The Rival Campers Afloat; or, The Prize Yacht Viking
by Ruel Perley Smith · English · Gutenberg #40547 · 532,659 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Rival Campers Afloat; or, The Prize Yacht Viking
Author: Ruel Perley Smith
Illustrator: Louis D. Gowing
Release date: August 20, 2012 [eBook #40547]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40547
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVAL CAMPERS AFLOAT; OR, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING ***
The
Rival Campers Afloat
Or, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING
By
Ruel Perley Smith
Author of “The Rival Campers”
ILLUSTRATED BY
LOUIS D. GOWING
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1906
_Copyright_, _1906_
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, August, 1906
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston. U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Down the River 1
II. The Collision 15
III. A Rescue Unrewarded 28
IV. Squire Brackett Discomfited 39
V. Harvey Gets Bad News 56
VI. Out to the Fishing-grounds 73
VII. Near the Reefs 91
VIII. Little Tim a Strategist 108
IX. Harry Brackett Plays a Joke 126
X. Mr. Carleton Arrives 143
XI. Squire Brackett Is Puzzled 160
XII. The Surprise Sets Sail Again 180
XIII. Stormy Weather 192
XIV. The Man in the Cabin 206
XV. Mr. Carleton Goes Away 224
XVI. Searching the Viking 239
XVII. A Rainy Night 259
XVIII. Two Secrets Discovered 278
XIX. The Loss of the Viking 298
XX. Fleeing in the Night 318
XXI. A Timely Arrival 336
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Crew of the Viking Meet Skipper Martel (_Frontispiece_) 98
“The boom brought up with a smashing blow against the Viking’s
starboard quarter” 25
“‘Nonsense,’ roared the infuriated Squire. ‘He can sail a boat as
good as you can’” 54
“‘Here, that’s our boat,’ cried Joe. ‘You’ve got no right to
touch it’” 112
“‘Just tell them that you heard me say I was going back to
Boston’” 236
“‘Get out of here,’ exclaimed Mr. Carleton, sharply” 335
THE RIVAL CAMPERS
AFLOAT
CHAPTER I.
DOWN THE RIVER
It was a pleasant afternoon in the early part of the month of June. The
Samoset River, winding down prettily through hills and sloping farm lands
to the bay of the same name, gleamed in the sunlight, now with a polished
surface like ebony in some sheltered inlet, or again sparkling with
innumerable points of light where its surface was whipped up into tiny
waves by a brisk moving wind.
There had been rain for a few days before, and the weather was now
clearing, with a smart westerly breeze that had come up in the morning,
but was swinging in slightly to the southward. The great white
cloud-banks had mostly passed on, and these were succeeded at present by
swiftly moving clumps of smaller and lighter clouds, that drifted easily
across the sky, like the sails below them over the surface of the water.
There were not a few of these sails upon the river, some set to the
breeze and some furled; some of the craft going up with the tide toward
the distant city of Benton, the head of vessel navigation; some breasting
the tide and working their way down toward Samoset Bay; other and larger
craft, with sails snugly furled, tagging along sluggishly at the heels of
blustering little tugs,—each evidently much impressed with the importance
of its mission,—and so going on and out to the open sea, where they would
sail down the coast with their own great wings spread.
The river was, indeed, a picture of life and animation. It was a river
with work to do, but it did it cheerfully and with a good spirit. Far up
above the city of Benton, it had brought the great log rafts down through
miles of forest and farm land. Above and below the city, for miles, it
had run bravely through sluice and mill-race, and turned the great wheels
for the mills that sawed the forest stuff into lumber. And now, freed
from all bounds and the restraint of dams and sluiceways, and no longer
choked with its burden of logs, it was pleased to float the ships, loaded
deep with the sawed lumber, down and away to other cities.
There was many a craft going down the river that afternoon. Here and
there along the way was a big three or four masted schooner, loaded with
ice or lumber, and bound for Baltimore or Savannah. Or, it might be, one
would take notice of a trim Italian bark, carrying box-shooks, to be
converted later into boxes for lemons and oranges. Then, farther
southward, a schooner that had brought its catch to the Benton market,
and was now working out again to the fishing-grounds among the islands of
the bay.
Less frequently plied the river steamers that ran to and from the summer
resorts in Samoset Bay; or, once a day, coming or going, the larger
steamers that ran between Benton and Boston.
Amid all these, at a point some twenty miles down the river from Benton,
there sailed a craft that was, clearly, not of this busy, hard-working
fraternity of ships. It was a handsome little vessel, of nearly forty
feet length, very shapely of hull and shining of spars; with a glint of
brass-work here and there; its clean, white sides presenting a polished
surface to the sunbeams; its rigging new and well set up, and a handsome
new pennant flung to the breeze from its topmast.
The captain of many a coaster eyed her sharply as she passed; and, now
and then, one would let his own vessel veer half a point off its course,
while he took his pipe from his mouth and remarked, “There’s a clean
craft. Looks like she might go some.” And then, probably, as he brought
his own vessel back to its course, concluded with the usual salt-water
man’s comment, “Amateur sailors, I reckon. Humph!”
That remark, if made on this particular occasion, would have been
apparently justifiable. If one might judge by their age, the skippers of
this trim yacht should certainly have been classed as amateurs. There
were two of them. The larger, a youth of about sixteen or seventeen years
of age, held the wheel and tended the main-sheet. The other, evidently a
year or two younger, sat ready to tend the jib-sheets on either side as
they tacked, shifting his seat accordingly. The yacht was beating down
the river against the last of a flood-tide.
“We’re doing finely, Henry,” said the elder boy, as he glanced admiringly
at the set of the mainsail, and then made a general proud survey of the
craft from stem to stern and from cabin to topmast. “She does walk along
like a lady and no mistake. She beats the _Surprise_—poor old boat! My,
but I often think of that good little yacht I owned, sunk down there in
the thoroughfare. We had lots of fun in her. But this one certainly more
than takes her place.”
“Who would ever have thought,” he continued, “when we saw the strange men
sail into the harbour last year, with this yacht, that she would turn out
to be a stolen craft, and that she would one day be put up for sale, and
that old Mrs. Newcome would buy her for us? It’s like a story in a book.”
“It’s better than any story I ever read, Jack,” responded the other boy.
“It’s a story with a stroke of luck at the end of it—and that’s better
than some of them turn out. But say, don’t you think you better let me
take my trick at the wheel? You know you are going to teach me how to
sail her. I don’t expect to make much of a fist of it, at the start; but
I’ve picked up quite a little bit of yacht seamanship from my sailing
with the Warren boys.”
“That’s so,” conceded the other. “You must have got a pretty good notion
of how to sail a boat, by watching them. Here, take the wheel. But you’ll
find that practice in real sailing, and just having it in your head from
watching others, are two different things. However, you’ll learn fast. I
never knew any one who had any sort of courage, and any natural liking
toward boat-sailing, but what he could pick it up fast, if he kept his
eyes open.
“The first thing to do, to learn to sail a boat, is to take hold in
moderate weather and work her yourself. And the next thing, is to talk to
the fishermen and the yachtsmen, and listen when they get to spinning
yarns and arguing. You can get a lot of information in that way that you
can use, yourself, later on.”
The younger boy took the wheel, while the other sat up alongside,
directing his movements. But first he took the main-sheet and threw off
several turns, where he had had it belayed on the cleat back of the
wheel, and fastened it merely with a slip-knot, that could be loosed with
a single smart pull on the free end.
“We won’t sail with the sheet fast until you have had a few weeks at it,
Henry,” he said. “There are more boats upset from sheets fast at the
wrong time, or from main-sheets with kinks in them, that won’t run free
when a squall hits, than from almost any other cause. And the river is a
lot worse in that way than the open bay, for the flaws come quicker and
sharper off these high banks.”
Henry Bums, with the wheel in hand and an eye to the luff of the sail, as
of one not wholly inexperienced, made no reply to the other’s somewhat
patronizing manner; but a quiet smile played about the corners of his
mouth. If he had any notion that the other’s extreme care was not
altogether needed, he betrayed no sign of impatience, but took it in good
part. Perhaps he realized that common failing of every yachtsman, to
think that there is nobody else in all the world that can sail a boat
quite as well as himself.
He knew, too, that Jack Harvey had, indeed, had by far a larger
experience in sailing than he, though he had spent much of his time upon
the water.
In any event, his handling of the boat now evidently satisfied the
critical watchfulness of Jack Harvey; for that youth presently exclaimed,
“That’s it. Oh, you are going to make a skipper, all right. You take hold
with confidence, too, and that’s a good part of the trick.”
At this point in their sailing, however, the yacht _Viking_ seemed to
have attracted somewhat more than the casual attention of an observer
from shore. A little less than a quarter of a mile down the river, on a
wharf that jutted some distance out from the bank, so that the river as
it ran swerved swiftly by its spiling, a man stood waving to them.
“Hello,” said Henry Burns, espying the figure on the wharf, “there’s a
tribute to the beauty of the _Viking_. Somebody probably thinks this is
the president’s yacht and is saluting us.”
“Well, he means us, sure enough,” replied Jack Harvey, “and no joke,
either. He’s really waving. He wants to hail us.”
The man had his hat in hand and was, indeed, waving it to them
vigorously.
They had been standing across the river in an opposite direction to the
wharf; but now, as Jack Harvey cast off the leeward jib-sheets, Henry
Burns put the helm over, and the yacht swung gracefully and swiftly up
into the wind and headed off on the tack inshore. Jack Harvey let the
jibs flutter for a moment, until the yacht had come about, and Henry
Burns had begun to check her from falling off the wind, by reversing the
wheel. Then he quickly trimmed in on the sheets, and the jibs began to
draw.
“Most beginners,” he said, “trim the jib in flat on the other side the
minute they cast off the leeward sheet. But that delays her in coming
about.”
Again the quiet smile on the face of Henry Burns, but he merely answered,
“That’s so.”
They stood down abreast the wharf and brought her up, with sails
fluttering. Jack Harvey, looking up from the side to the figure above on
the wharf, called out, “Hello, were you waving to us?”
“Why, yes,” responded the man, “I was. Are you going down the river far?”
“Bound down to Southport,” said Harvey.
“Good!” exclaimed the stranger, and added, confidently, “I’ll go along
with you part way, if you don’t mind. I’m on my way to Burton’s Landing,
five miles below, and the steamboat doesn’t come along for three hours
yet. I cannot get a carriage and I don’t want to walk. You don’t mind
giving me a lift, do you? That’s a beautiful boat of yours, by the way.”
The man had an air of easy assurance; and, besides, the request was one
that any yachtsman would willingly grant.
“Why, certainly,” replied Harvey, “we’ll take you, eh, Henry?”
“Pleased to do it,” responded Henry Burns.
They worked the yacht up alongside the wharf, and the stranger, grasping
a stay, swung himself off and leaped down on to the deck. Then he pushed
the boat’s head off with a vigorous shove and advanced, smilingly, with
hand extended, to greet the boys. The _Viking_ gathered headway and was
once more going down-stream.
The stranger was a rather tall, well-built man, light on his feet, and
handled himself as though he were no novice aboard a boat. He descended
into the cockpit and shook hands with Jack Harvey and Henry Burns.
His voice, as he bade them good afternoon, was singularly full and deep,
and seemed to issue almost oddly from behind a heavy, blond moustache. As
Henry Burns expressed it afterward, it reminded him of a ventriloquist he
had seen once with a travelling show, because the man’s lips seemed
hardly to move, and the muscles of his face scarcely changed as he spoke.
His eyes, of a clear but cold blue, lighted up, however, in a pleasant
way, as he thanked them.
He wore a suit of navy blue, and a yachting-cap on his head.
“This is the greatest luck in the world for me,” he said. “You see, I
want to catch the train that will take me down to Bellport, and I can get
it at the Landing below. This fine craft of yours will take me—”
He stopped with strange abruptness. If the attention of Jack Harvey and
Henry Burns had, by chance, been directed more closely to him, and less
upon the handling of their yacht, they might have observed a surprised
and puzzled look come over his face. They might have observed him
half-start up from his seat, like a man that had suddenly come, all
unwittingly, upon a thing he had not expected to see.
But the two boys, intent upon their sailing, noticed only that the man
had left a sentence half-finished. They turned upon him inquiringly.
“What were you going to say?” asked Henry Burns.
The man settled back in his seat, reached a hand calmly into an inner
coat-pocket, and drew forth a cigar-case.
“I dare say you don’t smoke,” he said, offering it to them. “No, well, I
didn’t think so. You’re a little bit young for that. Let me see, what was
I saying?—oh, yes, I was about to remark that this boat would take me
down to the Landing on time. She does walk along prettily, and no
mistake.”
With which, he lighted the cigar and began puffing enjoyably. But his
eyes darted here and there, quickly, sharply, over the boat. Through a
cloud of cigar smoke, he was scrutinizing it from one end to the other.
“You handle her well,” he said. “Had her long?”
“Why, no,” replied Harvey. “The fact is, though we have had other
boats—that is, I have—and we have handled others, this is our first sail
in this one. You see, we got her in an odd way, last season—just at the
close of the season, in fact; and she was not in shape for sailing then.
So we had to lay her up for the winter. This is really the first trying
out we have given her.”
“Indeed, most interesting,” replied the stranger, arising from his seat
and advancing toward the cabin bulkhead, where he stood, apparently
gazing off across the river. Then, as he returned to his seat again, he
added, “That’s rather an elaborate ornamenting of brass around the
companionway.”
“Isn’t it, though!” exclaimed Harvey, proudly. “You don’t see them much
handsomer than that often, eh?”
“Why, no, now you speak of it,” replied the man. “You don’t, and that’s a
fact.
“In fact,” he added, stealing a sidelong glance at the two boys, “it’s
the only one just like it that I ever saw.
“Pretty shore along here, isn’t it?” he remarked a few moments later, as
they stood in near to where the spruces came down close to the water’s
edge, with the ledges showing below. “What’s that you were saying about
coming by the boat oddly? She looks to me as though your folks must have
paid a good price for her.”
“Why, that’s the odd part of it,” answered Harvey. “The fact is, our
folks didn’t pay for her at all. An old lady bought her for us. Made us a
present of her. Perhaps you’d like to hear about it.”
“Indeed I should,” replied the stranger. “It will while away the time to
the Landing.”
“You tell it, Henry,” said Harvey.
So Henry Burns began, while the stranger stretched his legs out
comfortably and listened.
“Well,” said Henry Burns, “this yacht, the _Viking_, was named the
_Eagle_ when we first saw her.”
The stranger’s cigar was almost blazing with the vigour of his smoking.
“She came into the harbour of Southport—that’s on Grand Island, below
here, where we are bound—one day last summer, to pick up a guest at the
hotel. There were two men aboard her, and it turned out that these two
men, and the man they were after at the hotel, had committed a robbery at
Benton. That’s way up the river.
“Well, it’s a long story how they were discovered; but they were, and
some jewels they had hidden were recovered. I said they were captured—but
one, a man named Chambers, got away in this very yacht. But he came back,
later, and set fire to the hotel for revenge.
“That was along toward the end of the summer. Then it happened that Jack,
here,—Jack Harvey,—captured the man, Chambers, in this yacht, down in a
thoroughfare below Grand Island. Jack’s boat, the _Surprise_, was sunk
there, when the two yachts crashed together, bow on.”
“Poor old _Surprise_!” interrupted Jack Harvey.
“Well, then,” continued Henry Burns, “there is a man over at Southport,
Squire Brackett, that hates all us boys, just because he is mean. He told
Witham, the hotel proprietor, that he had seen us boys in the hotel
basement, shortly before the fire; and he and Witham had us accused of
setting it, although everybody in Southport was indignant about it. And
all this time, Jack was on the right track, because he had seen the man
running from the fire and had followed him over to the other shore of the
island, and recognized the boat he sailed away in.
“So Jack sailed down the other side of the island, and captured the man,
Chambers, in the thoroughfare; that is, Jack and his crew did. And they
brought Chambers back just at the right time—and Squire Brackett and
Witham were so ashamed they wanted to go and hide away somewhere.”
The man they had taken aboard looked smilingly at Henry Burns.
“That is certainly a remarkable story,” he said, knocking the ashes
carelessly from the end of his cigar.
“Yes, but the rest of it is the oddest part of it,” responded Henry
Burns. “There was an old lady named Mrs. Newcome, whose life we saved at
the fire. She was furious at the squire and Witham for blaming us, and
thankful enough when Jack got us out of it.
“Now, when Chambers was tried, he was so bitter against the other two who
had got him into trouble, he confessed the yacht did not belong to any
one of them. So the yacht was taken over by the sheriff, and
advertisements were sent out all around to try to find the rightful
owner. But they never did find him, and finally the yacht was condemned
and put up for sale. There is where old Mrs. Newcome came in. She has no
end of money, and no one to spend it on except herself and a cat. The
yacht went cheap, and what did she do but buy it in and give it to us.”
Henry Burns paused, and there was silence for a few moments aboard the
_Viking_. The stranger smoked without speaking, apparently lost in his
own thoughts.
“That’s all of the yarn,” said Henry Burns, at length.
The man started to his feet, tossed his cigar away, and walked forward,
with his hands in his pockets.
“That’s one of the oddest stories I ever heard,” he said. “You’re lucky
chaps, aren’t you? Sounds like some novels I’ve read. By the way, isn’t
that Burton’s Landing just ahead there?”
He seemed eager to get ashore.
“Yes, that is the Landing,” answered Harvey.
A few moments more and they were up to it, and the stranger was stepping
ashore upon the pier.
“Well,” he said, shaking hands with them again, “I’m much obliged to both
of you—really more than I can begin to tell you. Perhaps I can return the
favour some day. My name is Charles Carleton. Live around at hotels
pretty much, but spend most of my time in Boston. Hope I meet you again
some day. Perhaps I may be down this way later, down the bay somewhere,
if I like the looks of it, and the hotels. Good day.”
“Good day; you’re very welcome,” called out Henry Burns and Jack Harvey.
Again the yacht swung out into the river, gathering headway quickly and
skimming along, heeling very gently.
The strange man stood watching her from the pier.
“No,” he said, softly, to himself, “I never saw but one boat just like
her before. But who would have thought I should run across them the first
thing? That was a stroke of luck.”
CHAPTER II.
THE COLLISION
“Pleasant sort of a man, wasn’t he?” commented Harvey, as the _Viking_
left the pier astern, and the stranger could be seen walking briskly up
the road toward the town.
“Why, yes, he was, in a way,” responded Henry Burns. “Most persons manage
to make themselves agreeable while one is doing them a favour. Really,
though, he isn’t one of the open, hearty kind, though he did try to be
pleasant. I don’t know why I think so, but he seemed sort of
half-concealed behind that big moustache.”
Harvey laughed.
“That’s a funny notion,” he said.
“Well,” responded Henry Burns, “of course it wasn’t just that. But, at
any rate, he is the kind of a man that has his own way about things. Did
you notice, he didn’t exactly ask us to take him into the boat. He said,
right out at the start, that he was going along with us—of course, if we
were willing. But he was bound to come aboard, just the same, whether we
were willing or not.”
“Hm!” said Harvey. “You do take notice of things, don’t you? I didn’t pay
any attention to what he said; but, now I think of it, he did have that
sort of way. However, we shall probably never set eyes on him again, so
what’s the odds?”
They were getting down near to the mouth of the river now, and already, a
mile ahead, the bay broadened out before their eyes.
The wind was blowing brisk, almost from the south by this time, and the
first of the ebb-tide running down against it caused a meeting between
the two that was not peaceful. At the point where river and bay blended,
and for some distance back up the river, there was a heavy chop-sea
tumbling and breaking in short, foam-capped waves. Farther out in the bay
there was considerable of a sea running.
Harvey, lounging lazily on the seat opposite Henry Burns, suddenly sprang
up and uttered an exclamation of surprise. Then he pointed on far ahead,
over the port bow, to a tiny object that bobbed in the troubled waters of
the river, low lying and indistinct.
“What do you make of that, Henry?” he cried.
“Why, it looks like a log from one of the mills up above,” replied the
other, after he had observed it with some difficulty. “Oh, no, it isn’t,”
he exclaimed the next moment. “There is something alive on it—or in it.
Say, you don’t suppose it can be Tom Harris and Bob White, do you? That
is a canoe, I believe.”
Without waiting to reply, Jack Harvey dodged quickly down the
companionway, and returned, a moment later, from the cabin, holding a
spy-glass in one hand.
“Hooray! clap that to your eye, Henry,” he cried, when he had taken a
hasty survey ahead with it.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Henry Burns, taking a long look through the glass,
while Harvey assumed his place at the wheel. “There they are, two of
them, paddling away for good old Southport as hard as ever they can.
There are two boys, as I make them out. Yes, it’s Tom and Bob, sure as
you live. Won’t it seem like old times, though, to overhaul them? You
keep the wheel, Jack. We can’t catch up with them any too soon to suit
me.”
“Shall we give them a salute?” cried Harvey.
“No, let’s sail up on them and give them a surprise,” suggested the
other. “They know we own the boat, but they haven’t seen her under sail
since we have had her. They may not recognize us.”
While the yacht _Viking_ was parting the still moderate waves with its
clean-cut bows, and laying a course that would bring it up with the canoe
in less than a half-hour, the occupants of the tiny craft were bending
hard to their paddles, pushing head on into the outer edge of the
chop-sea. They were making good time, despite the sea and the head wind.
“There go a couple of them Indians from away up the river yonder,” sang
out a man forward on a stubby, broad-bowed coaster to the man at the
wheel, as the canoe passed a two-master beating across the river. The
boys in the canoe chuckled.
“Guess we must be getting good and black, Bob,” said the boy who wielded
the stern paddle to the other in the bow. “And our first week on the
water, at that, for the season.”
“Yes, we’ve laid the first coat on pretty deep,” responded his companion,
glancing with no little pride and satisfaction at a pair of brown and
muscular arms and a pair of sunburned shoulders, revealed to good
advantage by a blue, sleeveless jersey that looked as though it had seen
more than one summer’s outing.
“What do you think of the bay, Tom?” he added, addressing the other boy.
This youth, similarly clad and similarly bronzed and reddened, was
handling his paddle like a practised steersman and was directing the
canoe’s course straight down the bay, as though aiming fair at some point
far away on an island that showed vaguely fifteen miles distant.
“Oh, it’s all right,” answered Tom. “It’s all right for this evening.
Plenty of rough water from now until seven or eight o’clock to-night, but
it’s just the usual sea that a southerly raises in the bay. We won’t get
into any such scrape as we did last year, when we came down here, not
knowing the bay nor the coast of Grand Island, and let a storm catch us
and throw us out pell-mell on the shore. We’ll not give our friends, the
Warren boys, another such a fright this year. We can get across all
right—that is, if you don’t mind a bit of a splashing over the bows.”
“It won’t be the first time,—nor the last, for that matter, I reckon,”
responded Bob.
“And I always get my share of it, in the end, too,” said the other boy;
“because when it sprays aboard it runs down astern and I have to kneel in
it. Well, on we go, then. It’s fifteen miles of rough water, but think
how we’ll eat when we get there.”
“Won’t we?” agreed Bob. “Say, now you speak of it, I’m hungry already. I
could eat as much as young Joe Warren used to every time he took dinner
at the hotel. He used to try to make old Witham lose money—do you
remember?—and I think he always won.”
“Hello!” he exclaimed, a moment later, as he looked back for an instant
toward the stem. “Just glance around, Tom, and take a look at that yacht
coming down the river. Isn’t she a beauty? I wouldn’t mind a summer’s
cruise in her, myself.”
“Whew!” exclaimed the other, as he held his paddle hard against the
gunwale and glanced back. “She is a pretty one, and no mistake. She’s
about as fine as we often see down this way. I don’t recall seeing
anything handsomer in the shape of a yacht around the bay last summer,
unless it was the one Chambers had—you know, the man that set the hotel
afire.
“I believe it is the very yacht,” he continued. “There isn’t another one
like it around here. You remember the boys wintered her down the river.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t they hail us?” asked Bob.
“Perhaps not,” answered Tom. “Henry Burns likes to surprise people. They
are due down the bay about this time. At any rate, we shall have a chance
to see the yacht close aboard, for she is heading dead up for us.”
The yacht _Viking_ was indeed holding up into the wind on a course that
would bring her directly upon the canoemen, if she did not go about. She
kept on, and presently the boys in the canoe ceased their paddling and
watched her approach.
“She won’t run us down, will she, Tom?”
“No, they see us, all right.”
There was evidence of this the next moment, for a small cannon, somewhere
forward on the deck of the yacht, gave a short, spiteful bark that made
the canoemen jump. There followed immediately the deep bellowing of a big
fog-horn and the clattering of a huge dinner-bell; while, at the same
time, two yachtsmen aboard the strange craft appeared at the rail, waving
and blowing and ringing alternately at the occupants of the canoe. A
moment later, the yacht rounded to a short distance up-wind from the
canoe, and the hail of familiar voices came across the water:
“Ahoy, you chaps in that canoe, there! Come aboard here, lively now, if
you don’t want that cockle-shell blown out of water. Hurry up before we
get the cannon trained on you! We know you, Tom Harris, and you, Bob
White, and you can’t escape.”
“Well, what do you think!” exclaimed Tom Harris, raising himself up from
his knees in the stem of the canoe, with a hand on either gunwale, “if
there isn’t that old Henry Burns and Jack Harvey. Say, where in the world
did you fellows steal that yacht, and where are you running off to with
it? Don’t tell us you own it. You know you don’t.”
“Just hurry up and come alongside here and we’ll show you,” cried Henry
Burns, joyfully. “Our ship’s papers are all right, eh, Jack?”
The boys in the canoe needed no urging. A few sharp thrusts with the
paddles brought them under the lee of the _Viking_; a line thrown aboard
by Bob White was caught by Harvey and made fast; and the next moment, Bob
White and Tom Harris were in the cockpit, mauling Henry Burns with mock
ferocity—a proceeding which was received by that young gentleman
serenely, but with interest well returned—and shaking hands with the
other stalwart young skipper, Jack Harvey.
The bow-line of the canoe was carried astern by Harvey and tied, so that
the canoe would tow behind; and the yacht was put on her course again.
“You don’t mind taking a spin for a way in the good ship _Viking_, do
you?” asked Harvey. “I have hardly seen you since we got this yacht, you
know, as my folks moved up to Boston the last of the summer.”
“We will go along a little way till we strike the worst of the chop,”
replied Tom Harris. “Our canoe will not tow safely through that. That is,
we will, if you allow Indians aboard.”
“Yes, and by the way, before anybody else has the chance to apply,” said
Bob White, “you don’t want to hire a couple of foremast hands, do you,
off and on during the summer? I’d be proud to swab the decks of this
boat, and wages of no account.”
“We’ll engage both of you at eighteen sculpins a week,” answered Henry
Burns. “But of course you know that the laws against flogging seamen
don’t go, aboard here. Harvey there, he is my first mate; and I make it a
rule to beat him with a belaying-pin three or four times a day, regular,
to keep him up to his work. Of course you forecastle chaps will get it
worse.”
Harvey, surveying his more slender companion, saluted with great
deference.
“How do you fellows happen to be up here?” he asked. “Haven’t you gone to
camping yet?”
“Yes,” replied Bob. “The old tent is down there on the point. We have had
it set up for three days. We had an errand that brought us up here.”
“And the Warren boys?” inquired Henry Burns.
“Oh, they are down there in the cottage, sort of camping out, too; that
is, the family hasn’t arrived yet. George and Arthur are working like
slaves trying to keep young Joe fed.”
“_He’s_ a whole famine in himself,” remarked Henry Burns.
“Say, how is old Mrs. Newcome’s cat, Henry, the one you saved from the
fire?” asked Tom Harris.
“Why, the cat hasn’t written me lately,” answered Henry Burns. “But I got
a letter from Mrs. Newcome a few weeks ago; said she hoped we would have
a good summer in the yacht, lots of fun, and all that.”
“My! but you are lucky,” exclaimed Bob. “I have been as polite as mice to
every cat I’ve seen all winter, but I haven’t received any presents for
it.”
Renewing old acquaintanceships in this manner, they were shortly in
rougher water.
“Here!” cried Tom Harris at length, “we must be getting out of this. That
canoe will not stand towing in this chop much longer. We shall have to
leave you.”
“Pull it in aboard,” said Jack Harvey.
“No, it would be in the way,” replied Tom Harris. “Just as much obliged
to you. We’ll meet you at the camp. Say that you will come ashore and eat
supper with us, and Bob will have one of those fine chowders waiting for
you; won’t you, Bob?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” replied Bob.
“You mean that you will cook one while we sit by and watch you, don’t
you?” asked Harvey. “We shall get there before you do.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Bob. “You have got to beat down, while we push
right through. It is four o’clock now, and there’s some fourteen miles to
go. We can do that in about three hours, because when we get across the
bay we can go close alongshore under the lee, in smooth water; while you
will have to stick to the rough part of the bay most of the time.”
“All right,” said Harvey, “we will have a race to see who gets there
first. But we’ll do it in half that time.”
So saying, he luffed the _Viking_ into the wind, while Bob White drew the
dancing canoe alongside. The canoeists and the yachtsmen parted company,
the _Viking’s_ sails filling with the breeze, as she quickly gathered
headway, throwing the spray lightly from her bows; the canoe plunging
stubbornly into the rough water, and forcing its way slowly ahead,
propelled by the energy of strong young arms.
The _Viking_ stood over on the starboard tack, while the canoe made a
direct course for the island; and the two craft were soon far apart. In
the course of a half-hour the canoe appeared from the deck of the
_Viking_ a mere dancing, foam-dashed object. But, in the meantime,
another boat had appeared, some way ahead, that attracted the attention
and interest of the yachtsmen. It was a small sailboat, carrying a
mainsail and single jib. The smaller yacht was coming up to them from the
direction of Grand Island, and was now running almost squarely before the
wind, with its jib flapping to little purpose, save that it now and then
filled for a moment on one side or the other, as the breeze happened to
catch it.
“There’s a boat that is being badly sailed,” exclaimed Harvey, as the two
watched its progress. “Look at it pitch; and look at that boom, how near
it comes to hitting the waves every time it rolls. There’s a chap that
doesn’t know enough, evidently, to top up his boom when running in a
seaway. What does he think topping-lifts are made for, anyway, if not to
lift the boom out of the reach of a sea like this?
“And let me tell you, running square before the wind in a heavy sea, with
a boat rolling like that, is reckless business, anyway. It is much better
to lay a course not quite so direct, and run with the wind not squarely
astern, with the sheet hauled in some. That’s no fisherman sailing that
boat.”
“It may be some one caught out who doesn’t know how to get back,” said
Henry Burns. “See, there he is, waving to us. He is in some trouble or
other. Let’s stand on up close to him and see what the matter is.”
“Well, I’ll take the chance,” replied Harvey. “There, he’s doing better
now. He is pointing up a little bit. We’ll keep on this tack and run
pretty close to him, and hail him. I’ll just sing out to him about that
topping-lift, anyway; and if he doesn’t like our interfering, why he can
come aboard and thrash us.”
As the sailboat drew nearer, there appeared to be a single occupant, a
youth of about Harvey’s age, perhaps a year older, holding the tiller.
His hat was gone and he was standing up, with hair dishevelled, glaring
wildly ahead, in a confused sort of way. The boom of the sailboat was
well out on the starboard side. Harvey kept the _Viking_ on the starboard
tack, and near enough to have passed quite close to the other boat.
A little too close, in fact, considering that the youth at the tiller of
the oncoming boat had, indeed, completely lost his head. Suddenly,
without warning, he put his tiller over so that the sailboat headed away
from the _Viking_ for an instant. Then, as the wind got back of his sail,
and the boat at the same time rolled heavily in the seas, the boom jibed
with terrific force. The sailboat swung in swiftly toward the starboard
beam of the _Viking_, and the wind and sea knocked it down so that the
water poured in over the side, threatening to swamp it. At the instant,
Jack Harvey had thrown the _Viking_ off the wind to avoid a crash with
the other boat. The boom of the sailboat swept around with amazing
swiftness, and then, as the boat careened, threatening to founder, the
end of the boom brought up with a smashing blow against the _Viking’s_
starboard quarter, breaking off several feet of the boom and tearing the
sail badly.
The sailboat, half-filled with water, fell heavily into the trough of the
sea and rolled threateningly; while at every pitch the boom struck the
waves as though it would break again.
The _Viking_, under Jack Harvey’s guidance, stood away a short distance,
then came about and beat up in to the wind a rod or two above the wreck.
“Get that mainsail down as quick as ever you can!” shouted Jack Harvey to
the strange youth, who had dropped the tiller, and who stood now at the
rail, dancing about frantically, as though he intended to jump overboard.
“I can’t,” cried the youth, tremulously. “Oh, come aboard here quick,
won’t you? I’m going to sink and drown. This boat’s going down. I don’t
know how to handle her.”
“We guessed that,” remarked Henry Burns, and added, reassuringly, “Don’t
lose your head now. You know where the halyards are. Go ahead and get
your sail down, and we’ll stand by and help you.”
Henry Burns’s calm manner seemed to instil a spark of courage into the
youth. He splashed his way up to the cabin bulkhead, where the halyards
were belayed on cleats on either side, and let them run. The sail dropped
a little way and then stuck. The youth turned to the other boys
appealingly.
“Pull up on your peak-halyard a little,” said Jack Harvey, “and let the
throat drop first a way. Then the throat won’t stick.”
The youth made another attempt and the sail came nearly down, hanging in
bagging folds.
“Lucky that’s not a heavy sail nor a heavy boom,” exclaimed Jack Harvey,
“or the boat would be over and sunk by this time. I think I could lift
the boom inboard if I could only get aboard there.”
“Here,” cried Harvey, coiling up a light, strong line that he had darted
into the cabin after, “catch this and make it fast up forward—and mind
you tie a knot that will hold.”
He threw the line across, and it was clutched by the boy aboard the
smaller boat. The boy carried it forward and did as Harvey had directed.
“Now,” said Harvey to Henry Burns, as he made fast the line astern, “the
moment we get near enough so that I can jump aboard, you bring the
_Viking_ right on her course, with a good full, so she won’t drift back
on to the wreck completely.”
He, himself, held the wheel of the _Viking_ long enough to allow the
yacht to come into the wind a little. Thus it lost headway sufficiently
so that the seas caused it to drift back, without its coming about or
losing all steerageway. Then, as the _Viking_ drifted within reach of the
smaller boat, he leaped quickly and landed safely on the deck. At the
same time, or an instant later, Henry Burns threw the wheel of the
_Viking_ over so that the yacht gathered headway again and tautened the
rope that connected the two boats.
CHAPTER III.
A RESCUE UNREWARDED
Harvey, having landed on the deck of the sailboat, steadied himself by
grasping the starboard stay, and took a quick, comprehensive glance over
the situation. A foot and a half or so of the boom had split off from the
end, and the mainsail was badly torn. The main-sheet had been snapped by
the jibing of the boom, but the break in the boom was beyond the point
where the sheet was fastened. The broken end of the sheet was trailing in
the water. The boat could be got in hand if that were regained.
Seizing the end of the main-sheet that remained in the boat, and casting
it loose from the cleat, Harvey found he had still the use of a rope of
considerable length. Coiling this up, and hanging it over one arm, he
regained the deck, over the small cabin, and took up his position on the
port side of the boat. The stay on that side had been saved from carrying
away only because the quarter of the _Viking_ had arrested the force of
the boom. Having this stay, then, to hold fast to, Harvey leaned over the
side, as far as he was able, passed an end of the rope about the boom,
took a turn, and made it fast.
Carrying the other end aft, Harvey handed it to the youth, who stood
gazing at his efforts stupidly, evidently knowing not in the least what
to do.
“Now you hold on to that,” said Harvey, “and when I tell you to, you haul
as hard as ever you can.”
The youth took the rope silently and sullenly.
Harvey sprang again upon the deck, caught the flying ends of the halyards
and ran the mainsail up. It was slow work, for the sail was soaked with
water, and the tear in it began to rip more when the strain was brought
to bear. When Harvey had hoisted the sail sufficiently so that the
topping-lift would have lifted the boom, he started for that; but it had
parted, and was of no use.
“Well,” said Harvey, “we’ll get the boom up a little more, with the sail,
no matter if it does tear. We can’t help it.”
So he took another pull at the peak-halyard. The boom lifted a little.
“That’s enough,” said Harvey. “Now haul in on that sheet lively, before
the sail tears any more. Get that boom in quick!”
The youth, with no great spirit nor heartiness in his movements, did as
directed, and the boom came inboard. Then Harvey once more dropped the
sail.
He was brim full of life, was Jack Harvey, and now that there was
something here worth doing, and necessary to be done quickly, he was
eager with the spirit of it.
“Have you got anything aboard here to bail with?” he asked, hurriedly;
and, without waiting for the more sluggish movements of the other, he
darted forward, through the water in the cockpit, to where he had espied
a pail half-submerged under the seat. With this he began bailing
furiously, dipping up the pailfuls and dashing them out over the side, as
though the boat were sinking and he had but one chance for life in a
hundred.
Harvey was working in this way, with never a thought of his companion,
when presently there came a hail from the _Viking_. He paused and looked
across the water to where Henry Burns was standing at the wheel of the
larger craft, with a look of amusement on his face.
“I say, Jack,” called Henry Burns, drawling very slightly, as was his
habit at times when other youths of more excitable temperament would
speak quickly, “that other chap aboard there is just dying to help bail
the boat. Why don’t you let him do his share of it?”
Harvey glanced back astern at his companion of the sailboat. What he saw
caused an angry flush to spread over his face. But the next moment the
cool effrontery of it made him laugh.
The youth whom Harvey’s surprised gaze rested upon was a rather tall,
thin, sallow chap, with an expression on his face that looked like a
perpetual sneer. He wore no yachting costume nor clothing of any sort fit
for roughing it. Instead, he was rather flashily dressed, in clothes more
often affected by men of sporting propensities than youths of any age. In
a scarf of brilliant and gaudy tint he wore a large pin in the form of a
horseshoe, with imitation brilliants in it. In fact, his dress and whole
demeanour were of one who had a far more intimate knowledge of certain
phases of life than he should. A telltale smear upon the fingers of his
right hand told of the smoking habit, which accounted for his thin and
sallow appearance—and which habit was now in evidence.
It was this latter that particularly angered Harvey, as he paused,
perspiring, from his work.
The youth had seated himself calmly on the edge of the after-rail, with
an elbow rested on one knee. In this comfortable attitude, and smoking a
cigarette, he was aimlessly watching Harvey work.
Harvey glared for a moment in amazement. Then his face relaxed.
“I say!” he exclaimed, throwing down the pail, wiping his brow, and
advancing aft toward the other youth, “this seems to be a sort of
afternoon tea, or reception, with cigarettes provided by the host.”
“No, thanks,” he added, shortly, as the other reached a hand into his
pocket and proffered a box of them. “You’re just too kind and generous
for anything. But I don’t smoke them. Some of my crew used to. But I tell
little Tim Reardon that that’s what keeps him from growing any. He’s at
them all the time. Guess you are, too, by the looks of you.”
Harvey glanced rather contemptuously at the lean, attenuated arm that the
other displayed, where he had rolled his cuffs back.
“Well, you don’t have to smoke them if you don’t want to,” said the
other, surlily. “But don’t preach. I’m as old as you are. My smoking is
my business.”
“Of course it is,” said Harvey. “I don’t care whether you smoke or not.
But what I object to is your doing the smoking and letting me do the
work. Your smoking is your business, and so is bailing out your own boat
your business—that is, your share of it is. Now, if you want any more
help from me, you just break up this smoking party and take that pail and
go to bailing. I’ve got enough to keep me busy while you are doing that.”
The youth glanced angrily at Harvey, but made no reply. Harvey’s stalwart
figure forbade any unpleasant retort. Sullenly, he tossed away the
half-finished cigarette, slumped down once more into the cockpit, took up
the pail that Harvey had dropped, and went to work.
“He looks like a real man now,” called out Henry Burns.
The youth, with eyes flashing, shot one glance at the smiling face of
Henry Burns, but deigned no reply.
Harvey, without further notice of his companion, proceeded to hoist the
sail a little so that he could take two reefs in it. This brought the
sail down so small as to include the torn part in that tied in. The sail
would, therefore, answer for the continuation of the trip.
“Say,” asked Harvey finally, “why didn’t you reef before, when it began
to blow up fresh and the sea got a bit nasty? You might have saved all
this.”
The youth hesitated, glanced at Harvey sheepishly, and mumbled something
that sounded like he didn’t know why he hadn’t.
“Hm!” said Harvey, under his breath. “He didn’t know enough.
“Well,” he continued, after a little time, “you’re all right to start off
again, if you think you can get along. That sail is down so small it
won’t give you any more trouble, and there is plenty of it to keep
headway on the boat; that is, if you are going on up the bay. Where are
you bound for, anyway?”
“Up to Springton,” replied the other. “Straight ahead.”
“All right,” said Harvey, “you can get there if you will only be a little
more careful. Don’t try to run straight for the town. Keep off either
way—do you see?” And Harvey designated how the other could run in safety.
“Run on one course a way,” he said, continuing, “and then put her about
and run on the other. But look out and don’t jibe her. Let her come about
into the wind. Now do you think you can get along?”
“Yes,” answered the youth, shortly. He had by this time finished his
bailing, and the cockpit floor was fairly free of water.
“Well, then, I’ll bid you an affectionate farewell,” said Harvey, who had
taken mental note of the fact that the youth had not offered to thank him
for all his trouble. “Sorry to leave you, but the best of friends must
part, you know. Good day.”
“Good day,” answered the youth, without offering even to shake hands.
Harvey lost little time in regaining the deck of the _Viking_. Henry
Burns was still smiling as Harvey took the wheel from him.
“We seem to have made a very pleasant acquaintance,” he said.
“Haven’t we though!” exclaimed Harvey. “If we were only in some nice,
quiet harbour, where the water wasn’t very deep, I’d just see whether
that young chap can swim or not. He’d get one ducking—”
“Oh, by the way,” called Henry Burns, as the two boats were separating,
“you’re entirely welcome to our assistance, you know. You needn’t write
us a letter thanking us. We know your feelings are just too deep for
thanks.”
“Little thanks I owe you,” snarled the other boy. “’Twas all your fault,
anyway. If you had kept off, my boat wouldn’t have gone over.”
Jack Harvey sprang from his seat and shook his fist in the direction of
the disappearing boat.
“Hold on there, Jack,” said Henry Burns, catching him by the arm. “Don’t
get excited. Do you know the answer to what he just said? Well, there
isn’t any. Just smile and wave your hand to him, as I do. He’s really
funnier than Squire Brackett.”
“Oh, yes, it is funny,” answered Jack Harvey, scowling off astern. “It’s
so funny it makes me sick. But perhaps you’d think it was funnier still,
if you had gone at that bailing the way I did, and had looked up all of a
sudden and seen that chap sitting back there at his ease, smoking. I’ll
just laugh about it for the rest of the week. That’s what I will.”
Jack Harvey certainly did not appear to be laughing.
“Above all things,” he said at length, “what do you suppose he meant by
saying it was our fault? That’s the last straw for me. We didn’t jibe his
boat for him.”
“No,” said Henry Burns, “but he probably owns the bay, and was mad to see
us sailing on it. He acted that way.”
“Well, it has cost us about an hour and a half good time,” exclaimed
Harvey—“though I should not begrudge it if he hadn’t acted the way he
did. We won’t win that race in to Southport, by a long shot. It’s about
half-past six o’clock, and we cannot make it in less than two hours and a
half, even if the wind holds.”
This latter condition expressed by Harvey was, indeed, to prove most
annoying. With the dropping of the sun behind the far-distant hills, the
wind perceptibly and rapidly diminished. They set their club-topsail to
catch the upper airs, but the last hour was sluggish sailing. It was a
few minutes to ten o’clock when the _Viking_ rounded the bluff that
guards the northeastern entrance to the snug harbour of Southport.
“There’s no show for that warm supper to-night, I’m afraid,” said Harvey,
as they turned the bluff and stood slowly into the harbour.
The immediate answer to this remark was an “Ahoy, there, on board the
_Viking_!” from across the water. The next moment, the familiar canoe
shot into sight and Tom Harris and Bob White were quickly on deck.
“We beat you fellows by a few minutes,” said Tom Harris, laughing at
Harvey.
“Look out for Jack,” said Henry Burns, with a wink at the other two. “He
has been having so much fun that he doesn’t want any more. And, besides,
he’s starving—and so am I; and we might eat little boys up if they plague
us.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Tom, observing that Harvey was
half-scowling as he smiled at Henry Burns’s sally.
“Oh, we have been entertaining a friend up the bay,” answered Henry
Burns, “and he didn’t appreciate what Jack did for him. Seriously now, I
don’t blame Jack for being furious.” And Henry Burns gave a graphic
account of the adventure.
When he had finished, both Tom Harris and Bob White gave vent to whistles
of surprise.
“Say,” exclaimed Bob White, “you couldn’t guess who that young chap is,
if you tried a hundred years.”
“Why, do you know him, then?” cried Jack Harvey.
“Yes, and you will know him, too, before the summer is over,” replied Bob
White. “That’s Harry Brackett, Squire Brackett’s son.”
“Didn’t know he had any,” exclaimed Harvey.
“Neither did we till this summer,” said Bob White. “He dropped in on us
one day, early, and wanted to borrow some money. That was up in Benton.
He said he must have it, to get right back to Southport; and Tom’s father
let him have a little. But we saw him several days after that driving
about the streets with a hired rig. So that’s where the money went, and I
think Mr. Harris will never see the money again. He’s been off to school
for two years, so he says; but if he has learned anything except how to
smoke, he doesn’t show it.
“But, never mind that now,” added Bob. “Let’s get the _Viking_ in to
anchorage and made snug, for you know there’s something waiting for you
over to the camp.”
“What! You don’t mean you have kept supper waiting for us all this time?”
cried Henry Burns, joyfully.
“Oh, but you are a pair of bricks!” exclaimed Harvey, as Bob White nodded
an affirmative. “I can smell that fish chowder that Bob makes clear out
here.”
A few minutes later, the four boys, weighting the canoe down almost to
the gunwales, were gliding in it across the water to a point of land
fronting the harbour, where, through the darkness, the vague outlines of
a tent were to be discerned. Soon the canoe grazed along a shelf of
ledge, upon which they stepped. Tom Harris sprang up the bank and
vanished inside the tent. Then the light of a lantern shone out,
illuminating the canvas, and Tom Harris, as host, stood in the doorway,
holding aside the flap for them to enter.
Inside the tent, which had a floor of matched boards, freighted down from
up the river for the purpose, it was comfortable and cosy. Along either
side, a bunk was set up, made of spruce poles, with boards nailed across,
and hay mattresses spread over these. There were two roughly made chairs,
which, with the bunks, provided sufficient seats for all. At the farther
end of the tent, on a box, beside another big wooden box that served for
a locker, was an oil-stove, which was now lighted and upon which there
rested an enormous stew-pan.
The cover being removed from this, there issued forth an aroma of fish
chowder that brought a broad grin even to the face of Jack Harvey.
“Hooray!” he yelled, grasping Bob White about the waist, giving him a
bearlike embrace, and releasing him only to bestow an appreciative blow
upon his broad back. “It’s the real thing. It’s one of Bob’s best. It is
a year since I had one, but I remember it like an old friend.”
“You get the first helping, for the compliment,” said Bob White, ladle in
hand.
“And only to think,” said Henry Burns, some moments later, as he leaned
back comfortably, spoon in hand, “that that was Squire Brackett’s son we
helped out of the scrape. He certainly has the squire’s pleasing manner,
hasn’t he, Jack?”
“Henry,” replied Jack Harvey, solemnly, “don’t you mention that young
Brackett again to me to-night. If you do, I’ll put sail on the _Viking_
and go out after him.”
“Then I won’t say another word,” exclaimed Henry Burns. “For my part, I
hope never to set eyes on him again.”
Unfortunately, that wish was not to be gratified.
CHAPTER IV.
SQUIRE BRACKETT DISCOMFITED
“But say,” inquired Henry Burns, in a somewhat disappointed tone, as they
were about to begin, “where are the fellows? It doesn’t seem natural to
me to arrive at Southport and not have them on hand. Didn’t you tell them
we were coming?”
“Didn’t have a chance,” replied Bob. “We went up to the cottage, but
there wasn’t anybody there. Then we met Billy Cook, and he said he saw
all three of them away up the island this afternoon.”
Henry Burns went to the door of the tent and looked over the point of
land, up the sweep of the cove.
“They have come back,” he exclaimed. “There’s a light in the cottage.
Come on, let’s hurry up and eat, and get over there.”
But at that very moment the light went out.
“Hello!” he said. “There they go, off to bed. Guess they must be tired.
Too bad, for I simply cannot stand it, not to go over to the cottage
to-night—just to look at the cottage, if nothing more. And I am afraid if
I do, I may make a little noise, accidentally, and wake one of them up.”
Henry Burns said this most sympathizingly; but there was a twinkle in the
corners of his eyes.
“Come on, Henry,” cried Harvey, “you are missing the greatest chowder you
ever saw.”
“Looks as though I might miss a good deal of it, by the way you are
stowing it aboard,” replied Henry Burns, reëntering the tent and
observing the manner in which Harvey was attacking his dish, while Tom
and Bob looked on admiringly.
“Never mind, Henry,” said Bob. “There’s enough. And, besides, Harvey is a
delicate little chap. He needs nourishing food and plenty of it.”
Harvey squared his broad shoulders and smiled.
“I’m beginning to get good-natured once more,” he said.
The campers’ quarters were certainly comfortable enough to make most any
one feel good-natured. The tent was roomy; the stove warmed it gratefully
against the night air, which still had some chill in it; the warm supper
tasted good after the long, hard day’s sailing; and Tom and Bob were
genial hosts.
Outside, the waves, fallen from their boisterousness of the afternoon to
gentle murmurings, were rippling in with a pleasing sound against the
point of land whereon the camp stood. The breeze was soft, though lacking
the mildness of the later summer, and the night was clear and starlit.
It had passed the half-hour after ten o’clock when the boys had finished
eating. They arose and went out in front of the tent.
“It is all dark over yonder at the Warren cottage,” said Tom. “What do
you think—had we better go over? The fellows are surely asleep.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Henry Burns. “Why, they would never forgive me if I
didn’t go over the first night I arrived here. We can just go over and
leave our cards at the front door. Of course we don’t have to wake them
up if they are asleep.”
“Oh, of course not,” exclaimed Harvey. “But just wait a moment, and I’ll
go out aboard and bring in that fog-horn and that dinner-bell.”
“We’ll get them in the canoe, Jack,” said Bob. He and Harvey departed,
and returned shortly, bringing with them a fog-horn that was not by any
means a toy affair, but for serious use, to give warning in the fog to
oncoming steamers; likewise, a gigantic dinner-bell, used for the same
purpose aboard the _Viking_.
“We haven’t anything in camp fit to make much of a noise with,” said Tom,
almost apologetically. “We keep our tent anchored in a fog, you know.”
“Who said anything about making a noise?” inquired Henry Burns,
innocently; and then added, “Never mind, there’s stuff enough up at the
cottage.”
They proceeded without more delay up through the little clump of
spruce-trees which shaded the camp on the side toward the village, and
struck into the road that led through the sleeping town. Sleepy by day,
even, the little village of Southport, which numbered only about a score
of houses, clustered about the harbour, was seized with still greater
drowsiness early of nights. Its inhabitants, early to rise, were likewise
early to bed; and the place, before the summer visitors arrived, was wont
to fall sound asleep by nine o’clock.
It was very still, therefore, as the boys went on up the main street.
Presently they turned off on a road to the right that led along the shore
of the cove, and back of which was a line of summer cottages, now for the
most part unopened for the season.
“There’s Captain Sam’s,” remarked Henry Burns, as they passed a little
frame cottage just before they had come to the turn of the road. “I’d
like to give him one salute for old time’s sake. He’s the jolliest man in
Southport.”
“He is not at home,” said Tom. “We asked about him to-day, when we got
in. He started up the bay this afternoon. Queer you did not see him out
there somewhere.”
“Why, we saw one or two boats off in the distance at the time of the
collision,” said Harvey; “but we were pretty much occupied just about
that time, eh, Henry? I didn’t notice what boats they were.”
They were approaching the Warren cottage by this time, and their
conversation ceased. The cottage was the last in the row that skirted the
cove, somewhat apart from all the others, occupying a piece of high
ground that overlooked the cove and the bay, and affording a view away
beyond to the off-lying islands. This view was obtained through a thin
grove of spruces, with which the island abounded, and which made a
picturesque foreground.
The cottage itself was roomy and comfortable, with a broad piazza
extending around the front and one side. Upon this piazza the boys now
stepped, quietly—“so as not to disturb the sleepers,” Henry Burns put in.
“Well, Henry, what’s up? You are master of ceremonies, you know,” said
Tom.
“Why, we want to wake them very gently at first,” replied Henry Burns.
“You know it is not good for any one to be frightened out of his sleep.
They might not grow any more; and it might take away young Joe’s
appetite—No, it would take more than that to do it,” he added.
They stepped around cautiously to the front door. As they had surmised,
the peacefulness of Southport made locks and keys a matter more of form
than usage, and the Warren boys had not turned the key in the lock. They
entered softly.
“Hark! what’s that?” whispered Bob.
They paused on tiptoe. A subdued, choky roar, or growl, was borne down
the front stairway from above.
“You ought to know that sound by this time,” said Henry Burns. “It’s
young Joe, snoring. Don’t you remember how the other boys used to declare
he would make the boat leak, by jarring it with that racket, when we had
to sleep aboard last summer? Why, he used to have black and blue spots up
and down his legs, where George and Arthur kicked him awake, so they
could go to sleep.”
The sound was, indeed, prodigious for one boy to make.
“We may as well have some light on the subject,” said Henry Burns,
striking a match and lighting the hanging-lamp in the sitting-room. It
shed a soft glow over the place and revealed a room prettily furnished;
the hardwood floor reflecting from its polished surface the rays from the
lamp; a generous fireplace in one corner; and, more to the purpose at
present, some big easy chairs, in which the boys made themselves at home.
But first a peep into the Warren kitchen pantry rewarded Bob with a
mighty iron serving-tray, and Tom with a pair of tin pot-covers, which,
grasped by their handles and clashed together, would serve famously as
cymbals.
“Now,” said Henry Burns, when they were all assembled and comfortably
seated, “you remember how we used to imitate the village band when it
practised nights in the loft over the old fish-house? Well, I’ll be the
cornet; Tom, you’re the bass horn—”
“He is when his voice doesn’t break,” remarked Bob, slyly.
“That’s all right,” replied Henry Burns. “Every musician strikes a false
note once in awhile, you know.” And he continued, “You are the
slide-trombone, Jack; and you, Bob, come in with that shrieking whistle
through your fingers for the flute.”
“Great!” exclaimed Bob. “What shall we try?”
“Oh, we’ll give them ‘Old Black Joe’ for a starter,” said Henry Burns,
“just out of compliment to young black Joe up-stairs.”
Presently, there arose through the stillness of the house, and was wafted
up the stairway, an unmelodious, mournful discord, that may perhaps have
borne some grotesque resemblance to the old song they had chosen, but
was, indeed, a most atrocious and melancholy rendering of it.
Then they paused to listen.
There was no answering sound from above, save that the snoring of young
Joe was no longer deep and regular, but broken and short and sharp, like
snorts of protest.
“Repeat!” ordered Henry Burns to his grinning band.
Again the combined assault on “Old Black Joe” began.
Then they paused again.
The snoring of young Joe was broken off abruptly, with one particularly
loud outburst on his part. There was, also, the creaking of a bed in
another room, and a sound as of some one sitting bolt upright.
“Here, you Joe! Quit that! What on earth are you doing?” called out the
voice of George Warren, in tones which denoted that he had awakened from
slumber, but not to full consciousness of what had waked him, except that
it was some weird sound.
Then another voice, more sleepily than the other: “What’s the matter,
George? Keep quiet, and let a fellow go to sleep.”
“Why, it’s that young Joe’s infernal nonsense, I suppose,” exclaimed the
elder brother. “Now, that will be enough of that, Joe. It isn’t funny,
you know.”
“That’s it! always blaming me for something,” came the answer from the
youngest boy’s room. “You fellows are dreaming—gracious, no! I hear a
voice down-stairs.”
It was the voice of Henry Burns saying solemnly, “Repeat.”
“Old Black Joe,” out of time, out of tune, turned inside out and scarcely
recognizable, again arose to the ears of the now fully aroused Warren
brothers.
There was the sound of some one leaping out of bed upon the bare chamber
floor.
“Now you get back into bed there, Joe!” came the voice of George Warren,
peremptorily. “Let those idiots, Tom and Bob, amuse themselves till they
get tired, if they think it’s funny. We are not going to get up to-night,
and that’s all there is about it. Say, you fellows go on now, and let us
alone. We’re tired, and we are not going to get up.”
“Too dictatorial, altogether,” commented Henry Burns, softly. “Give them
the full band now, good and lively.”
So saying, he seized the huge dinner-bell; Harvey took up the great
fog-horn; Tom and Bob, the pot-covers and serving-tray, respectively. A
hideous din, that was the combined blast of the deep horn, the clanging
reverberation of the tray beaten upon by Bob’s stout fist, the bellowing
of the dinner-bell and the clash of cymbals, roared and stormed through
the walls of the Warren cottage, as though bedlam had broken loose. The
rafters fairly groaned with it.
Down the stairway appeared a pair of bare legs. Then the form and face of
young Joe came into view. He stared for a moment wildly at the occupants
of the Warren easy chairs, and the next moment let out a whoop of
delight.
“Oh, hooray!” he yelled. “Come on, George. Come on, Arthur. Hurry up! Oh,
my! but it’s Henry Burns.”
A small avalanche of bare feet and bare legs poured down the stairs,
belonging in all to Joe, Arthur, and George Warren. Three sturdy figures,
clad in their night-clothes, leaped into the room, whooping and yelling,
and descended in one concerted swoop upon the luckless Henry Burns. That
young gentleman went down on the floor, where he afforded a seat for two
of the Warren boys, while young Joe, with pretended fury, proceeded to
pummel him, good-naturedly.
The three remaining boys were quickly added to the heap, dragging the
Warrens from off their fallen leader; and the turmoil and confusion that
raged about the Warren sitting-room for a moment might have meant the
wreck and ruin of a city home, adorned with bric-à-brac, but resulted in
no more serious damage than a collection of bruises on the shins and
elbows of the participants.
Out of the confusion of arms and legs, however, each individual boy at
length withdrew his own, more or less damaged.
“You’re a lot of villains!” exclaimed George Warren. “Wasn’t I sound
asleep, though? But, oh! perhaps we are not glad to see you.”
“I tell you what we will do,” cried young Joe. “We will hurry up and
dress and go out in the kitchen and cook up a big omelette—”
The roar that greeted young Joe’s words drowned out the rest of the
sentence.
“Isn’t he a wonder, though!” exclaimed George Warren. “Why, he had his
supper only three hours and a half ago, and here he is talking about
eating.”
“I don’t care about anything to eat,” declared young Joe. “I thought the
other fellows would like something.”
“He’s so thoughtful,” said Arthur.
Young Joe looked longingly toward the kitchen.
“Well, we are not going to keep you awake,” said Henry Burns at length,
after they had talked over the day’s adventures. “We thought you would
like to have us call. We’ll be round in the morning, though.”
But the Warrens wouldn’t hear of their going. There were beds enough in
the roomy old house for all, as the rest of the family had not arrived.
So up the stairs they scrambled. Twenty minutes later, the fact that
young Joe was sleeping soundly was audibly in evidence.
“He can’t keep me awake, though,” exclaimed Harvey. “I have had enough
for one day to make me sleep, haven’t you, Henry?”
But Henry Burns was asleep already.
The next afternoon, as the crowd of boys sat about the Warren
sitting-room, talking and planning, the tall figure of a man strode
briskly up the road leading to the cottage. He was dressed in a suit of
black, somewhat pretentious for the island population, with a white
shirt-front in evidence, and on his head he wore a large, broad-brimmed
soft hat. In his hand he carried a cane, which he swung with short,
snappy strokes, as a man might who was out of temper.
George Warren, from a window, observed his approach.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “Here comes the squire. Doesn’t look especially
pleasant, either. I wonder what’s up.”
That something or other was “up” was apparent in the squire’s manner and
expression, as he walked hastily across the piazza and hammered on the
door with the head of his cane.
“Good morning, Captain Ken—” began young Joe.
But he got no further. “Here, you stop that!” cried the squire, advancing
into the room and raising his cane threateningly. “Don’t you ever call me
‘Captain Kendrick’ again as long as you live. It’s no use for you to say
you mistake me for him, for you don’t.”
Young Joe disappeared.
“Confound that Joe!” said Arthur. “He always says the wrong thing.”
Captain Kendrick was the squire’s bitterest enemy; and it was a constant
thorn in the squire’s side that they really did resemble each other
slightly.
“Good morning, squire,” said George Warren, politely. “Won’t you have a
seat?”
“No, I won’t!” said Squire Brackett, shortly. “I don’t need any seat to
say what I want to say. I want to talk with those two young scamps over
there.”
Squire Brackett pointed angrily toward Jack Harvey and Henry Burns.
“What can we do for you, squire?” inquired Henry Burns, quietly.
“Do for me!” repeated the squire, his voice rising higher. “You have done
enough for me already, I should say. What do you mean by running down my
sailboat in the bay yesterday? Hadn’t you done enough to annoy me
already, without smashing into the _Seagull_ and tearing a brand-new sail
and ripping things up generally?
“What can you do for me, indeed! Well, I’ll tell you what you can do: you
can pay me forty dollars for a new sail; and you can pay for a new boom
to replace the broken one. And there’s some rigging that was carried
away. That is all I think of now.”
The squire paused for breath.
“Yes, I guess that is about all,” remarked Henry Burns.
But Jack Harvey was on his feet and facing the angry squire. “See here,”
he began, “do you mean to say that that young chap we helped out of his
scrape blames us for the wreck? Just bring him—”
“Hold on, Jack,” said Henry Burns. “Take it easy. We were not to blame,
so let’s not get into a quarrel with the squire. Perhaps he has not heard
just how it did happen.”
“Haven’t I?” roared the squire. “That’s impudence added to injury. Didn’t
my son, Harry, tell me all about it—how you ran him down; how you steered
in on to him when he was trying his best to keep clear of you? Haven’t I
heard of it, indeed! I have heard all I want to about it. Now, there is
only one thing left for you two young men to do, and that is to settle
for the damages. That is all I want of you—and no impudence.
“It won’t do you any good to try to lie out of it,” he added, as he
started for the door. “I’ve got no time to waste listening to denials.
You can just come down to Dakin’s store and settle to-day or to-morrow,
or there will be a lawsuit begun against both of you, or whoever is
responsible for you. I guess my son Harry’s word is good as a dozen of
yours. He’s told me all about it. Good morning to you.”
The squire swung himself angrily out of the door and strode away down the
road, flipping off the grass-tops with his cane.
Harvey and Henry Burns sat back in their chairs in amazement.
“And to think that I helped that young cub bail out his boat!” groaned
Jack Harvey.
Henry Burns snickered.
“It’s no joke, Jack,” he said. “But I can’t help thinking of that young
Brackett, sitting up there on the rail and watching you work.
“It is a bad scrape, too,” he added, more seriously. “It does mean a real
lawsuit. The squire is in the mood for it; and, the worst of it, there
weren’t any witnesses. It is his word against ours. It’s a bad start for
the summer, and no mistake.”
A half-hour later, a procession of sober-faced boys strolled down into
the village. Villagers, who had always liked Henry Burns, and had come to
like Jack Harvey since he had atoned for many past pranks by gallantry at
the end of the last season, greeted the new arrivals cordially.
“See you boys got into a leetle trouble with the squire,” remarked one of
them. “Well, that’s too bad. He’s a hard man when it comes to money
matters. What’s that? You say young Brackett was the one to blame? Pshaw!
Well, I do declare. Hm!”
Down in Rob Dakin’s grocery store there was the usual gathering of the
villagers and fishermen, lounging about, with elbows on counters,
half-astride sugar and cracker barrels, and a few of the more early
comers occupying the choice seats about the sheet-iron stove. This
inevitable centre of attraction, having done its duty faithfully
throughout the winter, was, of course, now cold and not an object of
especial beauty; but it still possessed that magnetic quality that
pertains to a stove in a country store, to draw all loungers about it,
and make it the common meeting-place.
There was Billy Cook, from over across the cove, who was always barefoot,
although a man of forty. There was Dave Benson, from the other side of
the island, who had deposited a molasses-jug on the floor in a corner,
and who now stood, apparently extracting some nourishment, and at least
comfort, from a straw held between his teeth. There was Old Slade, from
over on the bluff opposite, slyly cutting a sliver of salt fish from one
in the bale upon which he sat. Also a half-dozen or more others.
To this assembled group of his townsfolk, the squire, accompanied now by
his hopeful son, Harry, was holding forth, as the party of boys entered
the door.
“Here they be now, squire,” remarked Dave Benson. “Hello, boys! Ketchin’
any lobsters lately?”
“Yes, here they are, and here they shall pay!” cried the squire, turning
upon them.
Jack Harvey advanced toward young Brackett.
“Do you dare say we ran you down?” he inquired, angrily.
“Yes, you did,” answered young Brackett, sullenly, and sidling up close
to his father.
“Why, of course they did!” exclaimed the squire. “And it won’t do them
any good—”
But at this point his remarks were interrupted.
A strongly built, heavy-shouldered man entered the store, gave a loud,
good-natured “Haw! Haw!” for no apparent reason except that his natural
good spirits prompted him to, and bade everybody good evening in a voice
that could be heard a quarter of a mile away.
“Why, hello, Cap’n Sam,” said Dave Benson, hailing him as he entered the
doorway. “Haven’t seen you much lately.”
Captain Sam Curtis roared out a salutation in return. If there was a
voice within a radius of twenty miles about Southport that could equal
that of Captain Sam Curtis, no one had ever heard of it. It had a
reputation all its own, far and wide.
“Why, hello, squire,” cried Captain Sam. He had failed to notice Harvey
and Henry Burns for the moment in the crowd. “Good evening, squire, good
evening. Guess you’re glad to get that ’ere boy of yours back again,
ain’t yer?”
“Yes,” answered the squire, irritably.
“Well, I guess you better be!” exclaimed Captain Sam. “I thought he was a
goner there, yesterday, when I saw the _Seagull_ go kerflop.”
“What!” cried the squire. “You saw it? How is that? I thought you said
there weren’t any other boats around, Harry.”
The squire turned to his son; but young Harry Brackett was vanishing out
the store door.
“See it? I rather guess I did see it,” bawled Captain Sam, warming up to
his subject, while the villagers sat up and paid attention. “Why, I had
the spy-glass on that ’ere youngster for twenty minutes before he did the
trick. He was a-sailing that ’ere boat like a codfish trying to play
‘Home, Sweet Home’ on the pianner.”
“Nonsense!” roared the now infuriated squire, who observed the audience
in the store snickering and nudging one another. “Nonsense, I say. He can
sail a boat just as good as you can. Why, he told me, only the other day,
before I let him have the _Seagull_ at all, how he won races last summer
in a yacht off Marblehead.”
“Mebbe so, squire,” retorted Captain Sam. “But he was a-sailin’ this ’ere
boat of yours like a mutton-head. Haw! Haw! That’s what he was a-doin’,
squire.
“Why, sir, squire, he was a-standing up in that boat, with his hat blown
off, lookin’ as scared as you was last summer when you and old Witham
took that sail down the bay with me. Haw! Haw! And that ’ere boom was
a-jumpin’, and that ’ere sail was a-slattin’ around like an old alpacker
dress out on a clothes-line.
“‘Gracious goodness!’ says I to myself, ‘that youngster is a-scared out
of his wits. He’ll jibe her, as sure as a hen sets.’ And he done it, too.
Bang! she went, and the boom slat up against that other boat that was
comin’ down ’tother way—and I says, ‘It’s all up with poor Harry.’ And so
it would have been if it hadn’t been for the chaps in that other boat—
“Why, hello, Henry Burns! And if there ain’t young Harvey, too,” cried
Captain Sam, interrupting himself, as he espied the two boys. “Why, that
was your boat, eh? Well, I guess the squire is mightily obliged to you,
both of yer.
“Reckon you’ve thanked these young chaps, good and hearty, for saving
young Harry, eh?” cried Captain Sam, advancing to the squire.
But, to the utter amazement of Captain Sam, the squire turned upon his
heel, with an exclamation of disgust, dashed out of the store, and
disappeared in the direction taken shortly before by his son, while a
roar of laughter from the assembled villagers followed after him.
CHAPTER V.
HARVEY GETS BAD NEWS
Harvey and Henry Burns left the store together in high spirits,
surrounded by their companions, loudly jubilant over the turn affairs had
taken. It was growing dusk, and Rob Dakin was preparing for the usual
illumination of his store with one oil-lamp. Harvey and Henry Burns
started for the shore, but were stopped by a hail from George Warren.
“Come on over to the post-office with me,” he said. “You’re in no hurry
for supper. It’s my turn to go for the mail, and we are expecting a
letter from father up in Benton.”
So the two boys retraced their steps, and the three friends went along up
the road together.
“We haven’t a very extensive correspondence to look after, eh, Jack?”
remarked Henry Burns; “but we’ll go along for company’s sake. My aunt
never writes to me, and I think I never received but two letters in my
life. They were from old Mrs. Newcome.”
“I never got any,” declared Harvey. “My dad says to me at the beginning
of the summer, ‘Where are you going?’ and I say, ‘Oh, down in the bay,’
or wherever it is I am going. Then he says, ‘Well, take care of
yourself,’ and forgets all about me, except he sends money down to me
regularly—and more when I ask him.”
The boy’s remark was, in fact, an unconscious criticism of the elder
Harvey, and accounted, perhaps, for some of Harvey’s past adventures
which were not altogether commendable. Harvey’s father was of the rough
and ready sort. He had made money in the Western gold-fields, where he
had started out as a miner and prospector. Now he was enjoying it in
generous fashion, and denied his family nothing. He had a theory that a
boy that had the “right stuff in him,” as he put it, would make his way
without any particular care taken of him; and he was content to allow his
son, Jack, to do whatever he pleased. A convenient arrangement, by the
way, which also left Mr. Harvey free to do whatever he pleased, without
the worry of family affairs.
The boys walked through the fields, up a gentle incline of the land,
which led to the general higher level of the island, overlooking the bay
and the islands in the distance. They gazed back presently upon a
pleasing prospect.
There was the cove, sweeping in to the left, along the bluff opposite,
which was high and rock-ribbed. At the head of the cove the shores were
of clean, fine sand, broken here and there at intervals by a few patches
of clam-flats, bared at low water. Out from where the boys stood,
straight ahead rolled the bay, with an unbroken view away across to the
cape, some five miles off. A thoroughfare, or reach, extended south and
eastward from the cape, formed by the mainland and a chain of islands.
Then, to the south, the bay extended far, broken only by some islands a
few miles away.
At anchor in the cove lay the Warren boys’ sailboat, the _Spray_, and the
larger yacht, the _Viking_.
“Well, George,” said Henry Burns, with his right arm over the other’s
shoulder, “it looks like some fun, now that the trouble with Squire
Brackett is cleared away.”
“Great!” exclaimed George Warren.
The post-office, called such by courtesy, the office consisting of the
spare room of whatsoever fisherman or farmer happened to be honoured with
Uncle Sam’s appointment, was about a mile from the harbour of Southport.
It was, in this case, in the house of one Jerry Bryant, and was about a
quarter of a mile, or less, from the western shore of the island, where a
small cove made in from that bay.
“Good evening, Mr. Bryant,” said George Warren, as they arrived at the
post-office door. “Mail in yet?”
“Be here right away,” replied the postmaster. “I saw Jeff’s packet coming
in a moment ago. There he comes now up the lane.”
Jeff Hackett, whose commission it was to fetch the mail across from the
mainland in a small sloop daily, now appeared with a mail-sack over his
shoulder.
The formality of receiving the attenuated mail-sack and sorting its
somewhat meagre contents, being duly observed, Postmaster Bryant threw
open a small sliding door, poked his head out, and was ready for
inquiries.
“Anything for the Warren cottage?”
“Not a thing.”
“Anything for the neighbours, a few doors below?”
“Nothing for them, either.”
“Looks as though we had come over for nothing,” said George Warren. “Too
bad, but you fellows don’t mind the walk, do you?”
“Not a bit,” answered Henry Burns.
They were departing, when the postmaster hailed them.
“Say,” he called out, “who is Jack Harvey? He is the chap that caught
Chambers, isn’t he? Doesn’t he stop over near you, somewhere?”
“Here I am,” said Harvey, taken by surprise. “What do you want?”
“Why, I’ve got a letter for you,” said the postmaster. “It has been here
three days. I couldn’t find out where you were.”
“Well, that’s odd,” exclaimed Harvey, stepping back and receiving the
envelope. “I never got one before. Say, we came over for something, after
all.”
He tore open the envelope and read the letter enclosed.
“Whew!” he exclaimed as he finished. “That’s tough.” And he gave a
disconsolate whistle.
“What’s the matter? Nothing bad, I hope,” asked Henry Burns.
In reply, Harvey handed him the letter. It was dated from Boston, and
read as follows:
“My dear Jack:—Sorry to have to write you bad news, but you are big
enough to stand it, I had to work hard when I was a boy, and perhaps
you may now, but you’ll come out all right in the end. I don’t know
just where I stand, myself. Investments have gone wrong, and Saunders
has brought suit in court, claiming title to the land where the mine
is. May beat him out. Don’t know. He is a rascal, but may win.
“Now I haven’t got a dollar to send you, and don’t see where I’ll get
any all summer for you, as I shall need every cent to pay bills. I have
got to go out to borrow money to pay lawyers, too, to fight the case.
“Too bad, but you will have to come home, or shift for yourself for the
summer. Let me know, and I’ll send money for your fare, if you are
coming.
“Affectionately, your dad,
“William Harvey.”
An hour later, Jack Harvey and Henry Burns sat in the comfortable cabin
of the _Viking_, talking matters over. The yacht swung lazily at anchor
in the still cove. A fire burned in the little stove, and the smoke
wreathed out of a funnel on the starboard side. The boys were
superintending the baking of a pan of muffins in a sheet-iron oven, while
two swinging-lanterns gave them light.
“I declare I don’t know what to do about it,” said Harvey. “You see, I
never thought about getting along without money before. All I have had to
do is just ask for it. Now, you see, I’m behind on my allowance. We paid
Reed thirty-five dollars, you know, for wintering and painting the boat,
and something more for some new pieces of rigging. That, and what I’ve
spent for clothes, has cleaned me out.”
“Yes, but I owe you twelve dollars on the boat account, which I’m going
to pay as soon as I receive my own allowance from my aunt,” said Henry
Burns.
“Well, that won’t go very far,” responded Harvey, gloomily. “We owe—or
shall owe—for the freight on that box of provisions that’s coming from
Benton; we have got to hire a tender to take the place of the old one I
sold last fall. We can’t keep on borrowing this one all summer—”
“Never mind,” interrupted Henry Burns. “You know it costs us scarcely
anything to live down here. We can catch all the fish and lobsters we
want, dig clams, and all that sort of thing. All we need to buy is a
little meal and flour and coffee and sugar from time to time, and we’ll
do that all right on my allowance.”
“That’s kind in you, Henry,” said Harvey, warmly, “but I don’t quite like
the idea of living all summer on you.”
“Why not?” demanded Henry Burns, and added, quickly, “You used to provide
everything for all your crew last summer, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, I did,” replied Harvey. “Ha! ha! catch one of them buying
anything. But of course they couldn’t buy much of anything, anyway. They
hadn’t any money. But somehow this is different. You see,—well—the fact
is, I’m not quite used to being hard up. And I don’t exactly like to take
it. Of course, I know just how you mean it, too.”
“Yes, but think how small our expenses need be if we are careful,” urged
Henry Burns. “We live right aboard here all the time, you know.”
“Yes,” answered Harvey, “but it all counts up more than you think,
especially when one is short of money. You can’t run a big boat like this
all summer without expense. It’s a rope here and a block there, and a
spare anchor we need, and a lot of little things all the time. I know how
it was on the _Surprise_.”
Their conversation was interrupted at this point by a voice close
alongside. The canoe had glided quietly up, and the next moment Tom and
Bob were descending into the cabin.
“My, but you chaps have elegant quarters down here,” exclaimed Tom. “We
envy you your summer aboard here, don’t we, Bob?”
Henry Burns and Harvey, somewhat taken aback, made no reply, and looked
embarrassed.
“Why, what’s up?” asked Tom, observing something was wrong. “No more
trouble, I hope.”
Harvey explained the situation.
“That need not be so bad,” said Tom. “It doesn’t cost but little to live
here. We spend scarcely anything, do we, Bob? We can lend you something
to help you through. You don’t want to think of giving up the summer.”
“I dare say I could stick it out all right,” said Harvey, “if I was just
camping once more. That doesn’t cost much. It is this boat that bothers
me. We can’t run it for nothing.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Henry Burns, vigorously, with more
demonstrativeness than was usual with him, “I’ll tell you what we will
do. We’ll make the boat work. We will make it pay its own way, and pay us
something besides. We’ll fit out and go down among the islands fishing,
and take our fish over to Stoneland and sell them, the same as the
fishermen do. There won’t be a fortune in it, with a boat no bigger than
this, but it will support us, and more too, after paying all expenses.”
“Henry,” cried Harvey, gratefully, “you’re a brick! I thought of that
once, and I’d have proposed it if this had been the old _Surprise_; but I
didn’t know as you would be willing to do it with this boat. It dirties a
craft up so.”
“That doesn’t hurt a boat any,” said Henry Burns. “The fishermen down
around Wilton’s Harbour take out sailing parties all summer, and their
boats are always handsome and clean, and they don’t smell fishy. And the
men always use them for fishing in the fall and spring, when the fishing
is at its best. It simply means that we have got to take out all the nice
fittings from the cabin, stow them away somewhere on shore, fit out with
some tackle, and go ahead. At the end of the summer we will overhaul the
_Viking_ from deck to keelson, take out every piece of ballast in her,
clean it and dry it and put it back, and paint the yacht over after we
wash everything inside and out. She will be just as fine as she was
before.”
“That’s great!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “You can do it all right, too. I
wish we had a boat. We’d go along with you, wouldn’t we, Bob?”
“I’d like nothing better,” answered Bob.
“Then come along with us,” said Harvey. “We really need two more to
handle this boat properly. You can fit yourselves out with
fishing-tackle, and we’ll all share in the catch.”
“Hooray! we’ll do it,” cried Bob. “But we don’t want a share of the
catch. We will be glad enough to go for the fun of it.”
“Yes, but this is part business,” said Henry Burns. “You must have some
share in every trip you make with us. How will two-thirds for us and a
third for you do, as we own the boat?”
“That is more than fair,” replied Tom.
“Then it’s a bargain, eh, Jack?” said Henry; and, as the other gave
hearty assent, he added, “We’ll go about it right away to-morrow, if the
weather is good.”
When George Warren heard of the plan the next day, however, he was not
equally elated. “It’s the thing to do, I guess,” he said, but added,
“It’s going to keep you away from Southport; that is the only drawback.”
“No, only part of the time,” said Henry Burns. “We are not going to try
to get rich, only to support ourselves. We shall be back and forth all
summer. We’ll have some fun here, too.”
Then the boys went and hunted up Captain Sam Curtis.
“Yes, you can do it all right,” said Captain Sam, when he had heard of
the plan. “But it’s rough work. You can count on that. You want to get
right out to big Loon Island—you know, with the little one, Duck Island,
alongside. There’s where the cod are, out along them reefs; and you can
set a couple of short trawls for hake. May get some runs of mackerel,
too, later. I’ll get you a couple of second-hand pieces of trawl cheap.
They’ll do all right for one season. But it ain’t just like bay-sailing
all the time, you know, though you may not get caught. When it’s rough,
it’s rough, though.
“And there’s one thing you’ve got to look out for,” added Captain Sam.
“Of course the men around this coast will be fair to you and won’t
bother. But there’s a rough crowd that comes up from the eastward. They
may not take kindly to a pack of boys coming in on the fishing-grounds.
Just keep your weather eye out; that’s all.”
The boys went about their preparations eagerly. Already they had begun
removing the fine fittings from the cabin of the _Viking_, carrying them
up to the Warren cottage, and putting the yacht in condition for rougher
usage. They worked hard all day. At night, however, an unexpected event
occurred, which delayed their fishing-trip until the next week.
George Warren came down to the shore that evening with another letter for
Jack Harvey, much to the latter’s amazement.
“Hang it!” he exclaimed, as George Warren handed the letter over. “They
say troubles never come singly. I wonder if here’s more. I hope things
are no worse at home—Hello, it isn’t from Boston. It’s from Benton. Who
can have written me from there?”
He tore open the envelope hastily. The letter, badly written in an
uncouth scrawl, read thus:
“Dear Jack:—You remember you told us fellows last year that we could
come down to the island again this year and live in the tent, the same
as we did before you got the boat, and you would see that we got along
all right. Me and George Baker have got the money to pay our fares on
the boat, and Tim and Allan will work part of their passage. Dan Davis,
who’s on the boat, told us you was down there. So we’ll be along pretty
soon if you don’t write and stop us.
“So long,
“Joe Hinman.”
“Well, here’s a mess,” said Harvey, ruefully, and looking sorely puzzled.
“I’d clean forgotten that promise I made to the crew last year, that they
could come down, and I’d take care of them. You see, I thought I was
going to have plenty of money; but I don’t know just what to do now.
Would you write and tell them not to come?”
“No, let them come,” said Henry Burns. “They’ll get along somehow. We
will help them out, and they’ll have your tent to live in.”
“All right,” said Harvey. “I hate to disappoint them. They don’t get much
fun at home. I’ll send them word to come, as long as you are willing.”
So it happened that a few days later there disembarked from the river
steamer a grinning quartette of boys. The youngest, Tim Reardon by name,
was barefoot; and the others, namely, Joe Hinman, George Baker, and Allan
Harding, were not vastly the better off in the matter of dress. This was
Harvey’s “crew,” who had sailed the bay with him for several years, in
the yacht _Surprise_, and had camped with him on a point that formed one
of the boundaries of a little cove, some three-quarters of a mile down
the island from where Tom and Bob were encamped.
The united forces of the boys, including the Warrens, made things
comfortable for the new arrivals in short order. Harvey’s old tent, which
had been stored away in Captain Sam’s loft for the winter, was brought
out and loaded aboard the _Viking_; and the entire party sailed down
alongshore, and unloaded at Harvey’s former camping-ground, where there
was a grove of trees and a good spring close by. The tent was quickly set
up, the bunks fashioned, a share of the _Viking’s_ store of provisions
carried ashore, and everything made shipshape.
“Now,” said Harvey, addressing his crew, after he had confided the news
of his embarrassed circumstances, “I’ll help you out all I can, and
you’ll get along all right, with fishing and clamming. But, see here, no
more shines like we had before. I know I was in for it, too. But no more
hooking salmon out of the nets. And let other people’s lobster-pots
alone, or I won’t look out for you.”
“Oh, we’ll be all right, Jack,” cried the ragged campers, gleefully;
while little Tim Reardon, standing on his head and hands in an ecstasy of
delight, seemed to wave an acquiescence with his bare feet.
“That’s your doing,” said Harvey, thoughtfully, turning to Tom and Bob.
“Since you saved my life the crew really have behaved themselves.”
Two days later, the bare feet of Tim Reardon bore him, breathless, to the
door of the other tent, where Harvey and Henry Burns sat chatting with
Tom and Bob.
“Say, Jack,” he gasped out, “you just want to hurry up quick and get down
into the Thoroughfare. They’re going to raise the _Surprise_. I got a
ride on behind a wagon coming up the island this morning, and two men
were talking about it. One of them said he heard Squire Brackett say that
that yacht down in the Thoroughfare was anybody’s property now, as it had
been abandoned, and he calculated it could be floated again, and he’d
bring it up some day and surprise you fellows. But he hasn’t started to
do it yet, and so it’s still yours, isn’t it? If he can raise it, we can,
can’t we?”
Harvey sprang to his feet.
“Raise it!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve thought all along of trying it some
day. Captain Sam said last fall he thought it might be done. But I had
this other boat to attend to, and then I was called home. We’ll go after
it this very afternoon. What do you say, Henry?”
“Yes, and I think I have a scheme to help float her,” replied Henry
Burns.
Acting on Henry Burns’s suggestion then, the boys proceeded to the store,
where, in a spare room, Rob Dakin kept a stock of small empty casks which
he sold to the fishermen now and then for use as buoys. They hired the
whole supply, some twoscore, agreeing to pay for the use of them and
bring them back uninjured. These they loaded hastily aboard the _Viking_,
having sent word in the meantime to the Warren boys. They, joining in
heartily, soon had sail on their own boat, the _Spray_, and went on
ahead, down the coast of the island.
Completing the loading of the _Viking_, and taking aboard an extra supply
of tackle, borrowed for the occasion, Henry Burns and Harvey got up sail
and set out after the _Spray_, stopping off the cove below to pick up the
others of Harvey’s crew. They overhauled the _Spray_ some miles down the
coast, later in the afternoon, and thence led the way toward the
Thoroughfare. They had the wind almost abeam from the westward, and went
along at a good clip in a smooth sea.
That evening at sundown they sailed into the Thoroughfare. This was a
stretch of water affording a somewhat involved and difficult passage
between the Eastern and Western Bays, the two bays being so designated
according to a partial division of these waters by Grand Island. The
island was some thirteen miles long, lying lengthwise with its head
pointing about northeast and the foot southwest.
The waters of the Thoroughfare were winding, flowing amid a small chain
of islands at the foot of Grand Island. The channel was a crooked one,
the deeper water lying along this shore or that, and known only to local
fishermen and to the boys who had cruised there.
Henry Burns, on the lookout forward, presently gave a shout of warning.
“There she is, Jack,” he cried, pointing ahead to where the mast of a
yacht protruded above water some three-fourths of its length. “There’s
the ledge, too. Look out and not get aground.”
“Oh, I know this channel like a book,” said Harvey, and demonstrated his
assertion by bringing the _Viking_ to, close up under the lee of the
submerged yacht, in deep water.
The yacht _Surprise_, sunken where it had been in collision with the very
yacht that had now come to its rescue, lay hung upon a shelving reef,
with its bow nearer to the surface than its stern. The tide was at the
last of its ebb, and it was clear that by another hour there would be
only about two feet of water over the forward part of the boat and about
five feet over the stern.
“We are in luck,” cried Harvey. “She has worked up higher on the reef,
somehow, since last year, either by the tides, or perhaps some ice formed
here in the winter and forced her up. She was deep under water when I
last saw her.”
“But it’s a wonder the mast did not go,” he added. “The bobstay went when
we smashed into the _Viking_; and the mast wasn’t any too firm when we
last saw it. It wouldn’t have stood after we struck if we hadn’t let the
mainsail go on the run.”
Evening was coming on, but the boys lost no time in going to work.
Getting into the dory that they had hired for the season as a tender,
Henry Burns and Harvey stepped out carefully on to the reef, and made
their way down its slippery sides to the bow of the _Surprise_. Then,
with trousers rolled up and divested of jackets and shirts, they
proceeded, as soon as the tide had fallen, to nail some strips of canvas
over the hole smashed in the bow. They fastened it with battens, putting
several layers on, one over another.
“It isn’t a handsome job,” said Henry Burns, finally; “but the water will
not run in there as fast as we can pump it out. It’s a fair start.”
The yacht _Spray_ came in now and brought up alongside the _Viking_.
“What are you going to do?” inquired George Warren.
“Why, everybody has got to go in for a swim,” answered Henry Burns,
setting the example by throwing off his remaining garments. The others,
willing enough at all times for that, followed.
Henry Burns next brought forth several coils of rope, which he had busied
himself with, on the voyage down, knotting it at regular intervals into
loops.
“There,” said he, “the _Surprise_ lies, luckily, on these irregular
rocks. We have got to duck under and pass these ropes underneath the
keel, wherever there is a chance. Then we’ll bring the ends up on either
side and make them fast aboard, wherever there is a thing to hitch to.
Then we’ll attach the kegs to the loops. See?”
“Good for you, Henry!” cried Harvey, enthusiastically. “You always have
some scheme in your head, don’t you?”
“Wait and see if it works,” said Henry Burns, modestly.
“Ouch!” cried young Joe, as the boys splashed overboard. “This water is
like ice.”
“Oh, shut up, Joe!” said Arthur Warren. “Just think of that hot coffee we
are going to have for supper.”
The boys worked eagerly and hurriedly, for the waters of Samoset Bay had
not, indeed, fully recovered from their long winter’s chill, and the sun
had sunk behind the distant hills. The ropes, passed beneath on one side,
were grasped by numbed but skilful hands on the other. In a quarter of an
hour they had some six or eight of these passed under and made fast, and
the empty casks, tightly stopped with cork bungs, tied into the
loopholes. This, in itself, was no easy task. The buoyant casks persisted
in bobbing up to the surface, escaping now and then from their hands. Two
of the boys would seize a cask by the lashings that had been passed about
it and fairly ride it below the surface with their united weight. Then,
holding their breath under water, they would make it fast to a loop.
It was dark when they had finished; and a hungry, shivering crowd of boys
they were, as they danced about the decks and scrambled into their
clothes. But the cabins of the _Viking_ and the _Spray_ were soon made
inviting, with warmth and the odours of hot coffee and cooking food. They
were only too glad to go below and enjoy both.
“Hello, Henry,” called young Joe from the deck of the _Spray_, some time
later, as the boys were hanging their lanterns forward to warn any stray
fisherman that might sail through in the night; “the _Surprise_ doesn’t
seem to come up very fast.”
“Well, wait till to-morrow and see,” answered Henry Burns.
They were soon sleeping soundly, weary with the day’s hard work.
CHAPTER VI.
OUT TO THE FISHING-GROUNDS
While the boys were thus concerned down in the Thoroughfare, at the foot
of Grand Island, certain events were happening away over across the
Western Bay that might perhaps affect them later.
If a direct line were drawn across the middle of Grand Island, and
extended straight across the Western Bay to the neighbouring mainland, it
would touch that shore in about the locality of the town of Bellport.
This was a little community, dull in winter, and flourishing in summer
with the advent of cottagers and visitors from the little city of
Mayville, some miles up along the shore of the bay, and from the towns
farther north up the river. It was a favourite resort of yachtsmen in a
modest way.
On the afternoon that young Harry Brackett had quietly withdrawn from the
crowd of villagers in the store at Southport, coincident with the
disclosures of Captain Sam regarding his adventure in the squire’s
sailboat, he had not seen fit to return to the shelter of his father’s
roof. Instead, he had taken the night boat over to Mayville, and thence,
the following morning, made his way to Bellport, where he had some bosom
friends after his own heart.
What this meant was that, instead of entering into the healthful sports
that made the place of especial attraction, he and they were more often
to be found loitering about the office of the principal hotel, the
Bellport House, or playing at billiards in a room off the office, or
occupying the veranda chairs, with their feet upon the railing.
Young Brackett had been engaged one afternoon, soon following his
arrival, in a game of billiards with a companion, when he was accosted by
another acquaintance.
“Hello, Brackett,” said the newcomer. “You’re quite a stranger. How are
things over at Southport? Going to stay at home now for awhile?”
This salutation, commonplace as it was, had, it seemed, an effect upon a
tall, light-complexioned man, who was seated in a corner of the room,
where he had been enjoying his cigar and idly watching the game. For he
looked up quickly toward the boy addressed, and, during the continuation
of the game, certainly paid more attention to Harry Brackett than to the
play itself.
At the conclusion of the game, young Brackett’s companions bade him good
day and departed. Thereupon the stranger arose and advanced toward Harry
Brackett, smiling pleasantly. Stroking a heavy blond moustache with the
fingers of his left hand and picking up one of the cues with the other,
he said:
“You play a good game, don’t you? Shall we have another? I’ll be pleased
to pay for it, you know. Glad to have some one that plays as well as you
do for an opponent.”
It being inbred in young Brackett’s nature never to decline to enjoy
himself at another’s expense, he accepted the invitation at once.
Moreover, he was pleased at the compliment—which was, perhaps, more in
the nature of flattery, as he was but indifferently skilful at best.
“Do you come from around this way?” asked the stranger, as they proceeded
to play.
“Yes,” answered young Brackett. “My home is at Southport. Harry Brackett
is my name. I’m Squire Brackett’s son.”
“Indeed!” said the stranger, as though the answer was a matter of
information, whereas he had distinctly heard the boy’s companion refer to
him as coming from Southport. “But you are not an islander. You’ve been
about some, I can see.”
Most persons would have said that it would have been better for the boy
if he had had more of the sturdy qualities of the islanders and less of
those manners to which the stranger referred. But young Brackett took the
remark as a compliment, as it was intended, and answered, “Oh, yes, I’ve
been about a good deal—up Boston way and that sort of thing—Benton and
different cities. But I live at Southport. My father owns a good deal of
the place, you see.”
“Well, I’m glad to know you, Mr. Brackett,” said the stranger, with a
renewed show of cordiality. “My name is Carleton. I come from Boston,
too. I am just living around at any place I take a fancy to for the
summer. Oh, by the way, I came here to look at some boats. Do you know of
a good one over your way that a man might buy?”
“Why, no, I don’t know as I do,” replied young Brackett. “That is, not
what you would want. There’s only one elegant boat, and I guess she is
not for sale. She belongs to some boys. They’d better sell her, though,
if they get the chance. They think they are smart, but they can’t sail
her a little bit.”
“Hm!” ejaculated Mr. Carleton, and made a mental note of the other’s
evident antipathy to the boys he referred to.
“You don’t mean the _Viking_?” he inquired. “Somebody in the town here
was speaking about her the other day.”
“Yes, that’s the one,” replied young Brackett. “But I don’t think you can
buy her.”
“Oh, most any one will sell a thing, if you only offer him enough,” said
Mr. Carleton, carelessly. “Somehow I think she is about the boat I want.
I had a talk with a captain here the other day, and he said she was the
best sailer about here.
“Oh, by the way,” he added, apparently intent upon his game and studying
a shot with great care, “did you ever hear of anything queer about that
yacht—anything queer discovered about her?”
“Why, no!” cried young Brackett, in a tone of surprise. “Is there
anything queer about her? Do you know about her? That is a funny
question.”
If Mr. Carleton, making his shot unmoved, had got exactly the information
he was after, he did not betray the least sign of it. Instead, he laughed
and said:
“No, no. You don’t understand. I mean any ‘out’ about the boat. Has she
any faults, I mean. Does she sail under? Run her counters under? Knock
down in a wind and heavy sea? Carry a bad weather helm—or still worse, a
lee helm? You know what I mean. When a man is buying a boat he wants to
know if she is all right.”
He said it easily, in his deep, full voice, that seemed to emerge from
behind his heavy moustache, without his lips moving.
“Oh, I understand,” said young Brackett. Then he added, mindful of his
anger at the owners of the _Viking_, “I guess the boat is good
enough—better than the crowd that owns her.”
“Well, I want you to do something for me,” continued Mr. Carleton. “I
think I want her. When you return to Southport, I wish you would make
them an offer for me. Do you know what they paid for her?”
“Why, I think she brought only about eight hundred dollars,” said young
Brackett. “She’s worth twice that, I guess. But there wasn’t anybody to
buy her. She went cheap.”
“Tell them you know of a party that will give them fifteen hundred
dollars for the boat,” said Mr. Carleton. “And if you buy her for me for
that price I will give you two hundred dollars. The boat is worth all of
that from what I hear.”
Young Brackett’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Oh, I am in earnest,” said the man. “I can afford it. I’m out for a good
time this summer. I’ll be much obliged if you will do the business for
me. Business is business, and I don’t ask you to go to the trouble for
nothing. Here’s something on account.”
He handed young Brackett a ten-dollar bill, which the boy pocketed
promptly. It seemed a queer transaction, but he was satisfied.
“And, say, don’t mention my name,” said Mr. Carleton, carelessly. “You
see, if a man that has any money is known to be looking for a particular
boat, they always put the price up.”
“All right, I won’t,” replied Harry Brackett.
“I hate to tackle that fellow, Harvey,” he thought, as he turned the
matter over in his mind. “But it’s worth trying for two hundred dollars.”
Then, in great elation, he proceeded to beat Mr. Carleton at the game;
though that person’s intimate friends, wherever they might be, would have
laughed at his attempts to make poor shots instead of good ones. It pays
to be a loser sometimes, was his way of looking at it. At least, he and
Harry Brackett parted excellent friends.
The day came in warm and pleasant down in the Thoroughfare, and the boys
were early astir.
“Any more swimming to do to-day, Henry?” inquired George Warren, as the
fires were building in the cabin stoves, preparatory for breakfast.
“Only a plunge for one of us,” answered Henry. “I’ll do that. And that
reminds me; I’d better do it before breakfast, for one doesn’t want to
swim right after eating. Just throw us a line and trip your anchor, and
we will draw you up close astern of the _Surprise_, opposite us.”
The Warren boys did as he requested, and the two boats were soon almost
side by side, astern of the sunken yacht. Then Henry Burns, getting
George Warren to unhook the tackle from the throat of the mainsail of the
_Spray_, did likewise aboard the _Viking_. Taking the two pieces of
tackle in hand, while the boys let the halyards run free, he ducked down
at the stern of the sunken yacht and hooked in the tackle to one of the
stout ropes that had been passed under the boat’s keel.
“That will do till after breakfast,” he said, coming to the surface and
clambering out aboard the _Viking_.
“No, let’s have a pull on the thing now,” exclaimed Harvey. “I’m eager to
see the old _Surprise_ above water—that is, if she is going to float.”
“All right,” said Henry Burns. “Come on, fellows.”
The boys on each yacht caught hold of the halyards with a will, and
hoisted as they would have done to raise the throat of the mainsail. The
tackle, hooked on to the stern of the sunken yacht, was at first as so
much dead weight on their hands. Then, of a sudden, it began to yield
ever so little, and the halyards began to come home.
“She’s coming up, boys!” cried Harvey, gleefully. “Pull now, good and
hard.”
But the next moment something seemed to have given way. The ropes ran
loose in their hands, and the boys that held the ends sprawled over on
the decks.
“Oh, confound it! The rope must have slipped off the stern,” exclaimed
Harvey.
“No, it hasn’t,” cried Henry Burns, joyfully. “There she comes to the
surface. Look! Look! Quick, get in the slack of the ropes and make them
fast.”
The yacht buoyed by the numerous casks and lifted by the tackle, had,
indeed, hung on bottom only for a moment. Then, released by the strain
from the ledge and the seaweeds and slime that had gathered about it, it
had come to the surface with a rush. Loaded with ballast as it was,
however, and with the weight of water still within it, it could not rise
above the surface. Its rail showed just at the top of water, and the
cabin deck slightly above.
“Hooray! that’s great!” cried Harvey, slapping Henry Burns on the
shoulder. “That will do now. Let’s have some breakfast.”
“It’s about time,” said young Joe.
They spent little time at breakfast, however, for they were eager to
resume. With each yacht alongside the _Surprise_, they began bailing that
yacht out with pails tied to ropes, which they slung aboard. When they
had lightened her sufficiently, two of them sprang over into the cockpit
and bailed to better advantage there.
Then, while they took turns at the pump, the others got up a part of the
floors, and began lifting out the pieces of pig-iron ballast, passing
them aboard the other two yachts. Finally they rigged the tackle on to
the mast of the _Surprise_ and, with great care so as not to wrench the
boat, lifted it clear and lowered it into the water alongside.
Now it would be safe to beach the yacht; and this they did at high tide
that afternoon, towing it in on to a beach that made down in a thin strip
between the ledges, and drawing it up as far as it would float, where
they made it fast with a line passed ashore to a small spruce-tree.
It had been a good job, and Henry Burns surveyed it proudly. But he
merely remarked to young Joe, “Well, she’s up, isn’t she?”
The yacht _Surprise_ was at present a sorry-looking sight. The bottom was
very foul, covered with long streamers of slimy grass and encrusted with
barnacles. These had fastened, too, upon the mast and spars; and inside
the yacht was in the same condition. The sails were slime-covered and
rotten. Everything was snarled and tangled, twisted and broken about the
rigging. The bowsprit had been broken off short in the collision of the
fall before. This, with the carrying away of the bobstay, necessitated
the taking out of the mast now. Rust from the iron ballast had stained
much of the woodwork.
“There’s a job,” said Harvey, eying the wreck. “There’s a good week’s
work, and more, in scraping and cleaning her, and cleaning that ballast.
We wanted to get to fishing, too.”
“Well, you go ahead and leave us to begin the work,” said Joe Hinman,
speaking for himself and the crew. “It’s no more than fair that we should
do it, seeing as we are to have the use of the yacht this summer. Just
leave us a little coffee and some cornmeal and some bread and a piece of
pork and one of the frying-pans. We’ll catch fish, and live down here for
a week, till you come for us.”
“Where will you stay?” inquired Harvey. “The other yacht is going back to
Southport, you know.”
“Up in the old shack there,” replied Joe, pointing back to where there
stood a tumble-down shelter that had been used at some time to store a
scant crop of hay that the island produced. “Give us a blanket apiece and
we’ll get along. You’ve got to go back to the harbour before you go
fishing, and you can get ours down at the camp.”
“All right,” said Harvey, “I guess we’ll do it. You can run things, Joe,
and there won’t anybody trouble you.”
So with this prophecy—which might or might not hold good—Harvey proceeded
to install his crew in temporary possession of the yacht _Surprise_, and
of the little island where they had dragged it ashore, which was one of
the chain of narrow islands that lay off Grand Island.
Late that afternoon the two yachts sailed out of the Thoroughfare and
went on to Southport, leaving the crew masters of their island domain and
of the wreck.
The next morning Henry Burns and Jack Harvey were up before the sun, for
Harvey had waked and found a light west wind blowing, and this was a fair
one for the trip down the bay. They roused the campers in the tent on the
point, and soon Tom and Bob, their canoe loaded with blankets and
provisions, were paddling out to the _Viking_. They made two trips, and
then, leaving the canoe up on shore alongside the tent, fastened that
good and snug. Henry Burns took them aboard the _Viking_ in the tender.
The mooring which they had put down for the season was slipped, the sail
hoisted, a parting toot-toot sounded on the great horn in the direction
of the Warren cottage, and the _Viking’s_ voyage in search of work had
begun.
The course the _Viking_ was now shaping was about due south from the
harbour they had just left. Far away to the southward, some twenty-two
miles distant, lay the islands they were seeking, at the seaward entrance
to East Samoset Bay. Some six miles ahead on the course lay a group of
small islands, on one of which was erected a lighthouse. Beyond these, to
the southwest, a few miles away, lay two great islands, North Haven and
South Haven. Off to the eastward from the foot of these, across a bay of
some six miles’ width, lay Loon Island, with little Duck Island close
adjacent.
As the day advanced, the promise of wind did not, however, have
fulfilment. It died away with the burning of the sun, and when they had
come to within about a mile of the first group of islands, it threatened
to die away altogether. It sufficed, however, to waft them into a little
cove making into one of these islands at about two hours before noon.
“Well, we’ve got to Clam Island, anyway,” said Harvey. “We’ll load up our
baskets, and be in time to catch the afternoon’s southerly.”
Clam Island well merited its name. Its shores were long stretches of
mud-flats, corrugated everywhere with thousands of clam-holes. It would
not be high tide until three in the afternoon, and the flats were now
lying bare.
Equipped with baskets and hoes, the boys set to work, with jackets off
and trousers rolled up. In two hours’ time, each one of them had filled a
bushel basket to the brim, for the clams were thrown out by dozens at
every turn of a hoe.
“That’s enough bait for a start,” said Harvey, wiping his forehead. “We
can buy more of the fishermen if we run short.”
“My!” exclaimed Henry Burns, straightening himself up with an effort. “My
back feels as though it had nails driven into it. I don’t wonder so many
of these old fishermen stoop.”
The day was very hot, and the boys went in for a swim. Then, when they
had eaten, they stood out of the little harbour; but the wind had dropped
almost entirely away, and, with the tide against them, they scarce made
headway.
“I’m afraid we won’t make Loon Island to-day,” said Tom.
“Oh, perhaps so,” said Harvey. “See, there’s a line of breeze way down
below.”
A darkening of the water some miles distant showed that a southerly
breeze was coming in. They got the first puffs of it presently, and
trimmed their sails for a long beat down the bay.
The _Viking_ was a good boat on the wind, the seas did not roll up to any
great size, as the wind had come up so late in the day, and it was easy,
pleasant sailing in the bright summer afternoon. Still, the breeze was
too light for any good progress, and they had only reached Hawk Island,
on which the lighthouse stood, and which was fifteen miles from Loon
Island, by two o’clock.
They were going down a long reach of the bay now that rolled some six
miles wide, between North and South Haven on the one hand, to starboard,
and a great island on the other. Back and forth they tacked all the
afternoon, with the tide, turning to ebb just after three o’clock, to
help them.
By six o’clock they were two miles off the southeastern shore of South
Haven, with great Loon Island, its high hills looming up against the sky,
four miles across the bay.
“Well, shall we try for it?” asked Harvey, eagerly scanning the sky.
It looked tempting, for there had come one of those little, deceptive
stirrings of the air that happen at times before sundown when the wind
makes a last dying flurry before quieting for the night. The sun, just
tipping the crests of the far-off western mountains across the bay, had
turned the western sky into flame. Loon Island looked close aboard. So
they kept on.
Then by another hour the glow had faded from the sky and the waters
blackened and the shadows began to die away on the hills of Loon Island,
and all the landscape grew gray and indistinct. They were two miles above
the harbour, when the bluffs that marked it blended into the dark mass of
its surroundings and there was no guide left for them to follow. The wind
had fallen almost to nothing.
“We can’t miss it,” said Harvey, stoutly. “I’ve been in there once
before.”
“No, we’re all right,” said Henry Burns. He went forward and stood
looking off eagerly for some sign of light on shore. The island grew
black in the twilight, and then was only a vague, indefinite object.
They were in great spirits, though,—so they made out,—but it was just a
bit dreary for all that, almost drifting down with the tide, and only a
few puffs of wind now and then, with not even a light in a fisherman’s
cabin showing on that shore.
Then, too, the very calmness of the night made sounds more distinct. And
just a little to seaward, a mile or two below where the harbour should
be, there sounded the heaving of the ground-swell against the reefs that
lay about Loon Island so thickly. And the sound of the shattering of a
wave as it drops down upon a reef in the night, amid strange waters, is
not a cheerful thing to hear.
Perhaps it was this doleful, ominous sound more than anything else that
somehow took the enthusiasm out of them. It was such an uncertain sound,
that subdued crashing upon the reefs. Was it a half-mile away? Was it a
mile? Was it near? It was hard to tell.
Just how uncertain they did feel, and just how anxious they had grown in
the last half-hour of darkness, was best revealed by Henry Burns when,
from his watch forward, he said suddenly, but very quietly, “There are
the lights, Jack. We’re close in.”
It was his manner of expression when he was most deeply affected—a calm,
modulated tone that had a world of meaning in it.
“A-h-h!” exclaimed Harvey. There was no mistaking the relief in his
expression. “I knew they ought to be here, but they were a long time
showing.”
“Well, I don’t mind saying they could have showed before and suited me
better,” said Bob. “Say, those reefs have a creepy, shivery sound in the
night, don’t they? I’d rather be in the harbour.”
There was a twinkling of lights to guide them now, for a little flotilla
of fishing-boats lay snug within, each with its harbour light set; and
the lamps in the fishermen’s houses that were here and there straggling
along the shores of the large and small island facing the harbour gleamed
out from many a kitchen window.
They drifted slowly in under the shadow of the hills of Loon Island and
entered the little thoroughfare that ran between the two islands, at a
quarter to nine o’clock.
“We are in luck at the finish, at any rate,” said Henry Burns, presently,
picking up the boat-hook. “Jack, there’s a vacant buoy to make fast to.”
The buoy, a circular object painted white, showed a little way off the
windward bow, and Jack Harvey luffed up to it. Henry Burns caught the
mooring; Tom and Bob had the mainsail on the run in a twinkling; and a
moment more they were lying safe and snug at their voyage’s end.
Fifteen minutes later, the sound of heavy sweeps, labouring and grinding
in rowlocks, told them that another boat was coming into the harbour from
outside with the aid of an “ash breeze,” the wind having died wholly
away. The boat came in close to where they were lying. From their cabin,
as they sat eating supper, they could hear a man’s voice, rough and
heavy, complaining apparently of the bad luck he had had in getting
caught outside, deserted by the breeze.
The next moment the young yachtsmen got a rude surprise. The dishes they
had set out on the upturned leaves of the centreboard table rattled, and
the yacht shook with the shock caused by the other boat clumsily bumping
into them astern. Then the rough voice sounded in their ears:
“Git away from that mooring! Don’t yer know I have the right ter that?
What are yer lyin’ here for?”
The yachtsmen rushed out on deck. The boat they saw just astern was a
dingy, odd-shaped little sailboat, about twenty-five feet long, sharp at
both ends, with the stern queerly perked up into a point like the tail of
a duck. A thickly bearded, swarthy man stood at her tiller, where he had
been directing, roughly, the efforts of two youths, who had worked the
boat in with the sweeps.
“What’s the matter with you?” cried Harvey, angrily. “What do you mean by
bumping into us? We’ve got our lights up.”
“You git off from that mooring, I tell you!” cried the man, fiercely.
“Ain’t I had it all summer? What right have you got interfering?”
The man’s manner was so threatening and his voice so full of the fury
that told of a temper easily aroused, that a less aggressive youth than
Harvey might have been daunted. But Harvey had got his bearings and knew
where he was.
“No, you don’t!” he replied, sharply. “You can’t bully us, so it won’t do
you any good to try. This is a government buoy, and the first boat up to
it has the right to use it unless the revenue men complain. You can push
your old tub out of the way.”
“Better tell him we will give him a line astern if he wants it,”
suggested Henry Burns. “That won’t do any harm.”
“I won’t,” exclaimed Harvey. “He’s taken enough paint off the _Viking_
already, I dare say. But”—he added—“you can if you want to. I don’t
care.”
So Henry Burns made the offer.
The answer the man made was to order the two youths to work the “pinkey,”
as the fishermen call his style of craft, up to the buoy, where he could
cut the yachtsmen adrift.
Harvey sprang to the bow of the _Viking_, drew her up close to the buoy
by taking in on the slack of the rope, and held her there by a few turns.
Then he snatched up the boat hook. Henry Burns and Tom and Bob likewise
armed themselves with the sweeps of the _Viking_ and a piece of spar.
They stood ready to repel an attack.
It looked serious. But at this point the two youths aboard the strange
boat failed to obey orders. There arose, thereupon, a furious dispute
aboard the other craft, the youths remonstrating in what seemed to be a
broken English, and the man railing at them fiercely in English that was
plain, but still had not just the Yankee accent; in the course of which
the man at the tiller rushed upon one of them, and would have struck him
had not the other youth interfered.
It ended in the wrathful stranger taking his craft ahead, quite a
distance up the harbour, ignoring Henry Burns’s offer to moor astern of
the _Viking_.
“Just as well he didn’t stay,” commented Henry Burns. “I don’t think he
would improve on longer acquaintance, do you, Jack?”
“Well, hardly,” said Harvey. “I guess he must be one of those chaps
Captain Sam spoke of.”
“I wonder if he will make us any more trouble to-night,” remarked Bob.
“No, he’ll have to fight it out with his own crew first,” said Harvey.
“But I’ll just keep an eye out for a little while. You fellows can turn
in.”
And Harvey kept vigil till eleven o’clock, muffled in a greatcoat,
outside, until he nearly fell over asleep in the cockpit. Then he rolled
in below, and was sound asleep before he could get his boots off.
The _Viking_ was not molested through the night, though so wearied were
the yachtsmen with their day’s sailing that a man might have come aboard
blowing a fog-horn and not have aroused them from their deep slumber.
CHAPTER VII.
NEAR THE REEFS
The sound of voices calling cheerily over the water and the creaking of
blocks awoke the boys a little after four o’clock the next morning. Henry
Burns dragged himself drowsily to one of the cabin ports and looked out.
It was a picturesque sight, for a small fleet of fishing-craft, of all
sorts and shapes and sizes, was passing out of the thoroughfare, on its
way to the fishing-grounds, with a light morning breeze that just filled
the sails.
Back of the harbour the land went up gradually for a way, dotted here and
there with the snug, tidy homes of the fishermen, until it rose in the
centre of the island, forming hills of some considerable height—the first
landfall for ships coming in from sea at that point. Now the tops of the
hills glinted with the rays of the morning sun, which soon streamed down
the slopes and made the whole island glow with warmth and brightness.
The pleasing landscape had at that moment, however, no particular
attraction for Henry Burns. He gave a groan of self-commiseration,
tumbled back into his warm blanket, and remarked:
“Oh, but these fishermen do begin the day early! Say, we don’t have to,
do we, Jack? I vote for another hour’s sleep.”
“Make it four,” said Bob, who had been eying Henry Burns with
apprehension.
Harvey and Tom muttered an assent that was not distinguishable.
By five o’clock, however, the sounds of men and boats had them awake
again; and by another half-hour they were breakfasting on their way out
of the harbour, beating against a light southerly.
“Do you know the fishing-grounds, Jack?” inquired Henry Burns.
“Only in a general way,” replied Harvey. “But we’ll follow the others,
and get in somewhere near them.”
They stood out of the harbour and headed down the coast of the island,
which extended seaward thus for some four miles. Harvey, at the wheel,
was studying carefully a chart of the waters; Henry Burns and Tom and
Bob, arrayed in oilskins, were busily engaged in “shucking” clams into
some wooden buckets.
Presently an unexpected hail came across the water to them from a
sailboat they had overhauled.
“Why, hello,” called Harvey, and added to his companions, “Here’s luck.
It’s Will Hackett, Jeff’s brother. You know Jeff, who carries the mails
in his packet.”
“What are you chaps doing way down here? Aren’t you lost?” asked the
other, a stalwart, red-faced youth, who, with a crew composed of one
small boy, was navigating a rough-looking sloop that looked as though it
had seen a score of hard summers.
Harvey explained.
“Well, you won’t get rich,” said Will Hackett, bringing his craft in to
head along with them. “But I’ll show you where to fish. The depth of
water makes all the difference around here. They call me lucky, but
there’s something in knowing where to drop a line. I’m down only for the
day, but you follow me around and you’ll know where to go next time.”
When they had told him of the adventure of the night before, Will Hackett
slapped a heavy fist down upon his knee.
“Good for you!” he cried. “So you’ve run foul of old Jim Martel, have
you? Why, I offered to thrash him and his two boys only three weeks ago,
for hanging around after dark where I had a trawl set. They come from
over eastward, and quarrel with everybody; and I wouldn’t trust one of
them with a rotten rope. You’d better keep away from them, though. He’s
got a hot temper, has Jim Martel.”
They were in the swell from the open sea now, and the _Viking_ and its
companion, the _Gracie_, were lifting and dipping amid the long, rolling
waves. About them, and ahead here and there, clouds of spray, cast like
chaff into the air, told of reefs; sometimes marked with a spindle, or a
cask set on the top of a pole, if it lay near the course; sometimes with
a thin point of the ledge rising a few feet above water.
Some three miles down the coast of Loon Island a reef of several rods in
length broke the force of the waves from seaward; and as these dashed in
upon it they crashed into a thousand particles, which gleamed transiently
with the colours of the rainbow as the sun shone upon the drops. Close
under the lee of this reef went Will Hackett, and cast anchor a few rods
away, not far from another boat, already at anchor. The _Viking_
followed, and likewise anchored at a little distance, and sails were
furled.
Quickly the heavy cod-lines, equipped with two hooks each, and bulky
sinker, were dropped overboard; and the boys waited expectantly, their
baits close to bottom.
“A prize to the one that gets the first cod,” said Harvey.
“What’s the prize?” asked Bob.
“Why, he can keep the cod’s head,” said Henry Burns. “Hello!” he
exclaimed a moment later. “I’ve hooked on bottom, I guess. No, it must be
seaweed.”
Henry Burns began hauling in with considerable effort.
“Why, it’s a fish!” he exclaimed the next moment. “There’s something
moving on the end of the line. But he doesn’t fight any. Comes up like so
much lead.”
“That’s the way they act,” said Harvey. “They don’t make any fuss. But
you’ve got a big one.”
Henry Burns, hauling with all his might, hand over hand, presently
brought to the surface an enormous cod.
“There’s a whole dinner for a hotel in that fellow,” said he. And,
indeed, the fish would weigh fully twenty pounds.
“Not quite so lively sport as catching mackerel, is it?” he remarked,
looking at his hands, which were reddened with the chafing of the hard
line.
“No, this is more like work,” said Harvey. “But they won’t all run
anywhere near as big as that. You’ve caught one of the old settlers.”
The fish were biting in earnest now, and the boys were bringing them in
over the rail almost as fast as they could bait and cast overboard. By
noon they had two great baskets full, stowed away in the cabin out of the
sun, and were glad enough to take a long hour for rest, feasting on one
of the smallest of their catch, rolled in meal and fried to a tempting
crispness.
Then near sundown they were among the first to weigh anchor and run for
harbour, tired but elated over their first day’s rough work.
Will Hackett had advised them how to dispose of their catch. A trader at
the head of the harbour bought for salting down all that the fishermen
did not sell alive to the schooners that carried them in huge wells, deep
in their holds, to the Portland or Boston markets.
So they ran in with the other craft, and took their catch in to his dock
in their dory.
The trader, a small, wiry, bright-eyed Yankee, scrutinized Henry Burns
and Jack Harvey sharply, as they entered the little den which bore the
imposing word “_Office_” over its door.
“So you’re fishermen, eh?” he remarked. “Rather a fine craft you’ve
brought down for the work. Guess you might manage to keep alive somehow
if you didn’t fish for a living.”
He was interested, though, when they told him their circumstances.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m paying a dollar a hundredweight for cod
caught on hand-lines, and less for trawl-caught. But you don’t calculate
to do trawl-fishing, I reckon.”
“Not just yet,” answered Harvey.
They hitched the tackle at the end of the pier on to the baskets of fish,
and the cod were hoisted up to the scales.
“Three hundred and sixty pounds, I make it,” said the trader. “That’s
three dollars and sixty cents.”
The boys went away, clinking three big silver dollars, a fifty-cent
piece, and a dime, and passing the money from hand to hand, admiringly.
“That never seemed like very much money to me before,” said Harvey,
thoughtfully. “It makes a difference whether you earn it or not—and how,
doesn’t it?”
“It’s all right for the first day,” said Henry Burns. “We’ll do better as
we get the hang of it. And then later, if we get a catch of mackerel on
the first run of the fish, why, we’ve got the boat to make a fast trip
over to Stoneland, and sell them to the hotel. There’ll be money in
that.”
The next morning, beating out of the harbour early, they had an
unpleasant experience.
They had anchored off the dock at the head of the harbour, and had just
begun to work their way out through the channel, which was there quite
narrow, against a light southwest breeze. Henry Burns had the wheel, with
Harvey tending sheet, and Tom and Bob working the single jib that they
had set. A little way ahead of them a boat was coming in, running free.
“There’s our friend,” remarked Henry Burns, noting the pinkey’s sharp,
queer stern. “It’s old Martel coming in from under-running his
hake-trawls. We’ll try to keep clear of him.”
But it seemed this was not wholly possible.
The _Viking_ was standing up to clear a buoy a short distance ahead,
which marked the channel, and would just barely fetch by it if she was
not headed off any. It became apparent soon, however, that the skipper of
the pinkey was heading so that, if one or the other did not give way,
there would be a collision.
“Better give him the horn,” suggested Tom, as the boys watched the
oncoming boat.
“No, I don’t think we need to,” said Henry Burns. “They see us. Look,
there they are pointing. Old Martel knows what he is doing. It’s just a
case of bullying. We’ve got the right of way over a boat running free,
and he knows it.”
“That’s right, Henry,” exclaimed Harvey. “We might as well show him we
know our rights. Keep her on her course, and don’t give way an inch.”
There was plenty of water on the pinkey’s starboard hand, and the course
was free there; but for the _Viking_ to head off the wind meant failure
to clear the buoy, and another tack, with loss of time. It was all a mere
trifle, of course, but they knew the skipper of the pinkey was trying to
crowd them; and they were bound to stand on their rights.
The pinkey came up perilously close; then, just barely in time, sheered
off so that its boom almost came aboard the _Viking_. Henry Burns,
unmoved, had held the _Viking_ close into the wind, without giving way an
inch even when it had looked as though the two boats must come together.
“We might as well fight it out right now with old Martel,” he said,
quietly. “Perhaps he will let us alone if he finds we’re not afraid of
him.”
Captain Jim Martel’s anger at being outmanœuvred was not lessened by the
figure of Jack Harvey standing up astern and grinning at him derisively.
He glared back angrily at the young yachtsmen.
But Harvey’s blood was up, too.
“Why don’t you learn to sail that old tub of yours?” he called out,
sneeringly.
Martel’s answer was to put his helm hard down, bring his boat about, and
stand up on the track of the _Viking_.
“Come on, we’ll give you a tow out to sea again,” cried Harvey.
“Go easy, Jack,” said Henry Burns. “He’s the pepperiest skipper I’ve seen
in all Samoset Bay. Better let him alone. He’s angry enough already.”
“Yes, but he’s to blame,” said Harvey. “When anybody hits me, I hit
back.” And forthwith he made gestures toward the other boat, as of urging
it to hurry, by beckoning; and he coiled a bit of the free end of the
main-sheet and threw it back over the stern, indicating that it was for
the other craft to pick up, so as to be towed by the _Viking_.
The effect on Skipper Martel was, indeed, amusing. He sprang up from his
seat, handed the tiller to one of his boys and rushed forward, where he
stood, shaking a fist at the crew of the _Viking_ and calling out
angrily.
He made a comical figure, with his black, shaggy head wagging, and with
his angry sputtering and his pretence of pursuit, whereas the _Viking_
was leaving the pinkey rapidly astern. Henry Burns joined in the
laughter, but he repeated his warning: “Better let him alone, Jack.”
Which warning, now that the skipper of the pinkey strode aft again, Jack
Harvey finally heeded.
“Funny how that fellow gets furious over nothing,” he said. “We’ll have
to have some fun with him.”
“You like an exciting sort of fun, don’t you, Jack?” said Henry Burns,
smiling. But it was plain he took it more seriously.
They fished for four days more with varying success, and with a Sunday
intervening. They were getting toughened to the work; their hands growing
calloused with the hard cod-lines; their knowledge of working their boat
in rough water and heavy weather increasing daily; their muscles
strengthened with the exercise; and their appetites so keen that young
Joe might have envied them.
One day it rained, but they went out just the same, equipped for it in
oilskins, rubber boots, and tarpaulins, and made a good haul.
“Well, here’s our last day for a week or so,” said Henry Burns, as they
stood out one morning for the fishing-grounds. “It’s back to Southport
to-morrow. We mustn’t get too rich all at once.”
It was a day of uncertain flaws of wind, puffy and squally, after a day
of heavy clouds. They were sailing under reefed mainsail, for at one
moment the squalls would descend sharp and treacherous, though there
would succeed intervals when there was hardly wind enough to fill the
sails. They worked down to the fishing-grounds and tried several places,
but with no great success. Some of the boats put back to harbour early in
the afternoon, dissatisfied with the conditions, as it was evidently an
off day for cod. Others, including the _Viking_, held on, hoping for
better luck.
Then, of a sudden, the wind fell away completely two hours before sunset,
and the sea was calm, save for the ground-swell, which heaved up into
waves that did not break, but in which the _Viking_ rolled and pitched
and tugged at anchor.
“Perhaps we will get a sunset breeze and be able to run back,” said
Harvey.
But evidently the fishermen, more weather-wise, knew better; for some of
the lighter, open boats furled their sails snug, got out their sweeps,
and prepared to row laboriously back the three long miles. Others of the
big boats made ready to lie out for the night.
“Well, we’ve got a good anchor and a new line,” said Harvey. “There’s
nothing rotten about the _Viking’s_ gear. We’ll lie as snug out here as
in the harbour.”
They tripped the anchor just off bottom, got out the sweeps, and worked
the _Viking_ back a dozen rods or so from the shallow water about the
reef. Then they dropped anchor again, with plenty of slack to the rope,
to let the yacht ride easy with less strain on the anchorage. There were
a half-dozen boats within hailing distance, similarly anchored, including
Skipper Martel and his pinkey.
“We’re in good company,” said Henry Burns, laughing. “But I’m glad Jack
isn’t near enough to stir him up.”
Evening came on, and the little fleet resembled a village afloat, with
the tiny wreaths of smoke curling up from the cabin-funnels. The night
was clear overhead and the hills of Loon Island shone purple in the
waning sunlight, streaked here and there with broad patches of black
shadow. The ground-swell broke upon the reef heavily, sending up a shower
of spray high in air, weird and grimly beautiful in the twilight.
“That’s good music to sleep by,” said Bob, as the booming from the reef
came to their ears while they sat at supper.
“Yes, it’s all right on a night like this,” assented Harvey. “You’ll
sleep as sound as in the tent.”
It grew dark, and the little fleet set its lanterns, though it was mere
conformance to custom in this case, since no craft ever made a
thoroughfare where they lay.
“What do you think?” asked Henry Burns two hours later, as he and Harvey
stood outside, taking a survey of the sea and sky, and making sure once
more that their anchor-rope was clear and well hitched—“What do you
think, Jack, do we need to keep watch?”
He had quite a bump of caution for a youth who did not hesitate at times
to do things that others considered reckless.
“Oh, it’s still as a mill-pond,” replied Harvey. “We’ve had the
clearing-off blow, and there are the clouds banking up off to southward,
where the breeze will come from in the morning. See, there isn’t a man
out on any of the other boats. No, we’ll just turn in and sleep like
kittens in a basket.”
So they went below.
The roaring of the reef was, in truth, a not all unpleasant sound to
those who felt safe and snug in its lee, securely anchored. To be sure,
there was a grim suggestion in the crashing of the swell against its
hollows and angles at first, but the steady repetition of this became in
time almost monotonous. There was the heavy, roaring, thudding sound, as
the swell surged in against its firm base. Then this blended into a crisp
rushing, as the waters raced along its sides; and then a crash as of
shattered glass as the mass thrown up broke in mid-air and fell back in
countless fragments of white, frothing water upon the cold rocks.
The boys went off to sleep with this ceaseless play of the waters in
their ears.
The hours of the night passed one by one. And if any boy aboard the
_Viking_ roused up through their passing and heard the surf-play upon the
reef, there was no more menace in it than before. Just the same steady
hammering of water upon rock.
Yet Harvey’s prophecy of sound sleep was not wholly borne out—at least,
in the case of Henry Burns. He was a good sleeper under ordinary
conditions, but he roused up several times and listened to the wash of
the seas.
“It may be grand music,” he muttered once, drowsily, “but I can’t say I
like it quite so near.”
Something awoke him again an hour later. His perception of it as he
half-sat up was that it sounded like something grating against the side
of the _Viking_.
He sat still for a moment and listened. The sound was not repeated.
“I thought I heard something alongside,” he said aloud, but talking to
himself. “Did you hear anything, Jack?” he inquired in a louder tone, as
Harvey stirred uneasily.
There was no reply. Harvey had not wakened.
“Hm! guess I’ve got what my aunt calls the fidgets,” muttered Henry
Burns, rolling up in his blanket once more. “It’s that confounded reef.
No, it’s no use. I don’t like the sound of it at night. Pshaw! I’ll go to
sleep, though, and forget it.”
Something just alongside the _Viking_ that looked surprisingly like a
dory, with some sort of a figure crouched down in it,—and which may or
may not have caused the sound that had awakened Henry Burns,—lay quiet
there for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes,—a good half-hour in all. Then it
moved away from the side of the boat, passed on ahead for a moment, and
stole softly away over the waves.
The booming of the seas upon the reefs! How the hollow roar of it sounded
far over the waters. How the thin wisps of spray, like so much smoke,
shot up through the darkness, white and ghostlike!
A strange phenomenon! But if by chance there had been some shipwrecked
man clinging to that reef, he might have fancied that the rocks to which
he clung were drifting in the sea—strangely shifting ground and drawing
up closer to a yacht at anchor.
Or was it something different? Was the yacht really no longer lying
anchor-bound? And was it drifting, drifting slowly down upon the rocks,
soon to be lifted high upon a crest of the ground-swell—and then to be
dropped down heavily upon one of the streaming, foam-covered points of
ledge?
Crash and crash again! Was it louder and heavier than before?
Henry Burns’s eyes opened wearily.
The sound of the sea seemed stunning. What was it about the noise that
seemed more fearful, more terrifying, more dreadful than before?
He sprang up now. Yes, there could be no doubt. Something was wrong. The
sea rising, perhaps. The wind blowing up. There it came, again and again.
It was louder—and louder still. A mind works slowly brought quickly from
sleep; but Henry Burns was wide awake now.
The boys had turned in half-undressed, to be ready for an early start in
the morning. Henry Burns slipped on his trousers, scrambling about in the
darkness.
“Jack, get up!” he cried, seizing his sleeping comrade and shaking him
roughly. “Wake up, fellows—quick! Something’s the matter.”
He burst open the cabin doors and rushed out on deck.
No, there was no delusion here. The reef lay close aboard. The din of the
beating, crashing waters seemed deafening. The _Viking_, dipping and
falling with the long swells, was going slowly but surely down upon it.
Henry Burns reached for a short sheath-knife that he carried when aboard
the yacht, moved quickly along from the stern to the foot of the mast,
and cut the stops with which the sail had been furled. Then he dashed to
the bulkhead, and, without stopping to cast off the turns from the
cleats, seized the throat and peak halyards and began hauling
desperately.
The next moment, Tom and Bob had tumbled forward and caught hold with
him; while Harvey, emerging half-awake from the companionway, seized the
wheel.
Three athletic pairs of arms had the mainsail up quicker than it had ever
been set before.
“Quick now with the jib!” cried Harvey. “That will head us off, if
there’s any breeze to save us. Jump it for dear life, boys.”
They needed no urging. It was set almost before Harvey had finished
speaking. Tom, holding it off as far as he could reach to windward, stood
on the weather-bow, shivering in the cool night air and glaring fearfully
at the rocks close ahead. The white spray, writhing up half as high as
the mast, seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.
Henry Burns, having seen the mainsail and jib set, and realizing there
was nothing left to do only to hope that there was wind enough stirring
to fill the sails, dashed down into the cabin. He brought up the spare
anchor, which he proceeded to bend on to a coil of rope. But the danger
had passed before he had it ready to cast astern.
The yacht, like a living thing, seeming to feel its own peril, had caught
just the faintest of the wandering night airs in its great white sail.
The tide, ebbing, was urging it down to destruction. Then, as the wind
caught the sail, the boat responded slightly, but began to head up,
pointing fair at the black rocks. Harvey let the sheet run off. The jib,
held far out to windward, caught another faint puff of air and headed the
yacht slowly but surely off the wind.
The yacht had saved itself. Gliding ever so slowly, it skirted along the
edge of the reef for a moment, till Harvey had brought it around fairly
before the wind. Then there was one final contest between breeze and
tide. The yacht hung upon the waves sluggishly, so close in upon the
reefs that the spray, dashing over, wetted the boys aboard.
Then it moved slowly up against the tide, rising and falling heavily upon
the seas, but gaining a little, and then more.
It was enough. The spare anchor went overboard, the yacht brought up and
held. They dropped the sails once more, unharmed, with the black, hungry
reef stretching out its white arms of foam and spray, vainly, balked of
their prey.
“O-oh!” said Harvey, sinking down on a seat. “That was a close shave. But
what could have made that rope part? That’s what I can’t understand. It
was a brand-new one.”
They found out a half-hour later, after they had gone below and put on
their jackets and warmed themselves and had returned on deck. They drew
the end of the line aboard and examined it by a lantern in the cabin.
It was not broken. The end was clean, without a frayed strand in it. It
had been severed with a single sweep of a fisherman’s knife, sharp as a
razor-blade.
“Ah!” ejaculated Harvey. “We might have guessed. It’s old Martel’s work.
We’ll have the law on him for this.”
But when they peered across the water with the coming daylight there was
no pink-stern sloop to be seen, because it had gone out with the tide
long before, just as they went adrift, and was out upon the sea now,
standing off to the eastward.
“Well, we have learned two lessons,” said Henry Burns. “One is to have
the spare anchor where it can be got at quicker when it’s needed. I’d
have gone for that first if I hadn’t remembered that we had it buried
under that lot of stuff forward.”
“And what’s the other lesson?” asked Bob.
“It’s to be never without a knife when you are sailing a boat,” answered
Henry Burns. “I heard a fisherman say that once, and so I bought one to
wear in a belt aboard here. But I never thought just what it would mean
to be without one when every second counts.”
“I wish young Joe were here,” remarked Tom.
“Why’s that?” asked Harvey.
“He would have the coffee on by this time,” replied Tom. “That night air
sent the shivers through me.”
“Something else sent the shivers through me,” remarked Henry Burns. “I’ll
go and start the fire.”
CHAPTER VIII.
LITTLE TIM A STRATEGIST
Joe Hinman, with his crew of three, composed of George Baker, Allan
Harding, and little Tim Reardon, did not intend to be idle during the
absence of the yacht _Viking_. The yacht _Surprise_, when it should be
patched up, cleaned, and once more floated, and equipped with a spare set
of sails that had been left in the _Viking_ when she came into the
possession of Harvey and Henry Burns, was to become the property for the
summer of Joe and the rest of the crew. The morning after the _Viking_
had left the Thoroughfare, in company with the _Spray_, the boys set to
work in earnest upon the hull of the _Surprise_, with the tools that had
been left for them.
It was hard work, for the barnacles and sea-grasses had covered the yacht
everywhere, not only below, but on deck and even in the cabin. They got
some pieces of joist that had been cast up ashore with a lot of other
riffraff and shored the yacht up on an even keel, so they could work to
better advantage, without getting in one another’s way.
They worked industriously to the noon hour, only Little Tim knocking off
work an hour before the others, in order to go down on the rocks and
catch a mess of cunners for their dinner. He had these cleaned and
cooking by the time the other three were ready, and they ate the meal
heartily, in sight of their labours. Then they were at it again shortly,
and worked hard till sundown. The yacht had begun to have a different
appearance.
The next three days they made even better progress, and had the most of
the deck scraped down, so that it began to look bright again, as Harvey
and his crew had always kept it.
“She’ll be the fine old boat she was before,” exclaimed Joe Hinman,
joyfully, as they stood that next evening eying their work approvingly.
“Jack won’t know her when he gets back.”
But the following morning, when Joe had arisen and dressed and taken a
peep out of the old shed in which they had found shelter, he could scarce
believe his eyes. His first thought was, however, when he had begun to
think at all, that the yacht _Spray_ had returned, and that the Warren
boys had surprised them by coming to lend a hand, and that they had begun
work early.
Then he saw that the yacht that lay anchored close in shore was not the
_Spray_, but a strange boat; and furthermore that the four persons who
were busily engaged at work upon the hull of the _Surprise_ were not the
Warren boys, but larger youths, and strangers.
No, they were not all strangers, either. For there was one with whom they
had a slight and brief acquaintance. It was Harry Brackett. What had
happened was this:
When Harry Brackett had ventured finally to return to his father’s home,
he had not received that fond welcome that one might expect from an
indulgent parent. In fact, Squire Brackett was so incensed at having been
led to make the exhibition of himself in the store before his fellow
townsmen that he stormed roundly at his son, and he made some remarks
about having wasted his money for the last few years in sending young
Brackett to the city to school, an assertion which perhaps Harry Brackett
knew the full truth of even better than the squire.
“Now,” said the squire at length, “let’s see if you can’t make yourself
of some use, instead of just spending my money. You get Tom Dakin and Ed
Sanders and John Hart, and take the _Seagull_ and get down there in the
Thoroughfare and see if you can’t raise up that yacht that those young
scamps wrecked there last fall. She’s abandoned, and she belongs to
anybody that can get her. I’d just like to fetch her back here and rig
her up handsome, and let them see what they might have done. I’ll show
them a thing or two.
“Now you work smart,” continued the squire, “and get that boat, and I’ll
give her to you to use while you are at home; and I’ll get John Hart to
teach you how to sail her. And see here, don’t you go fooling around with
the _Seagull_ any. You let John Hart sail her. That was a pretty story
you told me about winning races around Marblehead! Now clear out and see
what you can do.”
It might be said that if young Harry Brackett had had any knowledge of
boat-sailing he could not have gained it from the squire, for, whereas
that gentleman had property interests in several sailing-craft, by way of
business, he knew nothing of seamanship himself, and was invariably
seasick when he went out in rough water.
Harry Brackett was not wholly disinclined to the task imposed upon him,
although he had certain misgivings as to how it would coincide with the
commission imparted to him by the man, Carleton, whom he had met at
Bellport. He figured, however, that the _Surprise_, if she could be
floated, would be worth vastly more than the promised two hundred
dollars. So he went about the village hunting up the youths his father
had named. These three were rough fellows, whose worth the squire had
well in mind in selecting them. They were strong and able-bodied, older
by some years than Harvey and his companions; youths who went alternately
on short fishing-voyages and hung about the village at other times, ready
equally for work or mischief.
The four accordingly embarked at evening and sailed down to the
Thoroughfare that night. Great was their surprise to find, on coming to
anchor, that the yacht they had expected to see deep under water lay out
on shore, with evidences of having been worked upon.
Not to be defeated so easily, however, they resolved, on the spur of the
moment, to lay claim to the yacht, especially as they saw no boat of any
description anchored anywhere in the Thoroughfare. They would take
possession of the _Surprise_ and, if it should prove that a party of the
campers had raised her,—and not any of the villagers,—they would swear
that they themselves had found her in shoal water and had dragged her
out.
As to the future possession of her, they would trust to the squire to
fight a lawsuit, if necessary, to retain her. It was a lonely place, down
there in the Thoroughfare, and there could be no outside witnesses.
Therefore, before the sun was up, they had rowed ashore and begun work
upon the yacht. They began differently, however, than the boys had done.
They realized that the first thing for their purpose was to get the
_Surprise_ afloat. Once in possession of the yacht, afloat and towed back
to harbour, whoever should claim it then might have trouble in making
their claim good.
John Hart was something of a shipwright in a small way, and they had
brought carpenter’s and calking tools along.
They, in turn, busily engaged at their work, were taken by surprise all
of a sudden at the appearance of Joe Hinman and his crew, tearing down
upon them, half-dressed, and their eyes wide with amazement and
indignation.
“Here, that’s our boat,” cried Joe, rushing up to them, panting for
breath. “You’ve got no right to touch it. We raised it.”
John Hart, with sleeves rolled up, displaying a pair of brawny arms,
looked at the crew sneeringly. They were certainly not formidable as
against himself and his two comrades, to say nothing of young Harry
Brackett.
“You raised it!” he exclaimed, roughly. “That’s a likely story. What did
you raise her with—your hands? You’re a fine wrecking-crew. Why, we had
this boat out on shore two days ago. What are you interfering with us
for?”
“Now, see here,” said Joe Hinman, “that won’t work, so you better not try
it. There are too many on our side.” And he narrated, rapidly, the
history of the raising of the _Surprise_ by the Warrens and Henry Burns
and Harvey and himself and crew.
John Hart and his comrades seemed a bit nonplussed at this. It did put a
different phase upon the matter. They looked at one another inquiringly
for a moment. But they were rough fellows, not given to weighing evidence
critically. Might was right with them if it could be carried through.
“That’s a lie!” exclaimed John Hart, suddenly, advancing toward Joe
Hinman. “You think you can fool us with your city ways, but you’d better
look out. Where are all these fine youngsters that you say raised the
boat? This boat is ours, because we saved her. You get out and don’t come
around bothering, because we won’t stand any nonsense.”
There was no present hope for Joe and his crew. They were clearly
outmatched. They withdrew, therefore, to the shed, cooked their breakfast
and ate it with diminished appetites.
“What will Jack say,” remarked Little Tim, ruefully, “if he gets here and
finds the boat gone? We can’t get away to give the alarm, either. We’ve
got to stay here till he comes back.”
“Never mind,” exclaimed Joe, bitterly. “They can’t keep it long. We’ll
prove in the end that we saved her.”
“Yes, but that means half the summer wasted in fighting over it,” said
George Baker, despondently. “You see, when one person gets hold of a
thing, that gives him some advantage. They will have that boat afloat,
and rigged, before they can be sued.”
The task of making the _Surprise_ tight enough to float was, however, not
to be so easy as it might appear at first glance. It was a nice and
particular job fitting in new planking where the hole had been stove. It
took a good part of the day, though John Hart and his comrades worked
industriously.
Then it was apparent that the yacht had strained all along her bilge
badly and about the centreboard, so that it would require all of another
day to calk her and set the nails that had been wrenched loose. By
evening of the next day, however, she was ready for hauling off, in the
opinion of John Hart; and they would do that in the morning and tow her
back to Southport.
But they had not reckoned wholly with Joe and his crew. Finding
themselves outmatched in strength, these youngsters had wandered
disconsolately about the little island for the last two days, fishing and
swimming and passing the time as best they could; watching eagerly out
through the Thoroughfare, in hopes that Harvey and Henry Burns and the
others might put in an appearance; and all the while keeping sharp watch
of the progress of work upon the _Surprise_.
Hart and the other three, fearing no interruption from the boys, had
ignored them. At night they went out aboard the _Seagull_, where they had
provided temporary quarters for all four of them by stretching the
mainsail over the boom for a shelter, and tying it to the rail at the
edges.
“They’re all ready to haul her off in the morning, I think,” said Joe
Hinman, as the boys sat gloomily by the door of the shed on the evening
of the second day after the arrival of the men. “I heard them singing and
laughing out aboard, and saying something about ‘to-morrow’ and
‘Southport.’ Oh, if there was only another day’s work on her, the boys
might get here in time yet.”
“Then I’ll keep her here another day,” exclaimed Little Tim, “if they
beat me black and blue for it.”
“You can’t do it,” said Joe.
“Can’t I, though?” responded Tim. “Well, watch me and see. Will you
fellows help?”
The boys assented, not to be outdone in courage by the smallest one of
them.
“We can do it,” said Little Tim. “They leave their tools aboard the cabin
of the _Surprise_ at night. I saw John Hart put the box in there before
he went out aboard. He said another hour’s work would fix something or
other. I couldn’t hear what. But we’ll fix her so it will take longer
than that, I reckon.”
“O-o-oh!” exclaimed George Baker. “But we’ll catch it, though, when they
find it out.”
“All right,” said Tim. “I’ll take my share if the rest will.”
Again the others assented somewhat dubiously.
Toward midnight, the four lads stole cautiously down to the shore, and
climbed noiselessly aboard the _Surprise_. As Little Tim had described
it, there, tucked away in the cabin, was a box of carpenter’s tools.
“Here’s what we want first,” said Little Tim, softly, producing a big
auger from the box. “We’ll use this for awhile, because it doesn’t make
any noise.”
“Great!” exclaimed Joe Hinman, whose imagination was now fired with the
idea of mischief. “Let me have the first turn at it.”
Little Tim yielded him the precedence.
Climbing out of the yacht again, Joe Hinman proceeded to bore into the
planking of the _Surprise_, on the opposite side from the shore. This
served to hide their operations and also to deaden what little sound it
made. He went laboriously along the length of one plank, and then turned
the auger over to Little Tim, who went to work with a subdued squeal of
delight.
“Keep to the same plank,” said Joe. “We don’t want to ruin the whole
bottom of the boat.”
They bored the holes in turn, close together, all around one plank, and
then began on another. It was tiresome work, but they served three long
pieces of planking the same way.
Then they brought out a great chisel and pried off the planking, fearful
of the noise it made. But they had done their work well, and the sound of
the tearing wood was not sharp. No one stirred out aboard the yacht.
“That’s enough,” said Joe, as the third plank came away. “They’ll have
hard work to match that up in two days. They’re short of wood now, by the
way they patched the other place.”
“We’ll take away the pieces of planking we’ve cut out, to make sure, and
bury them in the sand up alongshore,” suggested George Baker.
“Why not take the box of tools, too?” said Little Tim, whose blood was
fired, and who would have stopped at nothing.
“Not much!” exclaimed Joe. “We’re in for it enough as it is. Tim, I
didn’t know you had so much pluck.”
“I wish it was over with,” said Tim, looking apprehensively toward the
_Seagull_.
They stole softly away again, back to the shanty. But it was long before
they dropped off to sleep.
When Tim Reardon awoke, the next morning, he was dreaming that he had
jumped up suddenly in the cabin of the _Surprise_ and had bumped his head
against the roof of the cabin. It was a hard bump, too. Then it seemed as
if the boat was turning upside down, and jumping out of water, and the
floor rising up and hitting him. The next moment, however, he realized
that he was in the shanty, where he had gone to sleep, but that a strong
hand held him fast, and was shaking him roughly, while another hand was
cuffing him over the head and ears.
He let out a lusty yell for mercy, and the others jumped up, fearful of
what was coming.
Little Tim, in the grasp of John Hart, was receiving the soundest cuffing
and mauling that had ever fallen to his lot in a somewhat varied
experience with the world. It had been his misfortune, lying nearest the
entrance, to be the one on whom John Hart’s heavy hand had fallen, as he
entered, followed by the other three, Harry Brackett bringing up the
rear.
“Oh, I’ll larn ye to scuttle other people’s boats!” cried John Hart,
wrathfully. And he cuffed young Tim again, whereat that youngster howled
for mercy.
“You’re a coward!” cried Joe Hinman, hotly. “Licking a boy half your
size.”
“Well, you’re nearer my size,” exclaimed John Hart, dropping Little Tim
and making a rush for Joe. They clinched, but the younger boy was no
match for Hart, who was, too, reinforced by his three companions. Though
it was noticeable that Harry Brackett discreetly held aloof until one of
his companions had overpowered an adversary, when he essayed to put in a
blow or two.
There was no help for them. The boys got what they had expected—and
worse. They were soundly thrashed when John Hart and his companions had
satisfied their vengeance.
“Now, see here,” said John Hart, wrathfully, shaking a rough fist at the
boys. “What you have just got is like a fly lighting on you compared to
what you’ll get the next time, if you lay another hand on that boat.”
“We won’t,” blubbered Little Tim.
And he meant it.
“Ouch!” groaned Allan Harding, as he tried to rub a dozen places at once
with only one pair of hands. “You got us into a nice mess; that’s what
you did, Tim.”
“Yes,” wailed Little Tim. “But, o-o-h, it’s over now. And,” he added,
sniffling and chuckling at the same time, “the boat stays, doesn’t it?
You knew we’d catch it, so what’s the use blaming me?”
“I didn’t think it would be such a dose,” said Joe Hinman. “But I’ll
stand it all right, if Jack only gets here in time. Let’s have something
to eat. We’ll feel better.”
The yacht _Surprise_ did, sure enough, stay. They had done their part
well. Try as best they could, the workers could not fasten her up again
before sundown. They finished the job, however, by the aid of a
lantern-light, and, taking no more chances, got some pieces of old spars
for rollers and dragged the yacht down into the water, where they moored
her close to land, a few rods away from the _Seagull_.
There was no sleep for the boys that night. They were stiff and sore, for
one thing. But it was the last chance for rescue. It was the seventh day
since the _Viking_ had sailed away. They took turns watching, away down
on the point of the little island, an eighth of a mile below where the
_Seagull_ and the _Surprise_ lay. Nor did they watch in vain. Along about
eleven o’clock, Little Tim saw the moonlight shining on a familiar sail
away down the Thoroughfare.
With the return of daylight, following their narrow escape, Henry Burns
and his friends, wide awake, had begun fishing early. It proved a record
morning for them. They filled their baskets with cod, and piled the
cockpit deep with them, and only hauled in their lines finally, about the
middle of the forenoon, when they had exhausted the supply of herring
which they had purchased for bait of the trader. They had about six
dollars’ worth of fish when they weighed in their catch at the trader’s
dock.
It had been a satisfactory trip, on the whole, and had showed them what
they could do. Deducting the money they had paid out for bait and for
some provisions, they had netted nearly eighteen dollars, having fished a
part of five days. The division of this gave six dollars to Tom and Bob
and left twelve dollars to the two owners of the _Viking_. True, they
would have a new anchor and some new line to buy out of this; but that
was, in a way, an incidental of yachting, and might have happened in some
other manner.
There was a southwesterly blowing, with some prospect of its holding on
late. So, after clearing up accounts with Mr. Hollis, the trader, and
having an early supper in the harbour, where they were free from the
pitching of the sea outside, they got under way and stood up once more
for Grand Island, running free before a good breeze. It was about five
o’clock in the afternoon, and, if the wind held, they would make the foot
of Grand Island by nine o’clock. They were impatient to be back at
Southport, and were willing to sail at night if need be.
And yet it was a mere chance that should bring them in to the
Thoroughfare on time; for, just north of North Haven, and before they had
come to the group of islands beyond, some one suggested that they stand
on for Southport and go down to the Thoroughfare the next morning. Harvey
half-assented, and then, with a fondness that still lingered for his old
boat, was doubtful.
“What do you say, Henry?” he had asked of Henry Burns. “I’ll do as you
think about it.”
“Oh, better go down to-night and relieve the crew,” said Henry Burns.
“They’re probably sick of staying there by this time, all alone. At any
rate, we’ll leave them a new supply of food.”
But Henry Burns himself would rather have gone to Southport.
The wind held on for all of the eighteen miles they had to run; but it
dropped away to a very light breeze just at sundown, then freshened a
little soon after. It was not until near eleven o’clock, however, instead
of nine, as they had expected, that they entered and sailed up the
Thoroughfare.
Tom Harris, as lookout forward to watch the shoaling of the channel, saw,
all at once, something that made his flesh creep. A stout, wholesome lad
was Tom Harris, too, with no superstition about him. Yet he had heard
sailors’ yarns of ghostly things in the sea—and he might almost have been
warranted in thinking he now beheld something of that sort.
There, off the port bow, about an eighth of a mile from shore, was
something that did look strangely like a human head bobbing along; and if
there wasn’t an arm lifted again and again from the water, as of some one
swimming a side-stroke, why, then Tom Harris was dreaming, or seeing some
seaman’s phantom. He had to believe his own eyes, though; and yet how
could it be, away down at this end of the island, where there were no
cabins of any sort—and the crew up beyond?
“Jack, Henry, Bob,” he whispered, excitedly, “there’s a queer thing
swimming just ahead there. It may be a big fish or a seal, but it looks
different to me.”
“That’s no fish,” cried Harvey, springing to his feet. “It’s some one
swimming. I’ll bet it’s one of the crew. Little Tim Reardon, most likely.
Just like the little chap to try to surprise us. He’s the best swimmer I
ever saw. Learned it around the docks up the river before he was seven
years old.”
If there was any doubt in their minds it was dispelled by a faint halloo
from the swimmer, accompanied by a warning cry for them to make no noise.
“That’s queer,” said Harvey. “Something’s up when Tim doesn’t want a
noise. I wonder if anything has gone wrong.”
Little Tim, climbing aboard a few moments later, and telling his story in
excited tones, quickly apprised them that things were decidedly wrong up
the Thoroughfare. Wrong indeed! The yachtsmen were thunderstruck.
Jack Harvey brought the _Viking_ into the wind as near shore as he dared.
“Bully for you, Tim!” he exclaimed. “Now take the dory and get ashore
quick, and bring the rest of the crew down here.”
Tim was away for shore in a twinkling. A few minutes later the four could
be seen coming down on the run. They piled aboard the _Viking_ in a heap,
and the yacht stood along up the Thoroughfare once more.
“Well, what are we going to do, Jack?” inquired Henry Burns, as they
turned a bend of the shore and came in sight of the mast of the
_Seagull_.
“I’m going to fight for that boat!” cried Harvey, angrily. “I’ll die for
it, but they sha’n’t get it away from me.”
“Of course we’ll fight for it if we need to,” said Henry Burns, calmly.
“We will all stand by you, eh, fellows?”
“Yes, sir,” exclaimed Tom and Bob together, feeling of their muscles,
developed by canoeing and gymnastics.
The crew also assented, less warmly. They had had their taste of it
already.
“All the same,” said Henry Burns, “it would be a huge joke on them, after
they have gone to work and patched her up and floated her for us, to sail
in and tow her out without their knowing it. Just imagine them waking up
in the morning and finding the boat and the crew both gone.”
“Yes, and we’ll catch it for that, too, I suppose,” groaned George Baker.
“No, we’ll stand by you,” said Henry Burns. And he added, “Let’s try the
easiest way first, Jack. We’ll run in as quietly as we can, come up
alongside the _Surprise_ and take her in tow. If they wake, we’ll stand
by you and fight for the boat. But I think we may get away with her.
They’re bound to be sound sleepers.”
Carefully stowing away every pail or oar or stick that could be in the
way at the wrong time and make a noise, the yachtsmen brought the Viking
close in upon the dismasted _Surprise_. Then, as Harvey made a wide sweep
to bring the _Viking_ about into the wind, Henry Burns and Tom Harris
dropped astern in the dory and picked up the line with which the
_Surprise_ had been moored. They were ready for Harvey when he had come
about. Throwing the line aboard as the _Viking_ rounded to, close in,
they rowed quickly alongside and sprang over the rail. The line had been
caught by Bob, who made it fast astern.
The _Viking_ had not even lost headway, so skilfully had the manœuvre
been carried out. Standing away on the starboard tack, the _Viking’s_
sails filled and the line brought up. The wind was fairly fresh and the
weight of the unballasted _Surprise_ did not stop the _Viking_. The
_Surprise_, its long, lonely stay down in the Thoroughfare ended, had at
last begun its homeward journey toward Southport.
“I don’t see but what your friends on the _Seagull_ did us a good turn in
trying to rob you of the _Surprise_,” said Henry Burns, smiling. “They
seem to have made the old boat pretty fairly tight. They’ve saved us
time.”
“Oh, yes, we owe ’em something for that,” exclaimed Little Tim, feeling
around for a sore spot, “but I hope they don’t try to collect any more of
the debt from me.”
“Tim, you were a brick to do what you did!” cried Harvey. “And the rest
of you, too. You had the real pluck. But Tim suggested it, and he’s first
mate of the _Surprise_ after this, and next to Skipper Joe. That’s fair,
isn’t it?”
George Baker and Allan Harding agreed.
“What do you think,” asked Harvey, as they sailed on up the bay, “will
they keep up the fight for the boat? Will the squire take it to court, or
will they quit, now they find themselves outwitted?”
“They’ll give it up,” said Henry Burns. “They would have tried to lie it
through if they could have got the boat away from here. But now that we
have it, they will look at it differently. They’ll find, when they get
back to the village, too, that the Warren boys were down here, and that
will settle it.” Henry Burns was right.
John Hart and his comrades, astounded, on awakening, to find the
_Surprise_ nowhere to be seen, had jumped to the conclusion that the crew
had stolen down and cut her loose.
“We’ll take it out of them!” he had cried, fiercely; and, followed by his
no less irate comrades, had dashed up to the old cabin. Another
disappointment. And still another, when they had searched all the shores
of the Thoroughfare and examined its waters, and realized that the boat
was gone.
“Well, we’ll get it yet, if they have carried it off,” young Brackett
ventured to suggest.
“We’ll do nothing of the kind,” cried John Hart, angrily. “You idiot!
Can’t you see we’re beaten? Some one has been down in the night and
helped them. That must have been true, what they said about the other
chaps. The best thing we can do is to keep quiet about what we have done,
or we’ll have the whole town laughing at us for working on their boat.”
Young Harry Brackett looked pained.
CHAPTER IX.
HARRY BRACKETT PLAYS A JOKE
Southport, albeit not a place of great hilarity, took a night off once a
fortnight or so, and enjoyed itself in rollicking fashion. Up the island,
about a mile and a half from the harbour, there was a small settlement,
consisting of a half-dozen houses clustered together, overlooking a
pretty cove that made in from the western shore. They were a part of the
town of Southport, though separated from the rest. It had been, in fact,
the original place of settlement, and there was a church and town hall
there.
This town hall, bare and uninviting in appearance for the most of its
existence, brightened up smartly on these fortnightly occasions, putting
on usually some vestments of running pine and other festoons of trailing
vines, and adorned with wild flowers in their season.
A glittering array of lamps, some loaned for the occasion, made the hall
brilliant; while a smooth birch floor, polished and waxed as shining as
any man-o’warsman’s deck, reflected the illumination and offered an
inviting surface for dancing.
Overhead, on the floor above, it was often customary to serve a baked
bean supper before the dancing, with its inevitable accompaniment of pie
of many varieties.
Everybody took part in the dances, from Benny Jones, who had one wooden
leg, but who could hop through the Boston Fancy with amazing nimbleness,
to old Billy Cook, who arrayed his feet, usually bare, in a pair of heavy
boots that reached to his knees, and in which he clattered about the hall
with a noise like a flock of sheep. Even the squire consented to unbend
from his dignity on some of these occasions, stalking through a few
dances stiffly, as a man carved out of wood.
As for young Harry Brackett, he would have been welcomed, also, and
indeed had formerly taken part in the festivities. But, since his return
from Boston and from some of the livelier summer resorts, he had referred
to the island dances contemptuously as “slow.”
The campers usually went up to see the fun; and Henry Burns, who was a
favourite about the island, and George Warren were usually to be seen
among the dancers.
By far the most important functionary of all, however, was a quaint,
little, grizzled old man, who was not a resident of the island, but lived
six miles away, over across on the cape. “Uncle Bill” Peters, with his
squeaking fiddle and well-resined bow, was, in fact, the whole orchestra.
He was the one indispensable man of all. He had a tireless arm that had
been known to scrape the wailing fiddle-strings from twilight to early
morning on more than one occasion, inspiring the muse now and then with a
little tobacco, which did not hinder him from calling off the numbers in
a singsong, penetrating voice.
Early in the day, when a dance was arranged, it was the duty of some one
to sail across to the cape and fetch “Uncle Billy” over, his arrival
being the occasion for an ovation on the part of a selected committee.
“You’re goin’ up to the dance, I see,” remarked Rob Dakin to Billy Cook,
one evening shortly following the adventures down in the Thoroughfare,
just narrated.
“Well, I reckon,” answered Billy, reaching into a cracker-barrel and
abstracting some odds and ends of hardtack.
It was easy enough for anybody to see, for Billy’s boots occupied a large
part of the store doorway, as he seated himself in a chair, and crossed
one leg over the other.
“I just saw Uncle Bill Peters go by,” continued Billy Cook. “I should
think he’d be scared to fetch that ’ere fiddle clear across the bay here.
Jeff Hackett says it’s one of the best fiddles this side er Portland.
Cost seven dollars, I hear.”
Just then a crowd of boys, including Henry Burns and Harvey, Tom and Bob
and the Warrens, went by the door, coming up from shore, where they had
been at work on the hull of the yacht _Surprise_.
“Hello, Billy!” cried young Joe, spying the biggest pair of boots of
which the island boasted, filling up the doorway. “Are you going up to
the dance, Billy?”
“Yes, I be,” responded Billy, rather abruptly.
“Hooray!” cried young Joe. “So am I.”
“Well, I don’t know as I’m so overpowering anxious to have yer go,”
asserted Billy; “at least, unless you mend your ways. You boys have got
ter quit your cutting up dance nights, or there’ll be trouble.”
Young Joe grinned.
“I didn’t fill up your boots, Billy,” he said. “Honour bright, I didn’t.”
He might have added that the reason why was because somebody else thought
of it first.
Billy Cook’s memory of the preceding dance was clouded by one sad
incident. It seems that, by reason of his habit of going barefoot at
other times except funerals and dances, and of dispensing with the
conventionality of socks when he did wear boots, it was a relief to Billy
to step out-of-doors, once or twice during the evening, remove the
cumbersome boots, and walk about for a few moments barefoot.
It fell out that, at the previous dance, after one of these moments of
respite, Billy had returned to find his boots filled with water, and that
young Joe’s deep sympathy had directed suspicion against him.
“No, sirree,” said young Joe now, in response to Billy’s rejoinder. “We
didn’t have anything to do with that. And we didn’t put the lobster in
the squire’s tall hat, either. ’Twas some chaps from down the island that
did that. You know how they like the squire down there, Billy.”
“Guess I know how some folks up here like him, too,” muttered Billy.
Early that evening, the lights glimmering from the well-cleaned windows
of the town hall shone out as so many beacons to guide the islanders from
far and near. They came from up and down the island, rattling along the
stony road in wagons that must have been built at some time or
other—though nobody could remember when they were new. Moreover, whereas
a boat must be painted often to keep it sound and at its best, the same
does not apply to farm wagons. Hence, the conveyances that came bumping
along up to the town hall shed were certainly not things of beauty.
But each carried, nevertheless, its load of human happiness and
merriment. There sprang out rosy-cheeked, buxom island girls and sturdy
young fishermen, healthy, hearty, and full of life, eager for the first
weird strains of Uncle Billy’s seven-dollar fiddle.
He was soon in action, too. Seated on a high platform at the end of the
hall, resining his bow, was Uncle Billy, smiling like a new moon upon the
company. For the hall was used, likewise, by troupes of wandering
theatrical companies; and, on this very stage where Uncle Billy was now
seated, the villagers had gazed upon the woes of Little Eva and Uncle
Tom, and had beheld Eliza Harris flee in terror, with a lumbering mastiff
(supposed to be a bloodhound) tagging after her, crossing the little
stage at two heavy bounds, and yelping behind the scenes, either from
innate ferocity or at the sight of a long-withheld bone.
Uncle Billy was off now in earnest, with a squeaking and a shrieking of
the catgut. Captain Sam Curtis, his hair nicely “slicked,” and wearing a
gorgeous new blue and red necktie, led the grand march as master of
ceremonies, with Rob Dakin’s wife on his arm. Rob Dakin, escorting Mrs.
Curtis, followed next. The squire was somewhere in line, leading a
stately maiden sister of his wife. Billy Cook clattered along, with a
laughing damsel from down the island. Henry Burns and George Warren, with
comely partners, were also to be seen, entering heartily in the fun.
At the end of the hall nearest the doorway stood a group of islanders who
didn’t dance, or hadn’t partners at present. Included in these were the
other two Warren boys and the most of the campers. Included, also, was
young Harry Brackett, scowling enviously at a youth from the foot of the
island, who led to the dance a certain black-haired, bright-eyed, trim
little miss, who smiled at her escort sweetly as they promenaded past the
entrance where Harry Brackett stood.
It had happened that this same young lady had been invited by Harry
Brackett to accompany him to the dance as his partner; but that she had
coolly snubbed him, with the remark that he was “stuck-up,”—an
unpardonable offence in the eyes of a resident of Southport, as
elsewhere.
So it came about that Harry Brackett, after glaring malevolently upon the
general merriment for a few minutes, took his departure.
If any one had followed this young man, they would have observed him
footing it up the main road of the island for about half a mile, at a
surprising pace for one no more energetically inclined than he. Then, at
a certain point, Harry Brackett left the road, crawled through some bars
that led into a pasture, and made his way by a winding cow-path into a
clump of bushes and small trees, some distance farther.
Harry Brackett evidently was not travelling at random, but had some fixed
destination. This destination, shortly arrived at, proved to be a large,
cone-shaped, grayish object, hanging from the branch of a tree, near to
the ground. The boy approached it cautiously, pulled a cap that he wore
down about his ears, tied a handkerchief about his neck, turned up his
coat-collar, and put on a pair of thick gloves.
If any one had been near, they might have heard a subdued humming, or
droning sound coming from the object on the branch. It was a wasp’s nest
of enormous size.
Harry Brackett next proceeded to take from his pocket a small scrap of
cotton cloth and a bottle, from which, as he uncorked and inverted it,
there issued a thick stream of tar and pitch, used for boat calking.
Having smeared the cloth with this, he was ready for business.
He stole quietly up to the nest, clapped the sticky cloth over the
orifice at the base of it, dodged back, and awaited results.
A sound as of a tiny windmill arose within the nest—an angry sound, which
indicated that the fiery-tempered inmates were aware of their
imprisonment and were prepared for warfare. But Harry Brackett had
accomplished his design, unscathed. A few tiny objects, darting angrily
about in the vicinity, showed that some of the insects still remained
without the nest, and were surprised and indignant at finding their
doorway thus unexpectedly barred.
Somewhat uncertain as to how these might receive him, Harry Brackett
screwed up his courage and dashed up to the nest, which he severed from
the tree by cutting off the branch with his clasp-knife. His venture
proved successful, and, swinging his hat about his head to ward off any
chance wasp that might come to close quarters with him, he emerged
triumphantly from the thicket, bearing his prize, and without paying the
penalty of a single sting.
“My! but that’s a mad crowd inside there,” he exclaimed. “Sounds like the
buzz-saw over at Lem Barton’s tide-mill. Guess they’ll liven things up a
bit at the dance. Perhaps some other folks will be stuck-up to-morrow.”
The furious buzzing quieted, however, after he had gone about a quarter
of a mile, and he reflected that perhaps the wasps, cut off from a fresh
supply of air, might die on the way. So he took out his knife again and
stabbed several holes in the nest, with the thick blade; whereupon the
angry remonstrances of the prisoners was resumed, to his satisfaction.
This time, however, he did not venture along the highway, but made his
way slowly back to the town hall through the woods and pastures. After a
time he came to where the lights of the hall gleamed through the bushes,
and the thin but vigorous scraping of Uncle Billy’s fiddle sounded from
the stage. He put down his burden and made a stealthy reconnaissance as
far as the rear sheds of the hall. Some men were about there, so he
waited for a favourable opportunity.
This opportunity did not present itself for some time, as now and again
some one would come out to see if his horse was standing all right, and
possibly suspicious that some prank might be played with the wagons; for
the young fishermen of Southport were not above playing practical jokes
of their own on these occasions. So it was not until Harry Brackett had
waited fully a half-hour that he fancied the coast clear.
It was then half-past nine o’clock, or when the dancing had been in
progress about an hour, that Harry Brackett, bearing his burden of
pent-up mischief, stole slyly up to the rear of the hall, where a window,
opened to give a circulation of air through the place, afforded him an
entrance back of the stage.
It happened, not all opportunely for the young man, however, that some of
the islanders came to these dances, not for the dancing itself, but
because of the opportunity it offered to meet socially and discuss
matters. Of this number, long Dave Benson, who lived on the western
shore, and Eben Slade, commonly called Old Slade, who lived across from
the harbour settlement on the bluff, had withdrawn from the hall to talk
over a dicker about a boat.
After a friendly proffer of tobacco on Dave Benson’s part, the two had
adjourned to one of the sheds at the rear of the hall, to get away from
the noise of the music and the dancers, and had seated themselves in an
old covered carryall, from which the horse had been unharnessed.
From this point of vantage, they presently espied a solitary figure
emerge from the dark background and go cautiously on to the rear window.
“S-h-h!” whispered Dave Benson to his companion, “what’s going on there?
Some more skylarking, I reckon. Well, there won’t be any wheels taken off
from my wagon to-night.”
“Why, it looks like that ’ere young good-for-nothing of the squire’s,”
said Old Slade. “Thinks he’s a leetle too good for dancing, perhaps, but
don’t mind takin’ a peek at the fun from the outside. Seems to be
carrying something or other, though. What do you make that out to be?”
“Looks like a big bunch of paper to me,” replied Dave Benson. “But I
allow I can’t see in the dark like I used to—however, it don’t matter, I
guess. Now as to that ’ere boat of mine, she’s a bit old, I’ll allow, but
you can’t do better for the money.”
Harry Brackett, all unconscious of his observers, vanished through the
open window. When he reappeared, a few moments later, he was minus the
object he had carried. Moreover, that object no longer bore upon its base
the piece of tarred cloth. Harry Brackett had snatched that away as he
made his hasty departure, after depositing the nest among the faded
scenery stored behind the stage. Then, from a side window, he watched the
effect of his plan.
The dancing was in full swing. Uncle Billy, warmed to his task, and
keeping time with his foot, was calling off the numbers.
“Balance your partners! Gentlemen swing! All hands around!” sang out
Uncle Billy.
The dancers were in great fettle. Billy Cook, boots and all, was doing
gallantly. Captain Sam’s laugh could be heard clear to the woods beyond
the pasture. Squire Brackett was actually breaking out in a smile. Henry
Burns and his friends were gathered near the doorway, watching the
surprising play of Billy Cook’s boots.
But at this happy moment something happened to Uncle Billy Peters. His
fiddle-bow, scraping across the strings in one wild, discordant shriek,
dropped from his hand. His half-articulated call for a position of the
dance blended into a startled yell, that brought the dancing to an abrupt
stop; while Uncle Billy, his fiddle discarded, had leaped from his seat
and was now dancing about the stage and describing the most extraordinary
gyrations, waving his arms in the air and slapping at his face and the
back of his neck, as though his own music had driven him stark, staring
mad.
“What on earth!”—ejaculated Billy Cook. He got no further. Something that
felt like a fish-hook, half-way down his boot-leg, occupied his
attention; and the next moment a dozen or more of the same animated
fish-hooks were buzzing about his head.
Billy Cook made one frantic clutch at his boot-leg; and, failing to find
relief, yanked the boot off. Swinging this wildly about his head, one
foot bared and the other clattering, poor Billy fled from the hall.
The squire’s expansive smile faded away in an expression of anguish and
wrathful indignation. Slapping madly at the bald patch at the crown of
his head, and uttering fierce denunciations upon the author of the
mischief, he ignominiously deserted his partner of the dance and likewise
fled precipitately.
The campers had already scuttled before the storm, and in a twinkling the
hall was cleared. The angry, buzzing swarm was in complete and undisputed
possession.
“I’ll give five dollars to any one that will discover who did this
outrage!” cried Squire Brackett, dashing across the road to where a group
of dancers had gathered. “Where’s that Burns boy and that Harvey—and that
little Warren imp? He had a hand in it, I’ll take my oath. Whoever they
are, they’ll get one horsewhipping that they’ll remember for the rest of
their lives. Get those horsewhips out of the wagons! We’ll teach the
young rascals a lesson.”
The squire had not observed that still another group of stalwart
fishermen had had a word with Dave Benson and Old Slade and had already,
of their own accord, provided themselves with horsewhips.
The squire only knew, at this time, that a party of the men were off down
the road, with a hue and cry. He did not know that his own son was
fleeing before them on the wings of fear, and being fast overtaken by his
pursuers, themselves borne onward on the wings of pain and wrath.
What the campers, joining in the pursuit, saw shortly, was the figure of
young Harry Brackett, fleeing down the highway toward the harbour,
bawling loudly for mercy, as first one whip-lash and then another cut
about his legs; and receiving no mercy, but, instead, as sound and
thorough a horsewhipping as the squire himself had recommended for the
guilty wretch.
Some time later, there limped into Southport village a
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