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 yachtSurprisewas 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 yachtSurprise, 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 theViking. 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 theVikingin 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 theViking’svoyage in search of work had begun.
The course theVikingwas 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.
TheVikingwas 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 theVikingalready, 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 theViking, 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 theVikingand 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 theViking.
“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.
TheVikingwas 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.
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 theVikingand its companion, theGracie, 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. TheVikingfollowed, 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.
TheVikingwas 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 theVikingto 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 theViking. Henry Burns, unmoved, had held theVikingclose 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.”
THE CREW OF THE VIKING MEET SKIPPER MARTEL.THE CREW OF THE VIKING MEET SKIPPER MARTEL.
THE CREW OF THE VIKING MEET SKIPPER MARTEL.
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 theViking.
“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 theViking.
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 theVikingand 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 theVikingwas 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 theViking, 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 theVikingrolled 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 theViking’sgear. We’ll lie as snug out here as in the harbour.”
They tripped the anchor just off bottom, got out the sweeps, and worked theVikingback 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 theVikingroused 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 theViking.
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 theVikingthat 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. TheViking, 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.”