"They're fine lads!" A little moisture gathered in the captain's narrowed blue eye as he gazed back at the beach--moisture which did not come in over the Aviator's rail. "Some one has spoken of this Boy Scout Movement as the 'Salvation of England'--as I've heard! So here's to it again as the Future of America!" And he sounded three more whistles--and yet another three--giving the scouts three times three, until it seemed as if his power-boat would burst its steel throat. Then comparative silence reigned again upon the sands and certain startled birds resumed their feeding avocations, notably that white-breasted busybody, the sanderling or surf-snipe, called by river-men the "whitey." "See! the 'whitey' doesn't believe that 'two is company, three none': they're chasing after their dinner in triplets! They run out into the ripples and back again, pecking in the sand, so quickly that the larger waves can't catch them: don't they, Greerie?" said Leon Chase, pointing them out to Harold in the overflowing brotherliness established by that yell. Harold was no longer the "Hare." That nickname had been forbidden by the patrol leader of the Owls under pain of dire penalties. The "poltron," or coward, as Toiney had once in pity called him, was "Greerie" now; and was gradually learning what mere bugaboos were the fears which had separated him from his kind and from boyhood's activities--something which might never have come home to him thoroughly, save in the stimulating society of other boys who aimed earnestly at helping him. "We're going to have a splendid time here for the next two weeks, Greerie, camping among the dunes," Leon assured him. "To-morrow Nix an' you and I will go out in the little rowboat, the Pill, and hunt up a creamy pup-seal and bring him back to camp for a pet. Now! you must come and do your share of the work--help to set up the other tents among the sand-hills." One was already erected, a large canvas shelter, to contain four boys, another went up like unto it for the other four members of the patrol, then a smaller tent for the scoutmaster, and the cook-tent which sheltered the "commissariat," stocked with cans of preserved meats, vegetables, and all that went to make up the scouts' daily rations. "Where are _you_ going to sleep, Toiney?" asked Patrol Leader Nixon. "Me--I'll lak' for sleep out in de air, me--wit' de littal star on top o' me!" Toiney shrugged his shoulders complacently at the summer sky, now taking on the hues of evening, as if the firmament were a blanket woven for his comfort. "Oh! I'll sleep out with you.--And I!--Me, too!" Each and every member of the patrol, from the leader downward, longed to feel the white sand beneath him as a mattress, to have the stars for canopy, to hear the night-tide as it broke upon the near-by beach crooning his lullaby. [Illustration: IN CAMP]