Chapter XXXV: Hervey’s Luck

He went to Temple Camp with a check and his nerve, and neither did him any good. I have sometimes thought that this blithesome piece of effrontery marks the high spot in Hervey’s career. But I am at a loss to account for it. Of course, he was not without reasoning faculty or memory. I think it was just that he took everything as it came and never burdened his mind with anything. His nature refused to consider two things at once. He could not think of an act of one day in the light of its consequences on another day, much less another season. I cannot follow his reasoning, if he had any; I can only follow his acts. He could hardly have forgotten his dismissal; perhaps, if he thought at all, he thought the management would have forgotten it.

Officially Temple Camp did not pay him the compliment of being shocked by his bizarre reappearance. But the scouts who had been there the previous summer noticed him and commented on the circumstance of his unexpected presence. He was a conspicuous figure in his fantastic hat, as he wandered aimlessly about, and several tenderfeet who had never seen him before were inspired to follow him and look on while he scaled flat stones into the lake. After a while they began selecting stones for him.

Little Harold Titus, the office boy in Administration Shack who had originally summoned the prodigal to his doom, saw him engaged in this idle pastime and was struck dumb with consternation. Many who had known him the previous summer greeted him cheerily; they either forgot or avoided the incident of his dismissal. Some had never known of it. New boys noticed him as an odd, picturesque figure ambling about the camp grounds with a group of tenderfeet behind him.

One of these admiring youngsters had a large hollow brass sphere as big as a cocoanut, which was somewhat the worse for being knocked about. It had a hole in it which was plugged up by a cork. He was only too glad to proffer this to the enchanting stranger and Hervey amused himself and the others by hurling it into the lake and watching the camp dog bound in after it and push it ashore with his nose. There were limits to his effrontery and he thought it the part of wisdom thus to occupy himself at a distance from the center of things.

Of course he had not registered for assignment to quarters, and even he contemplated not without uneasiness his entrance to the grub pavilion at dinnertime. Temple Camp was a big place and of an open hospitality to visiting strangers who made free upon the grounds. But, of course, Hervey knew that he must face the “keepers” sometime and he was a little chary about the noonday meal. Had the camp authorities forgotten their ultimatum? He was carefree enough to hope so. Dinnertime would furnish the test.

“What’s this thing, anyway?” he asked after the twentieth or so recovery of the bobbing sphere.

“If you were here last week you’d know,” a tenderfoot piped up. “Do you see that big log cabin away up there past the eats pavilion? That’s Administration Shack. (Hervey had good reason to know that) And do you see the flagpole up on top of it? Well, this brass ball got knocked off the top of that by lightning. There’s a kind of an iron bar sticking in the top of that pole--it sticks on there or screws on or something. The pole got struck by lightning and it split the wood and the bar with the ball on it came down kerplunk. Worrie Bannard, he’s in a troop from Ohio, he found it and gave it to me. Do you know what Tom Slade says? Do you know who he is, Tom Slade? He’s assistant manager and he’s better than the head managers--do you know what he says? He says no feller here has got enough adventure to him to climb up and put that ball where it belongs. _Ooooooh_, I’m glad I haven’t got enough adventure for that!”

It was quite like Tom Slade to say that and he had not intended to be taken seriously. But Hervey took it as a dare given by proxy. Well, he would not take a dare from anybody; certainly not from Tom Slade, champion of adventure and moving spirit in the big camp family. Why, that amounted to an official dare! And of course, if he did that thing upon the incentive of Tom Slade’s dare, why he would be welcome to stay at camp. That was the way that he reasoned--if one may say that he reasoned at all. He would do a magnificent stunt and Temple Camp officially would fall at his feet. Tom Slade would be his champion and sponsor. He could go into the eats shack not only registered but lionized. Yes, he was lucky.

“Give me the ball,” he said.

“You’re not going to do it?” the diminutive holder of the ball gasped.

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Hervey, contemptuously.

“It--it kind of fits on,” the astonished youngster informed him, “but----”

“Leave it to me,” said Hervey.

They followed him up the path around the storehouse cabin and past the main pavilion where a row of scouts sat with their feet up on the railing. The very sight of Hervey seemed to inform them that some blithesome, illicit enterprise was under way and a few of them joined the little group.

As for Hervey, being a true artist, he was quite oblivious to his audience. Being an outlaw in camp, he even carried himself with a certain swaggering independence and disdained to glance at the big bulletin-board in front of Administration Shack. He had worried a little about returning home and telling his stepfather what he should have told him the year before. But now he was not worrying. Would not he have Temple Camp eating out of his hand? If he had looked at that bulletin-board (the same which he had formerly disfigured) he might have seen something there to arrest his attention. But his thoughts were on high.

Things were certainly breaking favorably for him.

In less time than it takes to tell it, he was on the porch roof, then on the main roof of Administration Shack. Then he was shinning up the slender flagpole to the gasping consternation of the increasing crowd below. He could not hold the brass ball while climbing, so he laid it in his hat and held his hat in his teeth. The slender pole bent and swayed as up he went. If ever sheer rashness is eligible for reward, I suppose Hervey was a likely candidate. The bantering absurdity of Tom Slade’s remark was only too plainly shown by the swaying pole as that nimble figure, hat in teeth, ascended its tapering length.

Breathlessly the throng watched as the pole bent this way and that as if uncertain in which direction to break and send its victim crashing to the slanting roof, then mangled to the ground below. Breathlessly one or two of the more keen-eyed observers saw those legs tightening around the pole, saw one arm move loose.

He got the brass sphere in one hand and let his hat fall to the ground. It tumbled off the roof and was picked up by a tall, quiet boy who stood somewhat apart from the throng. They saw a hand groping at the very end of the pole, saw the brass ornament in place, saw that nimble figure slide down to the roof, then off its edge into the midst of the spellbound watchers. He _was_ a hero; to them he was anyway.

“Hervey Willetts, you’re wanted in the office,” said a matter-of-fact voice. It was young Winthrop Allbright, the bespectacled young gentleman who was always digging in card indexes and writing in a big flat book in that awful sanctum. He held a fountain pen as if he had been but momentarily interrupted.