"Ha! Because he just naturally has to go ajee!" laughed her scout knight, estimating the length of that scaly corkscrew, if uncoiled, with his eye. "Pshaw! I've tamed 'em--and killed 'em, too," he added. "Yes! a black snake wouldn't harm you, even if he did bite." Pem was still reassuring her friend. "Did you hear him whistle?... But--but what's that?" It was just half a minute later that she put the question. "He isn't making that noise with his tail still; is he?" She looked at Stud. Under the ruby eye of the lamp his face--the face of a Stoutheart--had turned suddenly pea-green. His eyes were fixed upon a gleam of bloated yellow dimly seen, under the lee of a rock, not very many yards away--the venomous, pale yellow of the dropsical cave fungi. "Why--why! it's only one of those horrid, blowzy, mushroom things. But _what's_ the noise--like--like somebody rattling little marbles, dry peas?" The girl felt her own breath go ratatat as she put the question. "Oh-h! only some fellow rattling--rattling--beans in his pocket. Let's get away--quick!" And then Pemrose knew what it was to look upon a Stoutheart "rattled." But, with that, a voice, a cry, not loud, but strong, exploded like a spring gun in the cave,--suddenly halting advance. "What's that outside? What's that outside?" it whooped. "Is it an aeroplane? _Two_ aeroplanes? Oh! hurry out--and see." "A dozen aeroplanes! A corps of aeroplanes!" boomed back those flaunting big boys, of whom the nickum was leader, playing up to the cue of the Scoutmaster who had started the concentrated cry. "Oh, hurry--hurry!" She saw him fling his mayflowers on the ground, that strange youth, and snatch at Una's hand, to drag her along towards the low cave entrance. He made a wide, circling movement to catch at hers, too. But she dodged it. Never more should he play Jack at a Pinch to her! Never! Through old Tory Cave there surged the noise of a rising wind, silencing that weak gust afar off, now baleful, the sound of the hidden water; reverberating among the rocks, it might be taken for anything, for the hum of aircraft--for a perfect onslaught of sky cavalry! And the Scoutmaster's cry was convincing. Yet--yet, when boys and girls tumbled tumultuously through the cave entrance--the girls by some mysterious understanding, first--not a remote sign of a biplane, even a meager _one_, decorated the sky overhead. No flying wires sent down their challenge. And the hum resolved itself into what it was: the rising, random mockery of Ta-te, the tempest, laughing at their searching looks, going north, south, east and west, aloft, skirmishing in bewilderment to all points of the horizon. "Hum-m. There isn't a _sign_ of a buzz-wagon! Who pulled off that stunt--on--us?" bleated a few of the mystified younger boys, while Stud silently brushed moisture like cave-tears from his forehead. So did the tall Scoutmaster, heavily breathing relief.