“It’s going to be a great day,” observed Mac. “What was it the history book said, Gordon? ‘The day of their departure dawned brisk and fair’?” “Yes,” said Gordon.
“Didn’t it say something about every soul being scared? Surely it did.”
“It said every soul was prepared,” corrected Gordon, with dignity.
“Well, Ethan Allen and his crowd hadn’t anything on us,” Mac answered.
Indeed they had not, to judge from appearances, for nearly everything which had constituted the camp and made it homelike had been loaded into the gallant Swan, which rocked gently at its moorings. The glider, after a triumphant career of record making and breaking, had been taken apart, first submissively posing for innumerable snapshots. There was talk of awarding to the graceful flier a gnome motor, some time or other, and it was agreed that meanwhile if any enterprising shopkeeper in Oakwood cared to exhibit it “as the glider in which Harry Arnold had—”
“Sh-h-h, here he comes,” said one of the scouts, in an undertone; “he’d be wild if he heard you proposing that.”
“You’re not going to trust this precious cargo to Morrel, are you, Doctor?” said Harry.
“I thought I’d let Howard go along with him to tend the engine. Morrel can steer.”
“If you want her to go to the left, Til,” said Harry, soberly, “you just pull on this rope, and for the right—”
“Think you can remember that, Til?” said Roy Carpenter.
“You fellows make me tired,” grumbled Tilford Morrel.
The Swan, on her last voyage under scout auspices, went majestically down the stream into the broad expanse of the lake, and headed for Port Henry. Here she waited for the rest of the troop, and then the greater part of their camp property was sent on to Oakwood to herald their approach. But they kept enough for bivouac camping, in case they should decide to tramp as far as Albany before taking the train.
If you were to search to-day for the spot where the Oakwood boys camped all summer, you would find no distinguishing mark, no defacing of ground or tree, no unsightly can or battered paper box,—nothing unless, perchance, the initials “G. L.” obscurely graven here and there. Thus the scout comes and goes, and none shall be the wiser,—except, perhaps, another scout to whose observant eyes a wisp of grass may hold a meaning, and who sees where others see not.
Their camping paraphernalia reduced to a minimum, the Oakwood troop crowded into the Swan, a borrowed dory accommodating the overflow, and crossed the lake at Port Henry, landing at Chimney Point. From here they could look across the narrow channel formed by the Crown Point peninsula, and see the ruins of the famous old fortress on the end of the clumsy thumb of land. The sight of it fired Gordon with enthusiasm.
“Oh, it’s going to be great!” he cried. “Can we get down opposite Ticonderoga to-night, Red Deer?”
“If you’re good,” said Mac.
At Chimney Point they returned the Swan to its rightful owner, who agreed to row the borrowed dory across to its owner, and then they started southward along the Vermont shore.
It was, as Mac had observed, a great day. A brisk breeze rippled the waters of the lake, and rustled musically among the leaves.
“Well, who’s going to be Ethan Allen?” asked Red Deer. “Here we are, a couple of miles down the line, and don’t know yet who’s leader. Harry, this beautiful historic revival is yours, so I guess you’re old Ethan.”
“No, that’s Kid’s job,” laughed Harry, putting his arm over Gordon’s shoulder as they tramped along.
“G. Lord, or no one,” shouted Mac.
“G. Lord for mine!” added Brick Parks.
“If Kid Lord isn’t Ethan Allen, I won’t play,” shouted John Walden.
Gordon grinned from ear to ear. “All right, only you’ll have to be Seth Warner, Harry.”
“If you think I’m going to turn around and lead this outfit back to Crown Point in order to play Seth Warner, you’ll have to think again, my fraptious boy. If Ethan Allen Lord leads us forth to victory this night, I think that will be about enough. Have you got the speech all pat?”
“‘In the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!’” shouted Gordon, striking an attitude.
“Great!” said Charlie Greer.
“Did you notice how I rolled my r’s?” asked Gordon.
“We certainly did—you’re the only original!”
“That’s nothing. I can do it even better than that.”
Harry, smiling, walked over to Vinton, who was carrying several staves and a fishing-rod wound up in a piece of light tenting. Fumbling in this bundle, he pulled out a battered, rusty sword.
“Here you are, old man,” he said, handing it to Gordon. “You want to do it right, you know.”
“Where’d he get that?” asked Langford, surprised.
“Don’t ask me,” said Dan Swift.
“Oh, cracky, where’d you get it, Harry?” Gordon cried.
“Oh, cracky, I just happened to see it in Port Henry when we were making the glider,” laughed Harry.
Gordon grew sober.
“Now you’re the genuine, warranted article,” said Harry, falling back and walking with the scoutmaster.
“How did you happen to buy that, Harry?” Dr. Brent asked in a low voice.
“Oh, I just happened to see it in the blacksmith’s. I thought it would hit him in the right spot.”
Red Deer made no comment. He knew Harry.
In a few minutes Gordon fell behind, and he and Harry walked together.
“Harry, it’s a James Dandy! I—I don’t see how you happened to think to buy it.”
“Oh, I just happened to be in Berry’s getting some steel bent.”
“Then it was when—while—during—”
“Yes, it was when, while, during,” said Harry; “and you’re supposed to wave it over your head just the minute you clap your eyes on Mr. E. C. Wade—see?”
“Oh, but it’ll be great!” said Gordon.
A day’s tramp southward along the Vermont shore brought them opposite Ticonderoga about dusk. Far inland, when the view was unobstructed, they could see the hazy outline of the Green Mountains, and across on the New York side, Harry pointed out the frowning, shaggy head of old Bulwagga, and farther on, the less forbidding height of Dibble Mountain, from whose summit they had seen the smoke which lured them northward only to find a heap of ashes.
“But you found us just the same, didn’t you, Harry?” said Mac.
“Did you think he wouldn’t?” said Gordon, contemptuously. (It was noticeable that he did not say we; he said he.) “He found you right at the biological moment, too.”
“Psychological,” corrected Red Deer, smiling.
“He’s all right, is Harry boy,” said Charlie Greer.
“So’s G. Lord,” said some one else.
“Harry,” said the doctor, “this is private land we’re coming to. Guess we’ll have to make a long detour. It wouldn’t do for a party of scouts to be caught trespassing.”
To the doctor’s surprise, however, Harry vaulted the low fence, apparently oblivious of the sign which said, “Positively No Trespassing.” “Come ahead,” said he, looking back.
“Isn’t he the bold thing?” said Nelson Pierce.
A man came down through the grounds with a menacing aspect. “Don’t yez know how to read plain English?” he shouted.
“No, but I can understand plain Irish,” said Harry. “Hello, Pat, how are you?”
The man uttered a laugh to crack the heavens. “Sure, and ’tis yourself, is it? And Oi’m that glad to see ye!”
“Are we pinched?” laughed Harry.
“Ye are that, the whole Wild West crew of yez! Fetch yer friends in here till I have thim fined ten dollars each. Did yez have yer supper yit? ’Tis a lie, ye didn’t—come into the house.”
Gordon was already at Harry’s side, and the rest followed.
“Where’s the folks?” asked Harry.
“Gone. The place is closed up an’ I’m left here to kape it open. The sarvants went to Oakwood to tidy up a bit a week ago, and the Mister and Missus went this morning with Master Penfield. It’s a ghrand place they’ve there, Mister Arnold. Me and the old woman goes down with our bandbox in the tourin’ car with Jimmie, Mister Roger’s man, this day week, praise be, for ’tis as slow as mud here now.”
“How are they? All well?” asked Harry.
“All well, and waitin’ to get their two hands on ye—specially the girrls, forbye a letter ye sint Master Penfield. Sure, he made a raid on the establishment. Two fancy hats, no less, must Miss Marjorie hand over, and there’s not so much as a wicker chair left in the house. Come up and set down in wan o’ thim—the whole o’ yez!”
“Was the aeroplane a success?” Gordon asked.
“Faith, why should it not be, with the ind of a tin-dollar fountain pen into it, and poor Mr. Danforth, him writin’ with the stub of a lead pencil? It kin carry three passengers, seventeen-year-locusts, would ye believe it, and it wint acrost the lake!”
“Fine!” said Harry.
The place seemed indeed deserted, with Mr. Danforth’s genial face not in evidence. But Pat and his good wife proved very cordial and hospitable substitutes. Pat protested that if Mr. Danforth were to hear of their passing the house without accepting its entertainment, he, Pat, would be peremptorily discharged and denounced every day thereafter. So they dined luxuriously under the trees on the beautiful lawn, on a variety of dainty and toothsome odds and ends from the still well-stocked larder.
After dark they went on down the shore, with many acknowledgments to the hearty chauffeur, who seemed to have a full measure of the genuine Danforth hospitality. “I was chauffeur here long befoor there was anny autimobiles, or befoor they’d the place at all,” he told them, as they left; “and he’s the ghrand man, but I can’t larrn him to manage a boat.”
At nine o’clock that night, the Oakwood scouts sprawled on the grassy, sloping shore, just opposite old Fort Ticonderoga. A mile or so behind the fort lay the sleeping village. Behind the waiting scouts rose the historic Mount Independence; and across the lake there glimmered a quivering yellow band, the light of a camp-fire just beyond the fort.
“Wonder what time they’ll turn in?” said Roy Carpenter. “Christopher, but that light looks cheerful!”
The old fort, partially restored, lay at the end of a roundish cape projecting from the New York shore, and here the water flowed through the narrowest channel in all the lake’s broadening and narrowing path. It was a spot forever associated with the good old War of Independence. Right here, where the Oakwood scouts now waited for the light to die, had the redoubtable Allen given his boisterous followers a final harangue, generously offering to release any one who lacked the courage to follow him across.
The boys had not been able to secure a boat anywhere in the vicinity, and here they were handicapped in a way that Ethan Allen had not been. For that intrepid leader had, to tell the truth, “attached” all the boats along the shore—in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. This, of course, the new Green Mountain Boys could not very well do; so Harry suggested reconnoitering alone, bringing back, if possible, one of the enemy’s canoes. The proposition was one after Ethan Allen’s own heart. They rigged a makeshift raft by lashing together three logs which lay on a ruined pier near by, and spent an hour fashioning a rough sculling oar with a scout staff and a piece of narrow board.
After the fire had died sufficiently to convince them that the Albany troop had gone to bed, Harry boarded the raft, and managed to work his way across the channel, which was here about one third of a mile across. He kept well clear of the illuminated area, and crawled cautiously up the sloping shore, testing the ground before each step. It was almost pitch dark, but on the little eminence, a hundred feet or so............