The dancers were in great fettle. Billy Cook, boots and all, was doing gallantly. Captain Sam’s laugh could be heard clear to the woods beyond the pasture. Squire Brackett was actually breaking out in a smile. Henry Burns and his friends were gathered near the doorway, watching the surprising play of Billy Cook’s boots.
But at this happy moment something happened to Uncle Billy Peters. His fiddle-bow, scraping across the strings in one wild, discordant shriek, dropped from his hand. His half-articulated call for a position of the dance blended into a startled yell, that brought the dancing to an abrupt stop; while Uncle Billy, his fiddle discarded, had leaped from his seat and was now dancing about the stage and describing the most extraordinary gyrations, waving his arms in the air and slapping at his face and the back of his neck, as though his own music had driven him stark, staring mad.
“What on earth!”—ejaculated Billy Cook. He got no further. Something that felt like a fish-hook, half-way down his boot-leg, occupied his attention; and the next moment a dozen or more of the same animated fish-hooks were buzzing about his head.
Billy Cook made one frantic clutch at his boot-leg; and, failing to find relief, yanked the boot off. Swinging this wildly about his head, one foot bared and the other clattering, poor Billy fled from the hall.
The squire’s expansive smile faded away in an expression of anguish and wrathful indignation. Slapping madly at the bald patch at the crown of his head, and uttering fierce denunciations upon the author of the mischief, he ignominiously deserted his partner of the dance and likewise fled precipitately.
The campers had already scuttled before the storm, and in a twinkling the hall was cleared. The angry, buzzing swarm was in complete and undisputed possession.
“I’ll give five dollars to any one that will discover who did this outrage!” cried Squire Brackett, dashing across the road to where a group of dancers had gathered. “Where’s that Burns boy and that Harvey—and that little Warren imp? He had a hand in it, I’ll take my oath. Whoever they are, they’ll get one horsewhipping that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Get those horsewhips out of the wagons! We’ll teach the young rascals a lesson.”
The squire had not observed that still another group of stalwart fishermen had had a word with Dave Benson and Old Slade and had already, of their own accord, provided themselves with horsewhips.
The squire only knew, at this time, that a party of the men were off down the road, with a hue and cry. He did not know that his own son was fleeing before them on the wings of fear, and being fast overtaken by his pursuers, themselves borne onward on the wings of pain and wrath.
What the campers, joining in the pursuit, saw shortly, was the figure of young Harry Brackett, fleeing down the highway toward the harbour, bawling loudly for mercy, as first one whip-lash and then another cut about his legs; and receiving no mercy, but, instead, as sound and thorough a horsewhipping as the squire himself had recommended for the guilty wretch.
Some time later, there limped into Southport village a sadder, if not wiser youth, stinging as though the whole nest of wasps had broken loose and settled upon him.
On the following morning, this same saddened youth, walking painfully, and somewhat dejected in mind, resulting from an interview with the elder Brackett, turned the corner where the main street was intersected by the road leading up to the Warrens’ cottage, and came most unexpectedly upon Jack Harvey. It was his first face-to-face meeting with Harvey since the episode out in the bay, and the subsequent accusation he had made against Harvey and Henry Burns.
It was disconcerting, but Harry Brackett resolved to put on a bold face.
“Hello there, Harvey,” he said, eying the other somewhat sheepishly despite his resolution.
“Hello, yourself,” replied Harvey, grinning at the doleful appearance presented by the other. Secretly, Jack Harvey had promised himself that he would thrash him at the first opportunity; but he had seen that done so effectively, only the night previous, that he was fully satisfied. He couldn’t have done it half so well himself.
“Say, you had a lot of fun last night, didn’t you?” said Harvey. “You did that in fine style. But say, what did you want to keep all the fun to yourself for? Why didn’t you let us in on it?”
Harry Brackett flushed angrily at the bantering, but, realizing he could not resent it, made no reply.
“How’d the squire like it?” continued Harvey.
“Look here, you wouldn’t think it any fun if you got what I did,” exclaimed Harry Brackett.
“No, but I think it good fun that you got it,” said Harvey; “and I’ll tell you right now that it saved you one from me.”
Harry Brackett eyed Harvey maliciously; but he had a mission to perform, and he was bound to go through with it.
“Say, I know it wasn’t the square thing to lay that upset out there in the bay to you fellows,” he said, with an effort. “But, you see, I knew father would be furious about the boat—and, well, I told him the first thing that came into my head about it. I didn’t think he would try to make trouble for you, though.”
“No?” replied Harvey, skeptically. “Probably you don’t know him as well as some of the rest of us do.”
“Well, here, don’t go yet,” said Harry Brackett, as Harvey started to brush past him. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”
Harvey paused in surprise.
“It’s about the boat,” explained Harry Brackett. “You fellows don’t need two boats—and two such good ones as theVikingand theSurprise—”
Harvey’s wrath broke forth again at the mention of theSurprise.
“That was a fine trick you tried to play on us, stealing theSurpriseafter we had her up,” he said.
“I didn’t want to do it,” said Harry Brackett. “I told John Hart you fellows must have floated her in there, but he wouldn’t believe it.”
“Any more than I believe you,” sneered Harvey.
Harry Brackett twisted uneasily. He was making poor progress.
“Say, Harvey,” he said, abruptly, “I want to buy that new yacht of yours, theViking.”
“You mean you want to steal her if you get a chance, don’t you?” retorted Harvey.
“No, I don’t,” cried Harry Brackett, the perspiration standing out on his forehead. “I mean just what I say. I want to buy her, in dead earnest. You’ve got theSurpriseback, and you don’t need the other one. I’ll pay you fifteen hundred dollars for theViking. Come, will you sell her?”
“Who wants to buy her?” asked Harvey.
“I do, myself,” replied Harry Brackett. “I tell you I’ll pay you fifteen hundred dollars in cash for her.”
Harvey winked an eye, incredulously.
“You must be a millionaire,” he said.
“Well, I can afford to pay that much for a good boat,” said Harry Brackett, with a well-feigned air of indifference as to money matters.
“And have you talked it over with the squire since last night?” inquired Harvey, whose curiosity was now aroused.
“I haven’t talked it over with anybody,” replied Harry Brackett, impatiently. “I don’t have to. It’s my money.”
Harvey gave a whistle denoting surprise. “Well,” he said, “theVikingis not for sale. Besides, Henry Burns owns half of her. You’ll have to talk with him. He won’t sell, though, I know, because the boat was a gift to us.”
“Perhaps he would, if you urged him to,” suggested young Brackett.
“Well, I won’t urge him,” said Harvey, abruptly. “But I tell you what I will do,” he added, “I’ll sell you theSurprise. She’s a grand good boat, too; and she’ll be as good as ever when she is put in shape.—No, I won’t do that, either,” he exclaimed, after a moment’s thought. “That is, not this summer. I’ve promised her to the crew, and I won’t go back on it. No, I won’t sell you theSurprise, either.”
“Would you let me hire either of them for the season?” ventured Harry Brackett.
Harvey hesitated for a moment, with visions of the money it would bring temptingly before his mind’s eye. But the remembrance of the loyalty of his crew was still fresh in his mind.
“No,” he said, determinedly. “I won’t do it.”
Which was a lucky determination, if he had but known it.
“See here,” said young Harry Brackett, lowering his tone, and making one final desperate effort to shake Harvey’s resolution, “I’ll make you a better offer than that. I’ll pay you and Henry fifteen hundred dollars for the boat between you. You can get him to do it if you only try. And I’ll give you seventy-five dollars for yourself, and you needn’t say anything about it.”
A moment later, Harry Brackett was picking himself up off the ground and rubbing one more sore spot.
“Hang it all!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, as he strode away, “I needn’t have hit him—but he made me mad clear through. I owed it to him, anyway.”
And so Harry Brackett, eying the other angrily, swore a new resolve of revenge on Harvey and all the crowd of campers and cottagers.
“Why, Jack,” said Henry Burns later that day, when he and Harvey were talking it over, “don’t you suppose it was some kind of a queer joke on Harry Brackett’s part? What does he want of theViking? He couldn’t sail her if he had her, and in the second place, I don’t believe he ever had so much money in all his life.”
“That’s just the queerest thing about it,” replied Harvey. “He wasn’t joking and he was in dead earnest. He either wants the boat, or knows somebody else who does. It is queer, but he meant it.”
“Well, I can’t guess it,” said Henry Burns. “Let’s go and catch a mess of flounders for supper.”
“How d’ye do, squire,” bawled Captain Sam Curtis to Squire Brackett, a morning or two later, as the squire stopped for a moment at the door of the captain’s shop, where he was busily engaged sewing on a sail which he was refitting for the yachtSurprise, for the boys.
“Good morning, Captain Sam,” replied the squire. “You’re busy as usual, I see.”
“Yes,” said Captain Sam, “just helping the boys out a little. Smart chaps, those youngsters. Why, they went to work and raised that ’ere yacht down there in the Thoroughfare, and they’re cleaning her up in great shape; and I vow, when they get her painted and these good sails on her, she’ll be every bit as good as new. And she was always a right smart boat.”
The squire scowled at Captain Sam, who kept on with his work; but the squire made no reply.
“I should er thought some of you vessel-owners that have got the rigging handy would have dragged her out for yourselves,” continued Captain Sam. “I had a mind to do it myself this spring, but I was too busy.”
The squire sniffed as though exasperated at something. But Captain Sam, stitching away, with an enormous sailmaker’s needle strapped to his palm, was apparently unmindful. No one would have thought, to look at his serious face, that he had heard the whole history of the squire’s venture down in the Thoroughfare, through the expedition of Harry Brackett, and that he was indulging in a little quiet fun at the squire’s expense.
“Why, what on earth should I do with another boat?” inquired the squire. “The one I own is one too many for me now. I’d like to sell her if I got a good offer.”
“Would yer?” queried Captain Sam. “Well, you’ll get a good boat in her place if you get theViking. I hear you are trying to buy her.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed the squire. “Who told you that?”
“Why, Jack Harvey; he was in here a little while ago. He said as how your son, Harry, offered him fifteen hundred dollars for the boat.”
“Fifteen hundred fiddlesticks!” roared the squire. “If he’s got fifteen hundred cents left out of his allowance, he’s got more than I think he has. That’s a likely story. Well, you can just put it down in black and white that I don’t pay any fifteen hundred dollars for a boat for a lot of boys to play monkey-shines with. I’ll see about that.”
“Perhaps it’s one of Harry’s little jokes, squire,” suggested Captain Sam. “Boys will have their fun, you know.”
Captain Sam threw his head back and gave a loud haw-haw. His recollection of Harry Brackett’s most recent fun was of seeing that youth tearing along the highway at night, with a dozen fishermen after him, armed with horsewhips.
The squire’s conception of it was not so pleasant, however, and he took his departure.
“Harry,” he said, at the dinner-table that day, “what’s this I hear about your trying to buy that boat of Jack Harvey?”
Harry Brackett, taken somewhat by surprise, hesitated for a moment. “Why—why—that was a sort of a joke,” he answered, finally, forcing himself to smile, as though he thought it funny.
“A joke, eh?” retorted the squire, sharply. “Well, don’t you think you have had joking enough to last you one spell? Here it is getting so I can’t go down the road without folks looking at me and grinning. Haven’t you any respect for your father’s dignity? Don’t you know I’m of some consequence in this town?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the son, dutifully. “But I didn’t bring your name into it. I didn’t say you wanted it.”
“Well, what did you do it for?” repeated the squire.
“Just for fun,” insisted Harry Brackett.
“May be so,” said the squire, eying his son with some suspicion; “but I’m not so sure of that, either. Now don’t you go getting into any mischief. You’ve had just about fun enough lately.”
“All right, sir,” answered Harry Brackett.
Nevertheless, it was not exactly all right, from the squire’s standpoint. Not altogether above taking an unfair advantage of others, he was naturally suspicious of everybody else; and this lack of faith in humanity extended to his son. So he said no more, but kept his eyes open.
Chance favoured him the very day following, when young Harry Brackett, having some work to do about the garden, threw off his jacket and waistcoat and left them carelessly over the back of a chair in the kitchen. The squire, passing through the room, espied a letter exposed from an inner pocket of the waistcoat. With no compunctions, he took it out, opened it and read it. The letter was addressed to “Mr. Harry Brackett, Southport, Grand Island, Me.,” and read as follows:
“If you have not already made the offer for theViking, don’t bother about it; for I am planning a visit to Southport, myself. Much obliged to you for your trouble, in any case. Please don’t mention the matter, however.“Hoping I may be of service to you at some time,“Very truly yours,“Charles Carleton.”
“If you have not already made the offer for theViking, don’t bother about it; for I am planning a visit to Southport, myself. Much obliged to you for your trouble, in any case. Please don’t mention the matter, however.
“Hoping I may be of service to you at some time,
“Very truly yours,“Charles Carleton.”
“So, ho!” exclaimed the squire, softly. “Been lying to me again, has he? I am not so surprised at that. But what did he do it for?”
The squire’s first impulse was to call Harry into the house and demand an explanation. Then his curiosity led him to alter that determination. Who was this Mr. Carleton? Why was he trying to buy a boat through his son? Why didn’t he want the matter mentioned? What were the relations between this Mr. Carleton and his son? Well, Mr. Carleton, whoever he was, was coming to Southport. The squire would wait and see him for himself.
He did not have long to wait, either, for the very next day he met Mr. Carleton face to face. The squire was waiting in the post-office for the evening mail when there came in with Jeff Hackett, in whose packet he had sailed across from Bellport, a tall, gentlemanly appearing man, dressed in a natty yachting-suit of blue, his face chiefly characterized by a pair of cold, penetrating blue eyes and a heavy blond moustache.
“Good evening, sir,” he said, with the easy air of a man of the world, and, withal the least deference to the pompous individual whom he addressed, which was not lost on a man of the squire’s vanity. “Beautiful place, this island. You should be proud of it, sir.”
“Good evening,” replied the squire, formally, but warming a little. “Yes, sir, we are proud of Southport.”
“True,” he continued, swelling out his waistband, “it does not afford all the opportunities for a man of capital to exert his activities; but it has its advantages.”
“Which I judge you have made some use of, sir,” remarked the stranger, in an offhand, easy way, smiling.
The squire beamed affably.
“Are you going over to the harbour?” he inquired. “If so, I should be pleased to take you over in my carriage.”
“Why, you are very kind; I should like to ride,” responded the stranger. “I’ll just leave word to have my valises sent over, and I’ll go along with you.”
He presently reappeared, sprang lightly into the wagon, and the squire drove down the road.
The stranger proved most agreeable to Squire Brackett. He was an easy, fluent talker, though, to one of finer discernment than the squire, it might have been apparent that he was not a man of education, but rather of quick observation and who had seen something of the world. He pleased the squire by an apparent recognition of him as the great man of the place, without ever saying so bluntly. He spoke of business matters as of one who was possessed of some means, and finally, intimating that the squire should know the name of one to whom he was showing a courtesy, handed him his card.
To say that the squire was surprised, would be putting it mildly, for he had not thought of Mr. Carleton arriving by other than the boat from Mayville. Yet, so it was engraved upon the card, “Mr. Charles Carleton,” with the address below of a Boston hotel.
The squire was, however, somewhat relieved. It flashed through his mind now, quickly, just what it all meant. Harry had met this man at Bellport and had been commissioned by him to purchase the boat. He had seen fit to pose as the real purchaser to create an impression on the minds of the other boys that he had that amount of money. As for this gentleman, Mr. Carleton, he evidently had the means to buy as good a boat as theVikingif he chose.
“I wish you would tell me the best boarding-house in the village,” said Mr. Carleton. “I hear the hotel is burned down.”
“Indeed it is!” cried the squire, warmly. “And a plague on the rascal that set it, and all his kind! It’s a terrible loss to the place; and I say it, though I opposed its being built.”
“What a shame!” responded Mr. Carleton from behind his heavy moustache. But his eyes were coldly unsympathetic.
“There isn’t any regular out-and-out boarding-place this summer,” said the squire; “but I guess Captain Sam Curtis will put you up. He takes a boarder occasionally, and feeds ’em right well, too, I’m told.”
So, at length, arriving at the harbour and alighting at the house of Captain Sam, Mr. Carleton bade the squire good evening. He went in at once, engaged a room, cultivated the captain and his wife studiously for a time, and was soon at home, after the manner he had of getting on familiar terms with whomsoever he desired. A curious trait in Mr. Carleton, too; for, at first approach to strangers, he seemed cold and almost reserved, whom one might set down as a man of nerve, that would not be likely to lose his head under any conditions.
If Mr. Carleton had made up his mind to put himself on friendly terms with the youngsters of Southport, despite his natural inclinations, he certainly knew how to go about it. Witness his appearance, the following day, in the course of the forenoon, at the camp of Joe Hinman and the rest of Harvey’s crew, as they were making their preparations for dinner.
“Well, you boys certainly have it nice and comfortable down here,” he said, cheerily, advancing to where Joe Hinman was stirring a bed of coals, ready for the fry-pan, while two of the boys were finishing the cleaning of a mess of fish down by the water’s edge. “I’ve done this sort of thing myself, and I declare I believe I’d like a week of it now better than living at a hotel or a boarding-house. Good camp you’ve got there.
“That makes me hungrier than I’ve been for a long time,” he added, as Joe proceeded to cut several slivers of fat pork and put them into the fry-pan, where they sizzled appetizingly.
“Better stop and take dinner with us,” suggested Joe. “We’ve got plenty to eat, such as it is. We’ll give you some of the best fish you ever tasted, and a good cup of coffee, and a mess of fritters.”
“Fine!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton. “You’re lads after my own heart. I’ll watch you do the work and then I’ll help you eat up the food.” And Mr. Carleton, smiling, seated himself on the ground, with his back against a tree, lighted a cigar, and watched operations comfortably.
He proved very good company, too, at dinner. For he had a fund of stories to amuse the campers; and he was heartily interested in their own exploits—and particularly in their account of recent adventures down in the Thoroughfare, where Harry Brackett and his companions had been defeated.
“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he exclaimed, enthusiastically, as they were finishing their camp-fire meal, “I’m in for some fun, just as much as you are. If you will go ahead and dig some clams this afternoon, I’ll go up to the store and order a lot of fruit and nuts and that sort of stuff, and anything else that I see that looks good.
“I saw some chickens hanging up there, too, that will do to broil. I’ll get enough for a crowd. You tell the fellows up above in that camp there,—you know them, I suppose,—well, you get them and anybody else you like. And we’ll build a big fire down here this evening and have the time of our lives.”
“Hooray!” cried young Tim Reardon. “Joe Warren and the others would like to come in on that. How about two more, besides—two fellows that own that yacht, theViking?”
“Just the thing,” replied Mr. Carleton. “As many as you like.”
There was no more work on theSurprisefor the rest of that day. A man who was willing to buy good things for the boys with that recklessness didn’t come to town every day, nor once in a summer.
“He says his name is Carleton,” explained young Tim to Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, some time later. “He says he’s in for a good time, and I guess he is by the looks of things.”
“We know him,” replied Harvey. “He’s an old friend of ours, eh, Henry?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Henry Burns; “he was theViking’sfirst invited—no, uninvited—guest.”
Mr. Carleton was as good as his word, and more. The canoe, manned by Tom and Bob, went down alongshore that afternoon loaded with a conglomerate mixture of oranges, bananas, bottled soda, pies, other sweet stuff, and extra dishes from the campers’ stores. And Mr. Carleton, arriving on the scene in the course of the afternoon, brought a lot more. He paid for everything.
“My!” exclaimed young Joe, eying the stuff as the Warren boys put in an appearance about five o’clock. “I hope he stays all summer, don’t you, Arthur?”
“Hello, I’m glad to meet you once more,” cried Mr. Carleton, heartily, advancing to greet Henry Burns and Harvey as their dory landed at the shore. “I thought I might get down this way. How’s that fine boat of yours?”
“Fine as ever,” answered Harvey.
“Good! I’ll go out for a sail with you to-morrow,” cried Mr. Carleton, clapping a hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “Say the word, and I’ll have the soda and ginger ale and a new pail for some lemonade. We’ve got to make the time pass somehow, eh?”
“Suits me all right,” assented Harvey. “What do you say, Henry?”
“Bully!” said Henry Burns.
The fire of driftwood, which was plentiful everywhere along the shores of Grand Island, roared up cheerily against the evening sky. When it had burned for an hour or more, Jack Harvey deftly raked an enormous bed of the coals out from it, on which to set fry-pans and broilers and coffee-pot, still keeping the great fire going at a little distance, for the sake of its cheer.
They feasted, then, by the light of blazing timbers and junks of logs, borne down from the river, as only hungry campers can. Young Joe ceased laughing uproariously at Mr. Carleton’s stories only when his sixth banana and fourth piece of pie precluded loud utterance. And when it was over, and they went their several ways by woods and alongshore, they voted Mr. Carleton a generous provider.
He was ready again, was Mr. Carleton, the following afternoon, with the promised luxuries, alongside theViking; and he was as much a boy as any of them when he and the owners of the yacht and Tom and Bob set out on a sail up the bay.
The wind was fresh and fair from the southward, the bay furrowed everywhere with billows breaking white, with just enough sea running to make it good sport. TheViking, with sheets well off, made a fine run to Springton, and bowled into that harbour with the spray flying.
They cast anchor and went up into the old town, which was quite a little settlement clustered on a steep bank overhanging the harbour, and which boasted of a fine summer hotel and several smaller ones. And when it got to be late afternoon, Mr. Carleton wouldn’t hear of their departing; but they should all stay to supper at the hotel. If the wind died down with the sun, why, they could stay all night. What did it matter, when they were out for a good time?
So they ate supper in style in the big hotel dining-room, and came forth from there an hour later to see the waters calm and the wind fallen.
“Never mind, we’ll sleep aboard theViking,” said Henry Burns. “There’s room enough, though we have taken out some of the mattresses so as to put in the fishing-truck.”
But Mr. Carleton would not hear of this. Not for a moment. He liked roughing it, to be sure, as well as any of them. But they were his guests now for the night. They must remain right there at the hotel, and he would see about the rooms. And they should breakfast at the hotel and then sail back the next day at their ease.
They were not unwilling. It was an unusual sort of a lark, but so long as Mr. Carleton was enjoying it and was ready to pay the bills, they were satisfied.
So they sat on the veranda for several hours, enjoying the music of the orchestra in the parlour and watching the dancing through the windows. Then, when Mr. Carleton had bade them good night and had gone up to his room, they followed shortly, Tom and Bob occupying one room together and Harvey and Henry Burns, likewise, one adjoining.
“Jack,” said Henry Burns, suddenly, pausing in the act of divesting himself of his blue yachting-shirt, “hang it! but I’ve forgotten to lock the cabin.”
“Oh, let it go,” said Harvey, who was already in bed and was drowsy with the sea air and good feeding.
“No, I don’t like to,” said Henry Burns. “There’s a lot of boats lying close by; and you know how easy it is for one of those fishermen to slip aboard, and sail out at four o’clock in the morning, with one of our new lines and that compass that cost more than we could afford to pay just now; and there’s a lot of things that we couldn’t afford to lose just at this time. No, I’m going to run down and lock up.”
“It’s a good half-mile,” muttered Harvey. “Better take the chance and let it go.”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t say so if you had forgotten it,” said Henry Burns. “I’m to blame. And if you don’t see me again, why, you’ll know I’ve stayed aboard.”
Henry Burns said this last half in fun, as he departed. As for Harvey, it mattered naught to him whether Henry Burns returned or stayed away. He was asleep before his comrade had closed the hotel door behind him.
If it had chanced that Mr. Carleton, too, being a man of shrewd observation, had noticed the omission on the part of Henry Burns, who was the last one overboard, to slip the padlock that made the hatch and doors of the companionway fast, he had not seen fit to mention the fact. Instead, he had been most talkative as they rowed away, pointing out various objects of interest up in the town.
And now that the yachtsmen had retired for the night and Mr. Carleton had withdrawn to his room, it is just barely possible that he may have recalled that fact. At all events, he did not make ready to retire, but sat for a half-hour smoking. Then he arose, turned down the light, and went quietly down the stairs.
It was about eleven o’clock, and the hotel was beginning to grow quiet. Few guests remained in the parlour, and most of the lights were out about the hotel and the grounds. Down in the town, as Mr. Carleton strolled leisurely along the streets, there were few persons stirring. Yachtsmen aboard their craft in the harbour had ceased bawling out across the water to one another, and no songs issued forth from any cabin. Only the harbour lights for the most part gleamed from the little fleet.
The yachtVikinglay some half-mile down below the village, toward the entrance to the harbour, and was hidden now from Mr. Carleton’s view by a little strip of land that made out in one place, and on which some tumble-down sheds stood leaning toward the water.
Mr. Carleton went down confidently to the shore; but when he had arrived at the place where they had drawn the dory out, he met with a surprise, for there was no dory there.
He looked about him, thinking he might have happened upon the wrong place; but there could be no mistaking it. There were the same sheds, with nets hung out, and the same boats in different stages of repair that he had observed with a careful eye when they had come ashore.
He went along the beach for a little distance, to where a lamp gleamed in one of the sheds, and knocked at the door.
“Some one seems to have taken our tender,” he said to a man that opened to his knock. “Do you know where I can borrow one or hire one for an hour so I can go out aboard? My yacht lies down there below that point. Anything you say for pay, you know.”
“I’ve got a skiff you’re welcome to use, if you only fetch it back before morning,” replied the man, good-naturedly. “I don’t want pay for it, though. Just drag it up out of the reach of the tide when you come in.”
He pointed to the boat, and Mr. Carleton, dragging it into the water, stepped in and sculled away.
He was alert enough now, and he worked the little boat with a skilled stroke and a practised arm. There were a pair of oars aboard, but it sufficed him to use the scull-hole at the stern, with a single oar, which gave him the advantage of being able to look ahead. He put his strength into it, and the skiff worked its way rapidly through the fleet of yachts. The evening was warm, and Mr. Carleton threw off jacket and waistcoat and unbuttoned his collar. He was a strong, athletic figure as he stood up to his work, peering eagerly ahead.
Something gave him a sudden start, however, just as he cleared the point that had lain between him and theViking. Watching out for a glimpse of the yacht, there seemed to be—or was it a trick of the eyes, or some reflection from across the water—there seemed to be a momentary flash of light from the cabin windows. Just a gleam, or an apparent gleam, and then all was dark.
Mr. Carleton had stopped abruptly, straining his eyes at the yacht ahead.
“Strange,” he muttered softly, resuming his sculling and watching the yacht more eagerly, “I could have sworn that was a light in the cabin. If ’twas a light, though, it must have been in one of the other boats.”
He proceeded vigorously on his way.
At this very moment, however, there came another surprise to Mr. Carleton, greater than the other.
Henry Burns, going down to the shore and sculling out to theViking, had found the cabin unlocked, as he had recalled; but everything was safe. It was comfortable aboard the yacht, and he decided to remain, planning to go ashore early in the morning in time for breakfast at the hotel. He sat up for some little time, however, and it was, indeed, his cabin light that Mr. Carleton had seen, the moment before he had extinguished it, to turn in for the night.
Mr. Carleton, sculling on now cautiously toward theViking, suddenly heard a noise aboard the yacht. He paused again, then seated himself quickly at the stern of the skiff, as a boyish figure emerged from the companionway of theVikingand came out on deck. It was Henry Burns, taking one last look at the anchor-line, and a general look around, before he went off to sleep.
There was nothing within sight to excite Henry Burns’s interest. Everything was all right aboard theViking. There were the few lights still left, up in the village streets. There were a few yachts anchored at a little distance. There was the dark shore-line, with its tumbling sheds huddled together here and there. And, also, there was the lone figure of a man, seated at the stern of a small skiff, sculling slowly down past, some distance away. It was all clear and serene in Henry Burns’s eyes, and he went below, rolled in on his berth, and went to sleep.
The lone figure that Henry Burns had seen in the skiff had ceased sculling now. He seemed to have no destination in view. The oar was drawn aboard and the skiff drifted with the tide. What the man in the skiff was thinking of—what he contemplated—no one could know but he.
But he resumed his sculling, very softly and slowly, after the lapse of a full half-hour. Noiselessly he described a circle about the yacht, drawing in nearer and nearer. Then he paused irresolutely, once more, and waited. Only he could know what would happen next. Perhaps he, too, was racked with uncertainty and irresolution. For once he seized the oar and worked the skiff up to within twenty feet of the gently swinging yacht. Then he paused again and waited.
Henry Burns’s sleep might, perchance, have been troubled could he have dreamed of the man now, waiting and watching just off the starboard bow of theViking, while he slept within. But no dreams disturbed his sound slumbers.
Nor did aught else disturb them. For, presently, there came out from shore another boat, a rowboat with three men in it. They were laughing and joking about something that had happened ashore.
Mr. Carleton, resuming his oar, sculled gently away from theViking, worked his way back again through the fleet of yachts whence he had come, drew the skiff out of water where he had embarked, dragged it up on the beach, and cast it from him roughly. Then he strode away up the bank to the hotel, muttering under his breath, and looking back out over the water once or twice as he ascended the hill, like a man that has suffered an unexpected defeat.
Henry Burns was up early the next morning, as he had planned. He rowed the dory quickly in to the landing-place, and was in Harvey’s room before that young gentleman was out of bed.
“Why, I didn’t hear you get up,” said Harvey.
“That’s not so surprising,” replied Henry Burns, “seeing as I got up aboard theViking. I slept there.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed Harvey. “I wonder how Mr. Carleton would like that if he knew it. He needn’t have hired so big a room just for me. Say, but he’s a jolly good fellow, though, isn’t he?”
“He is certainly a generous one,” answered Henry Burns.
Harvey smiled at his companion.
“What is it you don’t like about him, Henry?” he asked.
“Why, nothing,” replied Henry Burns. “Who said I didn’t like him? I never did.”
“No, you didn’t,” admitted Harvey. “But I know you well enough by this time to tell when you really like a person. Now, if I asked you if you like George Warren, you’d come out plump and flat and swear he is a fine chap, and all that. But you don’t seem quite sure about Mr. Carleton. I think he’s the best man that ever came down here. He likes to have a good time with us boys—which is more than most men do; he enters into things; he buys everything, and he tells good stories. What fault do you find with him?”
“Not any,” laughed Henry Burns. “He’s everything you say he is, and I think he is one of the most generous men I ever met. There, don’t that satisfy you? But I’ll tell you one thing, Jack. I was just thinking I shouldn’t want to be in Mr. Carleton’s way if he had made up his mind to do a certain thing. He’s the kind of a man that wouldn’t be interfered with when once he was decided.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Harvey.
“Oh, just by a lot of little things,” answered Henry Burns, “not any of them of any particular consequence of themselves. By the way, do you remember inviting him to sail down the river?”
“Why, not exactly,” replied Harvey, somewhat puzzled.
“Well, you didn’t,” said Henry Burns, laughing quietly. “He invited himself. He said, ‘I’ll sail down with you,’ or ‘I’ll go along with you,’ or something of that sort.
“And do you remember inviting him to go out sailing on this trip?” continued Henry Burns.
“No,” replied Harvey, a little impatiently.
“That’s because he invited himself,” said Henry Burns, still smiling. “I remember that he said, ‘I’ll go out sailing with you to-morrow.’ That settled it in his mind.”
“Well, what of it?” asked Harvey.
“Nothing,” replied Henry Burns. “I’m just as glad as you are that he proposed it. I’ve enjoyed his company and his generosity. I only say he is a man that I’d rather have for a friend than an enemy.”
Jack Harvey laughed.
“Well, you may be right,” he said. “I never think of looking at anybody as deep as that. If a man comes along and wants a sail and wants some fun, and is willing to do his share, why, that’s enough for me. And if he’s up to any tricks, why, he and I’ll fight and have it over with. I don’t worry about what might happen.”
“Did you ever see me worry about anything?” asked Henry Burns.
“Why, no,” said Harvey, emphatically, “I never did. I meant that I don’t think about things just as you do.”
Which was certainly true.
If Mr. Carleton had any notion in his head that he had, as Harvey had suggested, hired a larger room for him and Henry Burns than was really needed—or if he had any notion in his head that he had wasted his money in hiring any rooms at all at the hotel—he showed no sign of it when he appeared in the office and they went into the dining-room. Indeed, he thought it a good joke on Henry Burns that he should have had to go off to the yacht for the night, and he laughed very heartily over it, behind his big moustache.
The wind was blowing fresh from the south as the party went out on the hotel piazza. It had started up early in the morning, along with the beginning of the flood-tide, which meant, in all likelihood, that it would blow fresher from now on until sundown. There were already whitecaps to be seen over all the bay, and the yachts that were out under sail were lying over to it and throwing the spray smartly. It was a good morning to show the fine sailing qualities of a boat, and they were eager to be off.
They went down through the town, then, to where the dory was tied.
As they took hold to drag it down the beach, a fisherman, weather-beaten, and smoking a short stub of a clay pipe, approached them. Addressing Mr. Carleton, he said, good-naturedly, “Well, you got out and back safe, I see. Found your own boat again all right, eh?”
Mr. Carleton, glancing coolly at the man that had accommodated him the night before, said, carelessly, “Guess you’ve got the advantage of me, captain. I’m afraid I haven’t the pleasure of your acquaintance.”
The man slowly removed his pipe and stared at Mr. Carleton in amazement.
“Wall, I swear!” he ejaculated. “D’yer mean to say it wasn’t you that borrowed my skiff last night to go out to your yacht?”
Mr. Carleton laughed heartily.