"A dozen aëroplanes! A corps of aëroplanes!" 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.
"Not an aëroplane in sight! Not a single one!" breezed the girls, all ready to be angry. "Who--who put that hoax over?"
"Varnish right--and aëroplane wrong!" It was the freakish voice of a nickum which answered. "No! No buzzer, as the boys say, but there was a rattler, in there, beside that rock. If some of you girls had gone ahead, you'd have stepped right on him!"
"A 'rattler!' A big rattlesnake! And--and you started the cry, to get us out quietly--quickly!"
"Not we! The Scoutmaster had the presence of mind to launch an aëroplane. We boomed it," came the laughing reply, as Jack at a Pinch, second fiddle now, marched off with his companions.
"Who--is he?" Pemrose caught wildly at the arm of Stud, who was wishing that he and not those patronizing big boys had caught the Scoutmaster's cue and created airdrawn aëroplanes by the corps. "Do you--do you know who he is; that biggest--that gaudiest--one among them?"