in the frame of the sled, and which acted as wing-braces, were utilized. When this was complete, each wing was as rigid as steel, presenting a slightly curved surface toward the front. They were, in fact, closely modeled on the wings Paul’s observant eyes had noted on the army airship.
“Now, then, who is to have the honor of the first flight on the greatest invention of the age?”
Rob laughed as he gazed about him.
“Don’t all speak at once,” said Merritt.
“Any one can have my turn,” ejaculated Tubby, with deep conviction.
“Why, I’m to be the first to try it, of course,” spoke up Paul, boldly. “I’m lightest, and anyhow, an inventor ought not to risk anybody’s bones but his own on his freak ideas.”
“Suppose we take it half way down the hill for a starter,” suggested Rob, “then we can see if it’s going to work or tip over, without running such a risk of a smash-up.”
Accordingly, the contrivance, looking like a queer bird in the moonlight, was shoved down the hill to a post about a quarter of a mile from the bottom.
Paul seated his slight frame upon the craft, bracing his feet against two projecting iron rests and taking a firm grip of the steering wheel.
“All right?” asked Rob, as the others stood behind, holding detaining hands upon the vehicle.
“Let her go,” ordered Paul, boldly.
Like a stone from a sling, the sled shot off into the cold, breathless night. On and on under the stars it flew, its runners grating with a sharp, musical note on the close-packed snow, for that afternoon there had been a lot of sleighing on the grade.
“She won’t rise!” exclaimed Tubby. “She’s like me. Built for a career close to the ground.”
“Hold on. I’m not so sure about that,” exclaimed Rob the next instant. “Look!”
As he spoke a strange thing happened. The sled seemed to rise from the earth as if drawn upward by some invisible force. Even at that distance they could see Paul’s body shift as he strove to maintain his balance on the contrivance.
Up and up the strange bird-like craft climbed, till it was about ten feet above the ground. It skimmed along for a hundred feet or so and then came down to earth again with a bump that unseated the inexperienced rider and sent him tumbling head first into a snow bank. But, as the others came running down the hill, Paul extricated himself and gave a shrill cheer.
Up and up the strange bird-like craft climbed, till it was about ten feet above the ground.
“Hooray, fellows! She works!” he cried. “It’s a success.”
“It’s a success as a dumping machine, I’ll admit,” sniffed Tubby.
“Just wait till I put some springs on to take up the jolt when she lands and she’ll settle like a bit of thistledown,” Paul assured him.
“If she doesn’t settle you first,” put in Merritt, rather doubtfully.
“Anybody want a ride?” asked Paul, as he prepared to tow the craft back to the top of the hill again.
“No, I haven’t made my will yet and I can’t afford to risk the legal complications which might ensue in case of my death,” responded Tubby, grandiloquently.
“I haven’t decided what sort of stuff I’ll have them write on my tombstone,” chimed in Merritt, “so you can count me out.”
“You’re in a blue funk. That’s what’s the matter,” laughed Rob. “If you want to take a chance on having your machine smashed up I’ll take her down, Paul,” he went on.
“Hooray for the hero,” scoffed Tubby.
“Adios,” said Merritt, placing his hand over his heart in an affected attitude, and using some of the Spanish he had picked up in the West, “we’ll gather up the remains to-morrow—mañana.”
“Banana, you mean,” chuckled Paul, “and it’ll just be as easy as eating one for Rob to ride the Pegasus.”
“Oh, you’ve christened it already, have you?” inquired Rob.
“That’s the only name I could think of,” answered Paul. “Pegasus was a winged horse, you know.”
“And poets have been riding the poor critter to death ever since,” chimed in Tubby, with a snicker.
Rob decided that he would try his experimental ride from the summit of the hill. From what he had seen, it would be no very difficult task to control the winged sled. He was, in fact, so anxious to be off on his initial voyage that he could hardly wait till they reached the summit of the moonlit hill.
At last, however, everything was ready for the start.
“Whoa, Peggy!” cautioned Tubby, as with Merritt he hung on to the rear of the sled, while Paul gave Rob some final instructions.
“Balance her just like you would a bicycle,” he said, “and when you feel her rising don’t resist, but just take it easy. Look out for the landing, though. It’ll jolt the wishbone out of you.”
“I expect to get a tumble,” Rob assured him.
“Guess I’m all right,” he added the next minute, straining his eyes to make sure the hill ahead was clear.
Suddenly he was off, rushing through the frosty air at an exhilarating clip. All at once he felt a queer, rising movement, and knew that the winged sled was starting to spread its pinions. Far behind him he heard a faint cheer. Like a bicycle rider, Rob balanced a tipping tendency in either direction by swaying his body.
“Whee-e-e-e-e-e-e!” he yelled in sheer delight at the wonderful sensation as he clove the atmosphere. Above him the frosty stars twinkled. Beneath was the long, white hill, chequered vividly here and there with inky splashings of shadow.
Suddenly, just ahead as it seemed, and slightly below him, there came a loud shout. Rob was startled, and for an instant he allowed his attention to waver. Like a flash the machine tilted, and with the boy still clinging desperately to its careening form, the Pegasus shot staggeringly downward through the air, driving straight at four dark forms that had just come into view at the foot of the hill.
“Look out!” was all Rob had time to yell before the marvelous flying sled was ploughing at top speed into their midst.
CHAPTER XVI.
“THERE’S MANY A SLIP——”
“Wow! Look out where you’re coming!”
“What is it?”
“It’s a giant owl!”
These and a dozen other exclamations of dismay and alarm mingled with a great splintering, and crashing, and snapping, as Rob came ploughing down to earth. Luckily, he fetched up in a snow bank, into which the velocity with which the winged-sled had been traveling, drove it, for three feet or more.
The wings were reduced to a mass of torn canvas and shattered frames, while the steel-runners were buckled and bent under the strain. A more complete wreck was never seen.
But havoc had been done, likewise, to the group into which Rob had inadvertently plunged. As it so happened, they were the last persons in the world he would have wished to encounter just then, for in the voices that rang out about him, as the four figures were thrown right and left, he had recognized the familiar tones of Freeman Hunt, Bill Bender, Jack Curtiss and Lem Lonsdale. They had, by a strange coincidence, selected the same night upon which Paul’s friends had come to try out their big sleigh with which they intended to capture the silver cup.
“Anybody hurt?” hailed Rob, as he extricated himself from the snow-pile, feeling a little dizzy by the rapidity with which his smash-up had occurred. At one moment he was flying, and the next he was ignominiously toppled into a snow bank, with the splintered wreck of his winged vehicle about him.
“Anybody hurt?” he repeated, coming toward the group, the members of which were brushing off the snow that had clung to them when they were shot here and there by the lad’s sudden descent.
“It’s that cub Blake,” whispered Hunt to Jack Curtiss.
“Well, what of it?” growled Jack in a low voice. “We aren’t scared of him or a dozen like him. Hurt?” he went on at the top of his voice. “No, we ain’t, but I suppose you’d like to have seen us all injured for life by that fool thing you were flopping about on. You’re a great inventor—not.”
“It isn’t my invention,” said Rob, with meaning emphasis. “It was the idea of a friend of mine—a young fellow who made something else that interested a certain man in this town so much that he tried to forge a telegram to get a chance to buy it.”
“Are you aiming at me?” demanded Freeman Hunt, coming forward, “or at my father?”
“If the cap fits, you can wear it,” retorted Rob, thoroughly angry with Hunt and his companions. He was turning contemptuously away when Jack Curtiss stepped forward.
“Hold on there a minute, young fellow,” he snarled, “you’ve got a lesson coming to you, and right here is as good a place as any to give it to you.”
“The same sort of lesson you tried to give me in the road one night, eh?” flung back Rob, scornfully; “the same sort of lesson that the fellow who fired that gun at me in the wood wanted to give me, I guess.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” blurted out Freeman Hunt, before his wiser cronies could stop him.
“Then my guess was right. It was you that fired it,” said Rob. “Thanks for giving me the proof of it.”
“Bother it all, he’s got a hold over us now,” muttered Jack Curtiss, turning away as Rob’s chums came up.
“Well, the smash-up happened,” said Rob to Paul. “I’m awfully sorry, Paul. I couldn’t help it, though. Something seemed to divert my attention for a second, and the next thing I knew I was head-over-heels in the snow-pile.”
“Good thing it was there,” said Merritt, who, with the others, had been examining the wreck.
“See what a big hole his head made,” cried Tubby, pointing to the hole in the soft snow where Rob had driven into it.
“I’ll make it all right with you, Paul,” Rob promised. “I’ll see that you are able to build a bigger, better flyer than this one. I believe that if we don’t break our necks trying it out, that you have a good idea there.”
“Do you really think so?” asked Paul.
“I do,” rejoined Rob.
“He really does,” sneered Jack Curtiss from the patch of shadow in which he and his cronies were standing.
“I wish you’d broken your skull instead of hitting that snow bank,” he went on.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Rob, serenely; “unfortunately for you, I didn’t.”
“I guess you think you are going to get that cup at the sled carnival, don’t you,” chuckled Bill Bender; “well, you haven’t got a chance.”
“No, you won’t know you’re on earth,” chimed in Lem Lonsdale, viciously.
“Oh, come on, fellows,” urged Freeman Hunt, who had his own reasons for not wishing to linger, “leave the babies alone. They’ve smashed their pretty toy, now let them run home to bed.”
So saying, he turned, and began lugging the long, racy-looking toboggan they had brought with them up the steep, white hill. With a muttered threat about punching heads and “fresh young cubs,” Jack Curtiss and the others followed him.
“Well, I guess we’d better pick up the remains and go home,” said Tubby, dragging out a splintered wing-tip from the snow.
“Hold on a minute,” said Rob, “let’s wait here and see what those fellows can do. I guess they’ve come out here to try that big, new sled.”
Sure enough, a few seconds later there came a loud screech from the top of the hill.
“Here they come,” volunteered Tubby, bending forward.
High up the hill, outlined sharply against the snow, there came rushing toward them a flying object. It seemed to fairly whiz over the frozen surface. Hardly had they sighted it before it flashed past with yells of defiance from its occupants, and vanished into the darkness cast by a clump of big fir trees.
“Well!” exclaimed Rob, “they’ve got a flyer; no mistake about that.”
“It’ll be faster yet when they get those runners rubbed down,” vouchsafed Merritt; “it only came in this afternoon from New York. They got it from a big sporting-goods house.”
“Maybe the same one Jack got his flying machine from,” chuckled Paul, smiling over the remembrance of the bully’s discomfiture on the occasion of the aeroplane model contest, as told in the first volume of this series.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” responded Tubby, in reply to Paul’s observation.
“Where did they get the money from?” wondered Merritt. “That sled must have cost a lot.”
“Oh, Hunt’s father gives him plenty of money,” was Rob’s response, “and the others are not exactly poor. They could easily afford such a sled for the gratification of winning the cup away from us.”
“I guess that’s about all they’ve gone into the competition for,” suggested Paul.
The others agreed with him. It would be a big feather in the caps of the arch enemies of the Boy Scouts if they could capture any of the events which were to take place on the hill after Christmas, especially the big cup event.
“It’s up to us to look out for any crooked work, then,” said Tubby, as, with arms full of such parts of the shattered Pegasus as seemed worth keeping, they started for home. “Those fellows won’t stick at anything as we know.”
“Oh, don’t be too hard on them,” was Rob’s comment; “there’s good in most chaps if you look for it.”
“Hum,” sniffed Merritt, “you’d have to go prospecting with a pickaxe and dynamite to find it in Jack Curtiss’ crowd.”
“And then use a microscope,” commented Tubby, in spite of Rob’s protests that they ought to use “fair play.”
As Rob had prophesied, Paul managed to build a new winged-sled, and despite an occasional flop, it proved to be a handy sort of contrivance, making short glides and alighting on its spring runners without more than almost dislocating the rider’s vertebrae. However, boy-like, the lads of Hampton regarded it as a wonderful invention, and lauded it to the skies, so much so, that a paragraph concerning “our ingenious young fellow townsman, Paul Perkins,” was inserted in an issue of the Hampton Local.
“Wouldn’t that make you sick,” sneered Jack Curtiss, when he saw the item. “Ingenious indeed—anybody could do things like that if they had a mind to.”
In this saying, Jack came as near to the truth as in anything he had uttered for a long time.
Jones’s Hill became alive now in the gloaming, and on moonlight nights, with sleds of all descriptions, from small, old-fashioned “foot-steerers” to the big, polished, nickel-trimmed, flexible-guiding store varieties. One thing the trials had shown, on comparison with previous records, and this was that the capture of the silver cup probably lay between the big toboggan of the Curtiss faction, and the six-seater manipulated by Rob and his chums.
“If there is no dark horse entered, Hampton gets the cup this year sure,” Rob declared one evening as the happy, tired boys began to retrace their steps to the village, after an evening of exciting practice.
“I don’t see much satisfaction in that if Curtiss and his crowd win it,” mumbled Tubby, which brought down upon his head another lecture from Rob, who, as should all good scouts, did not believe in harboring a grudge.
“Let the best team win,” he said; “that’s all we ask for—that, and fair play.”
On the evening of which we have spoken, Paul and his chums met at his house to discuss final plans for the race and talk over the advisability of showing off the paces of the winged-sled. In the midst of their talk, Rob got up from the table and started for the door with a plate containing sundry apple cores, the remains of the fruit which the deliberators had consumed as an aid to their counsels.
He had opened the portal and was about to chuck them out into the night when he suddenly paused and stood listening sharply. He thought—was sure, in fact—that he had heard a furtive footstep creep away from the house as he flung the door open.
“Shut that door for goodness sake,” howled Tubby, as Rob stood there peering out; “you’re freezing us to death in here.”
The others added their voices of protest. Thus admonished, Rob closed the door, and returned to the table. Although he said nothing about it, he could not get out of his head the idea that he had seen a form, darker than the surrounding blackness, slip away from the house as he gazed forth.
It was not far from midnight when the boyish conference broke up, and Rob, Tubby and Merritt started for their homes, which lay in the same direction. They had reached Tubby’s house and were just saying good-night when there came a sudden alarming shout. On the frosty air it rang out, as clearly and as startlingly as a midnight bell.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
CHAPTER XVII.
FIRE!
“There it is, down there!” exclaimed Tubby, pointing back toward the part of the village they had just left.
A red, flickering glare was already illuminating the sky in that part of the place. Clearly it was the fire. As they gazed, other shouts were added to the first outcry.
“Come on!” shouted Rob, starting off at top speed in that direction. But as he set off another idea occurred to him. The firehouse was not far from Tubby’s house—on the next block, in fact.
“You fellows go ahead!” shouted Rob, turning. He dashed off toward the firehouse in which the old-fashioned hand pump engine was kept. On top of the place was a big bell, the rope of which hung down in front of the building. Rob seized it as he arrived at the place, and started a wild clamor ringing out.
“That will rouse out the Boy Scouts,” he muttered; “they all know what to do when they hear the fire bell.”
The boy was right. Hardly had the echoes of the tocsin died out before from dozens of houses boyish figures came pouring. Boy Scouts every one of them, and ready for active duty. Little Andy, the Eagles’ bugler, went tearing past as Rob dropped the bell rope, satisfied that the alarm had been well-sounded. He was racing on when Rob seized him by the shoulder.
“Sound the assembly!” he ordered.
Andy, considerably startled at first, quickly recovered himself, and placed the bugle to his lips. The sibilant call was soon sounding. In less than five minutes the Boy Scouts had obediently gathered at the firehouse, and, under Rob’s directions, were falling in to await orders. Dale Harding was there, too, with the Hawks, and the two patrols eagerly hung on the next word of command.
Down the street came Boffy Groggs, the janitor of the firehouse. He was half asleep and was regarding the key he carried in his hand as if he hardly knew what to do with it. The volunteer firemen of the village had not yet put in an appearance.
“Putting on their fancy uniforms,” guessed Rob, as Boffy came mooning along.
“Hey, Boffy, give me that!” shouted Rob, as he saw the key in the sleepy old man’s hand.
“Fire in your hat?” inquired old Boffy, who was somewhat deaf.
“No, give me that!” snapped Rob. “Quick, there’s no time to lose!”
“I haven’t got on my shoes, and that’s a fact,” grunted Boffy, comprehendingly. “I’ll go back and put them on.”
He was actually starting back when Rob seized the key from his hand.
“Hey! Hey!” shouted Boffy, indignant at being robbed of his authority, as he deemed it, “give that back, Rob Blake, you’ve got no right——”
“To be wasting time here,” exclaimed Rob, impatiently, and hastily opening the firehouse door; “that’s true enough, Boffy—Hullo, Tubby, where is the fire?”
“It’s—it’s at Paul Perkins’s,” exclaimed the fat boy, who had just come racing up; “the wagon house—poof—it——”
He stopped, all out of breath, and gasped like a newly-landed fish.
“Out with the engine, boys, and race her down to Paul Perkins’s place!” ordered Rob, not waiting to hear the rest.
With a shout the Boy Scouts swept into the engine house, and soon were tailing onto the long ropes by which the engine was dragged.
“Forward! Double quick!” came the next order.
“Here! Here!” shouted Boffy.
“We’re going to the fire. Out of the way, Boffy!” yelled the boys.
“It’s not for hire! Bring it back!” shouted the hard-of-hearing janitor.
“Forward!” roared Rob and Dale Harding in a breath.
Instantly the wheels began to revolve, and the ponderous machine came trundling out of the shed, and an instant later was being raced down the street, drawn by strong, young arms. Cheering like soldiers, the Boy Scouts dashed along. Old Boffy sprang back as the big machine crashed past him.
“Come back! Come back!” he yelled, as it vanished in the distance.
As Tubby had reported, it was the wagon house which was on fire. As the Boy Scouts came racing up with the engine, yellow flames were licking hungrily at its eastern end. A red glow spread all about, and the air was filled with the sharp, acrid smell of blazing wood.
“Here you, and you, and you,” ordered Rob, singling out three lads, “take that hose down to the brook. The rest of you tail on to the hand-brakes.”
In an instant the lads ordered to carry the hose to the creek were off, and it was not more than five minutes before the pumps began to suck. Presently, from the clanking apparatus, there began to pour a feeble stream. It strengthened as the engine got limbered up and soon quite a force of water was spurting upon the flames. They hissed and set up clouds of steam as the cold water struck them.
“Hooray!” shouted the boys at the brakes, but their leaders quickly silenced them.
“Save your wind to work the pumps,” ordered Dale Harding.
“The machine! The machine!” cried a voice, and Paul Perkins, pale and blackened with soot and flying embers, came dashing in among them. The lad’s hands were cut and bleeding.
“I tried to drag it out by myself, but I couldn’t,” he explained to Rob.
“Great Scott, I forgot all about that,” exclaimed Rob. “Come on, fellows, let’s get Paul’s machine out of there. I guess we can save it yet.”
It looked doubtful, however, if this could be accomplished. The flames now were leaping savagely up, but as yet they were confined to one end of the building. The wind, though, was driving them angrily forward, devouring the old dried timbers with the greed of a ferocious monster.
“Open those doors!” shouted Rob, and the next instant the big wooden bar had fallen from the portals as Paul unlocked the stout padlock holding them. As they swung open, the boys could see the machine standing in the centre of the place, illumined with a red glare. The heat that drove out was as intense as if they had opened the doors of a bake oven, but they didn’t flinch. Led by Rob and Dale Harding, they plunged into the fiery place. The heat seemed as if it would split their skins and singe their hair, but they paid little attention to it in the excitement of the moment.
“Lay hold of those runners, boys,” cried Dale, “we’ll drag her out that way.”
“Good scheme,” panted Rob, bending over and seizing hold. But the machine was heavy and refused to budge.
“We need a rope,” suggested Merritt.
“No time to get it,” panted Rob; “come on, try again.”
They strained till their muscles cracked, and this time the bulky contrivance slipped forward a little. Working with might and main, they had almost succeeded in getting it to a place of safety when there was a sudden shout from Paul.
“The gasolene. That tank’s full of it.”
“Great Scott, it will blow up!” cried Dale Harding.
As he spoke a cloud of sparks and hissing embers flew about them, driven from the burning end of the barn by a puff of wind.
“Don’t quit!” urged Rob, as they hesitated; “no Boy Scout ever quits. We’ve tackled this job; let’s see it through.”
His words put heart into the somewhat scared boys, and once more they bent their efforts to dragging out the machine. This time they managed to run it fairly beyond the danger line, and it was as well that they did so at that moment, for the feeble stream thrown by the hand-engine had had little effect on the flames, and by now one entire end of the wagon house had been burned away.