Produced by Sean Pobuda
Boy Scouts on Motorcycles
Or
With The Flying Squadron
By G. HARVEY RALPHSON
"Fine country, this—to get out of!"
"What's the difficulty, kid?"
Jimmie McGraw, the first speaker, turned back to the interior of theapartment in which he stood with a look of intense disgust on freckledface.
"Oh, nothin' much," he replied, wrinkling his nose comically, "onlyBroadway an' the Bowery are too far away from this town to ever amountto anythin'. Say, how would you fellers like a chair in front of thegrate in the little old Black Bear Patrol clubroom, in the village of N.Y.? What?"
The three boys lying, half covered with empty burlap bags, on the bareearth at the back of the apartment chuckled softly as Jimmie's facebrightened at the small picture he drew verbally, of the luxurious BoyScout clubroom in the City of New York.
"New York is a barren island as compared with this place," one of theboys, Jack Bosworth by name, declared. "Just think of the odor of theOrient all around us!"
Jimmie wrinkled his nose in disdain and turned back to the window out ofwhich he had been looking. The other boys, Ned Nestor, of the WolfPatrol, and Jack Bosworth and Frank Shaw, of the Black Bear Patrol, allof New York, pulled their coarse covering closer under their chins andgrinned at the impatient Jimmie, who was of the Wolf Patrol, and who wasjust then on guard.
It wasn't much of a window that the boy looked out of, just an irregularhole in a bare wall, innocent alike of sash and glass. Away to the eastrolled the restless waters of the Gulf of Pechili, which is little morethan a round bay swinging west from the mystical Yellow Sea.
To the south ran the swift current of the Peiho river, on the oppositebank of which lay the twin of Taku, Chinese town where Jimmie stoodguard. Tungku, as the twin village is named, looked every bit as forlornand disreputable as Taku, where the boys had waited four days forimportant information which had been promised by the Secret Servicedepartment at Washington.
The gulf of Pechili and the Peiho river glistened under the October sun,which seemed to bring little warmth to the atmosphere. Junks of allsizes and kinds were moving slowly through the waves, and farther outlarger vessels lay at anchor, as if holding surveillance over the mouthof the stream which led to Tientsin, that famous city of the greatChinese nation.
"Look at it! Just look at it!"
Jimmie pointed out of the opening, his hand swinging about to includethe river and the gulf, the slowly moving boats and the picturesquestreets.
"'Tis a heathen land!" the boy went on. "They wear their shirts outsideof their trousers an' do their trucking on their shoulders. Say, Ned,"he added, "why can't we cut it out? I'm sick of it!"
"Cut it out?" laughed Jack Bosworth, "why, kid, we've just got to theland of promise!"
"Most all promise!" replied Jimmie. "We've got nothin' but promisessince we've been here. Where's that Secret Service feller that wasgoin' to set the pace for us?"
"Perhaps he's lost in the jungle," laughed Frank Shaw. "He certainlyought to have been here three days ago. What about it, Gulf of Pechiliand the Peiho river Ned?" he added, turning to a youth who lay at hisside, almost shivering in spite of his shaggy burlap covering.<