CHAPTER XIVCASTAWAYS
As the wild swirl of water rushed over Jack, he clung desperately to the handle of the sloop’s pump. The vessel staggered under her load, but righted herself bravely.
“Are you there?” the boy spluttered, as soon as he could breathe once more. It was too dark to see anything.
“I—I think so,” came back the mate’s voice. “I didn’t expect to be, though. We don’t want much more of that stuff!”
The hours dragged along with leaden heels. Twice again during the night the sloop almost foundered beneath a terrible blow, but each time managed to right herself. It seemed to the distressed lads almost a week of darkness must have passed before a faint blur of light appeared in the eastern sky. When dawn beganto approach Jack had arrived at that state of physical exhaustion when further effort was almost intolerable, but the sight of returning daylight, with the possibilities it brought of being sighted, filled him anew with life. Then, a little later, his eyes opened wide with blank surprise.
“Why—why, wherearewe?” he exclaimed.
The boys stared into the half-gloom away to the west. The roar of surf was distinct above the rushing wind, and as the light increased it was possible for the lads to make out a line of broken water less than half a mile away.
“That isn’t the mainland,” George declared presently. “It’s only a little bit of a place. It surely can’t be Lobster Island! That’s forty miles or more away from Greenport.”
“Well, how far do you think we’ve drifted in the last twenty hours or so?” asked the other. “I haven’t the least notion where this place is, but I shouldn’t be surprised if we had gone as far as Lobster Island. It’s a mercy we didn’t bump up against it during the night. We’d have been broken to splinters in that surf.”
“I guess itisLobster Island,” said George. “There isn’t any other place it could be. Does anybody live on it?”
“I don’t believe so,” replied the captain. “But even so, I’m going to dump this packet on the shore.”
“You can’t, Jack, without wrecking her.”
“Maybe, and maybe not. Anyway, it’s about the only chance I see sticking up at present. Wait till we drift more to leeward of the island; then I’m going to make it or bust.”
This sudden appearance of land was the most welcome sight Jack could have imagined, but there remained a good deal of deep water between them and it; and he was by no means certain that, in the sloop’s badly crippled condition, she could be urged under the lee shore. Meanwhile, as theSea-Larkdrifted, the boy made ready to hoist the throat of the mainsail, and when the sloop was slowly going past he hauled up part of the jib.
The sloop shipped a heavy sea during this operation, and when the canvas bellied she was almost awash. But, on reaching the comparativelysmooth water under the lee of the little island she became more tractable and by dint of delicate handling the boy was able to run her ashore on a sheltered, sandy beach.
The moment the keel grounded the two lads, dripping wet though they were—worn out with the hardest and longest spell of toil they had ever known, and hungry as hunters—looked at each other and laughed.
“Gee! but that was what I call a narrow squeak!” commented George. “If you’d told me an hour ago that we should be safely ashore by now, I should have thought you’d gone crazy.”
“It didn’t look much like it!”
“Have you cut yourself?” the mate asked, seeing something dark drop from his chum’s hand.
“That’s nothing,” replied Jack, dipping his hand over the side in the water. “Just a bit of a blister that burst. Let’s look at your hands. Minehurt, I don’t mind admitting, now.”
George displayed the palms of his hands,which were in no better condition than those of his friend.
Suddenly Jack sprang from his seat and, opening the door of the companionway, dived into the cabin. A moment later he emerged with a dry package of crackers and a bottle of water.
“You think I’ve had my mind fixed on saving the sloop, all the night, don’t you?” he asked, proffering the package to the mate, and stuffing a cracker into his own mouth. “But you’re wrong. I kept remembering those crackers, but we’d both have been drowned as sure as eggs are eggs if we’d opened that door and shipped a sea. This stuff has been in a locker for almost a week, and I’d forgotten about it.”
“If ever you see me turn up my nose at a cracker after this,” said George, munching away, “I give you full permission to kick me from one end of Greenport to another.”
“We’re not in Greenport yet,” replied Jack. “Oh, my back’s nearly broken! I don’t think I could have gone on pumping for another hour if my life had depended on it.”
Though their position was dismal enough, stranded as they were on a barren beach, with their boat half full of water, the lads were now strangely happy. The strain of their recent unnerving experience had been greater than they realized, and now it was over, the sheer joy of being alive, and of knowing that death was not likely to overtake them any minute, was more than enough to compensate for the fact that they were still far from being out of the wood. The sloop was resting firmly enough on the sand, the receding tide leaving her high and dry. There remained a great deal of water to be pumped out of her bilge, but that could stay where it was for the present. No sign of any human habitation was visible on the island, but after resting a few minutes longer the boys went ashore and explored. They found nothing much to reward them. The island was little more than a barren rock, with sparse, coarse grass growing in places, and also a few low, straggling bushes. It was less than a thousand feet long, and only about two hundred feet across at its widest point. Possibly no humanfoot had stepped ashore there for years. Still, it offered a secure haven, and on that account the boys were thankful enough. By eating very sparingly of their slender supply of crackers they would at least be able to keep alive for the present.
“I don’t remember the geography of this part of the coast awfully well,” said Jack, after they had made a cursory examination of the place, “but if this is Lobster Island it can’t be so far off the mainland. The wind certainly isn’t quite so strong now. I believe the worst of the gale is over. I’m going to climb up to the top of that rock and see if I can spot the coast.”
The rock in question was not easy to scale, as it offered no secure foothold, but its summit was a full twenty feet above the level of the ocean, and before long the captain of theSea-Larkwas perched precariously on the top.
“Hooray!” he cried, shouting down to his chum, and pointing away to the north-west. “We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly.And there are two ships in sight—schooners,I think. That must be Bristow harbor over there.”
“We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly”
“We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly”
“We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly”
In his excitement he descended from his lofty perch a little too rapidly. Some distance from the bottom he slipped and came perilously near to breaking a bone or two as he rolled heavily to the spot where George stood. He barked his shins, and bruised one of his elbows, but was otherwise unhurt, and after rubbing the sore places for a few moments almost forgot about them, in view of the important discovery he had just made.
“If I can get that eye-bolt fixed in the top of the mast again,” he said, “we’ll be away from here within the next few hours.”
“There’s a biggish sea running,” George cautioned, his eyes roving the tumbling surface.
“It isn’t so bad,” replied the skipper. “Why, hang it! the wind isn’t half as strong as it was during the night. In another six hours or so we shall be able to slip across to Bristow in no time. You don’t want another night of it, do you?”
“Go ahead,” said George. “I’m just crazyabout sailing in lovely weather like this. And the pump is the best part of it, too, isn’t it? It seems years since I used a pump. Guess I must have forgotten how to work the thing by now. If I have forgotten, Jack, I hope you’ll do any little bit of pumping that might be necessary,” he added with a laugh.
They had walked back to theSea-Lark, and Jack was now standing on her deck, surveying the damage aloft. He soon realized that to replace the eye-bolt as it had been was a task beyond him, but, equipping himself with a few yards of spare manila rope, he climbed the mast and set about making temporary repairs. It had to be a clumsy job at best, but elegance was of less importance than strength; and before long he slipped down to the deck, convinced that the gear would hold.
“The tide will float us again in about another eight hours,” he declared. “If it’s safe to make a start by then, we shall have two or three hours’ daylight to make the run across.”
Toward noon, when the ebb tide had ceased, and the water was coming in the direction ofthe sloop once more, Jack fished the entire commissariat supply out of the locker again. It consisted of exactly five crackers and about half a pint of luke-warm water at the bottom of the bottle. The wind had by now dropped considerably, and there was every prospect of the lads being able to start on the journey to Bristow as soon as theSea-Larkfloated.
“Two crackers and a piece of one for you,” said the captain, dividing them out equally. “After we’ve eaten this we’ve got to starve to death or eat sand. Gee! it’s funny how small a cracker is when you’ve only got two and a half of them for dinner! If we’d only thought to lash down that bluefish of yours!”
George, having eaten his share of the lunch, yawned. It was more than thirty hours since he had been asleep.
“It’ll be hours before the sloop’s afloat again,” he said. “I’m going to turn in and have a snooze.”
He went into the cabin, and stretching in his bunk just as he was, fell asleep instantly.Jack sat on the deck, with his back against the deck-house. He did not remember ever having been so sleepy and tired. Presently his head nodded. He raised it with a jerk and then lowered his chin to his chest once more, while leaden weights seemed to be dragging his eyelids down. Just a short nap, he reflected lazily, would make him feel much fresher. A moment later he, too, was sound asleep, and when he awoke a puzzled expression swept over his face. The water was lapping the side of the sloop. It must have been that which awoke him. He had been asleep for hours.
“Come on, George!” he shouted, leaping to his feet. “We’ll be afloat soon.”
Rubbing his eyes, the mate emerged from the cabin.
“Why, the wind’s gone right down,” he said. “That’s fine!”
The sloop, which had been canting over on her side while ashore, now lay almost on an even keel. Jack, armed with the boat-hook, and George with a pole which had been picked up from the beach in anticipation of this moment,leaned over the side when theSea-Larkbegan to rock slightly, and without much difficulty they got her afloat once more. Up went the mainsail and jib, and away the sloop ran, in the direction of the shore which Jack had observed from the top of the rock. In half an hour they raised land, and not long after that their craft was nuzzling one of the pile wharves in Bristow harbor.
“I’ve got just a dollar and fifteen cents,” said Jack, turning out his pockets. “How much have you?”
“A dime.”
“We’ll manage all right. First of all we ought to telephone to Greenport. You’d better speak to your mother.”
They found a telephone booth near the harbor, and presently with Jack standing by his side, George was talking over the wire.
“Hello,” he said. “Is that you, Mother?... We’re at Bristow.... No, we haven’t got drowned yet.... Yes, we’re all right. You might tell Mr. Holden.... I’m jolly hungry, that’s all.... Well, itwasa bit roughbut you needn’t have worried.... No, everything’s all right, really.... We’re going to sleep on the boat here to-night, and if the weather holds good we’ll sail back in the morning.... Yes, thanks, a dollar and a quarter between us, and we sha’n’t need any more.... In thepaper! Ourpictures! Oh,crickey!... All right, Mother. See you in the morning. G’by.
“Oh, splash!” he exclaimed, hanging up the receiver. “That’s done it! Jack, we’re dead and drowned and given up for lost, and in the ‘Greenport Gazette’ as corpses, and half the town’s almost in mourning for us already.”
“Two eggs,” Jack was saying, already hurrying his chum away by the arm; “no, three eggs, and bacon. Lots of bacon. And toast and butter. And coffee, and—”
“Stop it! you’re making my mouth water,” protested George. “Here’s a place to get eats.”
Two of the hungriest boys who had ever sat down in the restaurant were soon giving their orders and appealing to the waitress to hurry;and it took every cent of their available cash to settle the bill.
After supper they strolled around the little town for an hour or two, and then returned to the sloop for a good night’s rest.
“We ought to get some one to fix that gear for us properly before we start off,” said Jack, when they had turned in. “It’s all right as it is if we don’t strike any more bad weather, but we don’t want another time like the last.”
“We’ll find somebody to do it,” replied George, sleepily, from his bunk; and a few moments later the two young adventurers were lost in slumber.
The next thing Jack knew, he was sitting bolt upright in bed. Footsteps on the deck had awakened him.
“George!” he said.
“Eh? Eh? What’s wrong?” asked the mate, in the darkness.
Already Jack was out of his bunk.
“There’s somebody prowling about,” replied the skipper. “Listen! He’s in the cockpit now.”
The cabin door opened, and Jack threw himself into a defensive attitude.
A light flared up in the doorway as a match was struck, and both boys burst into laughter.
“Well, you two!” said the familiar voice of Tony Santo.
“Dad!” George exclaimed. “How did you get here?”
“By train, of course,” replied Tony. “I just thought I’d run down and see that you were all right.”
“It’s awfully good of you,” said George. “But I told Mother there was nothing wrong.”
“Oh, no! Nothing at all wrong!” replied Tony, sarcastically. “What happened?”
“Some of the gear gave way and we couldn’t use our sails,” Jack explained.
“Well, my boys,” said Tony, “I’m glad it’s no worse. You certainly did throw a scare into us all, but it wasn’t your fault. Go back to bed now. There’s a hotel near here, and I’ll find a bed there. I’ll take you ashore for breakfast, and as soon as we get her overhauled we’ll be off for home.”
Next morning Tony strengthened the temporary repairs which Jack had made, and, with the breeze still favorable, theSea-Larkheaded for Greenport while most of the good folk of Bristow were still in bed. The summer gale had vanished as quickly as it had come, and the sloop had an easy passage back.