The Wolf Patrol: A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts

The Monday week after Chippy's visit to Locking was Easter Monday and a general holiday. The Wolves and the Ravens made it a grand field-day, and they were on the heath by nine...

On the next Saturday afternoon, accordingly, the Wolf and Raven Patrols fraternized in the old sandpit on the heath, and Mr. Elliott attended as umpire. The boys were far from b...

The cob, as Chippy called it, was a small knoll on which stood a finger post, with many arms to guide wayfarers along the roads which met at Shotford Corner. The boys gained the...

It was mid-morning before they got the knots out of their neckties, for they followed quiet ways on which few people were to be met. Then they approached a small town entered by...

'Now for the Quay Flat!' said Arthur Graydon. 'I say, Dick Elliott, you cut ahead, and see if that crew out of Skinner's Hole are anywhere about! You other fellows, get some sto...

Within a mile again, the track they were following--a very ancient vicinal way--began to rise over a long stretch of moorland used mainly for sheep-walks, and covered in places...

First a net was stretched across the head of the pool. Young Bill jumped into the water and waded across waist deep with one end of the net, while a confederate paid it out from...

'Look here, Chippy,' he said, 'I mustn't halt again for any length of time. If I do, my foot may stiffen up till I can't move. We must make one long swing in this afternoon.'

The haversacks were behind him on the bank of the brook. Sam, for his part, turned upon Dick with a ferocious oath, and a fresh demand for the money. Of the whining, puling, wee...

The scouts were falling off to sleep once more when they were aroused again, this time by the divinest music. A nightingale began to sing in the little wood, and made it echo an...

On the outskirts of the village a mill-wheel droned lazily as the boys swung at scout's stride down the road. Suddenly the drone died away, and by the time the comrades were abr...

When Chippy told his followers that they must play the game all the time, he meant every word that he said. He had devoted himself heart and soul to becoming a true scout, who i...

The next morning Chippy turned up at Elliott Brothers' prompt to time. He had had a big ducking, a rattle on his shoulder, and not much sleep; but he was as hard as nails, and l...

It was a happy thought of Dick to use his patrol whistle upon reaching the strip of country where they had seen the sergeant. The latter heard the very first shrill note. He was...

When the boat was well out from the shore its nose was turned, and it began to drop at an easy pace down the river. In cover of the bank Chippy was sculling his best. He had see...

'Not likely,' was the reply; 'we've a-lost too much time for that. An' now theer's that cut. What I say is this: let's mek' an early camp an' give yer foot a good rest. P'raps i...

'Shut up!' snarled the other; 'as if any kid could keep quiet! I ain't a-goin' to do time for the likes of him. Not me! I'll chuck him into the hold.' And he clinched his words...

Chippy told the story of his grandmother's lodger, and pointed to the heel-mark before them. It was the first time since they hit the trail that the heel-mark had been clearly s...

Chippy had been at work for Elliott Brothers rather more than a fortnight, when one day he went down to the waterside warehouse for some samples. The firm had a huge building at...

The scouts made straight for the bank over which they had been peeping, leapt it, and dashed on, Chippy picking up his patrol flag as he ran. He had left it with Dick to have hi...

'We'll make a man-hunt of it,' said Billy Seton. 'I suggest that somebody lends him a pair of tracking-irons, and we give him a quarter of an hour's start. When we come up to hi...

For nearly three miles they held to the main road, going due north, then turned aside to a quiet grassy by-track running north-east, and were fairly launched on their new route....

At seven o'clock on Whit-Monday morning the sun's rays fell on the backs of two boys marching westwards from Bardon at the scout's pace: Dick and Chippy were on the road. They w...

Chippy's heart beat high with excitement. It thumped against his ribs till he felt sure that the talkers a few yards away would hear it; and he turned and crept away, and circle...

Three weeks later the Wolf Patrol, again on a Saturday afternoon, were busy in their beloved headquarters. They had flattened out a tracking patch fifteen yards square. Dick had...

As Dick moved along the edge of the wood, the smell of tobacco grew stronger, and below a small ash he stopped with a jump of his heart. There was a scratch and spurtle of a mat...

When Chippy left the station and gained Skinner's Hole, he put away his patrol flag carefully behind the tall clock, which was the only ornament of the poor squalid place he cal...

The fire was taken in hand first thing, for Chippy would need a great pile of red-hot embers for his cookery. The hanger was littered with dry sticks, so that there was no lack...

Arthur Graydon was on the other side of a small open space, and Chippy paused and peered from behind a holly-bush to see what chance there was of a surprise shot. He waited a mo...

This was very mysterious. Chippy could not make out what had happened. The boat had not sunk. Had it done so, the men would never have gone down without a sound. The scout thoug...

But scarcely had the party left the farmyard than they saw in the distance the figure of a heavily laden scout. It was Dick marching along with his injured comrade on his should...

That morning the brother scouts enjoyed an experience which gave them keener pleasure than perhaps anything else which happened during their journey. It began about eleven o'clo...

While they ate the chupatties with the relish gained by their morning's tramp, and washed them down with steaming hot tea, they looked over the map which Dick had spread between...

'Handy by,' replied the Raven, and marched to a thicket of hazels within thirty yards of the camp fire. Dick heard one or two strokes of the little axe, and then Chippy came bac...

Nearly a fortnight passed, and one dull afternoon a very discouraged Raven was perched on a capstan at the edge of Quay Flat. Chippy had tramped the town end to end and street b...

They had gone half a mile from the copse, when their attention was drawn to a bramble-brake which seemed to be alive. It shook, it twisted, it rocked to and fro. They went up to...

Dick and Chippy took the road again an hour after dinner amid a volley of cheers raised by the labourers on the farm. The men had gathered in the stockyard to see them start, an...

There were several quick feints, but neither loosed his ball. Then Dick ran right in, and Chippy threw straight at him. The Wolves raised a howl of joy when their patrol-leader...

On a Sunday afternoon, some three weeks after the contest round the Beacon, Chippy was crossing the heath towards the little village--or, rather, hamlet--of Locking, three miles...

His Cockney accent, too, was wiped out as if by magic. Probably he had forgotten for the instant that he had used it in Locking. At any rate, he did not use it now. But his Engl...

As Dick's father and uncle walked towards the docks, the former related with much relish how Dick had gone to work to do his friend a good turn, and the two gentlemen laughed ov...

The two scouts crept along the edge of the coppice, eye and ear on the alert. They were hoping to surprise a rabbit in a play-hole, but though they saw plenty of rabbits scuttli...

It was not until they lay down and waited for sleep that the boys felt the oddness and queerness of this first night in the open. Bustling round, making the fire, cooking, riggi...

One Saturday afternoon Chippy, the leader of the wharf-rats of Skinner's Hole, was crossing the heath on his way home. He had been with a message to a village some three miles f...

'I'll show you where to out another afore we get to Newminster,' said Mrs. Slade--'a place where my man often cuts a stick. 'Tis a plantation of ashes on a bank lookin' to the n...

They parted instantly, and each took his track, his eyes glued to the ground. They could work a great distance apart and yet keep in touch, for their patrol whistles were very p...

The Wolf Patrol were to meet Mr. Elliott the next Thursday afternoon. If the day should be fine they were to practise tracking tests on the heath; if wet, it was to be Kim's gam...

No one was more delighted to hear of Chippy's clever work in connection with the robbery than his fellow patrol-leader, Dick Elliott. Part of Dick's delight, if the truth must b...

The Raven sprang up in turn, and the scouts shook out their blankets, and tossed them across a furze-bush close at hand to air before they packed them away. The fire had burned...

On the next Monday evening Dick burst into his uncle's house like a whirlwind. Mr. Elliott was in his 'den,' reading the paper, and he looked up with a smile as the boy entered.

A few days later Dick Elliott was standing outside a shop in Bardon High Street waiting for his sister, who was inside. He was on his way to a party, and so was dressed in full...