But the yacht lived through it all and kept bravely on its course. Henry Burns’s arms ached with bailing out the cockpit, where the seas broke in over the quarter, or came aboard in clouds of spray as they headed into the wind.
They dared not sail near the shore, and could see it but indistinctly, save when some larger wave broke upon the beach and carved out a white line of foam, which vanished as quickly as it appeared. So against the cliffs that they passed they could see a sudden blur of white as a big wave hurled itself to destruction. Beyond this all was blear and indistinct.
They were now within half a mile of the head of the island, and, looking ahead into the darkness, which, with the rain, had greatly increased within the last hour, like the beginning of a fog, they realized how useless was the search they had begun. They could see but the merest distance in any direction. The storm was steadily increasing, and already a new condition confronted them. The wind was shifting to the southeast, from east, so that their return was rendered impossible. It was worse than folly to think of beating back in such a head sea. The wind on their quarter was driving them along furiously. It was madness to dream of keeping on past the head of the island.
“We can’t make Bryant’s Cove any too soon to suit me,” said George. “TheSprayhas got more wind now than she knows what to do with.”
The little boat was, indeed, burying her bows under at every plunge, and trembled in all her timbers at the fearful strain. It was plain that she had reached the limit of her seaworthiness. Bryant’s Cove was a short distance around the head of the island. Once there, they would be sheltered from the storm.
The boys had ceased to speak of a possible rescue of their friends. It was a question of their own salvation now, and the instinct of self-preservation asserted itself. Henry Burns peered eagerly ahead, but looked only for the point of land behind which lay their safety. Suddenly he turned and uttered a shrill cry of fright, such as no one had ever heard from him before.
“Luff her, George! Luff quick—quick, for your life!” he cried, and, springing for the tiller, threw his weight against it ere the startled helmsman could find strength to act.
The yacht, with sails slatting, came into the wind amid a cloud of spray. The boom, striking a wave, had nearly snapped in two. But it was not an instant too soon.
A black object that looked enormous rose suddenly out of the sea in front of theSpray. The next wave lifted it high in the air, and hurled it down upon them. It was a ship’s yawl-boat, of immense size, fully as large as the yacht itself. Down the watery declivity it shot, swift and straight, like some sea-monster in pursuit of its quarry.
But the little yacht had answered her helm well. There was a crash and a splintering of wood, and the yawl drifted rapidly past and was lost in the darkness. The yachtSpray, her bowsprit and fore-rigging torn away, once more fell off the wind and was driven on by the storm. It was an escape so narrow that a moment more and they had been dashed to pieces.
Henry Burns was the first to regain his courage.
“It’s better the bowsprit than the rudder,” he said, coolly. And his courage gave them strength. A few minutes later they had passed the head of the island and gained the lee of the land, and in fifteen minutes more they had cast anchor in Bryant’s Cove.
“I am willing to do whatever you boys think is best,” said George Warren, as they lowered and furled the sail and made the yacht snug for the night. “But I think it’s of no use for us to make any search for the boys along this shore. If they capsized in the bay to-night, neither they nor their canoe would come ashore here. The canoe would be blown across the bay; and they— Well, we’re bound to believe that they didn’t start, or, if they did, that they put back.”
“I don’t see but what we have done all we can to-night,” responded his brother; “and, as we have got five miles of muddy road to travel, the sooner we start the better. We could stay in the boat to-night, but we must get back on mother’s account. Depend upon it, she has worried every single minute we have been gone, and I don’t blame her, either. Now it’s all over, I don’t mind saying I think we were fools to come out. But we meant well, so perhaps the less said the better. We’ll have to leave theSprayto herself till the storm goes down. Nobody will harm her.”
“I don’t mind staying here to-night and looking after her,” said Henry Burns. “To be sure, old Witham doesn’t know I have left the hotel, but I tumbled my bed up before I came away, and he will only think I got up early in the morning, if he wonders where I am.”
“No, no, old fellow. We won’t let you stay. We won’t hear of it,” said both brothers. “The sooner we all get home and get dry clothes on, the better. There’s no need of any of us staying. TheSpraywon’t sail out of the cove of herself, and every one on the island knows her.”
So, as they had left the tender behind, they removed their clothing, tied it into bundles, slung them around their necks, and, slipping overboard, swam to shore.
“If I ever was more glad to get on land alive than I am at present,” said Henry Burns, his teeth chattering with the cold, as he hastily scrambled into his clothes, “I don’t happen to remember it just at this instant. I wonder if my aunt would send me down here again for my health if she could see me now.”
There was something so ludicrous in the idea that the boys could not help bursting into roars of laughter,—though they felt little enough like merriment.
“The more I think of it,” said Henry Burns, “the more I believe the boys are snug ashore at Millville, and that they haven’t been within ten miles of Grand Island to-night.”
“I think you are right, Henry,” responded Arthur.
“It must be so,” said George.
And yet not one of them dared to believe absolutely that what he said was true.
They started off across lots now, walking as rapidly as their wet and heavy clothing would allow, to strike the road which led to the harbour. Coming at length into this road, they had walked but a short distance, and were at the top of a hill at a turn of the road where it left the shore, when Henry Burns, pointing down along the shore, said:
“We ought to remember that part of the bay as long as we live, for we shall never be much nearer to death than we were right there.”
“Sure enough,” responded Arthur, “it was just about off there that the big yawl smashed our bowsprit off.”
“The yawl must have been driven ashore by this time,” said George. “Wait a minute and I will take a look.” And he disappeared over the bank and was lost in the bushes. The two boys seated themselves by the side of the road to await his return, but started up with a horror in their hearts as a shrill cry came up to them from the shore. There was that in the cry that told them that George Warren had found other than the ship’s long-boat. They scarcely dared to think what. Then they, too, dashed down the slope to the shore.
When they reached his side, George Warren could scarcely speak from emotion.
“Look! Look!” he cried, in a trembling, choking voice, and pointed out upon the beach where the tide had gone down.
There were two strange objects there that the sea had buffeted in its wild play that night, and then, as though grown tired of them, had cast upon the shore, among the rocks and seaweed.
One was the long-boat, no longer an object of danger, for the sea had hurled it against a rock and stove its side in. The other was a canoe. The sea had overturned it and tossed it upon the shore. Two of its thwarts were smashed where it had been dropped down and pinioned upon a rock—and the rock held it fast.
With hearts beating quick and hard, they lifted the canoe from the rock, fearful of what they might find beneath it; but there was nothing there. Then they searched along the beach in the darkness as best they could, peering anxiously into clumps of seaweed, and standing now and again fixed with horror as some dim object, cast up by the sea, assumed in shadowy outline the semblance of a human form. The shore was heaped here and there with piles of driftwood and ends of logs that had come down through countless tides and currents from the lumber-mills miles up the river, and this stuff had lodged among the ledges and boulders at various points along the beach. Here and there among these they hunted, groping amid the seaweed, cold and chill to the touch, and suggesting to their minds, already alert with dread, the most gruesome of discoveries which they feared to make.
That the boys had crossed the bay in the frail craft which they had just found there seemed to be no possible doubt. Furthermore, they were now led to believe that Tom and Bob, having once reached a point where they could have found shelter, had chosen to keep on past the head of the island in an effort to make the harbour of Southport. They must at least, as the wind had blown, have reached a point opposite where the boys had found the canoe, and have, perhaps, paddled some distance beyond.
But it was clearly useless to continue the search further in the darkness and storm. They lifted the canoe and carried it up from the beach, and hid it in the bushes upon the bank. Then they went slowly back to the road.
“I tell you what we can do,” said Arthur Warren. “I hate to go back to the cottage without making one more search. Let’s get a lantern and come back. We shall not have to go far for one,—and we shall have done all we can, then, though it is a bad night to see anything.”
The rain was, indeed, pouring in torrents and driving in sheets against their faces.
“Yes, we must do that much,” said George. “And then—then we can come back in the morning—” His voice choked, and he could not say more. They went on down the muddy road in silence.
Shortly below the hill, upon the road, was a big farmhouse, arriving at which they turned into the yard. The house was in darkness, save one dim light in a chamber; but they pounded at the door with the heavy brass knocker till they heard the shuffling of feet in the entry, and a voice inquired roughly what was wanted. They answered, and the door was opened cautiously a few inches, where it was held fast by a heavy chain. An old man’s face peered out at them. The sight of the boys was evidently reassuring, for, in a moment more, the man threw open the door and invited them to walk in.
“There be rough sailors come by some nights,” he said, in a manner apologizing for his suspicion. “I’m here alone, and”—he lowered his voice to a husky whisper—“they do say that I have a bit of money hid away in the old house. But it’s a lie. It’s a lie. It’s the sea and the garden I live on. There’s not a bit of money in the old house. But what brings you out in such a storm? You haven’t lost your way, have you?”
They told their story, while the old man sat in a chair, shaking his head dubiously. When they told him of the finding of the canoe, and their certainty that the boys had crossed in it, he declared that it could never have lived to get to the island.
“It must have come from down below,” he said. “It could never have been paddled across the bay against this sea. Two boys, d’ye say, paddled it? No. No, my lads, never—upon my life, never. Two stout men in a dory, and used to these waters, might have done it; but two lads in a cockle-shell like that would never have reached the Head, let alone getting beyond it.”
He seemed to regard them almost with suspicion, when they told him of how they had sailed up along shore in search of their comrades, and was perhaps inclined to believe their whole story as some kind of a hoax. Certain it was he gave them little comfort, except to say he would look alongshore in the morning. If any one had drowned offshore in the evening, they might not come ashore till the next day, he said.
But he got a battered lantern for them and handed it over with a trembling hand, cautioning them to be careful of it, and to leave it by the door on their way back. They heard him bolt the heavy door behind them as they turned out of the yard into the road. A clock in the kitchen had struck the hour of ten as they left the house.
“Isn’t it very probable, after all,” said George, as they walked along, “that the man may be right, and that this canoe we have found is one that has been lost off some steamer?”
“It seems to me perhaps as probable,” answered Henry Burns, “as that the boys should have attempted to keep on in the storm, having once reached a place of safety.”
“I wish I could think so,” said Arthur. “But I can’t help fearing the worst,—and if the boys are lost,” he exclaimed bitterly, “I’ve seen all I want to of this island for one summer. I’d never enjoy another day here.”
“I won’t believe it’s their canoe until I have to,” said George. “They are not such reckless chaps as we have been making them out.”
And he tried to say this bravely, as though he really meant it.
They tramped along the rest of the way to the shore in silence, for none of them dared to admit to another that which he could not but believe.
By the lantern’s dim and flickering light they searched the beach again for a half-mile along in the vicinity of where the canoe had come ashore. But nothing rewarded their hunt.
“The old man must be right,” said George Warren. “The canoe must have come ashore from some steamer. Let’s go home, anyway. We’ve done all we can.”
Heart-sick and weary, they began the tramp back to the cottage. At about a mile from the old farmhouse, where they left the lantern, they turned off from the road and made a cut across fields, till they came at length to the shore of the cove opposite the Warren cottage. They could see across the water the gleam of a large lantern which young Joe had hung on the piazza for them; but the boat they had expected to find drawn up on shore was gone.
“Old Slade must be over in town,” said Henry Burns; “and he won’t be back to-night, probably. So it’s either walk two miles more around the cove or swim out to the tender. We’re all of us tired out. Shall we draw lots to see who swims?”
“I’ll go, myself,” volunteered George. “I’d rather swim that short distance than do any more walking. I’m about done up, but I am good for that much.” And he threw off his clothing once more, and swam pluckily out to the tender and brought it ashore. They pulled across the cove to the shore back of the cottage, and, springing out, carried the boat high up on land.
They were at the cottage then in a twinkling; but, even before they had reached the door, dear Mrs. Warren, who had heard their steps upon the walk, was outside in the rain, hugging her boys who had braved the storm and who had come back safe. She was altogether too much overcome at the sight of them, it seemed, to inquire if they had found those in search of whom they had set out.
And then the dear little woman, having embraced and kissed them as though they had been shipwrecked mariners, long given up for lost,—not forgetting Henry Burns, who wasn’t used to it, but who took it calmly all the same, as he did everything else,—hurried them into the kitchen, where young Joe had the big cook-stove all of a red heat, and where dry clothing for the three from the extensive Warren wardrobe was warming by the fire.
A comical welcome they got from young Joe, who had been just as much worried as Mrs. Warren, but who hadn’t admitted it to his mother for a moment, and had scornfully denied the existence of danger, and yet who was every bit as relieved as she to see the boys safe. He tried not to appear as though a great weight had been removed from his mind by their return, but made altogether a most commendable failure.
The big, roomy, old-fashioned kitchen—for the Warren cottage had originally been a rambling old farmhouse, which they had remodelled and modernized—had never seemed so cosy before. And the fire had never seemed more cheery than it did now. And when they had scrambled into dry, warm clothing, and Mrs. Warren had taken the teakettle from the hob, and poured them each a steaming cup of tea, to “draw out the chill,” they forgot for the moment what they had been through and their sad discovery.
In fact, it seemed as though Mrs. Warren and young Joe were strangely indifferent to what had sent them forth, and were easily satisfied with the opinions expressed by the boys, who had agreed not to mention the finding of the canoe until something more definite was learned, that Tom and Bob had in all probability not left the river.
So easily satisfied, indeed, and so little affected by the fruitless errand they had been on, that all at once Henry Burns, who had been eying Mrs. Warren sharply for some moments, suddenly rose up from where he was sitting, and rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining-room, into the front part of the house. Wondering what had come over him, the others followed.
What they saw was a tableau, with Henry Burns as exhibitor. He had drawn aside the heavy portière with one hand, and stood pointing into the room with the other.
There, seated before the fireplace, were two boys so much like Tom and Bob, whom they had given up for lost, that their own mothers, had they been there, would have wept for joy at the sight of them. And then, what with the Warren boys pounding them and hugging them, like young bears, to make sure they were flesh and blood, and not the ghosts of Tom and Bob, and with the cheers that fairly made the old rafters ring, and the happiness of Mrs. Warren, who was always willing to adopt every boy from far and near who was a friend of one of her boys,—what with all this, there was altogether a scene that would have done any one’s heart good, and might have shamed the storm outside, if it had been any other kind of a storm than a pitiless southeaster.
Then, though the hour was getting late, they all sat about the big fireplace, and Tom narrated the story of the shipwreck.
But, just as he began, young Joe said, with mock gravity:
“We haven’t introduced Henry Burns to the boys yet. Henry, this is Tom Harris, and this is Bob White.”
“I don’t think we need an introduction to one who has risked his life for us,” said Tom Harris, heartily, as he and Bob sprang up to shake hands with Henry Burns. But Henry Burns, carrying out the joke, bowed very formally, and politely said he was extremely happy to make their acquaintance. At which Tom and Bob, unfamiliar with the ways of Henry Burns, stared in astonishment, which sent the Warren boys into roars of laughter.
The boys thus introduced to Henry Burns were handsome young fellows, evidently about the same age,—in fact, each lacked but a few months of fifteen,—thick-set and strongly built. The sons of well-to-do parents, and neighbours, they had been inseparable companions ever since they could remember. Tom Harris’s father was the owner of extensive tracts in the Maine woods, from which lumber was cut yearly and rafted down the streams to his lumber-mills. In company with him on several surveying and exploring expeditions, the boys had hunted and fished together, and had paddled for weeks along the streams and on the lakes of the great Maine wilderness.
They had hunted and fished in the Parmachenee and the Rangeley Lake region, and knew a great deal more of real camp life than most boys of double their age. Further than this, they were schoolmates, and were so equally matched in athletic sports, in which they both excelled, that neither had ever been able to gain a decided victory over the other. Tom was of rather light complexion, while Bob was dark, with curly, black hair.
It was through their friendship with the Warren boys, who lived not far from them, in the same town, that they had decided to spend the summer camping on Grand Island.
As they all gathered around the cheerful blaze of the fire, Tom told the story of the day’s adventures.
With so much of their camp kit as they needed for cooking along the river, they had started from the town of Benton at about four o’clock that morning, just as the tide began to ebb. Hardened as they were to the use of the paddle, by the time the tide had ceased to ebb and slack water ensued, they had left the city miles behind and were well down the river.
Then the flood tide began to set strong against them, and a wind arose that furrowed the river with waves that were not big enough to be noticeable to larger craft, but which seriously impeded the progress of the frail canoe. They kept steadily on, but made slow headway.
At Millville, a few miles above the mouth of the river, where it broadened out into the bay, they had met the steamer, and had hastily scrawled the note which Captain Chase had brought to the Warren boys.
Sure enough, Captain Chase had warned them of the impending storm, and, furthermore, had offered to transport them and their canoe across the bay; but they had declined his offer, wishing to paddle the entire distance to the island. They had set their hearts on making the trip of forty miles in one day; and partly for this reason, and partly because Captain Chase had looked askance at their canoe, and had assured them that it was not a fit craft for bay work in any weather, let alone in a heavy sea, they had set out, toward the latter part of the afternoon, to cross the fifteen miles of bay which lay between them and Grand Island.
The storm which had threatened gradually closed in around them, but they held on stubbornly, until, when too far across the bay to put back, it rapidly gathered strength, and soon turned what had been a comparatively safe pathway across the sea into a wilderness of waves, that at one moment rose high above the bow of the canoe, dashing them with spray as the sharp canoe cleaved them, and the next dropped down beneath them, opening a watery trench, into which they plunged.
They had seen storms like this, that came quick and sharp upon the lakes, heaving up a sea almost in a moment, with squalls that swept down from the hills. They had been safely through them before; but at those times it had been a short, sharp battle for a half-hour at most, before they could reach a friendly shore. But here it was different. Here were miles of intervening water between them and the nearest land. This was no lake, to be quickly within the shelter of some protecting point of land.
But they had never for a moment lost courage nor despaired of coming through all right. They struggled pluckily on, and might have gotten safely to land without mishap, if they had been familiar with the shore of the island. To a stranger, the shore about the head of the island presented a sheer front of forbidding cliffs, rising abruptly from the water, and against which, in a storm, the sea dashed furiously.
There was apparently no place at which a boat could be landed; and yet, hidden behind the very barrier of ledge that sheltered it, lay Bryant’s Cove, as quiet and sequestered a pool as any fugitive craft could wish to find. Had the boys known of its existence, they would have landed there, and have been at the Warren cottage before theSprayhad left the harbour.
As it was, there seemed to them to be no alternative but to keep on to a point about half a mile farther along the shore, where they hoped to be able to make a landing upon the beach.
They had accomplished the distance, and were fast nearing a place where they could land in safety, when a most unexpected and disastrous accident happened. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning of its weakness, the paddle which Bob was using snapped in two in his hands. At the same moment a wave hit the canoe, and, with nothing with which to keep his balance, Bob was thrown bodily from the canoe into the sea, upsetting the canoe and spilling Tom out at the same time.
The boys were able to grasp the canoe and cling on for a few minutes. They were both good swimmers, and often, in smooth water, had practised swimming, with the canoe upset, and were able to accomplish the feat of righting it, bailing it with a dipper, which they always carried attached to one of the thwarts by a cord, and then climbing aboard over the ends. But it was useless to attempt such a thing in this boisterous sea.
Indeed, it was more than they could do, even, to cling to the overturned craft, for soon an enormous wave struck it a blow broadside and tore it from their grasp. Then ensued a fight for life that seemed almost hopeless. They were near to shore, but the sea seemed to delight in mocking them; tossing them in at one moment, so that they could grasp at seaweed that lay above the ledges, and then clutching at them and drawing them relentlessly back.
It was then that their athletic training stood them in good stead. Less hardy constitutions and weaker muscles than theirs would have quickly tired under the strain. Refraining from useless struggles to gain the shore, they waited their opportunity, and strove merely for the moment to keep themselves afloat. In this manner they were, several times, almost cast up on shore.
All at once Tom Harris felt a sharp pain in his right hand. Then he realized, with a thrill of hope, that he had struck it upon a rock. It was, indeed, a narrow reef that made out some distance from shore. They had narrowly escaped being dashed upon it head-foremost. Tom waited and gathered his strength as the next wave hurled him on its crest in the direction of the ledge. Then, as the wave bore him with great force against it, he broke the force of the shock with his hands, was thrown roughly up against it, and managed to cling fast, with his fingers in a niche of the rock, as the wave, receding, strove to drag him back again.
Then, holding on with one hand, he managed somehow to grasp at Bob as he was drifting by, and hold him fast and draw him in. Clinging to the ledge as each succeeding wave broke over them, they waited till they had regained their strength and recovered their wind, and then slowly worked their way along the ledge to shore, and at length were safe, out of the sea’s fury.
Then they had rested awhile, before setting out on foot. Their canoe they could see at some distance out from shore, tossing about at the mercy of the waves. It must of necessity come ashore in due time, but it might not be for an hour, and they resolved not to wait for it, but to push on to their destination, returning on the morrow to look for it. They followed the shore for about a mile down the island, till they met a fisherman, who told them how to get to the Warren cottage by the same route the Warren boys and Henry Burns had taken a few hours later.
They had crossed the cove in old Slade’s boat, and, expecting to astonish the Warren boys by their appearance, in the midst of the storm, had found, to their dismay, that those whom they had expected to find safe at home were imperilling their lives for them out in the bay.
“Well, I must be up and moving,” said Henry Burns, when Tom had concluded his narrative. “I don’t mind saying I’m a bit tired with this night’s work—and I guess you are, by the looks. I can sleep, too, now that I know that you are not down among the mermaids at the bottom of Samoset Bay.”
“Why don’t you stay here with the boys to-night, Henry?” said Mrs. Warren. “You cannot get into the hotel at this hour of the night, without waking everybody up. Colonel Witham closes up early, you know.”
“No one but Henry Burns can, mother,” said Joe Warren. “Henry has a private staircase of his own.”
“It’s a lightning-rod staircase, Mrs. Warren,” explained Henry Burns. “I use it sometimes after ten o’clock, for that is my bedtime, you know. Mrs. Carlin—good soul—sends me off to bed regularly at that hour, no matter what is going on; and so I have to make use of it occasionally.”
Mrs. Warren shook her head doubtfully.
“You shouldn’t do it, Henry,” she said. “Although I know it is hard for a strong, healthy boy to go off to bed every night at ten o’clock. Well, that comes of being too strict, I suppose,—but do look out and don’t break your neck. It’s a bad night to be climbing around.”
“Don’t worry about Henry Burns, mother,” said Arthur. “He wouldn’t do it, if he wasn’t forced to it,—and he knows how to take care of himself, if anybody does.”
“Well, good night,” said Henry Burns. “And don’t forget, I hold my reception to-morrow night; and I extend to Tom and Bob a special invitation to be present.” And, with a knowing glance at George Warren, Henry Burns took his departure.
As the boys went off to bed that night, George Warren explained to them that on the next night, the occasion being an entertainment in place of the regular Wednesday night hop at the hotel, he and Henry Burns had planned a joke on Colonel Witham, in which they were all to take part, and, with this prospect in view, they dropped asleep.
In the meantime Henry Burns, arriving at the hotel, and having learned by previous experience that a lock on a rear door of the old part of the hotel, which was not connected with the new by any door, could be manipulated with the aid of a thin blade of a jack-knife, crept up to the garret by way of a rickety pair of back stairs, and from thence emerged upon the roof through a scuttle. Then, carefully making his way along the ridge-pole to where the new part joined the old, he climbed a short distance up a lightning-rod, to the roof of the new part.
This was a large roof, nearly flat. He walked across, about midway of the building, to where another rod, fastened at the top to a chimney, came up. Clinging to this, Henry Burns disappeared over the edge of the roof, found a resting-place for his foot on a projection which was directly over his own window, and then lowered himself, like an acrobat, down the rod to a veranda. Raising the window directly beside the rod, he slipped inside, closed it softly, and in a few minutes more was abed and sound asleep.
While all Southport slept, the storm spent its force, and toward morning gradually subsided. In the place of the beating rain there stole up through the islands, in the early morning hours, great detached banks of fog,—themselves like strange, white islands,—which shut out the bay from the shore. They lay heavy over the water, and, as the boisterous seas gradually gave way to the long, smooth waves that rolled in without breaking, one might have fancied that the fog, itself, had a depressing and tranquillizing influence upon the sea.
Yet old fishermen would have ventured out then, without fear, for there were signs, that might be read by the weather-wise, that a light west wind was soon to be stirring that would scatter the fog at its first advance, and sweep it back out to sea.
But, brief as was the visitation of the fog, it sufficed to hide all things from sight. And if a boat, in which one boy rowed vigorously, had put forth from the camp of Jack Harvey, down in the woods, and had come up along the shore to the wharf, and the box, which was a part of the belongings of Tom Harris and Bob White, had been lowered from the wharf into the boat and conveyed back to the camp and hidden away there,—if all this had happened, it is safe to say that no one would have seen what was done, nor would any one have been the wiser.
Perhaps some such a thing might, indeed, have occurred, for when Tom and Bob, Henry Burns, and the Warren boys met at the wharf the next fore-noon, they found the box gone. They hunted everywhere, ransacked the storehouse from one end to the other, but it was nowhere to be found.
“And to think that it’s all my fault,” groaned young Joe, as they stood at the edge of the wharf, after the unsuccessful search. “I might have known John Briggs would forget to lock it up! It was left in the open shed there, boys, protected from the rain, and he promised to look out for it; but he must have forgotten. I spoke to him about it the last thing last night, on our way home to the cottage.”
“Was it very valuable?” asked Henry Burns.
“Ask Tom what he thinks,” laughed Bob, while Tom tried to look unconscious, but blushed furiously.
“There’s a pretty sister of mine,” continued Bob, “that thinks so much of us that she spent a week cooking up a lot of things for us to start our camping with. There’s a box full of the best stuff to eat you ever tasted, that somebody will gobble up, I suppose, without once thinking or caring about the one that made them. Pretty tough, isn’t it, Tom?”
Tom turned redder still, and felt of his biceps, as though he was speculating what he would do to a certain person, if that person could only be discovered and come up with.
“I tell you what it is, boys,” said George Warren; “things have had a strange way of disappearing here this summer, as they never did before; and, what’s more, if Jack Harvey and his crew haven’t stolen them, they have at least got the credit for taking the most of it,—and you may depend upon it, that box is down there in the woods, somewhere about that camp.”
“Then what’s to hinder our raiding the camp and getting it?” Tom broke in, angrily. “Bob and I, with two of you, could make a good fight against all of them.”
“No doubt of that, Tom,” answered George Warren; “but there are two things to be considered. First, we want to get the box back; and, second, we are not absolutely certain that they have it. If they have it, you may be certain that it is carefully hidden away, and we shouldn’t recover it by making an attack on them. We must find out where it is hidden first, and then, if we cannot get it away otherwise, we will fight for it.”
“So it seems that we have two scores to settle now,” said Henry Burns, dryly. “We owe a debt now to Jack Harvey and his crew, and there’s a long-standing account with Colonel Witham, part of which we must pay to-night. Be on hand early. The latch-string will be out at number twenty-one.” So saying, Henry Burns left them.
Late that afternoon Tom and Bob, looking from the door of their tent across the cove, saw a sight that was at once familiar and strange. It was a canoe, in which were two occupants, and it was being paddled toward their camp. The long seas, smooth though they were, still rolled in heavily, and the light canoe tossed about on their crests like a mere toy. Still, it did not take long for them to discover that the canoe was their own. They had supposed it lost, though they had intended to set out in search of it on the following morning.
In the bow and stern, propelling the craft with paddles roughly improvised from broken oars, were George and Arthur Warren.
“Tom, old fellow,” said Bob, as the canoe came dancing toward them, “we’ve lost the box, but we’ve got the luck with us, after all. Not only are we proof against drowning, but we own a canoe that refuses to be wrecked.”
And then the bow of the canoe grated on the sandy shore.
Henry Burns, having neither father nor mother living, had been taken in charge several years before this by an elderly maiden aunt, whose home was in the city of Medford, Massachusetts. She was fairly well-to-do, and, as there had been a moderate inheritance left in trust for the boy by his parents, they were in comfortable circumstances.
But Henry Burns was made, unfortunately, to realize that this does not necessarily mean a home, with the happiness that the word implies. Good Miss Matilda Burns, a sister of Henry’s late father, never having known the care of a family of her own, had devoted her life to the interests of a half a score of missions and ladies’ societies of different kinds, until at length she had become so wrapped up in these that there was really no room in her life left for the personality of a boy to enter.
Henry Burns was a problem which she failed utterly to solve. Perhaps she might have succeeded, if she had seen fit to devote less of her time to her various societies, and more to the boy. But she deemed the former of far more importance, and felt her duty for the day well performed, in the matter of his upbringing, if she kept him out of mischief, saw that he went off to school at the proper hour, and that he did not fall ill.
To achieve two of these ends the most conveniently to her, Miss Matilda exercised a restraint over Henry Burns which was entirely unnecessary and altogether too severe. Henry Burns was naturally of a studious turn of mind, and cared more for a quiet evening with a book than he did for playing pranks about the neighbourhood at night. At the same time, he had a healthy fondness for sports, and excelled in them.
He was captain of his ball team, until Miss Matilda found it out and ordered him to stop playing the game. She considered it too rough for boys, having had no experience with boys of her own. And so on, with swimming and several other of his healthful sports. They were altogether too risky for Miss Matilda’s piece of mind. It came about that Henry Burns, in order to take part with his companions in their out-of-door sports, found it necessary to play “hookey” and indulge in them without her knowing it. He won a medal in a swimming-match, but never dared to show it to Miss Matilda.
Withal a healthy and athletic youth, he had a pale complexion, which deceived Miss Matilda into the impression that he was sickly. He was slight of build, too, which confirmed in her that impression. When once her mind was made up, there was no convincing Miss Matilda. The family doctor, called in by her for an examination, found nothing the matter with him; but that did not avail to alter her opinion. The boy was delicate, she said, and must not be allowed to overdo.
Accordingly, she made life miserable for Henry Burns. She kept a watchful eye over him, so far as her other duties would admit of, sent him off to bed at nine o’clock, tried to dose him with home remedies, which Henry Burns found it availed him best to carry submissively to his room and then pitch out of the window, and, in short, so worried over, meddled with, and nagged at Henry Burns, that, if he had been other than exactly what he was, she would have succeeded in utterly spoiling him, or have made him run away in sheer despair.
Henry Burns never got excited about things. He had a coolness that defied annoyances and disappointments, and a calm persistence that set him to studying the best way out of a difficulty, instead of flying into a passion over it. He had, in fact, without fully appreciating it, the qualities of success.
If, as was true, he was a problem to Miss Matilda, which she did not succeed in solving, it was not so in the case of his dealings with her. He made a study of her and of the situation in which he found himself, and proceeded deliberately to take advantage of what he discovered. He knew all her weaknesses and little vanities to a degree that would have amazed her, and cleverly used them to his advantage, in whatever he wanted to do. Fortunately for her, he had no inclination to bad habits, and, if he succeeded in outwitting her, the worst use he made of it was to indulge in some harmless joke, for he had, underlying his quiet demeanour, an unusual fondness for mischief.
What to do with Henry Burns summers had been a puzzle for some time to Miss Matilda. She was accustomed, through these months, to visit an encampment, or summer home, composed of several ladies’ societies, and the presence of a boy was a decided inconvenience. When, one day, she learned that an old friend, one Mrs. Carlin, a fussy old soul after her own heart, was engaged as housekeeper at the Hotel Bayview, at Southport, on Grand Island, in Samoset Bay, she conceived the idea of sending Henry Burns there in charge of Mrs. Carlin.
So it came about that Henry Burns was duly despatched to Maine for the summer, as a guest of Colonel Witham. He had a room on the second floor, next to that occupied by the colonel, who was supposed also to exercise a guardianship over him. As Colonel Witham’s disposition was such that he disliked nearly everybody, with the exception of Squire Brackett, and as he had a particular aversion to boys of all ages and sizes, he did not take pains to make life agreeable to Henry Burns. He was suspicious of him, as he was of all boys.
Boys, according to Colonel Witham’s view of life, were born for the purpose, or, at least, with the sole mission in life, of annoying older people. Accordingly, the worthy colonel lost no opportunity of thwarting them and opposing them,—“showing them where they belonged,” he called it.
But this disagreeable ambition on the part of the colonel was not, unfortunately, confined to his attitude toward boys. He exercised it toward every one with whom he came in contact. Despite the fact that he had a three years’ lease of the hotel, he took absolutely no pains to make himself agreeable to any of his guests. He looked upon them secretly as his natural enemies, men and women and children whom he hoped to get as much out of as was possible, and to give as little as he could in return.
He was noted for his meanness and for his surly disposition toward all. Then why did he come there to keep a hotel? Because he had discovered that guests would come, whether they were treated well or not. The place had too many attractions of boating, swimming, sailing, and excellent fishing, winding wood-roads, and a thousand and one natural beauties, to be denied. Guests left in the fall, vowing they would not put up with the colonel’s niggardliness and petty impositions another year; but the following season found them registered there again, with the same cordial antipathy existing as before between them and their landlord.
In person, Colonel Witham was decidedly corpulent, with a fiery red face, which turned purple when he became angry—which was upon the slightest occasion.
“Here’s another boy come to annoy me with his noise and tomfoolery,” was the colonel’s inward comment, when Mrs. Carlin, the housekeeper, informed him that Henry Burns was coming, and was to be under her charge.
So the colonel gave him the room next to his, where he could keep an eye on him, and see that he was in his room every night not later than ten o’clock, for that was the hour Mrs. Carlin had set for that young gentleman’s bedtime.