The Boy Scout Automobilists; Or, Jack Danby in the Woods — Reading Notes

Spaniards were a brave and determined enemy, but they were so crippled and hampered by orders from home that they were unable to make much of a showing in the field. We'll learn some time, I'm afraid, that we won that war too easily. Overconfidence is our worst national fault. Just because we never have been beaten, we think we're invincible. I hope the lesson, when it does come, and if it does come, won't be too costly."

The run to Guernsey was not a very long one. The train arrived there at four o'clock in the afternoon, and the Scouts, armed only with their clasp knives, Scout axes and sticks, lined up on the platform in excellent order. Dick Crawford, who ranked as a lieutenant for the encampment, took command, while Durland reported the arrival to Colonel Henry, as he had been ordered to do.

Half a dozen extra sidings had been laid for the occasion by the railroad, and on these long trains, each carrying militia, had been shunted. Clad all in khaki, or, rather, in the substitute adopted by the American army as more serviceable and less easy to distinguish at a distance, a stout cloth of olive drab, thousands of sturdy militiamen were standing at ease, waiting for orders to move. Field guns, too, and horses, for the mounted troops, were being unloaded, and the scene was one of the greatest activity. Hoarse cries filled the air, but there was only the appearance of confusion, since the citizen soldiers understood their work thoroughly, and each man had his part to play in the spectacle.

From one of the trains, too, three great structures with spreading wings had been unloaded, and the eyes of the Boy Scouts turned constantly toward the spot where mechanics were busily engaged in assembling the aeroplanes which were to serve, to some extent, as the eyes of the army.

"Glad to see you, Captain," Colonel Henry said to Durland when the Scout-Master reported the arrival of his Troop. "I'll send an orderly with you to show you the location of your camp. Colonel Roberts directed me to give you an isolated location, and I have done so. It's a little way from drinking water, but I guess you won't mind that."

"Not a bit, sir," said Durland, smilingly.

"Very well, Captain. Report to General Harkness's tent at eight o'clock, sir, for your instructions. I think you will find that the General has enough work planned to keep your Troop pretty busy to-morrow. We shall all watch your work with a great deal of interest. We've been hearing a lot about Durland's Scouts."

Durland saluted then, and turned with the orderly to rejoin his Troop.

In two hours the camp was ready. The neat row of tents, making a short but perfectly planned and arranged company street, were all up, bedding was ready, and supper was being cooked from the rations supplied by the commissary department. Durland, with active recollections of commissary supplies, had been inclined to bring along extra supplies for his Troop, but had decided against doing so, though he knew that many of the militia companies had taken the opposite course to his own, and had brought along enough supplies to set an excellent table.

"I want the boys to get a taste of real service," he told Dick, "and it won't hurt them a bit to rough it for a week. They get enough to eat, even if there isn't much variety, and the quality isn't of the best. The stuff is wholesome, anyhow--that's what counts."

By the time he returned from headquarters, the Troop was sound asleep, save for the sentries, Tom Binns and Harry French, who challenged him briskly.

Reveille sounded at five o'clock. There was plenty to be done before the war game actually began. There were plans to be laid, codes to be determined, umpires to be consulted as to vague and indefinite rules, and all sorts of little things that in a real war would have adjusted themselves. But the Scouts were well out of the excitement. They struck their tents and handed them over, neatly arranged, with all their bedding, to the men from the commissary department.

"Sleeping bags for us, after to-day," explained Durland. "That is, if we have to sleep in the open. Sometimes we'll get a barn or a hayrick, or even a bed in a farmhouse. We won't worry about all that. But we're not going to sit still, and we can't scout and carry tents and dunnage of that sort along. So I said I'd turn it all in."