"You may take it in turns, fellows--each sleep out with him one night, when the weather is fine," decided the scoutmaster. "Now! I'm going to appoint Scouts Warren and Chase cooks for to-night." A first-rate supper did those cooks turn out, of flapjacks and scrambled eggs, the latter stirred with a peeled stick, while the great coffee-pot, brooding upon its rosy nest of birch-logs, grinned facetiously when a stray flame wreathed its spout, then broke into bubbling laughter. Night fell upon the pale dunes that turned to silver monuments under the smile of a moon in its third quarter. A gentle, lowing sound came to the scouts' ears from the tide at far ebb upon the silvery beach, as, the cook-fire abandoned, they gathered round a blazing camp-fire that cast weird reflections upon the surrounding white hillocks. The holding of a calm powwow on this first night in camp, when each heart was thrilling tumultuously to the novelty of the surroundings, was impossible. Toiney sang wild fragments of songs that found a suitable accompaniment in the distant, hoarse barking of the harbor seal, and in the plaintive "Oo-oo-ooo!"--the dove-like call of the creamy pup-seal to its marbled mother in some lonely tidal creek. Once and again from the shore side of the scouts' camp-fire, from among the shimmering sand-hills, came the weaker, more snappy bark of the little dog-fox, as he prowled the dunes. The dazzling Sugarloaf Pillar near the mouth of the river was wrapped in night's mantle. But lights flickered out in two of the handsome summer bungalows which the boys had noticed, standing at some distance from their camping-ground, looming high above the beach, erected upon stilt-like props driven into the sandy soil. "Those houses were only built last spring; they're occupied for the first time this summer," said Kenjo Red, who was more familiar with this region than the others. "Say! let's chant our African war-song, fellows. This is just the night for it." And the barbaric chant rang weirdly among the sand-hills, the leader shouting the first line, his companions answering with the other three, to the accompaniment of the flames' crackle and the night calls of bird and beast:-- "Een gonyâma--gonyâma. Invoboo! Yah bô! Yah bô Invoboo!" Presently the bark of the dog-fox was heard farther off. _He_ knew, the stealthy slyboots, that he was not the only lone prowler among the pale dunes that night who listened intently to the boisterous revelry round the scouts' camp-fire. His keen sense of smell informed him that behind one plumed sand-hill, between his own trotting form and the noisy company in the firelight, there lurked a solitary man-figure. But he, the sandy-coated little trotter from burrow to burrow, could neither hear nor interpret the sound, half groan, half oath, savagely envious, that escaped from the other night-prowler's lips as he listened to the boys' voices.