Jack Harvey's Adventures; or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates
by Ruel Perley Smith · English · Gutenberg #40396 · 453,331 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Jack Harvey's Adventures; or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates
Author: Ruel Perley Smith
Illustrator: Louis D. Gowing
Release date: August 2, 2012 [eBook #40396]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK HARVEY'S ADVENTURES; OR, THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE OYSTER PIRATES ***
Jack Harvey’s
Adventures
Or, The Rival Campers
Among the Oyster Pirates
By
Ruel Perley Smith
Author of “The Rival Campers Series,” “Prisoners
of Fortune,” etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY
Louis D. Gowing
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1908
RIVAL CAMPERS SERIES
BY
RUEL PERLEY SMITH
Each 1 vol., large 12mo, illustrated, $1.50
The Rival Campers
The Rival Campers Afloat
The Rival Campers Ashore
Jack Harvey’s Adventures
Or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
New England Building, Boston, Mass.
Copyright, 1908
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
All rights reserved
First Impression, September, 1908
Electrotyped and Printed at
THE COLONIAL PRESS:
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
TO
Lucy E. Cyr
With the Author’s Love
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Harvey Makes an Acquaintance 1
II. The Cabin of the Schooner 12
III. Down the Bay 25
IV. Aboard the Bug-eye 40
V. The Law of the Bay 52
VI. The Working of the Law 62
VII. Dredging Fleet Tactics 75
VIII. A Night’s Poaching 85
IX. Faces through the Telescope 102
X. Flight and Disaster 117
XI. Harvey Sends a Message to Shore 132
XII. Escape at Last 149
XIII. Henry Burns Makes a Discovery 163
XIV. Harvey Meets with a Loss 181
XV. Henry Burns in Trouble 199
XVI. Artie Jenkins Comes Aboard 212
XVII. Artie Jenkins at the Dredges 223
XVIII. The Battle of Nanticoke River 241
XIX. Surprises for Jack Harvey 256
XX. The Pursuit of the Brandt 271
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“Dealt Harvey a blow in the face that knocked him off his feet”
(Frontispiece) 115
“Up from the forecastle there burst three men” 28
“Presented a pretty sight as viewed from the deck of the river
steamer” 113
“‘Stand back there, or I’ll shoot,’ he cried” 196
“‘Get up there; you’re quitting!’ cried Haley” 237
“The speaker was a middle-aged, well-built man” 257
JACK HARVEY’S
ADVENTURES
OR
THE RIVAL CAMPERS AMONG THE
OYSTER PIRATES
CHAPTER I
HARVEY MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE
An Atlantic Transport Line steamship lay at its pier in the city of
Baltimore, on a November day. There were indications, everywhere about,
that the hour of its departure for Europe was approaching. A hum of
excitement filled the air. Clouds of dark smoke, ascending skyward from
the steamer, threw a thin canopy here and there over little groups of
persons gathered upon the pier to bid farewell to friends. Clerks and
belated messengers darted to and fro among them. An occasional officer,
in ship’s uniform, gave greeting to some acquaintance and spoke hopefully
of the voyage.
Among all these, a big, tall, broad-shouldered man, whose face, florid
and smiling, gave evidence of abundant good spirits, stood, with one hand
resting upon a boy’s shoulder. A woman accompanied them, who now and then
raised a handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away a tear.
“There!” exclaimed the man, suddenly, “do you see that, Jack? You’d
better come along with us. It isn’t too late. Ma doesn’t want to leave
you behind. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s to see a woman cry.”
The boy, in return, gave a somewhat contemptuous glance toward the
steamship.
“I don’t want to go,” he said. “What’s the fun going to sea in a thing
like that? Have to dress up and look nice all the time. If it was only a
ship—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence.
“Jack Harvey!” exclaimed his mother, eying him with great disapproval
through her tears, “why did you wear that awful sweater down here, to see
us off? If you only knew how you look! I’m ashamed to have folks see
you.”
Harvey’s father burst into a hearty roar of laughter.
“Isn’t that just like a woman?” he chuckled. “Crying about leaving Jack,
with one eye, and looking at his clothes with the other. Why, Martha, I
tell you he looks fine. None of your milk-sop lads for me!” And he gave
his son a slap of approval that made even that stalwart youth wince.
“Why, when I was Jack’s age,” continued the elder Harvey, warming to the
subject and raising his voice accordingly, “I didn’t know where the next
suit of clothes was coming from.”
Mrs. Harvey glanced apprehensively over her shoulder, to see who was
listening.
“Guess I wasn’t much older than Jack,” went on the speaker, thrusting his
hands into his pockets and jingling the coins therein, “when I was
working in the mines out west and wherever I could pick up a job.”
“Now, William,” interrupted Mrs. Harvey, “you know you’ve told us all
about that a hundred times—”
She, herself, was interrupted.
“You’ve got just a minute to go aboard, sir,” said one of the pier
employees, addressing Mr. Harvey. “You’ll be left, if you don’t hurry.”
Jack Harvey’s father gave him a vigorous handshake, and another slap
across the shoulder. Mrs. Harvey took him in her arms, despised sweater
and all, and kissed him good-bye. The next moment, the boy found himself
alone on the pier, waving to his parents, as the gang-plank was hauled
back.
The liner slowly glided out into the harbour, a cloud of handkerchiefs
fluttering along its rail, in answer to a similar demonstration upon the
pier.
Jack Harvey’s father, gazing back approvingly at his son, strove to
comfort and cheer the spirits of his wife.
“Jack’s all right,” said he. “Hang me, if I wasn’t just such another when
I was his age. I didn’t want anybody mollycoddling me. He’ll take care of
himself, all right. Don’t you worry. He’ll be an inch taller in six
months. He knows what he wants, too, better than we do. He’ll have more
fun up in Benton this winter than he’d have travelling around Europe.
There he goes. Take a last look at him, Martha. Confound the scamp! I
kind of wish he’d taken a notion to come along with us.”
If Jack Harvey had any such misgiving as to his decision to spend the
winter in Maine, with his boon companions, Henry Burns and the Warren
boys, and Tom Harris and Bob White and little Tim Reardon and all the
others, in preference to touring Europe with his father and mother, he
showed no sign of it. He whistled a tune as the liner went down the
harbour, watched the smoke pour in black clouds from its funnel, then
turned and walked away from the pier.
A glance at the sturdy figure, as he went along, would have satisfied
anyone of the truth of the assertion of Harvey’s father, that he was able
to take care of himself. The black sweater, albeit it rested under the
disapproval and scorn of Mrs. Harvey, covered a broad, deep chest that
indicated vigorous health; his thick winter jacket hung upon shoulders
that were rounded and muscular. He swung along with the ease and carriage
that told of athletic training. And the advantage of the sweater to one
of his active temperament was apparent, in that, although the air had a
somewhat icy tinge, he was unencumbered by any overcoat—an economy of
dress that afforded him freedom.
Freedom! His was, indeed, freedom now in all things. It came over him
strongly, as he walked alone in the city in which he was a total
stranger, how free he was to act as he pleased. His parents, who
exercised little restraint over him at the most, were now being borne
swiftly down the bay toward the ocean, and he should not see them again
for six long months. He, himself, was due to arrive back in Benton as
fast as trains would carry him; but the thought of his absolute freedom
for the time being exhilarated him strangely. He felt like challenging
the first youth he met to box, or wrestle, or race—anything in which he
could exert his utmost strength and let loose his pent-up energies.
Harvey’s train was due to leave that evening. He spent the afternoon
vigorously, walking miles through streets, exploring here and there,
seeing the sights all new to him. He was growing just a bit weary, and
very hungry, and was thinking of returning to the hotel for supper, when
he emerged from a side street upon a street that ran along the water
front.
A sight that made his pulses beat faster met his eyes. Almost at his
feet, a little more than the width of the street away, lay a fleet of
some thirty or forty fishermen, snuggled all in together, close to a
large float that intervened between them and the wharf. Himself a good
sailor of bay craft, and fond of the water, the picturesqueness of these
boats attracted Harvey greatly.
They were of an odd type, for the most part, unlike anything he had ever
seen in Maine waters, or anywhere else. They were long, shallow, light
draft fellows, with no bulwarks; so that as they lay, broadside to the
float, one might walk across from one to another, without difficulty.
Most of them were sharp at bow and stern. The masts had a most
extraordinary rake to them; and in the two-masters, the rig was more like
that of a yawl than the schooners he was accustomed to seeing. In the
case of these, the after mast, or what would correspond to the ordinary
main-mast, was the smaller and shorter of the two; and it raked aft at an
angle that suggested to the eye of a stranger that it was about to give
way and go overboard by the stern.
Jack Harvey had heard in the vaguest way of the Chesapeake Bay oystermen;
and he surmised at once that this was a part of that fleet. There was
little about them at the moment, however, to indicate occupation of any
sort. Their decks, which were built flush fore and aft, broken only by
the hatches, were swept clean, and their equipment for fishing, or
dredging, had been carefully packed away. And, as matter of fact, the
vessels Harvey now saw were probably for the most part the carriers for
the fishing fleet, that brought the oysters to market; and so carried no
dredging outfits.
Moreover, there was a pleasing suggestion of indolence and coziness in
the smoke that curled out of many funnels from the cook stoves in the
cabins, telling of preparations for supper. A few men were idling about,
talking together, on this and that boat, in groups. There seemed to be no
one working. Not such a bad sort of existence, thought Harvey.
The fishing boats made, indeed, a most attractive picture. Their lines,
though not as fine as yachts, were sweeping and graceful; their rigging,
simple and of few ropes, formed a network of sharp angles as they lay, a
score deep, by the float; their sloping masts, small and tapering,
inclined now all in one direction, like bare trees bending in a breeze.
The light that yet remained in the west brought them out in sharp relief
against water and sky.
As Harvey stood, watching them, interestedly, a slight accident happened.
A screw steamer, docked just at the head of the float, began to revolve
its propeller rapidly, preparatory to moving in its berth. The swift
current of water excited by the propeller bore down strongly against the
bow of one of the fishermen; and, at that most inopportune moment, the
bow line by which the latter was moored, frayed with much wear, parted.
The bow swung with the current, and the vessel threatened to crash into
another lying just below.
The veriest novice might almost have known what was needed; but Harvey
was no novice, and certainly did know. He was, moreover, prompt to act. A
coil of rope lay at hand upon the float. Snatching up one loose end of
this, Harvey quickly gathered a few loops in either hand, swung them and
threw the end aboard the vessel to a man that had run forward. Then he
took a few turns with the other end about a spiling, and held hard. The
vessel brought up, without harm.
“Good for you!” said a voice just behind Harvey. “You saved ’em just in
time.”
Harvey turned quickly.
The speaker was a thin, sallow youth, some years older, apparently, than
Harvey. His appearance, at first glance, was not wholly prepossessing.
His dress, which had a pretence of smartness, was faded and somewhat
shabby, but was set off with a gaudy waistcoat and a heavy gold chain
adorning its front. His collar was wilted and far from immaculate; but
its short-comings found possible compensation in a truly brilliant
necktie, tied sailor-fashion, with flying ends. A much worn derby hat was
tilted sidewise on the back of his head.
This youth, who was perhaps eighteen or nineteen years of age, had a
smart and presuming manner. He laid a hand familiarly on Harvey’s
shoulder, and addressed him as though he had known him a life-time.
“You’re all right,” he continued. “You took a hitch there like an old
hand. Come on, we’ll step aboard and look ’em over.”
Almost before he knew it, Harvey was being conducted across the float to
the deck of the first fisherman. He went willingly enough, for that
matter, for it was exactly what he had been wishing—that he might inspect
them closer. Yet he knew, without any definite reason forming itself in
his mind, that his chance acquaintance was not congenial to him.
“Will they let us go aboard?” he asked.
“Why, of course,” replied the stranger. “They don’t care. I know a few of
them, anyway. I’ll show you around.”
From the first boat, they stepped across to the deck of another,
alongside.
“Stranger about here?” inquired the youth of Harvey, casually, giving him
a quick, sharp, sidelong glance, as he spoke.
“Yes,” replied Harvey; “I am here only for the day. My father and mother
just went off on that liner for Europe.”
“Is that so!” responded the other. At the same moment he fell behind
Harvey and gave him another sharp, scrutinizing glance from head to foot.
Then he added, “So that leaves you all alone, to do as you please, eh?”
Harvey assented. It was his turn to question now.
“You live about here?” he asked; and looked his companion in the face. It
was an uncertain glance that met his. The small, dark eyes of the
stranger gave him no direct, answering glance, but shifted evasively.
“Oh, yes,” he responded; “lived here all my life. We’re one of the old
families here, but—” and he gave a slighting look at his well worn
clothing—“but we’ve had financial embarrassments lately. The fact is,
I’ve had to drop out of college for a year—”
The youth was interrupted for a moment at this point. He and Harvey,
walking forward on the vessel, had come upon two men who were sitting on
the deck by the forecastle. One of them, looking up, burst into a laugh.
Harvey turned, quickly.
Whatever it was that had amused the man was not apparent. As Harvey
turned and looked at him, he stopped abruptly and pointed off across the
water. Harvey, led by his companion, started aft again.
As the two reversed their steps, the man who had laughed pointed slyly at
Harvey’s escort.
“He’s a slick one, is Artie,” he said. “Catches more of ’em, they say,
than any runner along the front.”
“Got him, do you think?” inquired the other man, nodding toward Harvey.
“Looks promising.”
“My name is Jenkins,” continued Harvey’s companion; “and, as I was
saying, I’m out of college for a year, earning the money to keep on.
Don’t know as that interests you any—but never mind. What did you say?
Queer rig, these boats have?”
“Why, yes, it strikes me so,” replied Harvey. “It looks odd to me to see
big vessels like these with no gaffs and these leg-o’-mutton sails.”
Again the youth gave Harvey one of those quick, shrewd glances, that
seemed to take in everything about him from cap to shoes.
“Guess you know something about boats,” he remarked.
“Well, I own a sloop up in Samoset Bay, in Maine—that is, another fellow
and I own it together,” replied Harvey, with a touch of pride.
“I knew you were a sailor, the minute I saw you heave that line,”
exclaimed the other. And Harvey felt just a bit flattered. Perhaps
Jenkins wasn’t such a bad sort, despite his odd attire.
“Do you see that schooner?” inquired young Mr. Jenkins, suddenly,
pointing to a craft with a distinctive schooner rig, the outermost of the
vessels that comprised the fleet.
Harvey nodded.
“Well,” continued Jenkins, “that’s Captain Scroop’s boat. She’s the best
one of them all, and he’s the most obliging and gentlemanly captain that
sails into Baltimore. Come on, we’ll go over her.”
They walked across the decks to the side of the schooner, and climbed
aboard, over the rail. The schooner seemed deserted, save the presence of
a boy of about twelve, who was engaged in chopping a block of stove-wood
into kindlings, near the afterhouse.
“Hello, Joe,” said Jenkins.
The boy looked up and nodded, sullenly. He seemed, moreover, to eye Mr.
Jenkins with some disfavour.
“Captain Scroop aboard?”
The boy shook his head.
“Well, we’re going to look about a bit,” said Mr. Jenkins, easily.
He conducted Harvey about the deck, forward and aft, explaining one thing
and another; then showed the way to the companion that led to the cabin.
“Step down,” he said to Harvey. “Nice quarters they have aboard here.”
Then, as Harvey descended, he added, “Make yourself comfortable a moment.
I’ll be right along.”
Seeing Harvey at the foot of the companion-ladder, he turned quickly,
stepped to the side of the boy and cuffed him smartly over one ear.
“Here, you,” he said, “brace up and say something! There’s a dollar in it
for you if we land him. Come to life, now!”
Then he darted after Harvey, down into the cabin.
CHAPTER II
THE CABIN OF THE SCHOONER
Jack Harvey stood at the foot of the companionway, for a moment, looking
into the cabin, before he entered. There was a lamp burning dimly,
fastened into a socket in a support that extended from the centre-board
box to the ceiling. Its light sufficed for Harvey to see but vaguely at
first, owing to a cloud of tobacco smoke that filled the stuffy cabin. It
was warm there, however, for the cook-stove in the galley threw its
comforting heat beyond the limits of that small place; and the warmth was
decidedly agreeable to one coming in from the evening air.
Harvey entered and stood, waiting for his new acquaintance to join him.
He could see objects soon more plainly. He perceived that the person who
was emitting the volumes of smoke was a short, thick-set man, who was
occupying one of the two wooden chairs that the cabin afforded. He was
huddled all up in a heap, with his head submerged below the collar of his
thick overcoat, out of which rim the smoke ascended, as though from the
crater of a tiny volcano.
He seemed to have fallen almost into sleep there; and it appeared to
Harvey that he must be very uncomfortable, bundled in his great coat,
with the cabin hot and smoky. Yet he was awake sufficiently to draw at
the stem of his pipe, and to glance up at Harvey as he entered. He even
made a jerky motion over one shoulder, with his thumb, indicating a bunk
that extended along the side of the cabin, and mumbled something that
sounded like, “Have a seat.”
Harvey, however, turned toward the companion-way, as young Mr. Jenkins
entered and rejoined him.
“Now this is what I call comfortable for a vessel,” said Mr. Jenkins,
briskly; “not much like some of those old bug-eyes, where they stuff you
into a hole and call it a cabin. We’ll have a bit more air in here, and
then we’ll sit down and have a bite with Joe. He wants us to. You’re in
no great hurry, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” responded Harvey, congratulating himself that here was a
chance at last to see life aboard a real fisherman at close quarters.
Mr. Jenkins opened one of the ports on either side, which cleared the
cabin in a measure of the dense cloud of smoke, and made it more
agreeable. Then, stooping, he lifted the leaf of a folding table, that
was hinged to the side of the centre-board box, turned the bracket that
supported it into place, and motioned to Harvey to draw up a chair. He
seated himself on a wooden box, close by.
“Joe’s got some steamed oysters ready, and a pot of coffee and some corn
bread,” he said, cheerfully. “You don’t mind taking pot luck for once, do
you, just to see how they live aboard? Here he is now. Come on, Joe,
we’re hungry. Joe, this is Mr.—let’s see, did I get your name?”
Harvey informed him, wondering at the easy familiarity of his new
acquaintance aboard the vessel, but somewhat amused over it, and his
curiosity aroused. The boy nodded to Harvey. Stepping into the galley, he
returned directly, bringing two bowls filled with steamed oysters, which
he set before Harvey and Mr. Jenkins. The corn bread and coffee arrived
duly, and young Mr. Jenkins urged Harvey to fall to and eat heartily.
Harvey needed no urging. His long walk about the city had made him
ravenously hungry. Moreover, although the coffee was not much like what
he had been accustomed to, the oysters and corn bread were certainly
delicious. Harvey and Mr. Jenkins ate by themselves, waited on by the
youth, who declared he would eat later, with “him,” pointing to the
drowsy smoker, who had not stirred from his original position, and with
Captain Scroop, if the latter should return to supper.
It was in the course of the meal that Harvey, to his surprise, discovered
that there was still another occupant of the cabin, of whose presence he
had not before been aware. In the forward, farther corner of the cabin,
what had appeared to be a tumbled heap of blankets, on one of the bunks,
suddenly gave forth a resounding snore; and the heap of blankets stirred
slightly.
“Hello,” exclaimed Harvey; “what’s that?”
Mr. Jenkins glanced sharply at the sleeper, sprang up and made a closer
inspection, and then, apparently satisfied with what he saw, resumed his
seat.
“It’s one of the mates,” he said. “He’s had a hard cold for a week; taken
something to sleep it off with, I guess.”
Harvey went on eating. He might not have had so keen a relish for his
food, however, had he known that the sleeper was not only not a mate, but
that, indeed, he had never been aboard a vessel before in all his life;
that he hadn’t known when nor how he did come aboard; that he was utterly
oblivious to where he now was; and that he had been seized of an
overpowering drowsiness shortly after taking a single glass of grog with
the same young gentleman who now sat with Jack Harvey in the schooner’s
cabin. That had taken place at a small saloon just across from the float.
Perhaps the suggestion was a timely one for Mr. Jenkins; perhaps he did
not need it. At all events, he said guardedly, “Scroop sometimes opens
that bottle for visitors; do you want to warm up a bit against the night
air?”
He pointed, as he spoke, to a half opened locker, in which some glassware
of a certain kind was visible.
“No, thanks,” replied Harvey, “never.”
“Nor I, either,” rejoined Mr. Jenkins, emphatically. “A man’s a fool that
does, in my opinion. But it’s hospitality along here to offer it, so no
offence.”
One might, however, have noted a look of disappointment in his
countenance; and he seemed to be thinking, hard.
“Joe’s a good sort,” he remarked, presently. “I don’t know why I should
tell you, but it’s odd how I come to know him. The fact is, when my folks
had money—plenty of it, too—Joe lived in a little house that belonged to
our estate, and I used to run away and play with him. What’s more, now
I’m grown up, I’m going to run away with him again, eh, Joe?”
The boy nodded.
Harvey looked at Mr. Jenkins, inquiringly. The latter leaned nearer to
Harvey and assumed a more confidential air.
“Why, the fact is,” he said in a low tone, “you might not think it,
perhaps, but I’m a college man—Johns Hopkins—you’ve heard of that, eh?”
Harvey recalled the name, though the mere fact that such an institution
existed was the extent of his information regarding it, and he nodded.
“Well,” continued Mr. Jenkins, “I’m working my way through, and my folks
are so proud they don’t want it known. So I’m going a trip or two with
Joe and Captain Scroop, just as soon as they have a berth for me, because
it’s out of the way, where no one will know me, it’s easy work, and the
pay is high. Isn’t that so, Joe?”
One might have caught the suggestion of a fleeting desire to grin, on the
features of the boy addressed; but he lowered his gaze and nodded.
“Why, how many more men do you have begging for chances to ship, every
voyage, than you have need of?” inquired young Mr. Jenkins, looking
sharply at the boy.
“Dunno,” answered Joe, doggedly. “Mebbe five or six; mebbe more.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Mr. Jenkins, “And the wages are twenty-five
dollars a month, and all the good food a fellow can eat, eh?”
“More’n he can eat, mostly,” responded the boy. “They gets too much to
eat.”
“And when are you going to find that place for me to go a voyage—and
berth aft here with you and the captain and mate, like a gentleman, and
get my twenty-five a month at easy work?”
“We’ve got it now,” said Joe.
Young Mr. Jenkins sprang from his chair, with an exclamation of delight.
He stepped up to the boy and seized him by an arm.
“Say!” he cried; “you’re in earnest now—none of your tricks—do you mean
it, really?”
The boy nodded.
“We’ve got two chances,” he said.
Young Mr. Jenkins gave a whistle of amazement.
“Two chances open on the same voyage!” he exclaimed. “I never knew of
that before, and just before sailing. How do you account for it—somebody
taken sick?”
“That’s it,” said the boy.
Young Mr. Jenkins walked slowly back to his seat, looked sharply at
Harvey from the comers of his eyes, and spoke earnestly.
“Say, Mr. Harvey,” he said, “I’m not sure, but I believe I could get that
chance for you. You played in great luck when I saw you throw that
heaving line to the vessel there, this afternoon. I’ll swear to Captain
Scroop that you’re all right, and I know you could make good. Do you know
I’ve taken a sort of liking to you; and I tell you what, you and I’ll
ship for one month and I’ll see you through. Why, they’re all like
brothers here, the captain and his men. We’ll have a gorgeous time, see
how the fishing is done, come back in a month and have twenty-five
dollars apiece to show for it. And then you’ll have had a real sea
experience—something to talk about when you get home. It’s the chance of
a life-time.”
Taken all by surprise by the offer, and withal against his better
judgment, Jack Harvey found a strange allurement in the suggestion. At no
time in all his life could it have been held forth so opportunely. He
thought of his father and mother, on the ocean, to be gone for six
months. He knew, too, what his father would say, when he should tell him
of it later; how the bluff, careless, elder Harvey would throw back his
head, and laugh, and vow he was the same sort when he was a youth.
How strangely, too, events that had taken place in Benton coincided
favourably with his already half-formed intention to take the chance. He
recalled, in a flash, the hour of leaving there, with his father and
mother, for Baltimore; how Henry Burns’s aunt, with whom he had been
boarding, had asked when he would return; how Harvey’s mother had
answered that she hoped yet to persuade the boy to accompany them to
Europe; and how Miss Matilda Burns had said, then, she should expect him
when he arrived—no sooner—and had remarked, smiling, that if he didn’t
come back at all she should know he had gone to Europe.
“It’s only for a month, you know,” suggested young Mr. Jenkins, almost as
though he had been reading Harvey’s thoughts.
Harvey sat for a moment, thinking hard.
“Isn’t it pretty cold down there in the bay this time of year?” he asked.
“Why, bless you, no,” replied Mr. Jenkins, laughing at the suggestion.
“Don’t you know you’re in the South, now, my boy? This is the coldest
day, right now, that we’ll have till January. And if we have a touch of
winter—which isn’t likely—why, there’s a good, comfortable cabin to warm
up in.”
“Are we sure to get back in a month?”
“Joe, when are you due back here?” called Mr. Jenkins.
“Middle of December,” came the reply.
“I’m most inclined to try it,” said Harvey, hesitatingly.
Mr. Jenkins slapped him on the back, then shook his hand warmly.
“You’re the right sort,” he said. “We’ll have a lark.”
And Harvey knew from that moment that, for better or worse, be it a
foolish venture or not, he was in for it.
“What do I need to get for the trip?” he asked. “Guess I’d better step up
into the town and buy some boots and oil-skins.”
A look of determination came into the face of Mr. Jenkins. It was as if
he had made up his mind that Harvey should have no opportunity now of
backing out.
“No, you don’t need to,” he said. “The captain’s got all that stuff, and
he buys at wholesale, and you can get it cheaper of him. Wait till
to-morrow, anyway, and if he can’t fit you, we’ll go ashore.”
Harvey gave a start of surprise. He hadn’t counted on spending this night
aboard the schooner.
“Do you mean to stay here to-night?” he asked.
“Why, sure,” responded young Mr. Jenkins. “Good chance to try it on and
see how you like it. We’ll just roll up here, and you’ll swear you were
never more comfortable in all your life.”
“Well,” answered Harvey, “I’ll try it. You’re sure the captain will ship
us, though?”
“Oh, you can take what that boy Joe says for gospel,” answered young Mr.
Jenkins. “He knows.”
“Then I’ll step out on deck and bring down that little hand-bag of mine,”
said Harvey. “I left it forward by the rail when I came aboard. It’s got
a comb and brush and a tooth-brush and a change of underwear in it.”
Harvey ascended the ladder and walked out on deck. It was a glorious
night, the sky studded with thousands of stars. The air was chilly, but
Harvey was warmly dressed, and the crisp air was invigorating after his
stay in the cabin. He went forward, wondering, in his somewhat confused
state of mind, what his chums in Benton would think of it if they could
know where he was, and what he contemplated doing.
“I only wish Henry Burns was going along,” he thought. “Well, I’ll have
something to tell him next time I see him.”
He little thought under what strange circumstances they would next meet.
Hardly had Harvey left the cabin, when young Mr. Jenkins sprang into the
galley, leering at the boy Joe, and digging that stolid youngster
facetiously in the ribs.
“Oh, that’s rich!” he chuckled. “What do you say, Joey—a pretty
hair-brush and comb and a tooth-brush aboard an oyster dredger? You’ll
have to tell old Haley to get a mirror—a French-plate, gold-leaf
mirror—for Mr. Harvey. Oh, he’d do it, all right. He’ll—ah, ha, ha—oh
jimminy Christmas! Isn’t that rich?”
The boy, Joe, turned toward Mr. Jenkins, somewhat angrily.
“You think you’re smart,” he muttered. “You’ll get come up with, one of
these days. What did you get him for? He ain’t the right sort. He’s got
folks as will make trouble. I’ll bet the old man won’t stand for him.”
“Look here, you,” exclaimed Mr. Jenkins, seizing the boy, roughly, “you
shut up! Who asked you to tell me what to do? Don’t I know my business?
Don’t I know old Scroop, too, as much as you do? Of course he’ll stand
for him—when I tell him a few things. You leave that to me, and don’t you
go interfering, or I’ll hand you something you’ll feel for a week.”
The boy shrank back, and relapsed into stolid silence.
“Where’s that pen and ink?” inquired Jenkins.
The boy pointed to a locker.
Taking a faded wallet from his pocket, Mr. Jenkins produced therefrom a
paper which he unfolded and spread upon the table. It seemed to be a
form, of some sort or other, partly type-written. He got the rusty pen
and a small bottle of ink, laid them beside it, and waited for Harvey’s
return. Harvey soon reappeared.
“We’ll just sign this agreement,” remarked Mr. Jenkins carelessly.
“Scroop had some aboard here. They don’t mean much, with a good captain
like him, for he does better than he’s bound to, anyway. I’ll just run it
over, so you can get an idea of it.”
Talking glibly, Mr. Jenkins ran his finger along the lines, whereby
Harvey, by the dim light, got a somewhat hazy idea of them: to the effect
that he, Jack Harvey, twenty-one years of age, was bound to serve for one
month aboard the fisherman, Z. B. Brandt, whereof the master was Hamilton
Haley, on a dredging trip in Chesapeake bay and its tributaries.
Together, with divers conditions and provisions which Mr. Jenkins
dismissed briefly, as of no account.
“But I’m not twenty-one years old,” said Harvey. “That’s wrong.”
“Oh, that don’t amount to anything,” responded Mr. Jenkins. “I knew you
weren’t quite that, but it’s near enough. It’s all right. No one ever
looks at it. We’ll sign, and it’s all over. Then we’ll turn in, and see
the captain in the morning. He’s going to be late, by the looks.”
“But I thought you said the captain’s name was Scroop,” suggested Harvey,
puzzled.
“So it is,” replied Mr. Jenkins. “This is an old contract, but it’s just
as good. Haley used to be captain, and they use the old forms. It don’t
matter what the captain’s name is, so long as he’s all right, and he’s
got a good boat.”
Harvey, following the example of his companion, put his name to the
paper.
It might have been different had he had opportunity to take note, on
coming aboard, that the schooner, in the cabin of which he now sat, bore
no such name on bow and stern as the “Z. B. Brandt.” It might have been
different had he seen, in his mind’s eye, the real Z. B. Brandt, pitching
and tossing in the waters of Chesapeake Bay, seventy odd miles below
where the schooner lay in her snug berth. But he knew naught of that, nor
that the schooner in which he was about to take up his quarters for the
night was no more like the Z. B. Brandt than a Pullman is like a
cattle-car.
It was with his mind filled with a picture of the voyage soon over and
done, and a proud return to Henry Burns and his cronies, that Harvey
turned in shortly, on one of the bunks, wrapped himself snugly in a good
warm blanket, and went off to sleep. The creaking of rigging, as some
craft moved with the current, the noise of some new arrival coming in
late to join the fleet at moorings, the tramp of an occasional sailor on
the deck of a neighbouring craft, and the swinging of the schooner, did
not disturb his sound slumbers. Wearied with the doings of a busy day, he
did not move, once his eyes had closed in sleep.
Some time after eleven o’clock, Mr. Jenkins arose softly and stepped
cautiously over to where Harvey lay. There was no mistaking the soundness
of Harvey’s slumbers. Mr. Jenkins slipped out of the cabin, upon deck. A
row-boat soon attracted his attention, coming toward the schooner from
somewhere below. There were three figures in it. As the boat came
alongside, Mr. Jenkins stepped to the rail and spoke to the man in the
stern.
“Hello, Scroop,” he said. “I’ve got another for you. He wouldn’t drink,
but he’s a sound sleeper.”
The captain nodded. With the assistance of his companion in the boat,
whom Mr. Jenkins called mate, and of Mr. Jenkins, himself, another man
was lifted from the small craft to the deck of the schooner. He seemed
half asleep, and walked between them like one that had been drugged. They
did not take him aft, but assisted him down into the forecastle, and
returned presently, without him.
“All right, captain?” queried Mr. Jenkins.
“Yes, cast us off.”
Mr. Jenkins sprang over the rail, to the deck of the craft alongside. He
cast off the lines, forward and aft, that had moored the schooner to the
other vessel. The captain and mate ran up one of the jibs. Mr. Jenkins
pushed vigorously, and the bow of the schooner slowly swung clear. The
current aided. The light night breeze caught the jib. The schooner
drifted away, with Captain Scroop at the wheel.
Mr. Jenkins, standing on the deck of the vessel to which the schooner had
been moored, watched the latter glide away. After a little time the
foresail was run up. The schooner was leaving the harbour of Baltimore.
Mr. Jenkins did a little shuffle, thrust his hands into his pockets, and
walked briskly across the decks to shore.
“That’s ten dollars easy money for me and Scroop,” he muttered. Then he
stopped once and chuckled. “A comb and brush and a tooth-brush aboard old
Haley’s bug-eye!” he said. “Oh, my! That’s a good one.”
CHAPTER III
DOWN THE BAY
Jack Harvey’s father, awakening next morning in his comfortable
state-room aboard the liner, would have been not a little astounded had
he known how strangely the facts belied his remark to Mrs. Harvey that
Jack must, by this time, be well on his way north. By no possible stretch
of fancy could the vision of their son, lying asleep in the crazy cabin
of the old schooner, appear to the minds of Harvey’s parents. In blissful
ignorance of his strange adventure, they sailed away. Miles and miles
behind, the schooner followed in the liner’s wake.
Jack Harvey was a good sleeper. The sun came up out of the bay and shed
its light far and wide upon hundreds of craft, borne lightly by the wind
and tide. It penetrated, even, the cabin of the dingy schooner, and it
lighted the way for the youthful sleeper to come back from dreams to
consciousness.
For some moments, as Harvey lay with half opened eyes, he wondered where
he was. Then it all came back to him in a flash: the Baltimore
water-front; the picturesque fishermen; the strange young man—and then,
the remembrance that he had signed for a month aboard the schooner. For
an instant he almost regretted that act, and the thought brought him up
quickly on one elbow, to look about him.
One resolve he made at the moment. He would not back out now. He might
find that impossible, anyway, since he had signed the paper. But he would
send a line to Miss Matilda Burns, letting her know what he was doing. It
was no more than fair to her.
The next moment, Jack Harvey leaped to his feet. He was fully awake now.
Dressed, as he was,—for he had removed only his shoes and coat,—he sprang
to one of the ports. He had sailed too much not to know that the vessel
was under weigh, although, on a perfectly smooth sea and with no swell,
there was but slight perceptible motion to the schooner.
One glance told him the truth. He waited no longer, but ran up the
companion-way on deck. Amazed, he looked about him. Far astern, some
fifteen miles, the outlines of the city showed. The nearest shore was a
mile away. The schooner, foresail and main-sail set, and winged out, was
slowly gliding before the wind down the bay.
Jack Harvey gave a whistle of astonishment. Then a feeling of resentment
toward young Mr. Jenkins arose in his breast.
“That’s a cool trick!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t he tell me we were going
to sail so soon? He said we’d have time to get a few things in the shops
before we sailed. I’ll tell him what I think of it.”
Without waiting to speak to anyone on deck, or scarce take notice of who
was there, Harvey darted down the companion-way and hastened to the bunk
where he had seen Mr. Jenkins turn in, the night before.
It was empty.
Strangely puzzled, Harvey made his way out on deck. A tall, keen-eyed
man, smooth-shaven save for a light blond moustache, sat astride the
wheel box, steering. Harvey turned to him, somewhat excitedly.
“Where’s that fellow Jenkins?” he asked.
Coolly surveying Harvey, with a pair of steady, blue eyes, the man
replied, “You call me ‘Mr. Blake,’ young feller; I’m mate.”
Harvey’s face flushed, angrily. A feeling that he had been somehow
tricked came over him. Ignoring the man’s order, he stepped nearer to
him.
“I want to see that chap, Jenkins,” he repeated. “He didn’t tell me we
were going to sail this way in the night. Where is he?”
The lines about the mouth of Mr. Blake, mate, tightened as he looked the
boy over from head to foot. Later experience enlightened Harvey as to
what would have happened to him had they been well down the bay. But, as
it was, the man merely uttered something softly under his breath. “I’ll
leave you for Haley to deal with,” was what he said. And he added, in a
mollifying tone, addressing Harvey:
“Why, it’s too bad about that young feller, Jenkins. You see he got left.
He slipped up town for some stuff, early this morning—about three
o’clock, I guess, and didn’t show up when the tide served for starting.
Scroop wouldn’t wait, and you can’t blame him. But he left word for
Jenkins to come down on that boat that lay alongside us. She starts
to-morrow. We’ll pick him up down the bay. It’ll be all right. You’re the
young feller that Joe told about, eh—going a trip with us?”
The man’s manner, changing thus suddenly from sharp to kindly, was
surprising—and a bit comforting, too. Without a companion, even though
Jenkins were a chance acquaintance, the venture seemed to have taken on a
somewhat different and less pleasing aspect to Harvey.
“Yes,” he said, in answer to the mate’s query, “I’m going one trip, just
for a month.”
“I see,” said the mate, quietly. “Well, you’ll like it. You’re the right
sort. I can tell that. Ever shipped before?”
Harvey shook his head, as he explained that he had done some bay sailing.
He was about to explain further under what circumstances, but something
made him pause. Under the same sudden impulse—he knew not the reason for
it, but obeyed it—he became reticent when Mr. Blake, mate, plied him with
questions concerning himself and where he was from.
“I’m just knocking around a bit,” he replied, and kept his own counsel. A
fortunate thing for him, perhaps, in the light of subsequent events.
The conversation was abruptly broken off. Up from the forecastle there
burst three men, clinching in a confused, rough-and-tumble fashion, and
struggling together. Had Jack Harvey been on deck the night before, and
observed the man who had been carried, sleeping, from the cabin to the
forecastle, he might perhaps recognize him now as one of these three.
Somewhat recovered from his condition of stupefaction was he; sufficient
to gaze about him wildly, wrestle with the two men who attacked him,
strike at them furiously, and cry out several times that he was up to
their tricks, that he couldn’t be trapped like a dog and shanghaied down
the bay—and let them come on, if they dared.
That they did dare was quite apparent; for they rushed him almost off his
feet the next moment. And then, to Harvey’s surprise, he found himself
suddenly at service aboard the schooner.
Leaping to his feet, the mate exclaimed, hastily, “Here, you, hold that
wheel a minute.”
Harvey obeyed. The mate made a few bounds across the deck, took advantage
of the opening that offered as the strange man’s back was turned to him,
and dealt him a blow behind one ear that felled him, half stunned. The
next moment, Harvey saw the three lift the vanquished fighter by head and
heels and carry him below again.
Harvey’s heart sank a little. It was hardly an auspicious beginning of a
cruise on a strange craft.
Mr. Blake was back again in a few minutes. He was as cool as though
nothing unusual had taken place.
“No, you keep the wheel a moment, while I light my pipe,” he said, as
Harvey started to relinquish the post. Then he laughed, drew forth his
pipe and a piece of tobacco, and proceeded to cut a pipeful with his
knife.
“That’s Tom Saunders,” he said. “Gets foolish drunk the minute he steps
on shore; never’s sober except when he’s afloat. Comes aboard a-boilin’
every trip, fights, and makes a mess about being carried off against his
will. He’ll straighten out tomorrow and be the best man in the crew.”
Harvey felt a bit easier. There had come over him, as he watched the
struggle, a feeling that perhaps he, too, had been trapped aboard here.
It was strange, certainly: the disappearance of Mr. Jenkins, and the
words the man had just uttered about being shanghaied. However, he was in
for the cruise; and come what would, Harvey resolved to make the best of
it.
There came aft, presently, the man Scroop, captain of the schooner, whom
Harvey eyed curiously, when the mate addressed him.
“Well?” inquired Mate Blake.
Captain Scroop gave vent to a vigorous expletive. “We’ve fixed him!” he
said. “He’ll shut up for a while. Hullo, who’s this?”
“A friend of Jenkins,” replied the mate, giving a sly wink as he spoke.
Captain Scroop looked at Harvey keenly. Harvey eyed him, eagerly, in
return. What he saw was not wholly favourable. Scroop, a hard-featured,
shifty-eyed man of middle stature, had not been rendered more
prepossessing by his recent encounter. A swelling under one eye showed
where the stranger’s fist had landed heavily. His woollen shirt was torn
open at the neck, wherein the veins were distended from wrath and
excitement. He gave one quick, shifting glance at Harvey and said
abruptly, “All right. Get below now and tell Joe to give you breakfast.”
Harvey went below.
Captain Scroop turned angrily upon the mate.
“Who got him aboard?” he asked.
“Jenkins—who do you suppose?”
Captain Scroop’s face darkened, and he shook a clenched fist in the
direction of Baltimore.
“Won’t he never tell the truth, nohow?” he exclaimed. “Lied to me last
night, up and down. Twenty-five years old, or near that, was what he
swore. Haven’t I told him not to get these boys? That’s a kid—if he’s
seventeen he’s doin’ better’n I think. He’s got to go, though. I’ll put
him through, now. But wait till we get back. Won’t I settle with
somebody? They’ll have the law on us some day.”
“Pooh! You’ve said all that a million times,” replied the mate, coolly.
“What’s the odds? Aren’t we taking chances, every trip we make? Haven’t
we had boys before? Look at the lot of ’em we’ve had from New York.
What’s it to us? Leave Haley to work it out. And don’t you go to getting
down on Artie Jenkins. He knows his lay. He wouldn’t have shipped this
fellow unless he knew it was all right. He’s no fonder of trouble than we
are.”
Jack Harvey, the innocent subject of the foregoing remarks, was, in the
meantime, getting into a better frame of mind. There was no great fault,
surely, to be found with the grub aboard the schooner. Nothing that he
had ever cooked and eaten at his camp by the shore of Samoset Bay tasted
better than the corn flap-jacks handed out from the galley by the boy,
Joe. Smeared with a substance, greasy and yellow, but that never was nor
ever could be suspected of being butter, and sticky with a blackish
liquid that was sweet, like molasses, they were still appetizing to a
hungry youth who had never known the qualms of sea-sickness. A muddy
compound, called by extreme courtesy coffee, warmed Harvey to the marrow
and put heart in him. A few slices of fried bacon tasted better than the
best meal he could have had aboard the ocean liner.
Eating heartily, despite his disappointment to find himself forsaken by
Mr. Jenkins, Harvey essayed to draw the boy, Joe, into conversation; but
the latter was sullen, and chary of his words.
Would Jenkins surely be down by the next vessel? The boy nodded, somewhat
blankly. He guessed so. Where would they begin fishing, and how? Harvey
would see, later. And so on. There was clearly little to be gotten from
him.
Once there came down into the cabin the same, odd individual who had sat,
huddled in the cabin, smoking, the afternoon before. He got a dish of the
flap-jacks and a pail of the coffee, and started out again. Harvey fired
a question at him, as the man waited a moment to receive his grub.
“How do we fish, down the bay, anyway?” asked Harvey.
The man turned a little, stared at Harvey in a surly manner for a moment,
and then—apparently not all in sympathy with methods aboard the schooner
and in the trade generally—answered, “Hmph! You breaks yer back at a
bloody winder.” And with this somewhat enigmatical reply, went about his
business.
“Say,” said Harvey, turning to the boy, once more, “what’s a winder?”
“Why, it’s a—a—winder,” responded the boy.
“That’s just what I thought,” said Harvey, smiling in spite of his
perplexity. “And what’s it for?”
“You get oysters with it,” replied the boy. “You heaves the dredge
overboard, and you winds it in again.”
“Oh, I see,” said Harvey, enlightened by this lucid explanation. “It’s a
sort of windlass, eh?”
Joe nodded.
“Hard work?” continued Harvey.
“Naw—easy.”
But Harvey had his misgivings. And again he comforted himself with the
thought, at worst, the cruise would be over and done in a month.
“I guess I’m good for that,” he muttered; and went out on deck again.
The schooner’s course had been changed a little, and they were now
sailing almost directly south, down Chesapeake bay. The schooner was no
longer winged out, but had both booms off to port, getting the wind on
the quarter. Fore-staysail and jib and main gaff top-sail, as well, were
set, and the old craft was swinging southward at a fair clip. The wind
had begun to increase.
This was action after Harvey’s own heart, and he walked forward, toward
the gruff sailor, who was stationed near the forecastle. He observed, as
he advanced, that there was still another man forward by the jibs; and
that these two sailors, the captain and mate and the boy, Joe, were
apparently the only ones aboard the vessel, besides himself.
Harvey glanced at the man forward. He was almost dwarfish in stature,
thick-set, with unusually broad shoulders. Clearly, this was not the man
that Harvey had seen asleep, amid the bundle of blankets, in the cabin.
Harvey had not seen the face of the sleeper, but he had noted once, when
the man had stirred, that he was a tall man; that the figure stretched
out at length took up an unusual amount of room.
It flashed over Harvey that the man he had seen asleep in the cabin, the
night before, was missing from there now. Harvey was certain he had not
seen him, as he sat eating. To make sure, he went back and looked. The
man was not there.
“That’s odd,” said Harvey to himself, as he came on deck again. “I wonder
if they’ve lugged him down into the forecastle, too. They must have done
it in the night. By jimminy! I wonder how many they’ve got stowed away
down there, anyway.”
Somewhat startled at the idea that there might be other men held there,
and curious to see for himself, Harvey approached the companion. As he
did so, the surly seaman barred his way.
“Keep out ’er there,” he said, roughly. “You can’t go below now. Them’s
my orders.”
Harvey stepped back, in surprise. There was a mystery to the forecastle,
then, sure enough. He hazarded one question:
“What’s the matter? What’s down there?”
The man made no reply.
Harvey went forward to where the other man stood.
“Say, what’s there to do aboard here?” he asked.
The fellow turned and eyed Harvey for a moment, curiously.
“Nothin’ now,” he replied, finally. “Nothin’ till we get down the bay. We
all takes it easy like, till then.”
But further than this, he, too, became uncommunicative when Harvey
questioned him about the cruise. It was discouraging, and Harvey gave it
up. He seemed likely to have little companionship, if any, aboard the
schooner, and the thought was not pleasing. Again he wondered at the
strange disappearance of Mr. Jenkins, and hoped it might be true that the
young man would rejoin them down the bay.
The day passed somewhat monotonously for the most part. The schooner was
holding an almost straight course down the bay, along the western shore.
Harvey, having an eye for safety, noted that the coast was almost
unbroken for miles and miles, affording no harbour in case of storm. He
spoke of it once to the sailor by the forecastle.
“Plenty of harbours down below,” replied the man. “We’re goin’ well;
reckon we’ll lie in the Patuxent tonight. There’s harbour enough for
you.”
It was a positive relief to Harvey when, some time in the afternoon, it
came on to blow very fresh, and the foresail and mainsail were both
reefed. He lent a hand at that, tieing in reef points with the other two.
They seemed surprised that he knew how to do it.
But, with the freshening of the wind, it altered its direction and blew
up finally, towards evening, from the eastward; so that they made slower
progress, running now on the wind, close-hauled. Rain began falling at
twilight, and a bitter chill crept into the air. Harvey thought of the
oil-skins he had intended buying in Baltimore, and wished he had them.
There was nothing for him to do on deck now, however, and he gladly went
below.
He ate his supper alone, for all hands were on deck. The schooner pitched
and thrashed about in the short, rough seas. It was gloomy in the dimly
lighted cabin, and the boy Joe, at work in the galley, positively
declined to enter into conversation. Jack Harvey, left to himself,
mindful of his strange situation, of the mysterious forecastle with its
imprisoned men, and depressed by the wretched night, didn’t dare admit to
himself how much he wished himself ashore. The confinement of the cabin
made him drowsy, not long after he had eaten, and he was glad enough to
roll up in a blanket on one of the bunks and go off to sleep.
While he slept, the schooner thrashed its way in past a light-house on a
point of land on the western shore, and headed up into the mouth of a
broad, deep river. They sailed into this for something like half a mile,
Scroop at the wheel, and the mate and two seamen forward, peering ahead
through the rain.
Presently the mate rushed aft.
“There she lies,” he said, pointing, as he spoke, to where a lantern
gleamed in the fore-mast shrouds of a vessel at anchor.
“I see her,” responded Scroop.
The old schooner, under the guiding hand of Scroop, rounded to and came
up into the wind a few rods astern of the other vessel. And now, lying
astern, the light from the other’s cabin shone so that the forms of three
men could be distinguished vaguely, standing on the deck. The schooner’s
anchor went down, the foresail was dropped, and, the jibs having already
been taken in, the craft was soon lying snug, with her mainsail hauled
flat aft, to steady her. A small boat was launched from the deck, and
made fast alongside.
Mr. Blake, mate, pointing toward the cabin, inquired briefly, “Take him
first?”
“No,” said Scroop. “Clear out the forecastle. He’ll make a fuss, I
reckon. When we drop him, I want to get out and leave him to Haley.”
Advancing hastily across the deck, the four men, captain and mate and the
two sailors, disappeared into the forecastle. They reappeared shortly,
bearing an unconscious burden between them, much as they would have
carried a sack of potatoes; which burden, however, showed some sign of
animation as the rain fell upon it, and muttered something
unintelligible. They deposited the burden in the bottom of the small
boat.
Another disappearance into the forecastle, and a repetition of the
performance; another and similar burden being laid alongside the first in
the boat.
Then five men emerged from the forecastle, the fifth man walking upright,
held fast by the others. It was the man that Harvey had seen struggling
with the two sailors that morning. But he went along quietly now, the
reason being apparent in the words of Scroop.
“You go along or you go overboard,” he said. “The first yip out of you
and you get that belayin’ pin in the head.”
The boat, with its conscious and unconscious cargo, rowed by the two
sailors and guided by Scroop in the stem, put away from the schooner and
was soon alongside the other vessel.
“Hello,” said a voice.
“Hello, Haley.”
“How many?”
“Three here and one to come; good men, too—sailors, every one of ’em.”
A snort of incredulity from the man on deck.
“Let you tell it!” he exclaimed. “I’m in luck if there’s one of ’em that
hasn’t been selling ribbon over a counter. Well, fetch ’em on.”
A hatch-way forward received the three men; a short, thick-necked, burly
individual—the same being Hamilton Haley of the bug-eye Brandt—eying them
with evident suspicion as they were taken below. After which, the two
worthy captains repaired together to the cabin of the bug-eye, and
partook of something in the way of refreshment, which was followed by the
transfer of forty dollars in greasy bills, from a chest in the cabin to
the wallet of Captain Scroop.
“Dredging good?” inquires Scroop.
“Not much. Lost a man day before yesterday—took sick and died. Went
overboard in the chop, down below, and I couldn’t get him.”
“Wasn’t near time for his paying off, eh?” suggests Scroop, leering
skeptically.
“Never you mind what it was near. It couldn’t be helped, and the mate
will swear to it.”
This asserted by Haley, red of face, wrathful of manner, and bringing a
heavy fist down hard on the chest.
Some time later, Jack Harvey awoke suddenly from sound sleep. Someone was
shaking him. Dazed and hardly conscious of where he was, he recognized
the mate.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
The mate shook him again.
“Get up!” he said. “Get up. We’re going to row ashore. Hurry now, jump
into your boots and coat.”
Harvey, blinking and drowsy, did as he was ordered. Escorted by the mate,
he went out into the drizzle on deck. It was almost like an unpleasant
night-mare, the act of stumbling down into the boat, the short, pitching
ride in the rainy night. Then, all at once, the side of the other vessel
loomed up. Another moment, Harvey found himself lifted roughly aboard,
and, before he knew hardly what had happened, the rowboat was going away
and leaving him.
“Here!” he cried, thoroughly frightened. “What are you doing? What are
you leaving me here for? This isn’t ashore. Here, you, keep your hands
off me.”
But there was no hope for Jack Harvey. In the grasp of two stalwart
sailors, seeing in a flash the truth of what had befallen him, knowing,
all too late, that he had been tricked and trapped aboard a strange
vessel, he found himself dragged across the deck. He was half carried,
half thrown down the companion-way. He found himself in a stuffy,
ill-smelling forecastle, not much bigger than a good sized dog-kennel. It
was already crowded with men; but there, by lying at close quarters with
this forsaken lot of humanity, he might sleep out the rest of the night,
if he could.
And thus Jack Harvey was to begin his adventures aboard Hamilton Haley’s
bug-eye. Nor would it matter, as he should find, that the satchel
containing the articles which had occasioned so much hilarity on the part
of young Mr. Jenkins, had been left behind, in the confusion. Jack Harvey
surely would not need them aboard the Z. B. Brandt.
CHAPTER IV
ABOARD THE BUG-EYE
Jack Harvey stood at the foot of the short ladder leading down into the
forecastle, looking anxiously about him. A boat-lantern, wired for
protection in handling, hung by the bulkhead, affording a gloomy view of
the place. Harvey had, in the course of much roughing it, lived at times
in tents, in log cabins, and in odd sorts of shacks, and slept in the
cabins of the fishing boats of Samoset Bay in Maine. But never in all his
experience had he found himself in such dismal, cramped and forbidding
quarters as these.
On either side of the forecastle nearest the ladder was a narrow, shallow
bunk, raised a little above the floor, sufficient to tuck a few odds and
ends of clothing under; directly above each was a similar bunk, of equal
dimensions. All four of these had scarcely any head-room at all—an
arrangement whereby one, springing quickly up into a sitting posture,
would give his head such a bump as would remind him unpleasantly of the
economy of space.
In the lower of these bunks there now lay two men, at least asleep if not
resting. They breathed heavily, moaning as though in some unnatural
condition of slumber. It was evident to Harvey that they were under the
influence of something like a drug; and the recollection flashed through
his mind of the offer of young Mr. Jenkins in the cabin of the
schooner—which he had fortunately refused. If he were, indeed, a captive,
he was at least in no such senseless condition as these men.
The upper bunks held two more occupants. These two slept quietly, even
through the disturbance that had been made so recently. Perhaps they were
not unused to such occurrences. It was apparent they were sailors, and
their sleep was natural. In all likelihood, the two lower bunks had been
left vacant for new recruits, the old seamen taking the upper ones.
All this Jack Harvey took in with a few quick glances. What he saw next
gave him something of a start.
Forward of the four bunks described were yet two others, the space in the
forecastle being arranged “to sleep” six men. These bunks were, if such a
thing could be possible, even less comfortable than the others. Curving
with the lines of the bows of the vessel, they had scarce length enough
for a good sized man to stretch out in. In part compensation for which,
however, there being no upper bunks, there was head-room enough so that
one could sit upright with some degree of comfort.
In the starboard bunk there sat a man, huddled up, with one arm bracing
him from behind, and a hand, clutching one knee. He was staring at the
new-comer Harvey, with a look of abject despair.
Harvey, surprised and startled to find himself thus confronting someone
who was clearly in his proper senses, returned the man’s gaze, and the
two stared wonderingly at each other for a moment, in silence.
With a groan, the man swung himself down to the floor and advanced a
step.
“Hullo,” he said, “how in the Dickens did they get you?”
“Same to you,” said Harvey, by way of reply. He had, at the sight of this
companion in misery, regained his composure a little. Unconsciously, the
fact that here was someone with whom he could share misfortune had raised
his courage. For Harvey had taken in the appearance of the man at once.
He was well dressed. His clothes were of fine material and of a stylish
cut—albeit they were wrinkled and dusty from his recent experiences. A
torn place in the sleeve of his coat told, too, of the rough handling he
had received. His collar was crumpled and wilted, his tie disarranged. A
derby hat that he had worn lay now on the floor, in one corner, with the
crown broken. On the little finger of his left hand he wore a ring.
Instinctively, Jack Harvey and the stranger extended arms and grasped
hands, with the warmth of sudden friendship born of mutual sympathy.
“Well, I’ll be hanged, if they’re not a lot of scoundrels!” exclaimed the
man, surveying Harvey with astonishment. “Why, you’re only a boy. How on
earth did they get you? Didn’t drug your drink, did they?”
“No, I don’t drink,” said Harvey. “I signed for a cruise, all right, but
not on this craft. I signed to go a month on that schooner that brought
me down. Cracky, but it looks as though I’d made a mess of it. A chap
named Jenkins got me into this—”
“Jenkins!” cried the man, bursting out in a fury. “Jenkins, was it? Slim,
oily chap, flashy waistcoat and sailor tie?”
Harvey nodded.
The man clenched his fist and raised it above his head.
“Told you he was going to Johns Hopkins when he earned the money—nice
family but poor—and all that sort of rot?”
“That’s the chap,” said Harvey.
The man dropped his fist, put out a hand to Harvey, and they shook once
more. The man’s face relaxed into a grim smile.
“Well, I’m another Jenkins recruit,” he said. “I’m an idiot, an ass,
anything you’re a-mind to call me. There’s some excuse for you—but me, a
man that’s travelled from one end of this United States to the other, and
met every kind of a sharper between New York and San Francisco—to get
caught in a scrape like this!”
“Why, then your name is not Tom Saunders,” exclaimed Harvey, who now
recognized in his new acquaintance the man he had seen struggling with
the men of the schooner. “They said you were a sailor.” The man made a
gesture of disgust. “I hate the very smell of the salt water!” he cried.
There was a small sea chest next to the bulk-head at the forward end of
the forecastle, and Harvey and the stranger seated themselves on it. The
man relapsed for a moment into silence, his elbows on his knees, his face
buried in his hands. Then, all of a sudden, he sat erect, and beat his
fist down upon one knee.
“This ends it!” he cried, earnestly. “Never again as long as I live and
breathe.”
Harvey stared at him in surprise.
“I mean the drink,” cried the man, excitedly. “Mind what I say, and I
mean it. Never another drink as long as I live. I’ve said, before, that
I’d stop it, but this ends it. Say, what’s your name, anyway?”
“Jack Harvey.”
“Well, my name’s Edwards—Tom Edwards. Now look here, Harvey, I mean what
I say; if you ever see Tom Edwards try to take another drink, you just
walk up and hit him the hardest knock you can give him. See?”
Harvey laughed, in spite of the other’s earnestness.
“I won’t have any chance for some time, by the looks of things,” he said.
“You won’t need to sign any pledge this month. I reckon there’s no saloon
aboard this vessel.”
“I’m glad of it,” exclaimed Edwards. “I wouldn’t walk into one now, if
they were giving the stuff away. Look what it’s got me into. Say, how did
our Johns Hopkins friend catch you?”
Harvey quickly narrated the events that had followed the departure of his
parents for Europe, and the meeting with young Mr. Jenkins. Mr. Edwards,
listening with astonishment, eyed him with keenest interest.
“That’s it,” he exclaimed, as Harvey recounted the engaging manner in
which Jenkins had assured him he would return in one short month, with a
nautical experience that should make him the envy of his boy companions;
“put it in fancy style, didn’t he? Regular Tom Bowline romance, and all
that sort of thing, eh?”
Mr. Edwards’s eyes twinkled, and he was half smiling, in spite of
himself.
“Well,” he continued, noting Harvey’s athletic figure, “I guess you can
stand a month of it, all right, and no great hurt to you. And, what’s
best, your folks won’t worry. But I tell you, Harvey, it’s going to be
tough on me, if I can’t force this bandit to set me ashore again. I’m in
an awful scrape. My business house will think I’ve been murdered, or have
run away—I don’t know what. And when it comes to work, if we have much of
that to do, I don’t know how I’m going to stand it. You see, my firm pays
my expenses, and I’m used to putting up at the best hotels and living
high. So, I’m fat and lazy. Billiards is about my hardest exercise, and
my hands are as soft as a woman’s. See here.”
Mr. Edwards stretched out two somewhat unsteady hands, palms upward; then
slapped them down upon his knees. As he did so, he uttered a cry of
dismay and sprang to his feet, sticking out his little finger and staring
at it ruefully.
“The thieves!” he cried, angrily. “The cowardly thieves! See that ring?
They’ve got the diamond out of it. Worth two hundred dollars, if ’twas
worth a cent. They couldn’t get the ring off, without cutting it, and I
suppose they couldn’t do that easily; so they’ve just pried out the
stone.”
Harvey looked at the hand which Edwards extended. The setting of the
costly ring had, indeed, been roughly forced, and the stone it had
contained, extracted.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” said Edwards, “if it hadn’t been a gift from
the men in the store.” Impulsively, he turned to Harvey and put a hand on
his shoulder.
“Say, Harvey,” he exclaimed, “when you and I get ashore again—if we ever
do—we’ll go and hunt up this young Mr. Jenkins.”
“All right,” replied Harvey; “but it may not be quite so bad as you
think. We’ll get through some way, I guess.”
Oddly enough, either by reason of the lack of responsibility that weighed
on the spirits of the man, or because of a lingering eagerness for
adventure, in spite of the dubious prospects, the boy, Harvey, seemed the
more resolute of the two.
“Well,” responded Edwards, “I’m sorry you’re in a scrape; but so long as
you’re here, why, I’m glad you’re the kind of a chap you are. We’ll help
each other. We’ll stand together.”
And they shook hands upon it again.
“Now,” said Edwards, “here’s how I came here. I’m a travelling man, for a
jewelry house—Burton & Brooks, of Boston. I was on the road, got into
Washington the other night, and sold a lot of goods there. But one of my
trunks hadn’t come on time, and I was hung up for a day with nothing to
do. Never had been in Baltimore, and thought I’d run down for a few
hours.
“I got dinner at a restaurant and went out to look around. I went along,
hit or miss, and brought up down by the water-front. This chap, Jenkins,
bumped into me and apologized like a gentleman; we got to talking, and he
invited me into one of those saloons along the front. Beastly place, and
I knew it; but I was off my guard. He certainly was slick, talked about
his family and Johns Hopkins, and pumped me all the time—I can see it
now—till he found I wasn’t stopping at any hotel, but had just run in to
town for the day.
“That was all he wanted. Saw the game was safe, and then he and the
fellow that ran the place must have fixed it up together. I’ll bet he
stands in with most of these places on the water-front. He apologized for
the place, I remember; said it was rough but clean, and the oysters the
best in Baltimore. Well, I don’t remember much after that, until I woke
up in that hole on the schooner that brought us down here. I know we had
something to drink—and that, so help me, is the last that anyone ever
gets Tom Edwards to take. Shake on that, too.”
He had a hearty, bluff way of talking, and a frankness in declaring
himself to be the biggest simpleton that was ever caught with chaff, that
compelled friendship.
Harvey again accepted the proffered hand, smiling a little to himself,
and wondering if it were a habit of the other’s profession to seal all
compacts on the spot in that fashion.
“So here I am,” concluded Mr. Edwards, “in the vilest hole I ever was in;
sick from the nasty pitching of this infernal boat; the worst head-ache I
ever woke up with—thanks to Mr. Jenkins’s drug—robbed of $150 in money,
that I had in a wallet, a diamond that I wouldn’t have sold at any
price—and, worst of all, my house won’t know what’s become of me. You
see, I’m registered up in Washington at a hotel there. I disappear, they
find my trunk and goods all right, and my accounts are straight. Nobody
knows I came to Baltimore. I’m not registered at any hotel there. There’s
a mystery for ’em. Isn’t it a fix?”
Harvey whistled expressively.
“You’re worse off than I am, a million times,” he said. “Besides, I’ve
got a little money, if it will help us out any. It’s twenty-five dollars
I had for fare back to Benton, and pocket-money.”
“Where’s that—where’d you say you were going?” asked Mr. Edwards,
quickly.
“Benton.”
“Benton, eh? Well, that’s funny. I’ve been there; sold goods in Benton
lots of times. You don’t happen to know a man by the name of Warren
there, do you? He’s got three boys about your age, or a little
younger—nice man, too.”
Harvey gave an exclamation of surprise and delight.
“Know him? I guess I do,” he cried. “And the Warren fellows, well rather.
Hooray!”
It was Harvey’s turn to offer the hand of fellowship this time; and he
gave Mr. Edwards a squeeze that made that gentleman wince.
“You’ve got a pretty good grip,” said he, rubbing his right hand with the
other. “I guess you can stand some hard work.” Then they reverted to the
subject of Benton, once more, and it brought them closer together. There
was Bob White’s father, whom Mr. Edwards knew, and several others; and
Jack Harvey knew their sons; and so they might have shaken hands at least
a half dozen times more, if Mr. Edwards had been willing to risk the
experiment again.
“Now, to get back to the money,” said he, finally; “you’ve got to hide
that twenty-five dollars, or you’ll lose it. Here, I can help you out.”
He drew forth from a pocket a rubber tobacco pouch, and emptied the
contents into an envelope in one of his inside coat pockets.
“I don’t see how they happened to leave me this,” he said, “but they did,
and it’s lucky, too. It’s just what you need. We’ll tuck the bills in
this, fold it over and over, wrap a handkerchief about it, and you can
fasten it inside your shirt with this big safety-pin. Trust a travelling
man on the road to have what’s needed in the dressing line. It may save
you from being robbed. What are you going to do with that other five?
Don’t you want to save that, too?”
Harvey had taken from a wallet in his pocket twenty dollars in bills,
letting one five dollar bill remain.
“I’m going to use that to save the rest with,” replied Harvey. “Supposing
this brute of a captain asks me if I’ve got any money, to buy what I’ll
need aboard here, or suppose I’m robbed; well, perhaps they’ll think this
is all I’ve got, and leave me the twenty.”
“You’re kind of sharp, too,” responded Mr. Edwards, smiling. “You’d make
a good travelling man. We’ll stow this secure, I hope.”
He enfolded the bills handed to him by Harvey in the rubber tobacco
pouch, wrapped the boy’s handkerchief about that, and passed it, with the
pin thrust through, to Harvey. Harvey, loosening his clothing, pinned the
parcel of bills securely, next to his body.
“That’s the thing,” said Mr. Edwards, approvingly. “That’s better than
the captain’s strong-box, I reckon. I’m afraid we’ve struck a pirate.
Whew, but I’d give five hundred—oh, hang it! What’s the use of wishing?
We’re in for it. We’ll get out, I suppose some way. I’ll tackle this
captain in the morning. I’ve sold goods to pretty hard customers before
now. If I can’t sell him a line of talk that will make him set me ashore,
why, then my name isn’t Tom Edwards. Guess we may as well turn in, though
I reckon I’ll not sleep much in that confounded packing-box they call a
berth. Good night, Harvey, my boy. Here’s good luck for to-morrow.”
Mr. Edwards put forth his hand, then drew it back quickly.
“I guess that last hand-shake will do for to-night,” he said. “Pretty
good grip you’ve got.”
Harvey watched him, curiously, as he prepared to turn in for the night.
Surely, an extraordinary looking figure for the forecastle of a dingy
bug-eye was Mr. Tom Edwards. He removed his crumpled collar and his
necktie, gazed at them regretfully, and tucked them beneath the edge of
the bunk. He removed his black cut-away coat, folded it carefully, and
stowed it away in one end of the same. He likewise removed a pair of
patent leather shoes.
It was hardly the toggery for a seaman of an oyster-dredger; and Harvey,
eying the incongruous picture, would have laughed, in spite of his own
feeling of dismay and apprehension, but for the expression of utter
anguish and misery on the face of Tom Edwards, as he rolled in on to his
bunk.
“Cheer up,” said the latter, with an attempt at assurance, which the tone
of his voice did not fully endorse, “I’ll fix that pirate of a captain in
the morning, or I’ll never sell another bill of goods as long as I live.”
“I hope so,” replied Harvey.
But he had his doubts.
They had made their preparations not any too soon.
A voice from the deck called out roughly, “Douse that lantern down there!
Take this ere boat for an all-night dance-hall?”
Harvey sprang from his bunk and extinguished the feeble flicker that had
given them light, then crept back again. He was young; he was weary; he
was hopeful. He was soon asleep, rocked by the uneasy swinging and
dipping of the vessel. Mr. Thomas Edwards, travelling man and gentleman
patron of the best hotels, envied him, as he, himself, lay for hours
awake, a prey to many and varied emotions.
But he, too, was not without a straw to cling to. He had his plans for
the morrow; and, as tardy slumber at length came to his weary brain, he
might have been heard to mutter, “I’ll sell that captain a line—a line—a
line of talk; I’ll make him take it, or—or I’ll—”
His words ceased. Mr. Thomas Edwards had gone upon his travels into
dreamland. And, if he could have seen there the face and figure of
Captain Hamilton Haley of the bug-eye, Z. B. Brandt, and have listened to
that gentleman engaged in the pleasing art of conversation, he might not
have been so hopeful of selling him a “line of talk.”
CHAPTER V
THE LAW OF THE BAY
The bug-eye, Z. B. Brandt, lay more easily at anchor as the night wore
away and morning began to come in. The wind that had brought the rain had
fallen flat, and, in its stead, there was blowing a gentle breeze
straight out the mouth of the river, from the west. The day bade fair to
be clear. Still, with the increasing warmth of the air upon the surface
of the water, a vapour was arising, which shut out the shore in some
degree.
To one looking at it from a little distance, the vessel might have
presented a not unpleasing appearance. Its lines were certainly
graceful—almost handsome—after the manner of that type of bay craft. The
low free-board and sloping masts served to add grace to the outlines. The
Z. B. Brandt was a large one of its class, something over sixty feet
long, capable evidently of carrying a large cargo; and, at the same time,
a bay-man would have known at a glance that she was speedy.
Built on no such lines of grace and speed, however, was her skipper,
Captain Hamilton Haley, who now emerged from the cabin, on deck,
stretched his short, muscular arms, and looked about and across the
water, with a glance of approval and satisfaction at the direction of the
wind. He was below the medium height, a lack of stature which was made
more noticeable by an unusual breadth of chest and burliness of
shoulders.
Squat down between his shoulders, with so short and thick a neck that it
seemed as though nature had almost overlooked that proportion, was a
rounded, massive head, adorned with a crop of reddish hair. A thick, but
closely cut beard added to his shaggy appearance. His mouth was small and
expressionless; from under heavy eye-brows, small, grayish eyes twinkled
keenly and coldly.
Smoke pouring out of a funnel that protruded from the top of the cabin on
the starboard side, and a noise of dishes rattling below in the galley,
indicated preparation for breakfast. Captain Haley, his inspection of
conditions of wind and weather finished, went below.
A half hour later, there appeared from the same companion-way another
man, of a strikingly different type. He was tall and well proportioned,
powerfully built, alert and active in every movement. His complexion
showed him to be of negro blood, though of the lightest type of mulatto.
His face, smooth-shaven, betrayed lines that foreboded little good to the
crew of any craft that should come under his command. His eyes told of
intelligence, however, and it would have required but one glance of a
shrewd master of a vessel to pick him out for a smart seaman. Let
Hamilton Haley tell it, there wasn’t a better mate in all the dredging
fleet than Jim Adams. Let certain men that had served aboard the Brandt
on previous voyages tell it, and there wasn’t a worse one. It was a
matter of point of view.
Captain Hamilton Haley having also come on deck, and it being now close
on to five o’clock of this November morning, it was high time for the
Brandt to get under way. Captain Haley motioned toward the forecastle.
“Get ’em out,” he said curtly.
The mate walked briskly forward, and descended into the forecastle. The
two seamen in the upper bunks, sleeping in their clothes, tumbled hastily
out, at a word from the mate, and a shake of the shoulder. The men in the
two lower bunks did not respond. Angrily raising one foot, shod in a
heavy boot, Jim Adams administered several kicks to the slumberers. They
stirred and groaned, and half awoke. Surveying them contemptuously for a
moment, the mate passed them by.
“I’ll ’tend to you gentlemen later on, I reckon,” he muttered. Jack
Harvey, aroused by the stirring in the forecastle, had scrambled hastily
out, and was on his feet when the mate approached. The latter grinned,
showing two rows of strong, white teeth.
“Well done, sonny,” he said. “Saved you’self gettin’ invited, didn’t you?
Just be lively, now, and scamper out on deck. Your mammy wants ter see
you.”
“All right,” answered Harvey, and stooped for his shoes. To his surprise,
he felt himself seized by the powerful hand of the mate, and jerked
upright. The mate was still smiling, but there was a gleam in his eyes
that there was no mistaking.
“See here, sonny,” he said, “would you just mind bein’ so kind as to call
me ‘mister,’ when you speaks to me? I’m Mister Adams, if you please.
Would you just as lieves remember that?”
Jack Harvey was quick to perceive that this sneering politeness was no
joke. He answered readily, “Certainly, Mr. Adams; I will, sir.”
The mate grinned, approvingly.
“Get along,” he said.
Pausing for a moment before the bunk in which Mr. Tom Edwards was still
sleeping, the mate espied the black tailor-made coat which the owner had
carefully folded and stowed in one corner before retiring. From that and
the general appearance of the sleeper, it was evident Jim Adams had
gathered an impression little favourable to the occupant of the bunk.
“Hmph!” he muttered. “Reckon he won’t last long. Scroop’s rung in a
counter-jumper on Haley. Wait till Haley sees him.”
His contempt for the garment, carefully folded, did not however, prevent
his making a more critical inspection of it. Drawing it stealthily out of
the bunk, the mate quickly ran through the pockets. The search
disappointed him. There was a good linen handkerchief, which he
appropriated; an empty wallet, which he restored to a pocket; and some
papers, equally unprofitable. Tossing the coat back into the bunk, the
mate seized the legs of the sleeper and swung them around over the edge
of the bunk; which being accomplished, he unceremoniously spilled Mr. Tom
Edwards out on the floor.
There was a gleam of triumph in his eyes as he did so; a consciousness
that here, in these waters of the Chesapeake, among the dredging fleet,
there existed a peculiar reversal of the general supremacy of the white
over the black race; a reversal growing out of the brutality of many of
the captains, and the method of shipping men and holding them prisoners,
to work or perish; in the course of which, captains so disposed had found
that there was none so eager to brow-beat and bully a crew of
recalcitrant whites as a certain type of coloured mates.
Tom Edwards, awakened thus roughly, opened his eyes wide in astonishment;
then his face reddened with indignation as he saw the figure of the mate
bending over him.
“Would you just as lieve ’blige me by gettin’ your coat on an’ stepping
out on deck?” asked the mate, with mock politeness.
Tom Edwards arose to his feet, somewhat shaky, and glared at the
spokesman.
“I want to see the captain of this vessel,” he said. “You fellows have
made a mistake in your man, this time. You’d better be careful.”
“Yes, sir, I’m very, unusual careful, mister,” responded the mate,
grinning at the picture presented by the unfortunate Mr. Tom Edwards,
unsteady on his legs with the slight rolling of the vessel, but striving
to assert his dignity. “Jes’ please to hustle out on deck, now, an’
you’ll see the cap’n all right. He’s waiting for you to eat breakfas’
with him, in the cabin.”
Tom Edwards, burning with wrath, hurriedly adjusted his crumpled collar
and tie, put on his shoes and coat, and hastened on deck. Glancing
forward, he espied Harvey engaged at work with the crew.
“Here, Harvey,” he cried, “come on. I’ll set you right, and myself, too,
at the same time. I’ll see if there’s any law in Maryland that will
punish an outrage like this.”
Somewhat doubtfully, Jack Harvey followed him. Jim Adams, leering as
though he knew what would be the result, did not stop him. The two
seamen, also, paused in their work, and stood watching the unusual event.
Captain Hamilton Haley, standing expectantly near the wheel, eyed the
approaching Mr. Edwards with cold unconcern. Perhaps he had met similar
situations before.
Under certain conditions, and amid the proper surroundings, Mr. Thomas
Edwards might readily have made a convincing impression and commanded
respect; but the situation was unfavourable. His very respectable
garments, in their tumbled and tom disarrangement, his legs unsteady,
from recent experiences and from weakness, his face pale with the
evidence of approaching sea-sickness, all conspired to defeat his attempt
at dignity. Yet he was determined.
“Captain,” he said, stepping close to the stolid figure by the wheel,
“you have made a bad mistake in getting me aboard here. I was drugged and
shipped without my knowing it. I am a travelling man, and connected with
a big business house in Boston. If you don’t set me ashore at once,
you’ll get yourself into more kinds of trouble than you ever dreamed of.
I’m a man-of-the-world, and I can let this pass for a good joke among the
boys on the road, if it stops right here. But if you carry it any
farther, I warn you it will be at your peril. It’s a serious thing, this
man-stealing.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, fortifying himself with a piece of tobacco, eyed
Mr. Thomas Edwards sullenly. Then he clenched a huge fist and replied.
“I’ve seen ’em like you before,” he said. “They was all real gentlemen,
same as you be, when they come aboard, and most of ’em owned up to bein’
pickpockets and tramps when they and I got acquainted. I guess you’re no
great gentleman. When a man goes and signs a contract with me, I makes
him live up to it. You’ve gone and signed with me, and now you get
for’ard and bear a hand at that winch.”
“That’s an outrageous lie!” cried Tom Edwards, shaking his fist in turn
at Captain Haley. “I never signed a paper in my life, to ship with you or
anybody else. If they’ve got my signature, it’s forged.”
“Look here, you,” answered Haley, advancing a step, “don’t you go an’
tell me as how I lie, young feller. Ain’t I seen the contract with my own
eyes? Didn’t Scroop show it, along with the contract of that other young
chap there? Don’t you go telling me I ain’t doin’ things legal like. I’ll
show you some Chesapeake Bay law.”
“Well, Chesapeake Bay law is the same as the law for the rest of
Maryland, I reckon,” exclaimed Tom Edwards hotly. “You’ve got no law on
your side. I’ve got the law with me, and I’ll proceed against you. You’ll
find Chesapeake Bay law and State law is much the same when you get into
court.”
For a moment something like a grin overspread the dull features of
Captain Hamilton Haley. Then he raised his arm, advanced another step
forward, and shook his fist in the other’s face.
“I reckon you ain’t had no experience with Chesapeake Bay law,” he cried
angrily. “But it’s easy to larn, and it don’t take no books to teach it.
Do you see that fist?”
He brandished his huge, red bunch of knuckles in Tom Edwards’s face.
“Do you see that fist?” he cried again, his own face growing more fiery.
“That’s the law of the Bay. That’s the law of the dredging fleet. There
ain’t no other. Any man that goes against that law, gets it laid down to
him good and hard. There it is, and you gets your first lesson.”
With a single blow of his arm, planting the aforesaid digest and epitome
of dredging law full in the face of Tom Edwards, he stretched him
sprawling on the deck, dazed and terrified.
Captain Hamilton Haley, having thus successfully demonstrated the might
and majesty of dredging-fleet law, according to his own interpretation of
its terms, proceeded now to expound it further. His anger had increased
with his act of violence, and the veins in his neck and on his forehead
stood out, swollen.
“See here you, young fellow,” he cried, advancing toward Harvey,
threateningly, “don’t you go starting out uppish, too. Don’t you begin
sea-lawyerin’ with me. I know the law. There it is, and I hand it out
when needed. There ain’t no other law among the dredgers that I knows of,
from Plum Point down to the Rappahannock. Some of ’em larns it quick, and
some of ’em larns it slow; and them as larns it quickest gets it
lightest. Now what have you got to say?”
Jack Harvey, thus hopelessly confronted, thought—and thought quickly.
“I signed for a cruise, all right,” he replied, returning the infuriated
captain’s gaze steadily, “and I’m ready to go to work.”
“Then you get for’ard, lively now, and grab hold of that winch. You
loafers get back and yank that anchor up. This ain’t a town meetin’. Get
them men to work again, mate. Take him along, too.”
The captain pointed, in turn, to Harvey, to the sailors who had edged
their way aft, to watch proceedings, and to the unfortunate Mr. Edwards,
who had arisen from the deck and stood, a sorry, woe-begone object,
unable physically to offer further resistance.
“Shake things up now, Jim Adams, shake ’em up,” urged Haley. “Here we are
losing good wind over a lot of tramps that costs ten dollars apiece to
get here, and little good after we’ve got ’em. How’s a man goin’ to make
his livin’ dredging, when he pays high for men an’ gets nothin’ to show
for his money? I’d like to get that fellow, Jenkins, out here once,
himself. I’d show him this isn’t a business for school-boys and
counter-jumpers. I’d get ten dollars’ worth of work out of him, and a
good many more ten dollars’ worth that he’s got out of me, or he’d know
the reason why.”
Thus relieving his mind of his own troubles, Captain Hamilton Haley, in a
state of highly virtuous indignation, watched with approval the actions
of the mate. The latter, seizing Tom Edwards, hurried him forward
unceremoniously and bade him take hold at the handle of the winch and
help raise the anchor. Tom Edwards weakly grasped the handle, as
directed, in company with one of the sailors. Jack Harvey and the other
seaman worked at the opposite handle.
Two men could have done the job easily, and the four made quick work of
it. By the time the anchor chain was hove short, the mate and Haley had
got the main-sail up. One of the seamen left the windlass and set one of
the jibs; the anchor was brought aboard and stowed. The bug-eye, Brandt,
began to swing off from its mooring, as the wind caught the jib, which
was held up to windward. Easily the craft spun ’round, going before the
wind out of the harbour and running across the bay, headed for the
Eastern shore.
CHAPTER VI
THE WORKING OF THE LAW
“Shake out the reefs and get the foresail on her,” called Haley. “Lively,
now, we’ve lost time.”
The mate repeated the order; the two available seamen began untying the
reef-points, which had been knotted when sail had been shortened in the
breeze of the previous day. It was simple enough work, merely the
loosening and untying of a series of square knots. Harvey had done the
like a hundred times aboard his own sloop. He hastened to assist, and did
his part as quickly as the other two. Jim Adams, somewhat surprised, eyed
him curiously.
“You’re a right smart youngster, ain’t you?” he said, patronizingly.
“Reckon you’ll be so mightily pleased you’ll come again some time.”
There was something so insolent in the tone, so sheer and apparent an
exulting in his power to compel the youth to do his bidding, that the
blood mounted in Harvey’s cheeks, and he felt his pulses beat quicker.
But he went on soberly with his work, and the mate said no more.
Ignorant of all things aboard a vessel, and too weak to work if he had
been skilled at it, Tom Edwards stood helplessly by. The humiliation of
his repulse at the hands of the captain, and his dismay at the dismal
prospect, overwhelmed him. He gazed at the receding shore, and groaned.
The foresail was run up, and with that and the mainsail winged out on
opposite sides, the bug-eye ran before the wind at an easy clip. She
responded at once to the increased spread of canvas. Her evident sailing
qualities appealed to Harvey, and lifted him for the moment out of his
apprehension and distress.
“Now you get your breakfas’,” said Jim Adams, and the two sailors
shuffled aft, followed by Harvey and Tom Edwards. Harvey was hungry, with
the keen appetite of youth and health, and he seated himself with a zest
at the table in the cabin. But the place would have blunted the appetite
of many a hungry man.
It was a vile, stuffy hole, reeking, like the forecastle, with a stale
fishy odour, uncleanly and shabby. A greasy smell of cooking came in from
the galley. A tin plate and cup and a rusty knife and fork set for each
seemed never to have known the contact of soap and water. Jack Harvey
recalled the praise which his absent friend, Mr. Jenkins, had bestowed
upon the quarters of the schooner, and that young gentleman’s
disparagement of the comparative accommodations of a bug-eye; and he
endorsed the sentiments fully. Compared with the cabin of the schooner,
the cabin of the Z. B. Brandt was, indeed, a kennel.
There was little comfort, either, apparently, in the association of the
two sailors. The fellow directly opposite Harvey, whom the mate had
addressed once that morning as “Jeff,” stared sullenly and dully at the
youth, with a look that was clearly devoid of interest. He was a heavy
set, sluggish man of about thirty-five years, for whom hard work and ill
usage had blunted whatever sensibilities he may have once possessed.
Evidently he was willing to bear with the treatment, and the poor food
aboard the vessel, for the small wages he would receive at the winter’s
end.
The other man was slightly more prepossessing, but clearly at present not
inclined to any sociability. He had a brighter eye and a face of more
expression than his companion; though he, too, under the grinding labour
aboard the oyster dredger, had come to toil day by day silently, in dumb
obedience to the captain and mate. He was one Sam Black, by name,
somewhat taller and larger than his comrade.
These two paid little heed to the new arrivals. It is doubtful if they
really took notice of their being there, in the sense that they thought
anything about it. Life was a drudgery to them, in which it mattered
little whether others shared or not. They scarcely spoke to each other
during the meal, and not at all to Harvey or Tom Edwards.
Presently there stepped out of the galley an uncouth, slovenly appearing
man, who might have passed as a smaller edition of Captain Hamilton
Haley, by his features. He was, in fact, of the same name, Haley, and
there was some relationship of a remote degree between them, which
accounted for his employment aboard the vessel. He was not so stout as
his kinsman, however, and more active in his movements.
Whatever may have been the latent abilities of Mr. George Haley in the
art of cooking, they were not in evidence, nor required aboard the
bug-eye. Jack Harvey and Tom Edwards were now to behold the evidence of
that fact.
The cook bore in his hands a greasy wooden box, that had once held smoked
fish, and set it down on the table. Just what its contents consisted of
was not at first apparent to Harvey. When, however, the two sailors
reached over with their forks, speared junks of something from the box
and conveyed them to their plates, Harvey followed their example.
He looked at the food for a moment before he made out what it was. It
proved to be dough, kneaded and mixed with water, and a mild flavouring
of molasses, and fried in lard. Harvey gazed at the mess in dismay. If it
should prove to taste as bad as it looked, it must needs be hard fare.
But he observed that the sailors made away with it hungrily; so he cut
off a piece and tasted it. It was, indeed, wretched stuff, greasy and
unpalatable. There was nothing else of food forthcoming, however, and he
managed to swallow a few more mouthfuls.
The cook came to his aid in slight measure. He reappeared, bringing a
pail of steaming, black liquid, the odour of which bore some slight
resemblance to coffee. It was what passed for coffee aboard the bug-eye,
a sorry composition of water boiled with several spoonfuls of an essence
of coffee—the flavour of which one might further disguise, if he chose,
with a spoonful of black molasses from a tin can set out by the cook.
Harvey filled his cup with alacrity, hoping to wash down the mess of
fried bread with the hot coffee. He made a wry face after one swallow,
and looked with dismay at his companion in misery.
“It’s awful,” he said, “but it’s hot. You better drink some of it. It
will warm you up.”
Tom Edwards put out a shaky hand and conveyed a cup of the stuff to his
lips. He groaned as he took a swallow, and set the cup down.
“Beastly!” he exclaimed; and added, “I never did like coffee without
cream, anyway.”
Harvey laughed, in spite of his own disgust. “The cream hasn’t come
aboard yet, I guess,” he said. “But you drink that down quick. You need
it.”
Like one obeying an older person, instead of a younger, Tom Edwards did
as Harvey urged. He drained the cup at a draught. Then he staggered to
his feet again.
“I can’t eat that mess,” he said. “Oh, but I’m feeling sick. I think I’ll
go out on deck. It’s cold out there, though. I don’t know what to do.”
He was not long in doubt, however; for, as Harvey emerged on deck, the
mate approached.
“You tell that Mister Edwards,” he said, “he can jes’ lie down on one of
them parlour sofas in the fo’-castle till we gets across to Hoopers. Then
we’ll need him.”
Harvey did the errand, and the unhappy Tom Edwards made his way forward
once more, and threw himself down in the hard bunk, pale and ill. Harvey
returned on deck. The morning was clear, and not cold for November, but
the wind sent a chill through his warm sweater, and he beat himself with
his arms, to warm up.
“Didn’t get you’self any slickers, did you, ’fore you came aboard?”
inquired the mate.
“No, sir,” replied Harvey, remembering how the man had cautioned him to
address him; “I didn’t have a chance. They sailed off with me in the
night.”
The mate grinned. “That was sure enough too bad,” he said, mockingly.
“Well, you see the old man ’bout that. He sells ’em very cheap, and a
sight better than they have ashore in Baltimore. Awful advantage they
take of poor sailors there. Mr. Haley, he’ll fit you out, I reckon.”
They stepped aft, and the mate made known their errand.
Haley nodded. “He’ll need ’em sooner or later,” he assented. “May as well
have ’em now, as any time. Take the wheel.”
The mate assumed the captain’s seat on the wheel box, and Captain Haley
nodded to Harvey to follow him below. He fumbled about in a dark locker
and finally drew forth two garments—the trousers and jacket of an
oil-skin suit. They were black and frayed with previous wear, their
original hue of yellow being discoloured by smears and hard usage.
“There,” said Haley, holding up the slickers approvingly, “there’s a suit
as has been worn once or twice, but isn’t hurt any. As good as new, and
got the stiffness out of it. Cost you seven dollars to get that suit new
in Baltimore. You’ll get it for five, and lucky you didn’t buy any
ashore. There’s a tarpaulin, too, that you can have for a dollar. I
oughtn’t to let ’em go so cheap.”
Harvey hardly knew whether to be angry or amused. He had not shipped for
the money to be earned, to be sure, and the absurd prices for the almost
worthless stuff excited his derision. But the gross injustice of the
bargain made him indignant, too. He had bought oil-skins for himself,
before, and knew that a good suit, new, could be had for about three
dollars and a half, and a new tarpaulin for seventy-five cents. But he
realized that protest would be of no avail. So he assented.
“There’s a new pair of rubber boots, too,” continued Haley, producing a
pair that were, indeed, much nearer new than the oil-skins. “Those will
cost you five dollars. They’re extra reinforced; not much like that
slop-shop stuff.”
The boots thereupon became Harvey’s property; likewise a thin and
threadbare old bed quilt, for the bunk in the forecastle, at an equally
extortionate price. Then a similar equipment was provided for Harvey’s
friend, Tom Edwards, the captain assuring Harvey that they would surely
fit Edwards, and he could take them forward to him.
Suddenly the captain paused and looked at Harvey shrewdly, out of his
cold gray eyes.
“Of course I provide all this for a man, in advance of his wages,” he
said, “when he comes aboard, like the most of ’em, without a cent; but
when he has some money, he has to pay. Suppose he gets drowned—it’s all
dead loss to me. You got any money?”
Harvey thanked his stars for Tom Edwards’s precaution.
“I’ve got some,” he said, and began to feel in his pockets, as though he
were uncertain just how much he did have. “Here’s five dollars—and let’s
see, oh, yes, I’ve got some loose change, sixty-three cents.” He brought
forth the bill and the coins. Haley pounced on the money greedily. He
eyed Harvey with some suspicion, however.
“Turn your pockets out,” he said. “I can’t afford to take chances. Let’s
see if you’ve been holding back any.”
Harvey did as he was ordered.
“All right,” muttered Haley. But he was clearly disappointed.
“Can that fellow, Edwards, pay?” he asked.
“He told me he hadn’t a cent,” answered Harvey, promptly. “He was robbed
after they got him drugged.”
Haley’s face reddened angrily.
“He wasn’t drugged—nor robbed, either,” he cried. “Don’t you go talking
like that, or you’ll get into trouble. Leastwise, I don’t know nothin’
about it. If he was fixed with drugs, it was afore he came into my hands.
I won’t stand for anything like that. Get out, now, and take that stuff
for’ard.”
Harvey went forward, carrying his enforced purchases. An unpleasant sight
confronted him as he neared the forecastle.
The two men that had been brought aboard the bug-eye, stupefied, had been
dragged out on deck, where they lay, blinking and dazed, but evidently
coming once more to their senses. The mate gave an order to one of the
sailors. The latter caught up a canvas bucket, to which there was
attached a rope, threw it over the side and drew it back on deck filled
with water.
“Let’s have that,” said the mate.
He snatched it from the sailor’s hand, swung it quickly, and dashed the
contents full in the face of one of the prostrate men. The fellow gasped
for breath, as the icy water choked and stung him; he half struggled to
his feet, opening his eyes wide and gazing about him with amazement. He
had hardly come to a vague appreciation of where he was, putting his
hands to his eyes and rubbing them, to free them of the salt water,
before he received a second bucket-full in the face. He cried out in
fright and, spurred on by that and the shock of the cold water, got upon
his feet and stood, trembling and shivering. Jim Adams laughed with
pleasure at the success of his treatment.
“Awful bad stuff they give ’em in Baltimore, sometimes,” he said,
chuckling, as though it were a huge joke; “but this fetches ’em out of it
just like doctor’s medicine. You got ’nuff, I reckon. Now you trot ’long
down into the cabin, and get some of that nice coffee, an’ you’ll feel
pretty spry soon.”
The fellow shambled away, led by one of the crew.
Jack Harvey, his blood boiling at the inhumanity of it, saw Jim Adams’s
“treatment” applied with much the same success to the other helpless
prisoner; and this man, too, soon went the way of the other, for such
comfort and stimulus as the cabin and coffee afforded. Harvey deposited
his load of clothing in the forecastle, and returned to the deck.
In the course of some seven miles of sailing, as Harvey reckoned it, they
approached a small island which he heard called out as Barren island.
Still farther to the eastward of this, there lay a narrow stretch of
land, some two or three miles long, lying lengthwise approximately north
and south. Off the shore of this, which bore the name of Upper Hooper
island, the dredging grounds now sought by the Brandt extended southward
for some ten miles, abreast of another island, known as Middle Hooper
island.
Preparations were at once begun to work the dredges; and Harvey watched
with anxious interest. Here was the real labour, that he had by this time
come to look forward to with dread. He recalled the utterance of the
dismal sailor aboard the schooner, “You breaks yer back at a bloody
winder;” and he saw a prospect now of the fulfilment of the man’s
description of the work.
In the mid-section of the bug-eye, on either side, there were set up what
looked not unlike two huge spools. Wound around each one of these was
fathom upon fathom of dredge line. Each spool rested in a frame that was
shaped something like a carpenter’s saw-horse, and, in the process of
winding, was revolved by means of a crank at either end, worked by men at
the handles. The frame was securely bolted to the deck at the four
supports.
Connected with each dredge line, by an iron chain, was the dredge. This
consisted, first, of four iron rods, coming to a point at the chain, and
spread out from that in the form of a piece of cheese cut wedge-shaped,
and rounded in a loop at the broad end. Fastened to this was a great mesh
of iron links, made like a purse, or bag, This metal bag was a capacious
affair, made to hold more than a bushel of oysters. There were two larger
iron links in the mesh, by which it could be hooked and lifted aboard,
when it had been wound up to the surface of the water.
There was a locking device on the end of the support, so that the spool
would hold, without unwinding, when the handles were released.
The huge spools were set up lengthwise of the vessel. On either side of
the craft were rollers; one of these was horizontal, to drag the dredge
aboard on; one was perpendicular, for the dredge-line to run free on, as
it was paid out, or drawn in, while the vessel was in motion.
Captain Haley, at the wheel, gave his orders sharply. The sailors and Jim
Adams, lifting the dredges, threw them overboard on either side, and the
work was begun. The bug-eye, with sheets started, took a zig-zag course,
laterally across the dredging ground.
Obeying orders, Harvey took his place at one of the handles of a winder;
one of the sailors at the other. Presently appeared Jim Adams, followed
by the disconsolate Tom Edwards. The latter, pale and sea-sick, seemed
scarcely able to walk, much less work; but the mate led him along to the
handle of the other winder. Tom Edwards was not without making one more
feeble attempt as resistance, however.
“See here,” he said, addressing Adams, “you’ve got no right to force me
to work here. I’m a business man, and I was brought down here by a trick,
drugged. You’ll pay dear for it. I warn you.”
Jim Adams grinned from ear to ear, his expansive mouth exhibiting a
shining row of white teeth. He put a big, bony hand on Tom Edwards’s
shoulder.
“Don’t you go worrying ’bout what I’ll get, mister,” he answered; and
there was a gleam of fire in his eyes as he spoke. “I reckon you might as
well know, first as last, that I don’t care where we get you fellows, nor
how we gets yer; nor I don’t care whether you come aboard drugged or
sober; nor whether you’ve got clothes on, nor nothin’ at all. All I cares
is that you’s so as you can turn at this ere windlass. That’s all there
is ’bout that. Now you jes’ take a-hold of that handle, and do’s you’re
told, or you’ll go overboard; and don’t you forget that.”
Tom Edwards was silent. He stood, hand upon the windlass, shivering.
“You’ll be warm ’nuff soon, I reckon,” was Jim Adams’s consolation.
They got the order to wind in, presently, and the men began to turn the
handles. It was hard work, sure enough. The huge iron bags, filled with
the oysters, torn from the reefs at the bed of the bay, were heavy of
themselves; and the strain of winding them in against the headway of the
bug-eye was no boys’ play.
Harvey and his companion at their winder were strong and active, and
presently the dredge was at the surface, whence it was seized and dragged
aboard. There it was emptied of its contents, a mass of shells, all
shapes and sizes. Then followed the work of “culling,” or sorting and
throwing overboard the oysters that were under two inches and a half
long, which the law did not allow to be kept and sold.
“You need a pair of mittens,” volunteered Harvey’s working comrade, as
Harvey started in to help, with bare hands. “You’ll get cut and have sore
hands, if you don’t,” he added. “The cap’n sells mittens.”
The mittens, at a price that would have made the most hardened
shop-keeper blush, were provided, and Harvey resumed work.
The seriousness of the situation had developed in earnest. It was
drudgery of the hardest and most bitter kind.
“Just wait till the month is up,” said Harvey, softly; “I’ll cut out of
this pretty quick. A sea experience, eh? Well, I’ve got enough of it in
the first half hour.”
Spurred on by the harsh commands of the mate, Tom Edwards managed to hold
out for perhaps three quarters of an hour. Then he collapsed entirely;
and, seeing that nothing more could be gotten out of him for the rest of
the day, the mate suffered him to drag himself off to the forecastle.
“But see that you’re out sharp and early on deck here to-morrow morning,”
said Jim Adams. “We don’t have folks livin’ high here for nothin’. You’ll
jes’ work your board and lodgin’, I reckon.”
Thus the day wore on, drearily. The exciting sea experience that Jack
Harvey had pictured to himself was not at present forthcoming; only a
monotonous winding at the windlass—hard and tiring work—and the culling
of the oysters, and stowing them below in the hold from time to time. He
was sick of it by mid-day; and, as the shades of twilight fell, he was
well nigh exhausted.
“And only to think of this for nearly four weeks more,” he groaned. “Next
time—oh, hang it! What’s the use of thinking of that? I’m in for it. I’ve
got to go through. But won’t I scoot when the month is up!”
Toward evening, they ran up under the lee of Barren island, in what the
mate said was Tar Bay, and anchored for the night. Almost too wearied to
eat, too wearied to listen to the commiseration of Tom Edwards, who lay
groaning in his bunk, Jack Harvey tumbled in with his clothes on, and was
asleep as soon as he had stretched himself out.
CHAPTER VII
DREDGING FLEET TACTICS
Jack Harvey was a strong, muscular youth, toughened and enured to rough
weather, and even hardship, by reason of summers spent in yachting and
his spare time in winter divided between open air sports and work in the
school gymnasium. But the steady, laborious work of the first day at
dredging had brought into action muscles comparatively little used
before, and moreover overtaxed them. So, when Harvey awoke, the following
morning, and rolled out of his bunk, he felt twinges of pain go through
him. His muscles were stiffened, and he ached from ankles to shoulders.
He awoke Tom Edwards, knowing that if he did not, the mate soon would,
and in rougher fashion. The companionship in misfortune, that had thus
thrown the boy and the man intimately together, made the difference in
their ages seem less, and their friendship like that of long standing. So
it was the natural thing, and instinctive, for Harvey to address the
other familiarly.
“Wake up, Tom,” he said, shaking him gently; “it’s time to get up.”
Tom Edwards opened his eyes, looked into the face of his new friend and
groaned.
“Oh, I can’t,” he murmured. “I just can’t get up. I’m done for. I’ll
never get out of this alive. I’m going to die. Jack, old fellow, you tell
them what happened to me, if I never get ashore again. You’ll come
through, but I can’t.”
Harvey looked at the sorry figure, compassionately.
“It’s rough on you,” he said, “because you’re soft and not used to
exercise. But don’t you go getting discouraged this way. You’re not going
to die—not by a good deal. You’re just sea-sick; and every one feels like
dying when they get that way. You’ve just got to get out, because Adams
will make you. So you better start in. Come on; we’ll get some of that
beautiful coffee and that other stuff, and you’ll feel better.”
By much urging, Harvey induced his companion to arise, and they went on
deck.
It was a fine, clear morning, and the sight that met their eyes was
really a pretty one. In the waters of Tar Bay were scores of craft
belonging to the oyster fleet. They were for the most part lying at
anchor, now, with smoke curling up in friendly fashion from their little
iron stove funnels. There were vessels of many sorts and sizes; a few
large schooners, of the dredging class, bulky of build and homely;
punjies, broader of bow and sharper and deeper aft, giving them quickness
in tacking across the oyster reefs; bug-eyes, with their sharp prows,
bearing some fancied resemblance, by reason of the hawse-holes on either
bow, to a bug’s eye, or a buck’s eye—known also in some waters as
“buck-eyes”—clean-lined craft, sharp at either end; also little saucy
skip-jacks, and the famous craft of the Chesapeake, the canoes.
These latter, known also as tonging-boats, were remarkably narrow craft,
made of plank, about four feet across the gunwales and averaging about
twenty feet long. Some of them were already under weigh, the larger ones
carrying two triangular sails and a jib. It seemed to Harvey as though
the sail they bore up under must inevitably capsize them; but they sailed
fast and stiff.
A few of these craft were already engaged in tonging for oysters, in a
strip of the bay just south of Barren Island, where the water shoaled to
a depth of only one fathom. The two men aboard were alternately raising
and lowering, by means of a small crank, a pair of oyster tongs, the jaws
of which closed mechanically with the strain upon the rope to which it
was attached.
To the southward, other vessels were beginning to come in upon the
dredging grounds, until it seemed as though all of Maryland’s small craft
must be engaged in the business of oyster fishing.
With an eye to the present usefulness of his men, more than from any
compassion upon their condition, Captain Hamilton Haley had ordered a
better breakfast to be served. There was fried bacon, and a broth of some
sort; and the coffee seemed a bit stronger and more satisfying. Harvey
urged his comrade to eat; and Tom Edwards, who had rallied a little from
his sea-sickness, with the vessel now steady under him, in the quiet
water, managed to make a fair breakfast.
They made sail, shortly, and stood to the southward, following the line
of the island shores, but at some distance off the land. The hard,
monotonous labour of working the dredges began once more. Jack Harvey,
lame and stiff in his joints, found it more laborious than before.
Tom Edwards, somewhat steadier than on the previous day, but in no fit
condition to work, was forced to the task. He made a most extraordinary,
and, indeed, ludicrous figure—like a scarecrow decked out in an unusually
good suit of clothes. He had no overcoat left him, but had sought relief
from the weather by the purchase of an extra woollen undershirt from
Captain Haley’s second-hand wardrobe. His appearance was, therefore,
strikingly out of keeping with his surroundings.
In him one would have beheld a tall, light complexioned man; with blond
moustache, that had once been trimly cut and slightly curled; clad in his
black suit, with cut-away coat; his one linen shirt sadly in need of
starching, but worn for whatever warmth it would give; even his one
crumbled linen collar worn for similar purpose; and, with this, a bulky
pair of woollen mittens, to protect his hands that were as yet unused to
manual labour.
Watching him, as he toiled at the opposite winch, Harvey could not
restrain himself, once, from bursting into laughter; but, the next
moment, the pale face, with its expression of distress, turned his
laughter into pity. It was certainly no joke for poor Tom Edwards.
Mate Adams brought on the other two recruits, after a time, and they took
their places at the winders. They were not strong enough to work
continuously, however, and the two and Tom Edwards “spelled” one another
by turns.
The wind fell away for an hour about noon, and there was a respite for
all, save for the culling of the oysters that had been taken aboard; and
Jack Harvey found opportunity to speak with the two newcomers.
Theirs was the old story—only too familiar to the history of the dredging
fleet.
“My name is Wallace Brooks,” said one of them, a thick-set, good-natured
looking youth of about twenty years. “I come from up Haverstraw way, on
the Hudson river—and I thought I was used to hard work, for I’ve worked
in the brick-yards there some; but that’s just play compared to this.
“Well, I went down to New York, to look for work, and I fell in with this
chap. His name’s Willard Thompson. He’s a New Yorker, and has knocked
around there all his life. I’m afraid he won’t stand much of this work
here. He was a clerk in a store, but always wanted to take a sea voyage.”
Willard Thompson, standing wearily by the forecastle, did not, indeed,
present a robust appearance, calculated to endure the hardships of a
winter on Chesapeake Bay. He was rather tall and thin and sallow, dressed
more flashily than his friend, Brooks, and was of a weaker type.
“We fell in with a man in South street, one day,” continued Brooks, “and
he told us all about what a fine place this bay was; how it was warm here
all winter, and oyster dredging the easiest work there is—‘nothing to do
but watch the boat sail, dragging a dredge after it,’ was the way he put
it. He didn’t say anything about this everlasting grind of winding at the
machines. Said the pay was twenty-five a month, and live like they do at
the Astor House.
“He fooled us, all right, and we signed with him in New York, and he sent
us down to Baltimore. They put us into a big boarding-house there, with a
lot of men. Well, we found out more what it was going to be like, and we
were going to back out and get away; but they were too smart for
us—drugged our coffee one night—and, well, you know the rest. We’ve waked
up at last. Whew, but’s tough! I wish I was back in the brick-yard, with
a mile of bricks to handle. Isn’t old Haley a pirate?”
They were ordered to work again, soon, and the conversation ended.
Working that afternoon with the sailor, Sam Black, at the winch, Harvey
got a further insight to the devious ways and the shrewdness of the
dredgers, of the type of Hamilton Haley.
There sailed up, after a time, a smaller bug-eye, which ran along for
some miles abreast of the Brandt, while the two captains exchanged
confidences.
“Ahoy, Bill,” called Haley; “what d’yer know?”
“The Old Man’s looking for you,” returned the other.
“What’s he want of me?”
“Wants to see your license.”
“Well, I’ve got it, all right.”
Haley glanced, as he spoke, at his license numbers, displayed on two of
the sails.
“Where is he now?”
“Down below Smith’s Island.”
“Has he boarded you?”
“Yes, looked us all over. We’re all clear.”
“Then,” continued Haley, “I’ll run alongside at sundown; where’ll you
be?”
“Just around the foot of the island.”
“What does he mean?” inquired Harvey. “Who’s the Old Man?”
“Oh, he means the captain of the police tub,” replied Sam Black,
grinning. “They’ll look us over, by and by, just to see if everything’s
straight. It’s one of the state’s oyster navy.”
Harvey’s heart gave a jump. Might not here be a chance for liberty? But,
the next moment, his hopes were dashed.
“Don’t you go reckoning on it, though, youngster,” continued Sam Black,
“for ’twon’t do you a bit of good. There’s no police as slick as Ham
Haley, nor the rest of his crowd. What’s the good of two old police
steamers and a few schooners in goodness knows how many hundred square
miles of bay, with hundreds of harbours to run to and hide, and islands
to dodge ’round, and a score of pirates like Haley to help each other
dodge? And any captain in the fleet willing to tell where the police tub
is?”
“I tell you, it ain’t often they catch a captain napping, no matter what
he’s done. Let ’em swear out a warrant, up in Baltimore, for a captain
that has been beating up his men. Well, I dunno how it does come, hardly;
but, all the same, the news gets down the bay and spreads all through the
fleet like a field of grass afire. Pshaw! By the time they gets him, that
cap’n has got half a new crew, and there isn’t a man aboard as saw the
beating done, except the cap’n and his mate; and if they’ve done any
beating up, you bet they’ve clean forgotten it.”
Harvey’s face looked blanker than before. “Then there isn’t much hope in
the law, no matter what happens,” he said.
“Haley and the rest of ’em have got the law,” responded Black. “Haley
showed that fellow, Edwards, the law. Don’t you get in the way of it.
That’s my advice.”
“All the captains alike?” asked Harvey.
“About a score or so of ’em are downright pirates,” replied Sam Black.
“They’re the kind I’ve fell in with, mostly. There’s good ones, too, I
suppose—or not so bad.”
For all the sailor said, Jack Harvey was not without some faint hope, as
the afternoon wore away and the bug-eye headed for the foot of lower
Hooper Island, that the expected visit of the police boat might afford
him and Tom Edwards the opportunity for escape. He gave the news to Tom
Edwards, at supper time, and that weary unfortunate beamed with renewed
hope.
“It’s our chance,” he said. “Won’t I fill that navy captain full of what
that brute Haley has done aboard here!”
They rounded the foot of Hooper Island, after a time, and anchored in a
bight of the north shore. Presently the craft that had hailed the Brandt
bore up; and, shortly after, still another. The two came alongside, with
their sails fluttering—but they did not let them run.
“There’s two for each of you for the night, and till I get an overhauling
from the Old Man,” called Haley to the captains of the other craft.
A moment later, Jack Harvey and Tom Edwards found themselves hustled from
the deck of the Brandt aboard one of the strange bug-eyes. Likewise, the
men, Thompson and Brooks, found themselves similarly transferred.
Forewarned, Harvey and his companion made neither inquiry nor protest.
They knew it would be of no avail. But one of the others had ventured to
know the reason.
“You jes’ please shut up, and ask no questions,” was the satisfaction
gained from Jim Adams.
The two strange craft made sail again, and stood to the southeast,
through Hooper Strait.
And so, when, next morning, Jack Harvey, looking from the deck of his new
prison, saw a small steamer go by, with the smoke pouring from its
funnel, he knew full well the significance of it; he realized the
opportunity for freedom that was so near, and yet beyond reach. He was no
coward, but a lump rose in his throat that half choked him. Tom Edwards
gazed, with eyes that were moistened.
That day, toward noon, a steamer lay alongside the Brandt; and a captain,
eying Haley with stern disapproval, said, “Oh, yes, you’ve got your
license, all right, Haley, but you’re short-handed as usual. I know—it’s
the same old story. Looking for men, and can’t get them. Now I know you
dredge with more, so you needn’t lie. I suspect it’s lucky for you that I
haven’t time to follow you up. But I warn you, there have been
complaints, and some day you’ll fetch up short, if you don’t treat your
men right.”
“And ain’t that just what I do?” demanded Haley, highly injured. “Don’t I
treat ’em better’n half the captains down the bay? Good grub and easy
work—why, they’re too fat to wind, half the time.”
The captain’s face relaxed into a smile that was half amusement, half
contempt.
“I just warn you; that’s all,” he repeated; and went aboard the steamer.
Haley watched his departure with a chuckle.
“Get her under weigh again, Jim,” he said. “We’ll pick up our crew.”
By noon, the Brandt had run in to the small harbour where the two
bug-eyes were waiting; and, that afternoon, Harvey and the others were
back at work, under the abuse of Jim Adams, hounded on by him, to make up
for lost time.
CHAPTER VIII
A NIGHT’S POACHING
The days that followed were bitter ones for dredging. There came in fog,
through which they drifted, slowly, while it wrapped them about like a
great, frosty blanket, chilling and numbing them. When the wind was
light, the fog would collect for a moment in the wrinkle at the top of a
sail; then, with a slat, the sail would fill out, sending down a shower
of icy water, drenching the crew at their work. But the mate drove them
on, with threats and the brandishing of a rope’s end.
To make matters worse, the yield of the reefs was disappointing. Bad luck
seemed to be with the Brandt; and, though it was the beginning of the
season, and they should have been getting a cargo rapidly, the day’s
clean-up was often less than twenty bushels; which brought a storm of
abuse from Haley, as though it were the fault of the men.
He took his chances with the law, for several days, and ran down into
Tangier Sound, hidden in the fog, on that part of its great extent where
dredging was forbidden, and only smaller craft with scrapers allowed. But
the Brandt went aground, late one afternoon, on a bar off a dreary marsh
that extended for miles—the most lonesome and forbidding place that
Harvey had seen in all his life.
They were half the night getting clear from here, having to wait for the
flood tide, and the Brandt springing a leak that kept them toiling at the
pump till they were well nigh exhausted. The upshot was, that, early one
morning, with the lifting of the fog, the Brandt, followed by the craft
that had taken Harvey and Tom Edwards aboard, stood off from the Eastern
shore, heading northwest for the mouth of the Patuxent.
To Jack Harvey and his friend, sick and weary of the life they were
leading, every new move, every change of ground, keyed them up to renewed
hope. They watched eagerly the distant shore toward which they were
pointing, and rejoiced, in some small degree, that they were going back
to where they had started from. It seemed as though there must be greater
opportunity for relief in that river, with its more friendly appearing
banks, than amid the wilderness of the marshy Eastern shore, to which
winter gave a touch of indescribable dreariness.
For a day or two, however, following their arrival at the entrance to the
river, there was little change from the life they had been leading, save
that the fog had been blown out to sea, and the bitter cold had abated.
They dredged southward from the lower entrance to the river, along an
inward sweep of the shore, returning to the river at night for anchorage.
Then there came a day, overcast but yet favourable, during all of which,
to Harvey’s surprise, they did no work, but lay at anchor in the river.
Also, the craft that had accompanied them likewise rested, alongside, and
the two captains visited and drank together in the cabin of the Brandt.
What was coming? Haley was not the man to lie idle to no purpose. There
was mystery in the air, and in the manner of the men and the mate. Once,
Jim Adams had looked in at the forecastle, where the crew had been
suffered to remain at ease, and said, grinning broadly, “Youse gentlemen
of leisure, ain’t you? Well, you get something to keep you busy bimeby.
So don’t none of you please go ashore.”
“Go ashore!” It was no joke to them. Harvey and Tom Edwards had gazed
longingly at the banks, with their houses here and there—a tantalizing
sight, so near and yet so hopelessly far away.
“What’s the matter? What’s up?” Harvey inquired once of Sam Black.
The other winked an eye, knowingly.
“I reckon the captain’s going to try to change the luck,” he said.
“There’s easy dredging up yonder, if you don’t get caught at it.”
“How’s that?” continued Harvey.
“Why, running the river, that’s what I guess,” replied the sailor. “It’s
jail, if the law gets you; but he’s done it before and got clear. Take it
easy while you can, that’s my advice. There’ll be no turning in to-night,
I reckon.”
Sam Black thereupon set the example, by stretching out in his bunk and
falling soundly to sleep.
“Well, all I can say,” exclaimed Tom Edwards to Harvey, “is that I hope
we get caught right quick and put into jail, or anywhere else out of this
infernal hole. I’d go to jail in a minute, if I could see Haley go, too.
Wouldn’t you?”
Harvey smiled. “I’d rather be outside the bars looking in at Haley,” he
answered.
Tom Edwards impulsively put out his hand.
“Shake on that!” he cried. “Jack, my boy, we’ll put him there yet. We’ll
sell him a line of goods some day, eh?”
The two shook hands with a will.
That evening they fared better than ordinarily aboard the Brandt. There
were pork scraps, fried crisp, with junks of the bread browned in the
fat, and potatoes; and plenty of the coffee. They made a hearty meal, and
went on deck, at the call, feeling better and stronger than for days.
The night was not clear, yet it was not foggy; the moon and stars were
nearly obscured by clouds. It was comparatively mild, too, and the wind
blowing from the East across the river did not chill them, as in the
preceding days. Opposite where they lay, the gleam of Drum Point
lighthouse shone upon the water; while, out to the Eastward, another, on
Cedar Point, twinkled, more obscured. An island of some considerable size
lay to the northwest, from which there came across the water the sound of
voices, and of dogs barking. There were sounds of life, too, from the
nearer shore, coming out from a lone farmhouse.
The captain of the other vessel came aboard presently, and he and Haley
stood together, earnestly conversing.
“She’s up just the other side of Spencer’s wharf, I tell you,” said the
strange captain, once. “We can hug the other shore and slip past.”
Harvey turned inquiringly to the sailor, Sam Black, with whom, somehow,
he had struck up an intimacy that was almost friendly, despite the man’s
evident contempt for the green hands.
“He means the old Folly, the police boat,” said the sailor, softly.
“She’s just a big schooner. She’s got no power in her. The Brandt can
beat her, on a pinch, I reckon.”
The captain returned to his vessel, shortly, and the order was given to
make sail. Harvey sprang to the halyards with a will. If it were a
poaching venture, it was not his fault—and the best that could happen for
him would be capture. The anchor was got aboard, and the Brandt ran
quickly across to the Eastern bank of the river followed by the other
vessel.
They passed close to Solomon’s Island and skirted as near the shores of
that and the land northward as they could go. The wind was almost
directly abeam, and they made fast way of it. Clearly, the course was as
plain as a man’s door-yard to Hamilton Haley; for he passed at times so
close to land, that it seemed, in the darkness, to be near enough for one
to jump ashore. Jim Adams, in the bow, kept sharp watch, however; and now
and again, rather than run the risk of calling out, he ran back to the
wheel and pointed ahead, where the water shoaled.
Just to the north of the wharf which they had termed Spencer’s, the river
made a bend, and a thin peak of land jutted out. They followed the
curving of the shore, peering across the water toward Spencer’s.
“There she lies,” said Adams, darting aft to where Haley stood. “Listen,
they’re getting up anchor.”
Hamilton Haley, after one quick glance, put the helm down and brought the
bug-eye up into the wind. The other bug-eye drew abreast. Haley pointed
in toward the schooner, barely discernible, and showing a light in its
rigging.
“They’re coming out,” he called softly.
The two vessels headed off again and went on, rounding the point and
running up the river. Haley, picking his course, with accuracy, gazed
astern again and again, with an anxious eye. Presently he uttered an
exclamation of anger. The schooner Folly had, indeed, put forth from its
mooring and, with all sail spread, was taking a diagonal course across
the river, following in the wake of the two poachers.
The shore of the river made a bend to the eastward, at this point,
however, and the river broadened to the width of something like a mile
and a half. So that, by following closely the inward curve of the shore,
instead of setting a straight course up stream, the two bug-eyes could
put the point of land between them and the schooner for a time. It would,
moreover, afford them proof, when the schooner should have passed the
point, whether or not they really were being followed. If the police boat
were merely proceeding on its patrol up river, it would not hug the
eastern bank, and might, indeed, go up on the other side.
The vessels were not left long in doubt, however; for, as the two
skippers peered back through the night, they discerned, after a time, the
schooner heading in north by east, having turned the point.
“Haul her a little closer by the wind, and give her a bit more
centre-board,” ordered Haley, noting with a keen eye the more northerly
slant of the wind, as they sailed. “It’s good for us; we can leave her,
if this holds. Curse the luck! There’s no dredging to-night, with her on
our heels—at least, there can’t but one of us work.”
The mate repeated the orders, and the bug-eye heeled a bit more as a flaw
struck her. She was flying fast, and Haley’s face relaxed into a smirk of
satisfaction, as he perceived the schooner was dropping somewhat more
astern.
For a distance of about four miles the chase proceeded, when the Brandt
suddenly swung into the wind again and waited a moment for its companion,
slightly less swift, to come up. There was a hurried conference, and then
the two went on again. The schooner, by this time, was only to be made
out with difficulty.
The result of the conference was soon apparent; for, as they neared a
point on the eastern bank, a broad creek opened up; and into this the
Brandt steered, leaving the other craft to go on up the river alone.
Proceeding only a little way within the confines of this creek, Haley
guided his vessel with consummate skill into one of its sheltering
harbours, ordered all sail dropped, and everything made snug. The bug-eye
was, indeed, completely hidden; with every appearance, moreover, of lying
by for the night, in case their course should be followed and, by any
chance, they were discovered.
Launching the small boat, Haley ordered Harvey and the sailor, Jeff, into
it. He took his seat in the stern at the steering-oar, and was rowed by
them cautiously toward the mouth of the creek, skirting close to the
bank, not to be seen. Again the thought of escape flashed through the
mind of Jack Harvey; but, perhaps with the same contingency in view,
Hamilton Haley drew from his pocket a revolver and laid it before him on
a thwart. If the hint were intended for Harvey, it was sufficient. He
resigned himself once more to the situation and to the duty before him.
It was soon evident that the manœuvre had deceived the Folly, and had
been successful. Through the darkness, it had not been perceived by the
pursuer that the quarry had separated and taken different courses.
Resting on their oars, at a word from Haley, the three watched. The
schooner, almost ghost-like in the shades of night, swept along past the
creek, following the other vessel, which showed only a faint white blurr
far ahead.
Hamilton Haley motioned for the two to turn back, while his small eyes
twinkled; and he said, smiling grimly, “She’s got the right name, sure.
The Folly, eh? Well, she won’t catch us, nor she won’t catch Bill. Come,
shake it up there with those oars! Ain’t yer learned to row yet?”
Within a half hour, the Brandt was stealing out of the mouth of the creek
and heading for the opposite shore. The river was broad here, but the
wind was free and they were soon across.
And now began the work for which they had come; for which they had risked
capture at the hands of the police boat; and for which they would now
risk the penalty of imprisonment, or, as it might appear, even death,
itself.
It was very dark, the density of the clouds increasing as the night wore
on; and the shore showed a vague, dark smear as they turned and went up
the river. But it was all clear to Hamilton Haley. Born in a little
settlement farther up the river, it was an open book to him by night or
day. There was not an eddy, a cross-current, a deepening or a shoaling of
all its waters for fifty miles that he could not have told you, offhand.
A blur on the landscape defined itself to his eye as with the clearness
of sunlight, bred of familiarity and long experience. He knew when to
stand in close to shore; where to make a détour to avoid the long wharves
that made out from the warehouses. He knew where seed oysters had been
planted, by the owners that planned to tong for them when they should
have grown to sufficient size. He knew when the beds had been planted,
and which to leave untouched, and which would afford fat dredging.
There were no long waits between the winding here, as in many of the
places down the bay. When the dredge went down, it was filled almost
instantly. It was wind in and wind again, and the oysters, big and small,
went into the hold almost as fast as they came aboard.
Harvey and his companions, drenched to the skin with perspiration, sore
and lame, toiled on, driven by the threats of Jim Adams. There was no
waiting for rest—only once in the night, when the cook brought out a pail
of coffee, to keep them up to their work.
There was a ruthless, brutal disregard of the rights and precautions of
the owners of the beds. Stakes and branches of brush, that had been
carefully stuck down to mark the boundaries of this and that planter,
were over-ridden and torn away. The Brandt was reaping a rich harvest,
dodging in and out from shore here and there, making up for the time lost
in the reefs off Hooper Island.
The hours passed, and a steamer, delayed by freight on its trip from
Baltimore, passed along up the river. To Harvey, toiling away at the
winch, in a sheltered sweep of the shore, this boat presented a strange
and mysterious picture. Its lights, gleaming through the mists and the
blackness, made a pretty spectacle. Its white wake looked like a scar on
the dusky bosom of the water. It seemed, with its life and noise aboard,
like a living thing.
A little way up the river, the steamboat drew in to a pier at the end of
a long wharf. Harvey saw the doors of the warehouse on the shore and of
the one on the pier open, and emit a glow of light from several lanterns;
and, through the mingled lights and shadows, figures passed vaguely to
and fro. Wagons rattled up along the country road, and the cries of the
negro stevedores added to the noise.
All work had been stopped aboard the Brandt, and Harvey stood and watched
the landing made by the steamer. The sounds told of business and of home
life; passengers going ashore; once, the voices of young folks in
laughter. Harvey gazed, with eyes that moistened.
Hamilton Haley, also, gazed, but with an earnestness of a different
nature. He had not meant to be here, at the passing of the steamer. He
had planned differently, but the steamer had been late and—well, the
dredging at that moment when he had heard the distant whistle had been
particularly fruitful, and he had waited and taken the chance. Now he
wondered if that one sweep of the steamer’s search-light, as it passed,
had found him out. Had he been espied by the watchful eye of the captain,
keen for river poachers? At all events, he would lose no time in getting
away from the place, once the steamer had gone.
The steamer went on its way, and Haley pointed his vessel up river after
it. A mile above, he resumed his unlawful dredging.
The captain of the river steamer, bound for the port of Benedict, some
fifty miles up from the mouth of the river, and already having lost much
time, had urged the engineer to force all speed between the landings. The
steamer’s funnel belched forth clouds of black smoke and sparks, as the
craft churned its way noisily along. But the captain, eager as he was to
end his long run, had something else on his mind; and the search-light
now shot its shaft far ahead up river, now darted to the left or right,
lighting up the banks and hidden places, so that objects along shore
seemed to leap forth of a sudden as if surprised into life.
Then, as they sailed, and the search-light pointed a long ray far up the
river, like a giant finger, the glare fell on a white object flitting
down stream like the ghost of a vessel. The rays of the light were thrown
full upon it, and the schooner Folly was revealed, returning from its
unsuccessful pursuit of the poacher.
A single bell jingled in the engine-room, and the steamer slowed down;
then, as the schooner came close, another bell, and the steamer lay
motionless in the river.
The captain leaned far out of the pilot-house, as the schooner came
within hailing distance.
“There’s a fellow poaching just below Forrest’s,” he called. “I saw him
with the light, as I came up. I’m sure he was dredging. You may pick him
up on the way down. I couldn’t see who he was, though.”
The captain of the Folly uttered an exclamation of disgust.
“It’s one of the two I chased, coming up, I guess,” he replied. “That’s
the way they work it. The other fellow dodged me, too, up the river here,
somewhere. I suppose he’s turned and gone down again by this time. I tell
you we can’t do much with one vessel against that crowd. Much obliged,
captain; I’ll have an eye out going down.”
Some time after midnight, the bug-eye Brandt, poaching near the mouth of
a small creek, was doing great harvesting. It was easy work; for the
oysters, planted with care, came up clean and fat, and free from waste
shells. The crew sweated at the winders. Jim Adams, alternating between
one and the other winch, kept the tired men up to their work. Hamilton
Haley, losing somewhat of caution with the richness of the yield, and
assisting in the stowing away of the ill-gotten harvest, had relaxed a
little of his usual vigilance.
It was nearly fatal to him. Out of the blackness of the river bank, there
poured suddenly a thin stream of fire, and immediately another. A rifle
bullet passed so close to Haley’s head that for an instant it dazed him.
The bullet chipped a piece out of the main boom and went, zing, across
the river. The other bullet struck the hull of the bug-eye and bedded
itself in the oysters, near the deck. At the same time, a volley of
imprecations came from the thicket on shore, from the angry owners of the
oyster bed.
And now a strange coincidence added to the excitement and to the peril of
Haley and his craft. Almost immediately following the firing from shore,
there came another shot from the direction of up the river. Captain
Hamilton Haley, taken all by surprise, and giving one quick, frightened
glance to where the third shot had come from, beheld, to his
consternation, the vague outlines of the schooner Folly bearing down upon
him at full speed.
Haley was all things bad; but he had his merits as a sailor, and he had
the qualities of command that should have won him success in better
employment. Now he showed what he was made of. Darting across the deck,
he seized Jack Harvey by the shoulder, spun him around and sent him
flying toward the wheel.
“Grab that wheel,” he cried. “Keep her straight down stream.”
Harvey sprang aft.
“Jim,” cried Haley, in the next breath, “get the boys on to the sheets,
there—quick, for your life, or we’re good for doing time. Trim her! Trim
her! We’ve got to jump her, if we ever did. Curse that Folly!”
The next moment, Haley was among the crew with a bound, knocking them
like ten-pins away from the winders, and bidding them jump for the fore
and main sheets, if they valued their lives. Snatching a sheath-knife
from his belt, Haley darted for the nearest dredge-line. With an
exclamation of rage at the loss he was inflicting upon himself, he cut it
with a single slash, leaving the dredge behind in two fathoms of water.
In a moment, he was at the other side. Another stroke of the keen knife
and the second dredge-line was severed.
As the bug-eye, cleared of the weight of the heavy dredges, gathered
headway, the sheets were hauled in, under the command and with the
assistance of the mate. The craft heeled to the breeze and sped away.
And for all this, but for the loyalty of Jack Harvey toward a friend,
Captain Hamilton Haley would have lost his vessel and his freedom. A bit
of heroism had been done that he knew naught of—never would know.
When Tom Edwards, in the first excitement, had seen his friend, Harvey,
dart aft, he had slipped away in the confusion, and followed. With him,
the idea ever was that, come what would, they should stick together—and
so they had sworn. Jack Harvey found Tom Edwards by his side, as he
sprang to the wheel and, obeying orders, held the vessel on its course
down the river.
The next instant, the thought of freedom flashed again into Harvey’s
mind.
“Tom,” he said, “strip off that slicker as quick as ever you can. I’m
ready. I’ll swing her into the wind when you say the word. Then we’ll
jump and swim for it. That’s the Folly. She’ll pick us up, and catch
Haley, too. We’ve got to jump the second I swing her, though, or Haley’ll
shoot us both. We’ve got only a minute. Say when you’re ready.”
Tom Edwards, the vision of freedom opening before his eyes in one brief
instant, gave a groan of dismay and disappointment.
“I can’t do it, Jack, old boy,” he said. “I can’t swim ten strokes
without my heart hammering like a threshing-machine. You go, and I’ll
stay. You can tell them what’s doing aboard here, and they’ll hunt Haley
down and get me.”
Harvey shook his head, while he ground his teeth with chagrin.
“No, no,” he said. “I won’t go, if you can’t. They’d kill you if I got
away, and they didn’t get caught. We’ll try it another time. Get out of
here, forward, now, quick. If Haley catches you up here, you’ll get
hurt.”
Jack Harvey stood resolutely at the wheel, and held the bug-eye to her
course. He saw, with some hope, the Folly creep up through the night upon
the fleeing Brandt. He heard the commands for them to come to, and
surrender. Bullets whizzed past him, from the shore and from the pursuing
schooner. They went through the canvas of the bug-eye and did no other
harm.
He saw, next, with a great sinking of heart, the fast craft upon whose
deck he stood gather headway rapidly and eat its way through the night,
gaining on its pursuer. The wind came sharp in flaws from the bank. The
Brandt heeled over till the deck was awash. Hamilton Haley, springing to
the wheel and displacing Harvey, uttered a cry of exultation.
“Get along for’ard; you’ve done well, boy,” was his way of bestowing
praise.
The Folly fell astern, and the chase was lost.
That was a night never to be forgotten by Jack Harvey; the sudden flush
of hope; its swift vanishing, amid the thin fire of rifles; the cries of
disappointed men, and the quick flaws of wind upon the sails. There was a
thrill—even if one laden with disappointed hopes—in the rapid flight of
the poacher, Brandt, and its wild course down the river, past the black,
shadowy shores.
Dazed and disheartened, however, with the passing of the hours, Jack
Harvey and his comrade, by whom he had stuck manfully, turned in, at the
word, and laid their weary bodies down in the forecastle bunks. The
bug-eye, laden with its spoils, sailed away out of the Patuxent, heading
across the bay for the shelter of the Eastern Maryland shore.
Doomed to disappointment, then. Doomed to disappointment even more
bitter, on a day soon succeeding.
The Brandt was in luck at last. A few days of dredging along Hoopers,
and, by the early part of December, she was fully laden. There were a
thousand and more bushels of good oysters in her hold. The time for the
ending of the first trip was nigh.
Jack Harvey slapped his friend, Edwards, on the shoulder.
“We’ve stuck it out, old chap,” he said, “and we’re alive to tell the
tale, in spite of Haley. We’ll get back inside of the month. There’s one
thing that that scoundrel, Jenkins, didn’t lie about. Hooray! Why, you’re
a better man than when you came aboard, Tom Edwards. You’re stronger, if
we have had awful grub.”
“All the same, I’ll make it hot for old Haley, when I get ashore,”
exclaimed Tom Edwards. “I’ll have the law on him for this.”
Thus they talked and planned, but said naught to the others, lest word of
their contemplated revenge should get, by chance, to Haley’s ears. And
then, one evening, another bug-eye hove in sight as they lay at anchor,
and came alongside.
“All hands out, to unload,” called Haley.
“Look alive here,” repeated Jim Adams; “’spects we’ve got an all night
job before us.”
Taken by surprise, Harvey and Tom Edwards obeyed the summons. The work
they were next called upon to do dumbfounded and appalled them. With a
tackle and fall attached to the mast, the work of unloading the cargo of
the Brandt and transferring it to the hold of the other vessel was begun.
“What does this mean? What are they going to do? Aren’t we going up to
Baltimore with our load?” inquired Harvey, falteringly, of Sam Black.
“Why, you fool, of course not,” was the reply. “Did you think you were
going to quit so soon as this? Think old man Haley lets a man go when he
once gets him, with men so hard to catch? Didn’t you know you were booked
for all winter? Baltimore, eh? Well, when you see Baltimore, my boy, it
will be when the Brandt knocks off for the season. Don’t worry, though,
you’ll come through. You can stand it.”
Jack Harvey and Tom Edwards, gazing into each other’s faces with the
blankness of despair, shook hands silently. They could not speak.
CHAPTER IX
FACES THROUGH THE TELESCOPE
It was after school hours in the little city of Benton, on a day near the
middle of December, and a party of youths, with skates under their arms,
were walking toward the bank of Mill stream. A huge fire, of pieces of
logs and brush-wood, blazed cheerily by the shore, and welcomed their
approach. The frozen surface of the stream, swept clean by high winds of
previous days, shone like polished ebony, and stretched away to the
northward for a mile before it became lost to view amid high banks, on
its winding course.
The sun, a great red ball, nearing the western horizon, sent a
rose-tinged pathway across the black ice from shore to shore. A score or
more of skaters, some engaged in cutting fancy figures, others swinging
along on the outward roll, others having an impromptu race, made the air
ring with their shouts of hearty enjoyment.
Seated on a log, by the fire, one of the party of boys addressed his
nearest comrade.
“Say, Henry Burns,” he asked, “have you heard anything from Harvey, yet?”
Henry Burns, a rather slight but trimly built and active youth,
apparently a year or two younger than the boy who had spoken, paused in
the adjustment of the clamp of his skate, and looked puzzled.
“No,” he answered, “and, what’s more, I don’t expect to, now. Jack Harvey
rather take a licking than write a letter, anyway. And, another thing,
he’s having too much fun, I suppose, to stop to write.”
“Still, it’s queer,” he continued. “I didn’t think he’d go off the way he
did. He told me he wouldn’t go, no matter how much his folks urged him.
Said he knew he’d have more fun here with us this winter than poking
’round Europe with his father and mother; said his mother wouldn’t let
him wear his sweater in art galleries and in stores—rather skate, and
fish through the ice, than dress up and go around looking at things in
shop windows and museums.”
“Well, they must have got him to go, after all,” said the first boy.
“Too bad,” commented Henry Burns, standing up on his skates. “He’s
missing lots of fun. It scared my aunt, too, for a few days. She thought
he might have got lost. Just as though Jack couldn’t take care of
himself. But she remembered they said if he didn’t come back she could
know he’d gone on the steamer to Europe. So she’s feeling all right now.
I’d like to know what they offered Jack, to get him to go, though.”
Henry Burns’s companion, George Warren, having adjusted his skates, arose
and glided down the bank to the ice.
“Come on, Arthur,” he said, calling to a brother, a year or two younger,
who was still lingering by the fire; “we’ll give Henry a race up to the
bend. He thinks he knows how to skate.”
The brothers started off, with Henry Burns soon in swift pursuit; the
three went rapidly up the stream, the keen edges of their skates cutting
the glare ice with a crisp, grinding hum. Henry Burns caught the two by
the time they had gone half a mile, for he was a youth whose wiry muscles
seemed never to tire; and the three linked arms and went on together.
Presently a still younger boy came hurrying down to the shore, in a state
of activity that had left him short of breath. He was smaller, but
heavier of build than the others who had gone before, with a plumpness of
cheeks that told of evident enjoyment of good dinners; also, his was a
temperament, one would have guessed, that was more inclined to ease than
to any great exertion. But now he fastened on his skates hastily and
joined the party of skaters in mid-stream.
“Seen George and Arthur?” he inquired of a group of boys.
“Gone up-stream with Henry Burns,” was the reply.
The boy started off, bending forward and making his best time. Some
fifteen minutes later, the three, returning, saw him coming.
“There’s Joe,” said George Warren. “Looks as though he was skating for a
dinner. He’ll get thin if he doesn’t take care. Let’s give him a
surprise.”
The three quickly hid themselves behind some alder bushes and cedars that
fringed the bank. Young Joe Warren came on, unconscious of their
presence. He realized it presently as he came abreast. A snow-ball,
thrown with accuracy by Henry Burns, neatly lifted his cap from his head;
one from George Warren attached itself in fragments to his plump neck;
the third smashed against his shoulder. The combined effect of which,
with the surprise, so disturbed the equilibrium of the skater that his
feet suddenly flew out from under him, and he came down with a thump,
seated on the ice, and slid along in a sitting posture for nearly a rod.
“Too bad, poor old Joey,” said George Warren, sympathetically, gliding
out to his brother’s assistance; “somebody threw a snow-ball and hit you,
I guess. Get up on your feet and we’ll all go after him.”
Young Joe, angry at first, was not wholly unmindful of the humour of the
situation, as viewed from the position of the group that now tenderly
offered their assistance. Moreover, he had had a taste of this sort of
thing before.
“That’s all right,” he said, “never you mind about helping me up. I don’t
need any help. I’ll pay that fellow off some other time.” He reached a
hand in his coat pocket and drew forth an envelope, eagerly.
“You don’t deserve this, George,” he said, “and like as not you wouldn’t
get it until you got home, if I didn’t want to see what’s in it. Gee!
fellows, what do you think? It’s a letter from Jack Harvey. Oh, I haven’t
read it, George. It’s for you. But I know it’s from Jack, because it’s
from Baltimore. That’s the post-mark.”
“Baltimore!” exclaimed Henry Burns. “Then there’s something the matter.
Why, he ought to have left Baltimore weeks ago. Whew! You don’t suppose
he’s got hurt, after all?”
“And say,” he added, wonderingly, “what’s he writing to you for? Why
didn’t he write to me or my aunt? Perhaps someone is writing for him.”
The boys, in a high state of excitement, gathered close to George Warren
while he tore open the envelope, which was, sure enough, stamped with the
Baltimore post-mark, and was addressed in a bold, plain hand to George
Warren.
George Warren gave a whistle of surprise the next moment; Henry Burns, an
exclamation of mingled relief and disappointment.
“It isn’t from Jack, nor about him,” they cried almost in the same
breath. And George Warren added, buoyantly, “Say, it’s all right.
Fellows, Cousin Ed wants us to come down for the holidays and visit him.
My! But I’m glad there’s nothing the matter with Jack. Here’s what Ed
says:
“Dear Cousin George:—Isn’t it about time you youngsters made me that
visit you’ve been promising? You’ve never been here, and you ought to
see the place, though it isn’t what it used to be in the old days. This
isn’t just the time to see the country at its best, of course, but it’s
a dull time with me, and I won’t have anything to do but give you
youngsters a good time.
“I’m all alone for the next two months, except Old Mammy Stevens to
keep house for me. She can cook a turkey so it will just jump right
down your throat; and corn fritters, the way she fries ’em, just melt
in your mouth—”
Young Joe interrupted with a squeal of approval. “Let’s go, George,” he
exclaimed.
“Shut up! Joe, and let George go on,” admonished his brother, Arthur.
George Warren continued:
“We’ve got plenty of room for you and Arthur, and if Joe should come,
why he could sleep out in the stable with the cattle—”
A howl of indignation from Young Joe.
“Let’s see,” he cried, reaching for the letter. “He doesn’t say any such
thing, I’ll bet.”
“Well, perhaps not,” admitted George Warren. “Here’s what it is.” He
began again:
“There’s plenty of room in the old house for you three, and anybody
else you’ve a mind to bring. I’ll be glad to see any friend of yours.
We’ll shoot some rabbits and have a high old Christmas. Make Uncle
George let you chaps all come for the winter vacation. I’ll look out
for you. I’m going back home from the city to-morrow.
“Affectionately your cousin,
“Edward Warren,
“Address, Millstone Landing,
“St. Mary County, Maryland.”
“Whee!” yelled Young Joe. “I’m going to put for home, and ask father.
Say, I wonder what kind of syrup they have on those corn fritters.”
“Tobacco syrup,” replied George Warren, solemnly. “That’s what they raise
on all the farms down there. It’s awful bitter, too, at first, but you
get used to it, so they say.”
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” said Joe. “It’s corn syrup; that’s
what it is. I want to go, don’t you?”
“Well, perhaps so,” replied George Warren. And, turning to his companion,
asked, “What do you say, Henry?”
“Why, I’m not invited,” replied Henry Burns.
“Oh, yes, you are, isn’t he, fellows? Ed said bring anybody we wanted.
Well, we want you.”
The brothers chimed in, heartily.
“Why, I’d like to go, first rate, if I can,” said Henry Burns.
“Then we’ll do it,” said George Warren—“that is, if the folks will let
us. You’ll like Ed. He’s older than we are—about twenty; but he likes fun
as much as we do. It’s a big old farm house, with open fire-places and
things. We’ll make the place hum. Come on, let’s go home.”
There was little peace in the Warren household that night until the
matter had been duly discussed in all its phases, and the coveted
permission granted; whereupon, there was a departure in force for the
home of Miss Matilda Burns. There, however, the resistance was stronger.
Henry Burns’s aunt did not yield consent without reluctance nor without a
struggle. There was Jack Harvey, she said, who went to Baltimore and
never came back. Goodness knew where he might be. She didn’t believe in
boys going off without someone to look after them.
There was, in reply, positive assurance from all hands that Jack Harvey
was all right and having the finest time of his life, travelling about
Europe.
It was an unequal contest, and the opposition was finally overcome.
“See that you don’t run off to Europe—or anywhere else, though, except to
Mr. Warren’s,” Miss Matilda added, smiling. “And, Henry, you’ve got to
write me twice a week.”
Henry Burns groaned, but promised.
“She didn’t say how much to write,” he commented, inwardly, with a vision
of a sheet of paper bearing the words, “Dear Aunt, I’m all right,” in his
mind.
With which successful turn of affairs, the four let out such a series of
shrieks of triumph that poor Miss Matilda Burns nearly fell out of her
chair.
Four days later, there arrived in Baltimore four smiling youths, vastly
elated at their freedom; vastly puffed up with the importance of being
travellers at large, without a guardian.
It was a sharp, crisp winter morning, of the 15th of December, to be
precise; the old river boat of the Patuxent line lay in its berth at
Light street, making its own hearty breakfast off soft coal, and pouring
out clouds of black smoke from its funnel, with vigour and apparent
satisfaction. The cabins were warming up, and the last of a huge pile of
freight was being stowed away below. The four boys, shortly before half
past six—the early hour of departure—made their way aboard.
There was a jingling of bells, the lines were cast off, the gang-planks
drawn in, and the steamer was on its way down Chesapeake Bay.
The day passed pleasantly, for it was all new to them, and the bay, with
its peculiar craft, presented many attractions. They were hungry as
tigers, too, as they seated themselves at the cabin table for dinner.
“You’ve got the wrong side of the cabin, young gentlemen,” said the
coloured waiter, politely. “That other side’s the one for white folks.”
They changed places, accordingly.
“Wonder what would happen to us, if we sat over there?” remarked Arthur
Warren.
“Perhaps we’d turn black,” said Henry Burns.
“Well, Joe always eats till he’s black in the face when he gets a good
dinner,” said George Warren.
Young Joe sniffed, contemptuously.
After dinner they strolled about the boat. There were not a great number
of passengers aboard, and the four kept their own company. The only
exception for the afternoon was in the case of a young man, who accosted
the party as they happened to pause for a moment in front of the open
door of his state-room. He was a youth of about nineteen years, but with
the manner of a man of the world. He sat, with his feet up on the foot of
the bed, smoking a cigar and filling the room with clouds of smoke. A
derby hat was perched rakishly on the back of his head. His dress was
smart in appearance, though not new, and his coat thrown back revealed a
waist-coat of brilliant hue and flaring design.
“How’d do,” he said, removing his cigar, and waving a hand rather
patronizingly to them. “Step in. Strangers down this way, I see. Have a
smoke?”
He motioned to a table on which there was a box of the cigars.
“No, thanks,” replied George Warren. “Don’t smoke.”
They would have passed on, but the young man was not to be wholly denied.
He had a free and easy flow of conversation, which would not be stopped
for the moment, and which culminated in the offer—indicating his design
from the first—of a game of cards with them, which, he assured them,
should not cost them but little, if anything, with the alluring
alternative that they might be fortunate enough to win his money.
“Say,” interrupted Henry Burns at this point, “why don’t you fix your
neck-tie?”
The youth, surprised at the interruption, paused and laid down his cigar
on the edge of the table. He put both hands to the tie, a gaudy one tied
sailor fashion, and turned to Henry Burns.
“Why, what’s the matter with it?” he asked, in a tone of wonderment.
“Isn’t it all right?”
“Why, yes, it looks so,” replied Henry Burns, coolly and without changing
countenance; “but I thought perhaps you might like to untie it and tie it
over again. Come on, fellows.”
The consciousness that he had been made game of by the youth flashed upon
the stranger, as the boys moved on. He half arose from his seat, while a
flush of anger spread over his sallow face. A person on the threshold
accosted him at this moment. He looked into the face of a tall man, who
was smiling in at him.
“Why, hello, Jenkins,” said the man. “What’s up? You look as though your
dinner didn’t set right. What are you doing down this way?”
Mr. Jenkins returned the man’s smile with a scowl.
“Nothing’s the matter,” he said, surlily. “Come in and have a smoke. I’m
going up the river for a week. I used to live up that way, you know.
Business is dull, and I’m going up to the old place for Christmas. Shut
that door, and we’ll have a talk.”
The four boys from Benton had had their first meeting, brief and
fleeting, with Arthur Jenkins.
It was still daylight when the steamer turned the Drum Point light-house
and headed into the Patuxent river. It was a picturesque sight that the
four boys looked upon. Scattered here and there over the water, and
coming into harbour for the night, was a fleet of dredging vessels. Some
of them, rivals in speed, were racing, with all sail set, heeling far
over and throwing up little spurts of water at their bows. The sight
captivated Henry Burns, and he gazed with interest.
“My! but I’d like to be aboard that fellow,” he cried, as a fleet bug-eye
crept up on a rival craft and swept proudly and gracefully past.
“Not much you wouldn’t,” exclaimed a voice beside him.
Henry Burns turned. The genial, kindly face of the steamboat captain met
his gaze.
“It looks very pretty and all that, young man,” said the captain; “but
it’s a hard life they lead aboard the dredgers. It’s knock-down and drag
out all winter long, with bad food and little to show for it in wages
when the winter’s done—that is, for the most of them. It’s not much like
what you think it is, I reckon. But they do look pretty coming in; that’s
a fact.”
The dredger, Z. B. Brandt, coming in from down along shore, may have,
with others of its kind, presented a pretty sight as viewed from the deck
of the river steamer. Most assuredly, the steamer, viewed from the deck
of the dredger, looked good and inviting to the weary crew of the sailing
vessel. To them, watching its approach, it represented all that they
longed for—comfort, good food, freedom from abuse; and was a thing that
would transport them home—if they could only, some day, reach it.
Hamilton Haley, eying the steamer from a distance, suddenly uttered an
exclamation of amazement. A figure that, in dim outline, suggested
someone whom he had seen before, stood out against the sky, as the person
leaned against the steamer’s rail.
“I’m blest if I wouldn’t swear that ere was young Artie Jenkins!”
exclaimed Haley. “It’s him or his ghost. I’ll have a look at the chap.
Here you, Harvey, skip down into the locker, starboard, forward, and
fetch me up that glass. Lively now. I want it quick.”
Jack Harvey, who had long ere this learned the necessity of quick
obedience aboard the dredger, hastened to obey. He brought the telescope
and handed it to Captain Haley.
The latter, adjusting it to suit his eye, gave one long, careful look
through the glass, then took it from his eye with another muttered
exclamation.
“Well, I swear!” he said. “I knew it was him the minute I clapped my eye
on him. I’d know his rakish rig anywhere. I wonder what mischief he’s up
to down here.”
And he added, as he looked angrily at the steamer, “Wouldn’t I like to
have you aboard here, young feller! Wouldn’t I have it out of you, for
some of the counter-jumpers you’ve made me pay high for.”
Jack Harvey, watching Haley with curiosity as the captain surveyed the
steamer and as his face wrinkled with anger, wondered what he had seen
aboard to excite his wrath. It could not be anybody that Harvey had ever
known, but still he had a curiosity, an over-mastering desire, to take a
look for himself. As the glass was returned to him by Haley, he paused a
moment and asked, “May I have a look, sir?”
Haley nodded.
“Handle that glass easily, though,” he snarled. “Break that, and you’ll
wish you’d never been born.”
Harvey raised the glass to his eye, and levelled it at the deck of the
steamer. He had never looked through a large telescope before, and it was
wonderful how clear it brought out the figures aboard. He seemed to be
looking into the very faces of men and women—all strangers to him.
Strangers? Strangers? The telescope, as it was slowly moved in Harvey’s
hand, so that his glance took in the row of faces from one end of the
boat to the other, rested once on a group of four boys standing close by
the rail. For a moment Jack Harvey stood, spell-bound. The next moment he
forgot where he was; forgot the presence of the wrathful Haley; forgot
all caution. Taking the glass from his eye, he brandished it in the air,
and yelled at the top of his voice:
“Henry Burns! George Warren! Hello, it’s—”
The sentence was unfinished. Hamilton Haley, springing from the
wheel-box, was upon him in an instant. He snatched the telescope from
Harvey’s hand and, stooping, laid it on the deck. The next instant he had
dealt Harvey a blow in the face that knocked him off his feet. Harvey
fell, rolled over, half slid off the deck into the water; but he clutched
at the inch of plank that was raised at the edge, held on, and Haley
dragged him aboard again.
Holding him at the edge of the vessel, Haley shook him like a half
drowned dog.
“Another cry out of you, and down you go!” he said. “I’d put you under
now, if you hadn’t made good, up the river the other night. You get
below, and don’t you let me hear a yip out of you. What’s the matter with
you—crazy?”
Jack Harvey, half out of his wits with amazement, dazed from the blow,
and chilled with the sting of the icy water that had wet him to the
shoulders, stumbled below, without reply.
And aboard the steamer, Henry Burns turned to the captain, in dismay.
Neither he nor his companions had distinguished the cry sent forth to
them from the deck of the bug-eye, but they had seen a strange thing
happen aboard the vessel they were watching.
“Captain,” said Henry Burns, his face flushing with indignation, “I guess
what you said about rough treatment aboard those vessels is true. Why, I
just saw the man at the wheel strike some one and knock him down.”
“The brute!” exclaimed the steamer’s captain. “I told you so. But it’s
nothing new. It happens every day.”
“I’m sorry for the chap that got it,” remarked Henry Burns. “I hope he
gets square with the captain, some day.”
And for half that night, Jack Harvey, tossing in his bunk, unable to
sleep, wondered if what he had seen could have been true; wondered if his
eyes had deceived him; wondered, even, if his brain was going wrong under
his hard treatment.
Once he got up and roused Tom Edwards.
“Tom,” he said, “have you noticed anything queer about me lately?”
Tom Edwards sat up and looked at his friend in astonishment.
“Queer!” repeated Tom Edwards. “Of course I haven’t. You’ve been just the
same as ever. Why, what’s the matter, Jack? Are you sick?”
“I guess perhaps I am,” replied Harvey, dully. “I’ve heard about sailors
seeing mirages and things that didn’t exist. I saw something on a
steamer, as we came in, that couldn’t have been true. I thought I saw
some friends of mine that live way up in Benton in the state of Maine.
They can’t be down here in winter—hold on, though. They might be, after
all. Yes, sir, perhaps they’ve come to look for me. I’ll bet that’s it!”
“But,” he added, ruefully, “I don’t see how that can be, either. They’d
have come long before this, if they were looking for me. But I saw them.
I saw them, Tom Edwards, just as clear as I see you now.”
“Well, you don’t see me very clear in this dark forecastle, Jack, old
chap,” replied Tom Edwards. “Turn in and go to sleep, and see what you
can make out of it to-morrow.”
CHAPTER X
FLIGHT AND DISASTER
When Jack Harvey awoke, the next morning, it was in a confused state of
mind that he turned out of his bunk. The reason for this was at once
apparent. A heavy south-easter was on, and a rough sea was tumbling in
between the two projections of land that marked the entrance to the river
from the bay—Drum Point and Hog Point. Lines of white breakers were
foaming and crashing about the light-house.
The bug-eye, Brandt, lying well out in the river, and exposed to the sea,
had been tossing about violently, although Haley had given the
anchor-rode good scope, in order to ease the strain. The unconscious
sleepers in the forecastle had been thrown about against the hard wooden
sides of the bunks in which they lay; and Harvey found himself bruised
and lame. He put his head out of the companion-way just as a sea sprayed
over the vessel, wetting him. He rubbed the salt water from his eyes and
hair, and looked out into the bay beyond.
It was certainly rough, outside. As far as he could see, the broad
expanse of water was rioting in high frolic. Seas leaped and tumbled in
wild confusion. The sharp flaws of the south-easter whipped the white
caps from the curling breakers and sent the scud and spindrift flying.
Far out, a few stray vessels, close reefed and rolling heavily as they
ran, were making for the harbour; the ends of their lean booms, with
sails tied in, looked like bare poles. Jack Harvey noted one thing, with
especial satisfaction. Not a single craft in all the harbour fleet was
going out, or making any preparation therefor. Harvey gave a sigh of
relief, as he went below again.
“Tom,” he said, as he stepped to his comrade’s bunk and roused him, “Tom,
we’re in luck. It’s blowing a gale outside. No dredging to-day. Hooray!”
Tom Edwards sat up, and groaned.
“Oh, but I’m lame,” he said. “What with that tough day’s work, yesterday,
and this confounded slatting about, I’m just about done for. Haley’ll
kill us yet, if we don’t get away.”
Tom Edwards, erstwhile travelling man and frequenter of good hotels,
stepped stiffly out on to the floor and proceeded to rub his arms and
joints, to limber them up.
“Jack,” he said, “I’m sorry now that you didn’t take the chance up the
river, that night, and swim for it. You’d have got away, and they’d be
after us all by this time. Jack, I tell you, we’ve got to get out of here
pretty soon, or there’ll be no Tom Edwards left to go anywhere. I can’t
stand this much longer.”
Harvey stepped to the side of his friend, and whispered softly.
“Neither can I, Tom,” he answered, “and what’s more, I don’t intend to.
We’ll get away. We’ll escape.”
To their surprise, the conversation was interrupted by the sharp call of
the mate for them to hustle out and help get the bug-eye under weigh.
They looked at each other in astonishment, for one moment. Then Harvey
reassured his friend.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We can’t be going out. Haley wants a snugger
berth. We’re getting too much of the sweep here.”
Harvey’s conjecture proved correct. They were lying at a bad anchorage
for a south-easter, and Haley, to his chagrin, had observed the signs of
wind and sky and knew the weather was growing heavier instead of
clearing.
The anchor was hove short and brought up to the bow, while a jib and the
main-sail, both reefed, were set. The Brandt, with Haley at the wheel,
stood in nearer to the southern shore of the river, within a quarter of a
mile of the bank. The anchor went down again, and sails were once more
made snug.
They lay more comfortably here, in the bight of the southern river bank.
But it was a tantalizing sight to the prisoners on the Brandt—the near
and friendly looking shore, with an occasional house in the distance, the
smoke of hearths blown from the chimney tops, and now and then a
traveller going on up a country road.
And to what mad act Jack Harvey might have been wrought, could he have
seen, in his mind’s eye, the interior of one of these same houses, and a
certain one of these hearths, encircled by a certain group of boys, is
beyond all conjecture. But he only gazed longingly in ashore, and wished
he were there.
There was more definiteness to his thoughts when, an hour or two later,
following the wretched breakfast served—all the meaner and more wretched
because there was no work to be gotten out of the crew for the day—he saw
Haley and the mate launch the small skiff, bring it alongside and get in
and row away.
Not that there was any immediate purpose of escape in his mind. For, just
before his departure, Haley had designated where he was going—a small
shed just back from shore was his object, where a man kept some trifling
supplies that he wanted.
“And I’ll be in sight of this vessel from start to finish,” Haley had
added, and winked significantly at Jim Adams.
But the small boat and its possibilities was imprinted on Harvey’s brain
as he watched it toss flimsily about, while the captain and mate sculled
ashore. He had thought of it before, but no good opportunity had offered.
There had been chances, to be sure, down along the marshy intricacies of
the eastern shore. Once, when they had lain in Honga river over night,
inside Middle Hooper island, he had thought strongly of rousing Tom
Edwards and attempting flight to shore. But the country around had been
too forbidding. Wild salt marshes bordered the eastern coast of Hooper’s,
and across on the land to the east it was so shelterless, with salt
marshes on shore and a great fresh water marsh inland, that he had given
over the project for the time.
Occasionally, on a Saturday night, when the bug-eye lay in the Patuxent,
it was the habit of Haley and Jim Adams to take the skiff and go ashore.
Sometimes they spent the night, and were back again Sunday morning.
Sometimes they passed the greater part of Sunday back inland. There lay
Harvey’s hope. Yet he hardly knew how to work out a plan of escape. To
attempt to make sail on the bug-eye and run her either to shore or up the
bay, would, he discovered, be useless. It would involve making a prisoner
of the cook and the man, Jeff, and, possibly, Sam Black, also; though
Harvey looked for no great interference from him.
The cook and the sailor, Jeff, he found, had a certain dogged loyalty to
Haley. The former surely would stand by the vessel under all
circumstances; the latter, it was certain, would not compromise himself
with the authorities of the state by any attempt to take possession of
the craft in Haley’s absence.
But, with the mate and Haley away, there must be some means, surely, of
gaining one of the shores of the river. In milder weather, Harvey would
have thought nothing of swimming the distance, even of a mile, from the
middle of the wide part of the river; but the weather and the icy cold
water precluded that way of flight now. At least, Harvey did not care to
venture it, especially as, once on land, he would know not where to seek
shelter; for he knew that, bound by many mutual ties of interest, the
dredgers and the settlers along shore—unless the latter had oyster beds
to be robbed—worked for each other’s interests.
“Tom,” said Harvey, quietly, indicating the skiff with a glance, “that’s
the way you and I are going ashore one of these nights, and take our
chances when we get there. And,” he added, eagerly, “isn’t it lucky you
warned me to hide that money? That will help us out, when we do escape.”
Tom Edwards glanced at the bobbing skiff, that looked to his eyes about
as substantial as a child’s toy boat, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll try it, if we get the chance,” he said, somewhat dubiously; “but I
don’t like the looks of it.”
Harvey laughed. “You’re a landsmen, sure enough,” he said. “Why, that’s
an able little boat as a man might want, in a river like this. Look how
nicely it rides the waves.”
“Oh, I’d go on a bunch of shingles, if it would only take me out of
this,” exclaimed Tom Edwards—“that is, I think I would now. But you’ll
have to run the thing. I’ll confess, I don’t know one end of a boat from
another, except what that brute, Jim Adams, has ground into me.”
Harvey’s hopes, which had been raised by the shifting of the anchorage of
the vessel nearer land, were dashed late that afternoon, with the return
of Haley and the mate. Rain mixed with sleet poured down in torrents, and
drove laterally across the vessel. It was as much as one could do to keep
his footing on the slippery deck, even with one hand clutching a rope.
The sleet stung as it struck Harvey’s face, and made it smart as though
from a volley of small pebbles. He was only glad to seek shelter below,
even in the dreary forecastle. He learned, that night, how all
circumstances are relatively good or harsh. From the boisterous night
outside, the forecastle of the Brandt was a refuge that seemed almost
cheery.
The next morning, it was apparent that the strength of the storm was
wearing away. Moreover, there was a sudden peculiar change in the
weather. The wind had swung around more to the southward; and, with that,
there had come a decided moderation of the temperature. But the change
was of no immediate advantage to Haley, for there rolled in a heavy fog,
and a dense mist also rose up from the surface of the river.
Again Haley gave the order to make sail and raise the anchor. Once more
the bug-eye got under weigh, stood out toward the middle of the river and
cast anchor again, just beyond the path of any passing steamer. Captain
Haley, ever watchful, ever suspicious, was taking no chances. His rule
was invariable, in any kind of smooth water—to lie for the night beyond
swimming distance from shore. At least, to offer little chance for that.
He had known desperate, venturesome men to attempt it, even then.
He was in a bad humour, was Haley, that day. There was nothing to eat,
for the crew, but the bread, or dough, fried, and a few scraps of pork
mixed with it. It was Saturday, and, about the middle of the afternoon,
he and Jim Adams took the skiff again and went ashore. They were out of
sight in the fog before they had gone two rods, but the wind sufficed to
give them their direction for the distance they had to go.
“Tom,” said Jack Harvey that night, as they turned in, “keep your shoes
on, and don’t go to sleep.”
Tom Edwards looked at his young companion, in surprise.
“We’ve got a chance,” explained Harvey, “as good as we’ll ever get,
perhaps. We’ve got to break away from here some time. The sooner the
better.”
“In this beastly fog?” interrupted Tom Edwards.
“Of course,” replied Harvey. “It’s just what we want. The wind’s
southerly and will take us across to the Drum Point shore. We can’t help
hitting that, or Solomon’s Island. We’ll have the chance, too. I heard
Jim Adams say we’d put out of here early to-morrow morning, if the fog
lifts. Haley’s lost so much time, he won’t stay ashore Sunday. They’ll be
back with the skiff late to-night, or toward morning. We’ll give them
just time to go off to sleep and then make a try for it.”
The crisis thus suddenly facing Tom Edwards, he pulled himself together.
“Good for you!” he said. “I’ll go, if we have to row across the
Chesapeake. Anybody with us?”
“Not a soul,” said Harvey. “The skiff will hold only us two. And we
can do it better alone. Now you sit up first, will you, and let me
get two hours sleep, and then you wake me and I’ll keep watch,
because—because—”
Tom Edwards laughed good-naturedly.
“I know,” he said. “You’re afraid that I’d fall asleep later on, and we’d
miss the chance.”
“Well,—well,” stammered Harvey, “you are an awful sound sleeper when you
get a-going, you know. I didn’t mean anything—”
“You’re all right,” exclaimed Tom Edwards, softly, but with heartiness.
“You turn in. Let me have your watch. I’ll wake you, say, at eleven.”
Jack Harvey’s nerves were good, and he was not one to worry over coming
events. He turned in, and, in ten minutes, was sound asleep. Tom Edwards,
sitting uncomfortably in his bunk, counted the minutes as they dragged
away, drearily. It was a lonesome vigil, with only the sleeping crew for
company. He started up now and again, as some sound in the night outside
seemed to his active fancy a warning of the returning skiff.
Ten o’clock came, and then eleven; he arose and awakened Harvey.
“Too bad, old chap,” he said, “but it’s your turn.”
Harvey roused and turned out, sleepily.
“Tom,” he said, “I had the queerest dream. I dreamed we were chasing that
fellow, Jenkins, through miles of swamps, and every time we’d get near
him, he’d turn into Henry Burns and laugh at us. Then we’d see him again
a little way ahead.”
“You’re thinking of that chap you thought you saw through the telescope,
eh,” suggested Tom Edwards.
“He’s on my mind sure enough,” replied Harvey. “I can’t quite make it
out, though, whether I saw him or not.”
Tom Edwards rolled into his bunk, and Harvey, stretching and yawning,
began his watch. He didn’t dare tell Tom Edwards till long afterward; but
he went off soundly to sleep once, some time later, and woke with a
fearful start. What if he had been the one, after all, to upset their
plans by his carelessness!
He stole cautiously out on deck, and tip-toed aft. He breathed a sigh of
relief when there was no sign of the skiff. He hurried back to the
forecastle and struck a match, to read the face of his watch. It was
half-past twelve o’clock. He dared not trust himself, then, to return to
his bunk, but crouched down at the foot of the companion ladder, with the
sting of the night air in his face.
Suddenly a steady, creaking sound came to his ears. He started up and
crawled to the top of the ladder. It was the sound of an oar. Then his
heart gave a bound, as he heard voices through the fog.
“There she lies,” came the words in the voice of the mate. “I tells you,
Mister Haley, I’s pretty extra good on findin’ my way ’bout this river.
We’re goin’ to get a good day, all right, too. This wind be shiftin’
right; swingin’ round with the sun to the west by mornin’, sure’s you
born.”
They came indistinctly into view of the boy, as he crouched in the
companion-way, just peering over so he could see across the deck. The
skiff scraped alongside. The two men sprang out, shaking the fog and wet
from their coats. Harvey, still as though frozen to the spot, noted with
joy that they did not fetch the skiff aboard, but made the painter fast
near the stern. They hurried below, and a light gleamed in the cabin. It
burned a few minutes, only. Then the vessel was in darkness again, save
for the lantern in the foremast shroud, to warn any chance craft where
they lay.
Harvey waited. The minutes seemed like hours. Fifteen minutes were ticked
off by his silver time-piece; then fifteen more. It was a quarter past
one o’clock when he stole back, shivering, and awoke Tom Edwards.
“Sh-h-h!” he warned. “Don’t speak. They’re here; turned in half an hour
ago. Come on.”
They had no belongings to gather up; only their coats to button about
them. They crept out on deck and stood for a moment, waiting and
listening. There was no sound aboard the bug-eye. They darted quickly
aft. Tom Edwards stepped nervously into the little skiff, Harvey
following. Harvey cast off, took his seat astern, pushed away and began
sculling.
Two rods off from the bug-eye, they could discern the thin lines of its
masts and a dull blur that was its hull. Harvey gave a little murmur of
exultation, and paused in his sculling. But the next moment he uttered a
cry of surprise and alarm. He rose from his seat, and peered anxiously
through the fog.
“What’s the matter? What is it, Jack?” asked Tom Edwards, almost
breathless.
“Something’s coming!” exclaimed Harvey. “Don’t you hear that rushing
sound? Oh, hang this fog! If it would only lift a little.”
Suddenly Harvey dropped to his seat and began plying the single oar in
the scull-hole, with desperation. Then he sprang up again and gave a
warning call as loud as he dared.
It was too late. Out of the fog and mist there rushed a craft—so swiftly
that it was upon them before they had half seen it. It was a long, narrow
canoe, with full sail set, the wind on its quarter, flying for the mouth
of the river. Harvey had one fleeting glimpse of a man in the stern of
the craft, springing up and uttering an exclamation of rage and fright.
Then Harvey jumped from his own seat, literally tumbling over Tom
Edwards.
The man at the stern of the fleeing canoe had jammed the helm hard down,
at his first sight of the little skiff. But he could not clear it wholly.
There was a crash and a splintering of wood; the skiff half upset, and
took in nearly half a barrel of water. The main boom of the canoe swept
across the skiff, knocking both its occupants into a heap.
The next thing they knew, the man at the stern of the canoe and another
by the foremast were standing up, uttering maledictions upon the
unfortunate victims of the collision.
“Help us! Don’t leave us! We’re sinking!” called Harvey, in desperation,
as the canoe kept on its course. The only answer was a wrathful shake of
his fist from the skipper of the canoe. Another moment, and it was gone.
Harvey and his companion, ankle-deep in water, scrambled up, and Harvey
turned anxiously to the stern of the skiff. There was a hole there, and
the boat seemed to be sinking under them. They stripped off their outer
jackets, prepared to swim for their lives. But Harvey quickly reassured
his comrade.
“It isn’t coming in very fast,” he said. “We can get back to the bug-eye,
if we work lively. You take your hat and bail. I’ll jump her all I can.”
He gave a cry of dismay as he seized the oar, which was floating in the
bottom of the skiff. The blow from the canoe had broken half the blade
away. It was still of some use, but he could not make fast time with it.
Heartbroken and fearful of what awaited them, they turned the skiff in
the direction whence the wind was blowing, and toiled with desperate
energy. The water leaked steadily into the little craft, but Tom Edwards
dashed it out by hat-fulls, as he had never worked in all his life—not
even at the dredges under the eye of Jim Adams.
The bug-eye came more plainly into view. They neared it with quaking
hearts. Already they could seem to hear the torrent of imprecation that
awaited them from Haley and the mate, and could feel the hurt and pain of
“dredging fleet law.”
To their amazement, silence reigned aboard the vessel. That silence was
unbroken as they struggled up alongside. With not a sound aboard, they
grasped the foot of a shroud and Harvey sprang noiselessly to the deck.
Tom Edwards followed. Harvey took a quick turn with the painter. The half
submerged skiff was made fast, where it had been before.
They fled along the deck, and down into the forecastle, on the wings of
fear. Wet and exhausted, they tumbled into their bunks. It was some
moments before either of them could find breath to speak.
“Oh, the brutes!” murmured Tom Edwards, after a time. “How could any
human being do a thing like that? They left us to drown, Jack, and didn’t
care.”
“Of course they did,” answered Harvey, “and good reason. I know why.
Don’t you? Did you see the load they had aboard? They’d been lifting an
oyster dump. Some fellow’ll find his week’s tonging of oysters gone, when
he looks for them. They were poachers. They’d have killed us in a minute
if we’d stood between them and getting away. Cheer up, old Tom. We’re in
the greatest luck we’ve ever been in all our lives. Is your back cold?
Well, how would it feel, think, if Haley had caught us? Did you ever hear
Sam Black tell how he’s seen men rope’s-ended for trying to run away?
Wait till Haley sees that skiff in the morning. You’ll be glad you’re
alive. Never mind. We’ll escape yet. I’m going to sleep when I get these
boots off.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, standing by the wheel, some hours later, when the
sun had risen and the fog was lifting over the river, was not a pleasing
object to behold. What he had to say about poachers and their ways and
habits and carelessness would have warmed the water under the bug-eye, if
it hadn’t been in the dead of winter. To have heard his outburst of
indignation, over the evils of poaching and night sailing, would almost
have convinced a listener that he was the most averse to that habit of
any man in Chesapeake Bay. Also he berated Jim Adams, as much as he
thought that gentleman would stand, for not bringing the skiff aboard.
Haley bargained for a new skiff that day, and gave Jim Adams another
dressing down,—and Jim Adams took it out of the crew, for which Harvey
and Tom Edwards were sorry—although they got their share. And so their
night adventure passed into the history of the cruise; and there even
came a time, long afterward, when the two laughed at it—that is, when
they thought of Haley. The remembrance of their own fright remained, to
dream of, for many a night.
Two days afterward, there happened one of those sudden, mysterious
changes that told of the comradeship of a certain clique of the dredging
captains, and of their facility for dodging trouble.
Down along the western shore a strange craft sailed up, and Haley took a
man aboard from it; though not without some warm words with the strange
captain. He seemed not to welcome the recruit. But he took him, and
exchanged one of his own crew, the sailor, Sam Black, for the man. This
latter recruit was a swarthy man, tall and muscular. His face was
discoloured, as though by blows; and a long scar, freshly made, showed on
the back of one hand and wrist. He obeyed Haley’s and the mate’s orders
sullenly. Why he was aboard, none knew except the mate and captain. But
it was plain enough, the captain of the other craft had wanted him out of
the way.
CHAPTER XI
HARVEY SENDS A MESSAGE TO SHORE
Henry Burns and the Warren brothers, arriving at Millstone Landing on the
evening when Jack Harvey had seen a strange vision through Haley’s
telescope, found a young man on the wharf awaiting them. He hailed them
with a hearty shout of welcome the moment the steamer came to its
landing. He was a tall, somewhat spare man, but with broad, muscular
shoulders, and a general build that told of unusual strength. He had a
mop of short, almost curly hair, under a soft felt hat, a dark, clear
complexion, brown eyes that twinkled with fun, and an expression of
geniality that won the heart of Henry Burns at first glance.
The young man nodded smilingly to the river captain, and swung himself
aboard before the steamer had its gang-plank out; and he was up the
stairs and in the cabin in a twinkling, where he grasped George Warren
and the brothers, one after another, and welcomed them heartily.
“And this is our friend, Henry Burns,” said George Warren, introducing
his comrade.
“I’m right glad to meet him, too,” responded Edward Warren. “He’s just as
welcome as you are—and that’s saying all anybody could. Well, I’d know
you youngsters anywhere. You haven’t changed much since I was up north,
four years ago—except you’ve grown some. There’s Joe—my, but he’s growing
like a corn-stalk! Don’t it almost make your bones ache, to grow so fast,
Joey?”
Edward Warren was, all the while, assisting them with their bags and
bundles of coats and luggage, and steering them across the gang-plank to
the wharf, like a drove of frisky young cattle.
“Joe wants to know if you’ve brought any of those corn fritters down with
you, Cousin Ed?” said George Warren.
“No,” laughed Edward Warren, “but there’s a stack of them up in the oven,
keeping hot, as high as your head, almost. Here, sling your stuff into
this wagon, and Jim will take it up. Anybody that wants to ride, too, can
jump aboard. But I’m going to walk. It’s only about a mile, and I’d
rather walk a night like this, anyway.”
“Well, I’ll ride up and be making the acquaintance of Mammy Stevens,”
said Joe, grinning broadly, and springing up on the seat beside the
coloured driver. The others elected to walk, with Edward Warren.
He set off at a brisk pace along the road that skirted the shore,
bordered much of its way by ponds extending some distance inland. He had
spoken of a mile walk as though it were the merest trifle, and the pace
he set for his younger companions indicated that he so regarded it. But
they were good for it, too, although he had them breathing hard by the
time they had gone half a mile; and the four made quick time of it up
from the landing.
“You chaps are pretty good walkers,” he said, laughing quietly and
slowing down a little. “Thought I’d see how city life agreed with your
wind and legs. You’re sound in both wind and limb, as we farmers say of a
good horse. We’ll take the rest of it a little easier.”
There yet lingered in the mind of Henry Burns an indignation born of the
act he had seen on the passing vessel.
“Say, Mr. Warren,” he began, as they walked along along—
“Don’t call him ‘Mr. Warren.’ Call him ‘Ed,’” interrupted George Warren.
“Yes, that’s right,” responded Edward Warren, good-naturedly.
“I saw a man knocked down on a vessel as we sailed into the harbour,”
continued Henry Burns. “Isn’t it a shame to treat men like that?”
Edward Warren paused,
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