CHAPTER I
A TYPICAL BOY SCOUT

“Hullo, Rob; what’s up?”

Merritt Crawford stopped on his way past the Hampton post-office, and hailed Rob Blake, the leader of the Eagle Patrol, of which Merritt was corporal. Both lads wore the natty scout uniform.

“Not a thing is up or down, either,” rejoined Rob, with a laugh; “it looks as if things had stopped happening in Hampton ever since that schooner was blown up.”

“And Jack Curtiss’s hopes of a fortune with it,” added Merritt. “Well, I’m off home. Going that way?”

“Yes, I’ll be with you in a – Hullo, what’s happening?”

From farther up the street, at one end of which lay the glistening sheet of water known as Hampton Inlet, there came excited shouts. Then, suddenly, into the field of vision there swept, with astonishing rapidity, a startling sight.

A large automobile was coming toward them at a rapid rate. On the driver’s seat was a white-faced young girl, a cloud of fair hair streaming out about her frightened countenance. She was gripping the steering wheel, and seemed to be striving desperately to check the onrush of the machine. But her efforts were vain. The auto, instead of decreasing its rate of progress, appeared every minute to be gaining in speed.

It bumped and swayed wildly. A cloud of yellow dust arose about it. Behind the runaway machine could be perceived a crowd of townsfolk shouting incoherently.

“Oh, stop it! I shall be killed! Stop it, please do!”

The young girl was shrilly screaming in alarm, as the machine approached the two boys. So rapidly had events progressed since they first sighted it, that not a word had been exchanged between them. All at once, Merritt noticed that he was alone. Rob had darted to the roadway. As the auto dashed by, Merritt saw the young leader of the Hampton Boy Scouts give a sudden flying leap upon the running-board. He shot up from the road as if a steel spring had projected him.

For one instant he hung between life and death – or, at least, serious injury. The speed with which the auto was going caused the lad’s legs to fly out from it, as one of his hands caught the side door of the tonneau. But in a jiffy Rob’s athletic training triumphed. By a supreme effort he managed to steady himself and secure a grip with his other hand. Then he rapidly made his way forward along the running-board.

But this move proved almost disastrous. The already panic-stricken girl took her attention from the steering-wheel for an instant. In that molecule of time, the auto, like a perverse live thing, got beyond her control. It leaped wildly toward the sidewalk outside the Hampton candy store. A crowd of young folks – it was Saturday afternoon – had been indulging in ice cream and other dainties, when the shouts occasioned by the runaway machine had alarmed them.

Instantly soda and candy counters were neglected, and a rush for the sidewalk ensued. But, as they poured out to see what was the matter, they were faced by deadly peril.

The auto, like a juggernaut, was careening straight at them. Its exhausts roared like the nostrils of an excited beast.

Young girls screamed, and boys tried to drag them out of harm’s way. But had it not been for the fact that at that instant Rob gained the wheel, there might have been some serious accidents.

The lad fairly wrenched it out of the hands of the girl driver, who was half fainting at the imminence of the peril. A quick, savage twist, and the car spun round and was on a straight course again. That danger, at least, was over. But another, and a deadlier, threatened.

Right ahead lay the spot where the road terminated in a long wharf, at which occasional steamers landed. Every second brought them closer to it. If Rob could not stop the machine before it reached the end of the wharf, it was bound to plunge over and into the sea. All this flashed through the boy’s mind as he strove to find some means of stopping the car. But the auto was of a type unfamiliar to him. One experiment in checking its motion resulted instead in a still more furious burst of speed.

Like objects seen in a nightmare, the stores, the white faces of the alarmed townsfolk, and the other familiar objects of the village street, streaked by in a gray blur.

“I must stop it! I must!” breathed Rob.

But how? Where had the manufacturer of the car concealed his emergency brake? The lever controlling it seemed to be mysteriously out of sight. Suddenly the motion of the car changed. It no longer bumped. It ran terribly smoothly and swiftly.

From the street it had passed out upon the even surface of the planked wharf. Only a few seconds now in which to gain control of it!

“The emergency brake!” shouted Rob aloud in his extremity.

“Your foot! It works with your foot, I think!”

The voice, faint as a whisper over a long-distance telephone, came to the ears of the striving boy. It belonged to the girl beside him. Glancing down, Rob now saw what he would have observed at first, if he had had time to look about him – a metal pedal projected through the floor of the car. With an inward prayer, he jammed his foot down upon it. Would it work?

The end of the pier was terribly close now. The water gleamed blue and intense. It seemed awaiting the fatal plunge overboard.

But that plunge was not taken. There was a grinding sound, like a harsh purr, the speed of the car decreased, and, finally, it came to a stop – just in time.

From the landward end of the pier a crowd came running. In front were two or three khaki-uniformed members of the Eagle Patrol. Behind them several of the Hawks were mingled with the crowd.

Beyond all the confusion, Rob, as he turned his head, could see another automobile coming. It had two passengers in it. As the crowd surged about the boy and the girl, who had not yet alighted, and poured out questions in a rapid fusillade, the second car came “honking” up.

A murmur of “Mr. Blake” ran through the throng, as a tall, ruddy-faced man descended, followed by a military-looking gentleman, whose face was strongly agitated. Mr. Blake was Rob’s father, and, as readers of other volumes of this series know, the banker and scout patron of the little community. It was his car in which he had just driven up with his companion.

The latter hesitated not a moment, but in a few long strides gained the side of the car which Rob’s efforts had stopped just in time.

“Bravely done, my lad; bravely done,” he cried, and then, to the girl, “good heavens, Alice, what an experience! Child, you might have been killed if it had not been for this lad’s pluck! Mr. Blake,” as the banker came up, “I congratulate you on your son.”

“And I,” rejoined the banker gravely, “feel that I am not egotistical in accepting that congratulation. Rob, this is my friend, Major Roger Dangerfield, from up the State.”

“And this,” said the major, returning Rob’s salutation and turning to the girl who was clinging to him, “is my daughter, Alice, whose first experience with the operation of an automobile nearly came to a disastrous ending.”

Rob Blake, whose heroic action has just been described, was – as readers of The Boy Scout Series are aware – the leader of the Eagle Patrol, an organization of patriotic, clean-lived lads, attracted by the high ideals of the Boy Scout movement.

The patrol, while of comparatively recent organization, had been through some stirring adventures. In The Boy Scouts of The Eagle Patrol, for instance, we read how Rob and his followers defeated the machinations of certain jealous and unworthy enemies. They repaid evil with good, as is the scout way, but several despicable tricks, and worse, were played on them. In this book was related how Joe Digby in the camp of the Eagles, was kidnaped and imprisoned on a barren island, and how smoke signaling and quick wit saved his life. The boys solved a mystery and had several exciting trials of skill, including an aeroplane contest, which was almost spoiled by the trickery of their enemy, Jack Curtiss.

In the second volume, The Boy Scouts on the Range, we followed our young friends to the Far West. Here they distinguished themselves, and formed a mounted patrol, known as The Ranger Patrol. The pony riders had some exciting incidents befall them. These included capture by hostile Indians and a queer adventure in the haunted caves, in which Tubby almost lost his life.

In this volume, Jack Curtiss and his gang were again encountered, but although their trickery prevailed for a time, in the end they were routed. A noteworthy feature of this book was the story of the career and end of Silver Tip, a giant grizzly bear of sinister reputation in that part of the country.

The Boy Scouts and the Army Airship, brought the lads into a new and vital field of endeavor. They met an army officer, who was conducting secret tests of an aeroplane, and were enabled to aid him in many ways. In all the thrilling situations with which this book abounds, the boys are found always living up to the scout motto of “Be prepared.”

How they checkmated the efforts of Stonington Hunt, an unscrupulous financier, to rob a poor boy of the fruits of his inventive genius – a work in which he was aided by his unworthy son, Freeman Hunt – must be read to be appreciated. In doing this work, however, they earned Hunt’s undying hatred, and, although they thought they were through with him when he slunk disgraced out of Hampton, they had not seen the last of him.

As the present story progresses, we shall learn how Stonington Hunt and his son tried to avenge themselves for their fancied wrongs at the hands of the Boy Scouts.

CHAPTER II
TWO MYSTERIOUS MEN

“Tell us all about it, Rob!”

The Eagles and the Hawks pressed close about Rob, as, after the two machines had driven off, the scouts stood surrounded by curious townsfolk on the wharf.

“Not much to tell,” rejoined Rob, with a laugh. “Major Dangerfield is, it appears, an old friend of my father. He comes from Essex County, or rather, he has a summer place up there. On an automobile trip from Albany, to take his daughter to visit some friends down on Peconic Bay, he decided to stop over at Hampton and see the governor.

“He entered the bank to give dad a surprise, leaving his daughter outside for a few minutes, in the machine. She became interested in its mechanism and pulled a lever, and – the machine darted off. And – and that’s all,” he concluded modestly.

“Except that the leader of the Eagles covered himself with laurels,” struck in Bob – or Tubby – Hopkins, another member of the Eagles.

“Better than being covered with fat,” parried Rob, who didn’t relish this open praise.

“Three cheers for Rob Blake!” yelled Fylan Fobbs, a town character.

“Hip! hip! hooray!”

The cheers rang out with vim, the voices of the young scouts sounding shrill and clear among them, giving the patrol call:

“Kree-ee-ee-e!”