He glanced round sharply at his scout comrades, and pointed, with excited gesticulations, across the sable dunes in the direction of those recently erected summer residences. CHAPTER XVII THE SIGNALMAN "Patrol leaders and corporals, muster your men!" The voice of the young scoutmaster rang sharply out upon the night. The three boy patrols, Owls, Seals, and Foxes, who fell quickly into line at his order, were no longer surrounding their camp-fire amid the dusky sand-hills. That had been deserted even while Toiney was speaking, while he was pointing out the claims of a larger fire on their attention. From the glare in the sky this was evidently a threatening blaze; its fierce reflection overhung like an intangible flaming sword the trio of recently erected summer residences about quarter of a mile from the scouts' camp--those handsome bungalows from which the summer birds had flown. "That's no brush fire," Scoutmaster Estey had exclaimed directly he sighted the glare. "It's a building of some kind. Come on, fellows; there's work for us here!" And snatching one of the two camp-lanterns from its sandy pedestal he led the way across the dark wilderness of the dunes. Nixon caught up the second luminary and followed his chief. In their wake raced the three patrols, down in a sandy hollow one moment, climbing wildly the next, tearing their way through the plumed tangle of beach-grass and other vegetation that capped each pale mound now swathed in blackness, Toiney keeping Harold by his side. "It isn't one of the houses, thank goodness! Only a big shed!" cried the scoutmaster as they neared the scene of the fire, where golden flames tore in two the darkness that cowered on either side of them, having gained complete mastery of an outbuilding which had been used as a modest garage during the summer. "_Whee-ew!_ Gracious!" Nixon vented a prolonged whistle of consternation. "Why! 'twas into that very shed that we saw Dave Baldwin--or the man whom we took for him--disappear a couple of hours ago." But the demands of the moment were such, if the three houses were to be saved, that the remark, tossed at random into the darkness, was lost there amid the reign of fiery motes and rampant sparks that strove to carry the destruction farther. "Luckily, the wind isn't setting toward the house--it's mostly in another direction!" The scoutmaster by a breathless wave of his blinking lantern indicated the largest of the three bungalows to which the blazing outbuilding belonged. "No hope of saving that shed! But if the little wood-shed near-by catches, the house will go too. We may head the fire off!" It was then that he issued the ringing order to patrol leaders and those second in command to muster their men.