“Then,” said Bob, “we’ve got to keep out of the way for awhile till this thing blows over some. Everybody that sees us now will stop and ask us how we first saw the fire and all about it.”
“They’ve done that already to us,” said George Warren. “And, luckily, we could say truthfully that we first saw the fire from our cottage piazza. And we said we ran down to your camp and roused you boys. Now that is all right for a touch-and-go conversation, but suppose they see fit to follow it up, we’ll soon find ourselves either obliged to lie or to confess.”
“Then what are we going to do?” asked Tom.
“Take a fishing-trip,” suggested young Joe.
They looked at young Joe savagely, for each knew in his own heart that it was running away from danger,—but it was significant that not a boy objected.
“We’ve been planning one for a week or more,” urged Joe, in extenuation of his plan. “And we needn’t stay long. We can come back in a day or two and then start right out again, so as not to attract attention by being gone too long.”
“I suppose a little trip down among the islands wouldn’t be so bad for our health,” said Henry Burns, dryly; but it was clear he had no great liking for the plan.
And so, in a vain endeavour to escape from what seemed to them a most unfair and cruel predicament, and without realizing that it was the worst thing they could do, the boys agreed to start early on the following morning in theSprayfor a cruise.
Much surprised was Mrs. Warren when informed of their plan.
“And just as everybody is telling what brave boys you were,” she said. “They all say that half the guests would have lost their lives if it hadn’t been for you.”
This was worse than punishment, and the boys groaned inwardly, for Mrs. Warren had taught her boys to respect her, and they valued her good opinion more than anything else in the world. They went off to bed soon after supper, “so as to get an early start in the morning,” they said.
It was early that same evening, while the boys were at tea, that Squire Brackett stepped ashore from his sailboat in a perfect fever of excitement.
“I knew it and I said it,” he muttered to himself, slapping one hard fist into the palm of the other hand. “When I saw that blaze across the water this morning, and knew that it couldn’t be anything else than the hotel, I says to myself, ‘Those boys have done it, with some of their monkey-shines,’ and that’s just the way of it. By Jingo! but won’t Colonel Witham jump out of his skin when I tell him what I saw through that window.
“P’r’aps them ’ere boys won’t be’ so much inclined to tying other people’s dogs to ropes and drowning them when they get caught for setting fire to a fine hotel!”
And so, nearly bursting with the magnitude of his secret, and bristling with more than his usual importance, Squire Brackett hurried up from the landing and lost no time in finding Colonel Witham and escorting him in great haste to his own home.
There on the veranda of Squire Brackett’s house sat the two worthies, while the squire poured out his news into the eager colonel’s ear.
“Whew!” exclaimed Colonel Witham, when he had heard it all. “We’ve got them at last and no mistake. What’s more,” he added, jumping from his chair and stamping vigorously on the piazza floor, “I’ll prosecute them, every mother’s son, to the extent of the law. It’s breaking and entering, too,—forcing their way into my hotel at night,—and the fire was caused by their criminal act. That’s serious business, as they’ll find before I get through with them. Blow me if I don’t take the boat for Mayville this very night, and see Judge Ellis and get the warrants for Captain Sam to serve first thing in the morning!”
“I’ll go with you, colonel,” cried Squire Brackett. “We’ll be back here before midnight, and be all ready at daylight to arrest them. Reckon we’ll surprise folks a little.”
And so, chuckling maliciously together, the squire and the colonel waited eagerly for the whistle of the little bay steamer, upon hearing which they walked arm and arm down to the wharf and went aboard, with their heads together, in great satisfaction.
Their trip must have been greatly to their liking, for some hours later found them coming ashore again, evidently in a most agreeable state of mind; and as they bade each other good night on the veranda of the squire’s cottage, the colonel might have been heard once more to exclaim, exultantly: “We’ve got ’em this time, squire! They can’t get away.” And so strode away, caressing in one hand some crisp, official-looking papers, which boded no good in their contents to six boys whose names the colonel had given with evil delight to the judge at Mayville.
Very early next morning good-hearted Captain Sam might have been seen at the door of his home, his fist clenched and his face burning with indignation. Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett stood by the stoop.
“Now look here, colonel,” exclaimed Captain Sam, hotly, “you surely ain’t going to ask me to serve these papers on them innocent young lads? There’s some mistake, somehow, and the way for us to do is to get them up here and just give them a talking to; ask them all the questions you want. I’ve watched them boys for a good many summers now, ever since they was little shavers no bigger’n mackerel, and I tell you they wouldn’t do no wicked thing like setting fire to a hotel full of people, and there ain’t nobody on this island mean enough to believe it.”
“We didn’t come here asking you for advice,” sneered the squire. “You’re a constable of this village, sworn to do your duty, and your duty is to serve these warrants, the same being legally drawn and signed by the judge. That’s all your part, and all we ask of you to do. We take all the consequences.”
“Well, it’s a shame. It ain’t the right thing to do, squire, as you ought to know, having a boy of your own. But, as you say, it’s my duty if you insist, and I’ll do it,—but it’s the hardest job I ever done in all my life.”
“Let’s go down to the tent first,” said Colonel Witham. “There’s always two of them down there, and sometimes more. If Henry Burns is there, I just want to get my hands on him. I suspect he’s been fooling me all along and playing his tricks on me, when I thought him in his room asleep.”
The dew was still heavy on the grass and the sun had not lifted its face above the distant cape when the three men walked down to the tent upon the point. Not a sound broke the early morning quiet, save the cawing of some crows in a group of pines, and the lazy swash of the sluggish rollers breaking on the shore.
“They’re fast asleep,” whispered Squire Brackett. “We’ll give them a little surprise—just a little surprise.” And he gave a hard chuckle.
Captain Sam, at this same instant, casting his eyes offshore and hastily surveying the bay with the quick, comprehensive glance of an old sailor, gave a sudden start, and, for a moment, an exclamation of surprise escaped him.
“What is it?” asked Colonel Witham. “Did you remark anything, Captain Sam?”
“Nothing,” answered Captain Sam. “I was just a-muttering to myself.”
And at this moment the squire threw open the flap of the tent, saying, as he did so, “If you boys will—”
But as he and Colonel Witham poked their heads through the opening, the sentence was abruptly cut short.
“Empty!” gasped the colonel.
“Gone!” cried the squire.
The tent was, indeed, deserted.
“Where can they be?” asked Colonel Witham.
“I know,” answered the squire. “Up at the Warrens, of course. They are there half the time. It simply means we capture them all at once and save trouble. Come on, Captain Sam, you don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to do your duty, as you’re sworn to do.”
Captain Sam was, indeed, in no hurry. He loitered behind, stopped to tie his shoes, dragged one foot along after the other slower than he had ever done before, while every now and then, as he followed in the footsteps of the colonel and the squire, he cast a hasty glance over his shoulder out on the bay. What he saw must have pleased him, for on each occasion a broad smile spread over his face and a mischievous twinkle kindled in his eyes.
The colonel and the squire strode along impatiently, pausing now and then for Captain Sam to catch up with them; but as they drew near to the Warren cottage Captain Sam quickened his steps and halted them.
“You two will have to stay here,” he said, with an authority he had not shown before. “I’m commissioned with the serving of these warrants, and I’m going to do it; but Mrs. Warren is a nice, motherly little woman, and I don’t propose to have three of us bursting in on them like a press-gang and frightening her to death. I’m just going to break the news to her as best I know how, and I don’t want no interfering.”
So saying, and with face set into a reluctant resolve, the captain walked on alone, leaving the colonel and the squire much taken aback, and too much astonished by the sudden declaration of authority to attempt to dispute it.
What Captain Sam said to Mrs. Warren only she and he knew. There were no boys called in to listen to what was said. There were no boys there to see how Mrs. Warren’s face paled and how the tears rolled down her cheeks, nor to hear Captain Sam’s words of burning indignation as he tried to comfort her. No boys came to gather about her chair, to assure her it was all a dreadful mistake. There were no boys to face the colonel and the squire and declare their own innocence.
But out on the bay, with all her white sails set to catch the morning breeze, the yachtSpraywas beating down toward a distant goal among the islands. And aboard her were six boys, whose hearts were heavy and whose faces were drawn with an ever present anxiety. For a time they cast apprehensive looks back at the disappearing village, but as the morning wore on and no pursuing sail appeared, they became more cheerful; and to forget so far as they could the real cause of their flight, they talked hopefully of the fish they expected to catch and the swimming and other sport along the white sands of the island beaches.
But although no familiar craft as yet followed where they sailed, there was, far in the lead of them and some miles down along the island, a yacht they all knew, and in whose mission, had they but known it, their deepest interests, their very fate, in fact, lay.
Jack Harvey had lost little time in reaching his camp. While he ran the fire blazed brighter and brighter, sending an angry glare over the waters of the bay and lighting up the country around. Looking back now and then, he could see men and women running about in the light of the fire, and the frantic, though unavailing, efforts of the village fire department to stay the flames.
“Seems funny,” he muttered to himself, “to be running away from a fire, and the greatest fire we ever had on this island at that. I never did such a thing before, but I guess there’ll be something more exciting ahead than a fire before we get through.”
Harvey found his camp deserted, as he had expected. Not a sign of life showed about the place.
“They’re all up to the fire,” said Harvey; “but I’ll bring them soon enough, though I reckon they’ll be mad at first to have to leave when the fire is just at its best.”
And he began ransacking the camp, rolling up blankets, tying them into compact bundles and hurrying down to the shore with them, where he deposited them in a rowboat.
He made a pile of the rude dishes that the camp afforded, a saucepan, a fry-pan, tin dippers, and a few tin plates, tying them all together in a bundle and rattling them all down to the shore in great haste.
Finally he got a boatload of the stuff, and, jumping in, sculled the little craft out to theSurprise. Leaping aboard, he rushed down into the cabin, threw open a locker, drew forth a big tin horn, which he raised to his lips, and blew four loud, long blasts in succession.
“The hurry signal will surprise them, I reckon,” he exclaimed; “but they’ve always answered it before, and I guess they’ll come,—even from a fire.” And Harvey began stowing the stuff away aboard the yacht. Then he proceeded to untie the stops in the mainsail, and was thus engaged when a voice hailed him from the shore.
“Halloo, Jack!” came the call. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you up to the fire? What’s up?”
“Wait a minute,” answered Harvey. “I’m coming ashore. Are the others on the way?”
“Yes,” answered the boy on shore, who proved to be Joe Hinman; “but they don’t like it a bit. It’s a shame to lose this fire, Jack. Why, you ought to see Colonel Witham. He’s the craziest man I ever saw, running around and begging everybody he sees to rush into the blaze and save his old office furniture.”
“Well, Joe,” said Harvey, as he stepped out of the small boat on to the beach, beside the other, “we’ve got some work cut out for us that beats watching a fire all to pieces. I’ll tell you all about it, but there isn’t one half-minute to lose now. Believe me, you fellows won’t regret it,—hello, here are the others!”
The three other members of the crew, George Baker, Allan Harding, and Tim Reardon, burst out of the woods into the clearing, gasping from running, and amazed beyond expression that Harvey should have called them from the fire.
“Fellows,” said Harvey, “I’ll tell you the whole story just as soon as we get aboard and up sail. This is the greatest thing we ever did in all our lives; but it’s the minutes that count now, and we have got to get under way the quickest we ever did yet.”
And then, as the boys hesitated, and Joe Hinman ventured the question, with something of suspicion in his tone that he could not all conceal, “Why, Jack, there’s no trouble, is there—no trouble—about the fire?” it suddenly dawned on Harvey that this sudden departure did have a queer look to it, and that he was, indeed, open to their suspicion.
“Yes,” he cried, “there is trouble, and it’s about this fire; but it isn’t our trouble. The trouble is for the man that set it,—and we are going to make it for him. We’re going to catch him. Now will you hurry?”
“Will we?” exclaimed George Baker. “Just watch us!”
And every boy made a dash for the camp to secure anything he might need on a cruise down the bay.
Harvey and Joe Hinman seized two big jugs and made off for the spring, whence they returned quickly. Then the entire crew piling into the small boat, they were soon aboard theSurprise.
The anchor was up in a twinkling. The sails were never spread in such time. Almost as quickly as it takes to tell it, the yachtSurprisewas under way, and with Harvey at the wheel was standing out of the little harbour.
Then, as they left the glare of the fire upon the waters astern, but still flaming like a giant beacon against the sky, Harvey, with his crew about him, narrated his extraordinary adventure with the strange man, and asserted his conviction that the man was none other than the same Chambers who had fled from the island not long before.
“That is a fast boat, and we can never catch her in plain sailing,” said Allan Harding. “She is full half again as big as we, and she would sail around us a dozen times and then walk away from us without half-trying.”
“I know that,” said Harvey, “and that is just why I am so anxious to catch up with him before he gets out of the western bay into the open sea. If we don’t get him in the bay we shall lose him. Now let’s overhaul everything, and be sure that something doesn’t break just as we come to the pinch.”
There was little to be done, however, on that score; for, however carelessly they lived ashore, they had the true yachtsman’s spirit aboard theSurprise, and kept her shipshape. Then they set the club and jib topsails, for there was not much air stirring, and they drew the tender up close astern, so it would drag as little as possible.
“We have one advantage,” said Harvey. “We can depend upon it, he knows enough not to try the open bay and sail down toward the Gull Islands. The first part of the way is clear sailing enough, but when you get down just off the islands you come to the shallows, and a man has to follow the marks to get clear and safely out to sea. And then, too, the alarm is going to be sent out just as soon as a boat from the village can get over to the mainland. They won’t lose any time about that,—and Chambers is sharp enough to know it. He knows the whole bay down below there will be alive with boats, just as soon as they get the news wired down to them.
“Depend upon it, Chambers will try to fool them. I think he will come through the Thoroughfare at this eastern end of Grand Island, which he must have studied out on the charts. He will not dare to try the Thoroughfare to-night, however, and if we can only beat down to somewhere below the Thoroughfare to-night we shall be well to windward of him in the morning, and he will think we are a boat coming in from outside, while he will still be beating into the wind, if it holds from the south’ard, the way it is blowing now.”
“That’s right,” said Joe Hinman. “He cannot make the passage out through the Thoroughfare in the night, unless he knows the way better than I think he does. It is a bad run in the dark, even for a man that was born around here. We have done it only once or twice ourselves.”
“You fellows turn in now, all but Tim,” said Harvey, “and get some sleep. We two can run her for awhile. I’ll call you, Joe, in about an hour or two, to handle her while I get forty winks, but, mind, everybody will be called sharp the minute we clear Tom’s Island, for no knowing what we shall see then at any minute. Chambers will lie up in Seal Cove for an hour or two, I reckon, if he has got down that far. I only wish I was sure of it. We’d go ashore and take a run across the island and catch him napping—
“By the way, George,” exclaimed Harvey, “how do you feel? It’s mighty lucky you happened to be taken with that colic in the night, just at the right time, and that I started out to rouse up old Sanborn to get some ginger for you. All this would never have happened if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Why, I’m all right,” answered George Baker. “I could hardly walk when we first saw the fire, but I just made up my mind I wasn’t going to miss it, and so I started out. When the sparks began to fly I forgot all about the pain, and I hadn’t thought of it since. It’s all gone now, anyway.”
Two hours later they were nearing the southern end of Grand Island and coming in sight of a chain, or cluster, of smaller islands, through which an obscure and little used passage ran from the western bay to the outer sea. Jack Harvey had sent young Tim into the cabin to snatch a wink of sleep, and Joe had come up, heavy and dull.
“I’ll go without my sleep this once,” said Harvey. “Here, Joe, hold her a minute. I’ll get a bit of rest right here on deck, with one eye open.”
It was growing light fast now, and they strained their eyes for a sail.
“I guess we are in time,” said Harvey, as they came abreast of Tom’s Island. “He is not in sight. We’ll head out to sea a bit more, and cut into the Thoroughfare farther down, for the tide will be high in an hour, and we can cross Pine Island Bar. Then, if he has taken the channel on the other side of Tom’s Island, we can still head him off,—unless he went through in the night.”
And Harvey, having relinquished the tiller to Joe, stretched himself out at full length on the seat to rest.
Thus they sailed for a short cut into the Thoroughfare at a point where they could command the farther of the two channels.
And, as they sailed, so sailed another and a larger sloop, beating its way out to sea through the farther channel. A man, powerfully built, and with a hard, desperate look in his eyes, sat at the wheel,—and he was all alone. The yacht cut a clean path through the smooth waters of the Thoroughfare, and, as the man looked at the coast-line along which he was passing rapidly, he muttered: “It’s a clear passage; a safe run to sea. And, once there, who’s to say I was ever in these waters? I said I’d have revenge on this town for what I’ve lost, if it took all summer, and I’ve done it. The blaze did me good as it lit the sky. Twenty minutes more and I’ll be clear of this, and good-bye to this coast for ever.”
But even as he said it a smaller sloop turned the head of an island half a mile ahead, and came down the Thoroughfare, running off the wind.
Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they discovered that the boys had escaped.
“But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end,” said the squire. “The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and will count hard against them when we once get them into court.
“Colonel,” he continued, gazing off on to the bay, “I believe that’s them now, about two miles down along the shore. Cap’n Sam, you’re a sure judge of a sail. Isn’t that theSpraybeating down along the island, just off Billy Jones’s beach?”
Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically:
“That’s theSpray, sure’s a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there’s the youngsters, and no mistake.”
Captain Sam did not see fit, however, though a constable, sworn to do his duty, as the others had suggested, to explain that he had seen theSprayfor the last hour or more, and that he had been conscious all along of the precious time they were losing. But a sharp observer might have detected him chuckling down deep in his throat as the colonel and the squire stormed and raged.
“Well, what are we going to do?” cried Squire Brackett. “We’re losing valuable time here. That little boat eats fast into the wind, they say, and we have got to get started pretty quick if we expect to overhaul her between now and dark.
“Come! What do you say, Cap’n Sam? You know the boats in the harbour better than I do. Whose is the best one to go after them with?”
“Wa-al,” drawled Cap’n Sam, “if I do say it, I suppose theNancy Janeis about as good as any in a long thrash to windward,—if she does belong to me. She’s big and she’s roomy, and there’s a comfortable cabin in her for you and the colonel—for I suppose you’ll want to go along.”
“Go along!” exclaimed Colonel Witham. “I should say we did—eh, squire? When these ’ere warrants are served I want to be there to see it done, and so does the squire, I reckon.”
“That’s what I do,” responded Squire Brackett. “We’ll go along with you, sure enough.”
“Then you want to be getting some grub aboard right away,” said Captain Sam, with a fine show of energy and haste, “while I break the news to my wife. She’ll put me up a bite to last a day or two. You can’t tell, you know, when you start off on one of these ’ere cruises, where you’ll end up nor how long you’ll be out,—so you want to come prepared to stay.”
And then, as the colonel and the squire hurried off down the road, he turned back for a moment to Mrs. Warren, who stood weeping, and said, with rough good-heartedness:
“Now, don’t you go to taking on, Mrs. Warren. There’s some mistake here. Depend upon it. I’ve known them youngsters ever since they was no bigger’n short lobsters, and I know they ain’t got nothing bad enough in ’em to go to setting a hotel afire.
“P’r’aps there might have been some little accident,” he added, more conservatively. “Accidents always is happening, you know, and we’re all of us liable to ’em. I’ve got to do my duty, Mrs. Warren, bein’ as I am a constable of this town, sworn to obey my orders as I get ’em, signed and sealed from the court; but I’m goin’ to stand by them boys, all the same.
“So you just go and get your husband down here, quick as ever you can,—and we’ll settle this ’ere difficulty pretty soon, I reckon.
“And see here,” he said, in conclusion, “if Mr. Warren gets here by to-morrow noon, that’ll be time enough. And that gives you a chance to take the boat up to-day if you hurry, and bring Mr. Warren back with you. I’ll sorter guarantee we don’t fetch up here again till to-morrow afternoon, so don’t you worry.” And with a sly twinkle in his gray eyes the captain took his leave, and rolled along lazily toward his home.
He was still eating a hearty breakfast when the colonel and the squire burst in upon him, hot with impatience. But the captain was provokingly deliberate, and finished a few more huge slices of bread and a biscuit or two, and two cups of coffee and a few of his wife’s doughnuts, before he would budge an inch.
“The boys can’t escape,” he said, by way of assurance to the impatient pair. “They can’t go across the Atlantic in a little sardine-box like that, if it has got a mast and a bowsprit and a cabin to it. We’re bound to fetch up with them quick enough. Have a cup of coffee, colonel! Squire, sit down and drink a cup of coffee! Mrs. Curtis knows how to make it, if anybody does.”
But the colonel and the squire refused impatiently, and by dint of nagging and voluble persuasion they got Captain Sam started, and the three went down to the shore.
The news had spread abroad by this time,—thanks to the colonel and the squire,—and quite a number of villagers and cottagers had gathered to see them off.
What they said was not complimentary to the worthy two, for the boys, in spite of their pranks, were universally liked, and the whole village had not done with praising them for their bravery at the fire.
“Why don’t you go and arrest Jack Harvey and his crew?” cried one of the villagers. “Looks mighty queer to have them clear out, every one of them, the morning of the blaze. Dan French, he saw them standing out by his point early that morning while the fire was blazing its hardest. Reckon that looks a sight queerer than it does to wait a whole day.”
“Well! Well! I guess they had a hand in it,” cried Colonel Witham, as he stepped into the yacht’s tender. “We’ll hunt them up, too, later on. They are all mixed up in it, I’ve no doubt. Wait till we get the boys we are after now, and we’ll make them confess the whole thing.”
It certainly did look suspicious, this flight from both camps and from the Warren cottage, just after the fire; and the villagers, however well disposed they might be in the boys’ favour, or however much inclined to show leniency, could not explain it away.
“They must have been up to some of their pranks,” they said to one another, “and somehow got the hotel on fire. Colonel Witham must be right,—and, besides, Squire Brackett says he’s got the proof. He must know something bad, or he would not be so certain.”
And to this conclusion, reluctant as they might be to come to it, there fitted, in startling corroboration, the coincidence of their being the first to discover the fire,—the first to give the alarm.
And the villagers sympathized all the more, for this conclusion, with Mrs. Warren, as she took the boat for home that morning, bravely keeping back her tears, and receiving courageously their kindly assurances, though her heart was breaking.
TheNancy Janewas a heavy fishing-boat, of the centreboard type, big and beamy and shallow of build, able to “carry sail” in the worst of weather, but not so marvellously fast as one might have been led to believe by the recommendation of her owner. However, it was quite true that she could overhaul theSpray—only give her time enough, and provided no accident should happen.
“She’s got a bit of water in her,” said Captain Sam. “So make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable, while I pump her out. She’ll sail faster and point up better with the water out of her, and we’ll all be more comfortable.”
And the colonel and the squire made themselves anything but comfortable, fretting and fuming at the delay.
The captain took it leisurely, however, yanked the pump for ten minutes or more, to the accompaniment of short puffs of his pipe, and then pronounced her dry as “Dry Ledge at low tide.”
The colonel and the squire were neither of them sailors; so they could only wait on Captain Sam’s pleasure. He finally made sail on theNancy Jane, got up anchor, brought her “full and by,” and they began the long zigzag chase down the bay in the teeth of the wind.
The breeze freshened as they drew out of the shelter of the island shore, and down between the nearer islands Captain Sam could see the line of breeze show black upon the water.
“Looks like a right smart blow by afternoon,” he said.
Colonel Witham looked up apprehensively.
“It doesn’t get dangerous, does it?” he asked.
Captain Sam laughed dryly.
“Guess you’re not much on sailing, colonel, are you?” he asked, by way of reply. “Bless you! We don’t get a dangerous blow in the bay once in a summer. No, you need not worry about that. There’s no danger; but I wouldn’t wonder if we had a bit of a chop-sea when the wind freshens.”
The colonel looked more at ease.
“No,” he said, “I’m no sailor. I manage to make the voyage down the river to the island, but that is as much seagoing as I have ever wanted, and this will be my first real ocean experience.”
“Not what you’d hardly call an ocean experience, either,” said Captain Sam, grinning from ear to ear. “No,” and he said the words over to himself as though they afforded him no end of amusement, “a slat to windward from the point to Gull Island ain’t just what one would call an ocean experience, though it does shake a body up now and then in a blow.”
Dinner-hour came, and they had theSpraywell in sight, some miles ahead and pitching hard.
“We’ll eat a snack,” said Captain Sam, who was never so happy and hearty as when he had his hand on the wheel of theNancy Jane. “Colonel, have one of Mrs. Curtis’s fresh doughnuts, just fried this morning, make you feel like a schoolboy.”
But the colonel, pale of face, declined.
“I—I don’t seem to feel very hungry just this moment,” he stammered. “Late breakfast, you know. Er—by the way, is it going to blow much harder, do you think?”
“No great shakes,” responded the captain. “Guess there may be another capful or two of wind in them ’ere light clouds out yonder. It may freshen a bit, but that’s all right. That’s just what we want. The harder it blows the more theSpraywill pitch and get knocked back. It’s the kind of a breeze that theNancy Janelikes, plenty of wind and a rough sea. The wind is bound to go down by sunset. It’s the way these southerlies act.”
“By sundown!” groaned the colonel. “That’s hours yet, and I’m sure we’ll tip clear over if this boat leans much more.”
“Built to sail on her beam,” explained Captain Sam. But at this moment theNancy Jane’sbow snipped off the whitecap of a roller somewhat larger than its predecessor, and the spray flew in, drenching the colonel from head to foot.
He yelled with terror. “We’re upsetting, sure!” he cried. “Let’s turn her about, Captain Sam, while there is time, and start again when it’s lighter.”
“Nonsense!” said Captain Sam, with a grin. “You’re a bit shaken up, but you’ll feel better by and by. Just go into the cabin and lie down a little while. That may make you feel better.”
Perhaps it had been so many years since Captain Sam had experienced the awful misery of seasickness that he did not realize that the worst thing the colonel could do was to go down into the dark, damp, musty-smelling cabin of the old fishing-sloop. Perhaps he really did think that the colonel would feel better for it. But whatever his motive was, it had a sudden and deadly effect on Colonel Witham. Indeed, he had scarcely stuck his head into the stuffy cabin, had certainly no more than gotten fully within, before he staggered out again, with an agonized expression on his face, and sank, limp and shivering, to a seat, with his head over the rail.
“Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “I think I’m going to die. I’m awfully sick; never felt so bad in all my life. Can’t you put me ashore, Captain Sam—anywhere, anywhere? I don’t care where, even if it is a deserted island. I’d wait there a week if I could only get on shore.” And the colonel groaned and shivered.
It was obvious there was no way of going ashore, however, as they were some miles distant from it. There was nothing for the unhappy colonel to do but to make the best—or the worst—of it.
“Cheer up, colonel,” said Captain Sam, pulling out the stub of a black clay pipe, lighting it, and puffing away enjoyably. “I’ve seen ’em just as sick as you are one hour, and chipper enough to eat raw pork and climb the mast the next. You will be feeling fine before long,—won’t he, squire?”
But as the squire evidently had his doubts in the matter, owing particularly to the fact that he was not too much at ease himself, his response was rather faint; and the captain was left to the entertainment of his own society. He enjoyed himself for the next hour or two with a sort of monologue, in which he proceeded to analyze audibly the relative chances of the little yacht ahead and theNancy Jane.
“They are doing surprisingly well for a small craft in windward work,” he muttered. “They handle her well. Still, theNancy Janeis eating up on them. I say about sundown we shall be able to run alongside—Hulloa! If they are not changing their course to run down the Little Reach! Thought they knew better than that. Why, it’s what they call a ‘blind alley’ in the cities. Well, I’m surprised. They know the bay pretty well, too; and, only to think, they go to running in to a thoroughfare which really is nothing more than a long cove. They’ll fetch up at the end of it in an hour or two, and there’s no way out.”
The captain’s voice almost seemed to express disappointment that the chase should end so tamely.
“Colonel,” he cried. “Squire. It will be all over in a few hours now. They’re running into a trap.”
But the colonel and the squire were beyond interest in the pursuit.
The yachtSprayhad, indeed, started its sheets, and now, with the wind on its beam, was running off toward a group of small islands, or ledges, on a course nearly at right angles with that which it had been taking.
The boys had watched theNancy Janeanxiously for the last few hours.
“They are steadily coming up on us,” George Warren had said. “Too bad we could not have got a few hours more start. We might have given them the slip then when night shut down.”
“But we are not sure that they are after us, are we?” asked young Joe.
“No, but it looks pretty certain,” replied his brother George. “There’s nothing particular to start theNancy Janedown here, and she is Captain Sam’s boat and he is the town constable.”
“Then what had we better do?” queried Tom. “There is not much use running away, if we are sure to be caught inside of a few hours. We’d a sight better turn about and start back, as though we had finished our sail. That would look less like running away.”
It was noticeable that, having once set out to escape, they accepted the situation now fully, without more pretence.
“We have got to decide before long,” said Henry Burns. “TheNancy Janeis overhauling us fast.”
“George,” said Arthur Warren, “I know one chance, if you want to try it, and if you are willing to risk theSpray,—and I think it would save us.”
“What is it, Arthur?” asked George. “If it is any good, I’m for trying it. I can’t see as we have anything great to risk, with a twenty-five thousand dollar fire charged to us.”
“What is it, Arthur?” exclaimed the others, excitedly. It did not seem possible there could be any chance of escape open, but they jumped eagerly at anything that offered a faint hope.
“Well,” said Arthur, in his deliberate manner, “you know the small opening between Spring and Heron Islands at the foot of Little Reach? Nobody ever ran a sailboat through there because it’s choked up with ledges. But you remember when the mackerel struck in to the Reach there last August, we all went down in theSprayfor a week’s fishing. Well, one day Joe and I took the tender and worked our way clear through between Spring and Heron Islands to the bay outside. Now theSpray, with the centreboard up, does not draw very much more water than the tender, and by dropping the sails and all poling through, I think we can work her in clear to the other side.”
“We’ll try it,” said George Warren. “It is the only chance we have, so we’ve really no choice.”
And he put the tiller up and threw theSprayoff the wind, while Arthur and Joe started the sheets. It was this sudden manœuvre which had startled Captain Sam.
They soon passed the entrance to Little Reach, two barren ledges shelving down into the water, and were well down the Reach when Captain Sam and theNancy Janeheaded into it.
“There they go,” cried Captain Sam, “like an ostrich sticking its head into the sand. Well, what can you expect of boys, anyway? We’ll overhaul them faster than ever now, because this big mainsail draws two to their one this way of the wind, and the jibs aren’t doing anything to speak of, the wind varies so in here.”
It was smooth water inside Little Reach, and, as there was now scarcely any motion to theNancy Janeas she skimmed along by the quiet shores, the colonel and the squire began to revive a little, sufficient at least to regain their interest in the pursuit.
They were about a mile and a half down the Reach, and theSpray, not quite half a mile ahead, was apparently at the end of her cruise.
“They are at the end now,” cried Captain Sam, whose blood was up when it came to a race between theNancy Janeand another, though smaller, craft. “We’ve got ’em like mice in a box.”
“By George! look there, colonel—look, squire!” he exclaimed, excitedly. “They have given it up. There go the sails. It’s all over. They may scoot ashore, but the island on either side is nothing more than a rock. Well, I vow! But I didn’t think they would quit so tamely after a game race.”
“We’ll make ’em smart for what we have suffered to-day, eh, colonel?” growled the squire.
The colonel grunted assent. He was not yet sufficiently himself to be very aggressive.
“What on earth are they doing?” said Captain Sam, a few moments later. “Looks as though they were trying to hide away among the rocks, like a mink in a hole. They’ll have theSprayaground if they jam her in among those ledges.”
TheSpray, however, slipped in among the rocks, and was shut out from the view of the pursuers.
“Let ’em hide,” said Captain Sam, contemptuously. “That is a boyish trick. We’ll be up with them now in fifteen minutes.”
But theSpray, hidden from view of Captain Sam and the colonel and the squire, was not running itself upon the rocks nor poking its nose, ostrich-like, among the ledges.
The instant the sails were dropped young Joe sprang out on the bowsprit and lay flat, holding a pole, with which he took soundings as the others pushed and poled with the sweeps of the yacht.
They ran the bow gently on to rocks a dozen times, but a warning yell from Joe stopped them, and they turned and twisted and wormed and worried their way in among the ledges, turning about where a larger craft would have had no room to turn, and slipping over reefs that just grazed the bottom of the littleSpray, and which with two inches lower tide would have held them fast.
“It’s just the right depth of water,” said Arthur, exultantly. “Luck is with us this time, for certain. An hour later and we could not have done it. But we’re going through. There is only the bar ahead now. If we clear that we are free of everything.”
Just ahead, where two thin spits of sand ran off on either end of the two islands into shoal water, was a narrow, shallow passage, where the water was so clear that it looked scarcely more than a few inches in depth, as it rippled over the bar.
“All out!” cried Arthur, as theSpraygrated gently on the bottom, “We will lighten her all we can,” and they sprang overboard into water scarcely above their knees.
“Now, Joe,” said Arthur, “you and Henry take the head-line out over the bows and go ahead and pull for all you are worth. George and I will get alongside and push, and keep her in the channel, and Tom and Bob can get aft and push. We have got to rush her over that shallow place, and we must not let her stop, for if she once hangs in the centre we cannot budge her. TheSprayis not a ninety-footer, but she’s got enough pig iron in her for ballast to hold her high and dry if she once sticks.”
The boys seized hold quickly, and theSpray, lightened of her load, slid along, at first sluggishly, and then gathering speed, as the twelve strong, brown, boyish arms pulled and tugged and pushed.