The Rival Campers Part 44

"I don't need you to make any denial about the fire," Mr. Warren had said, when he stepped aboard the _Spray_ and put his hand on his eldest son's shoulder. "I know you boys would not do such a thing as that; but I fear your recklessness has gotten you into serious trouble, and Colonel Witham seems inclined to press the matter to the extreme. So I want to hear everything from beginning to end."

And George Warren told him all.

There was another boat coming sluggishly up the bay that night, far astern of the _Spray_, a handsome big sloop, beautifully modelled and with finely tapered, s.h.i.+ning yellow spars. But she carried little sail, was reefed, in fact, though the breeze was very light; and she moved through the water so like a dead thing, or like a creature crippled by a wound, that a sailor would have seen at once that there had been some mishap aboard, some injury to hull or spars that held her back.

The youth at the wheel of this strange, big sloop bore a striking resemblance to Jack Harvey, though the yacht was not the _Surprise_, but bigger and far more elegant. And the crew-yes, they were surely Harvey's crew-George and Allan and Tim and Joe,-and they addressed the boy at the wheel as "Jack."

And the _Surprise_-where was she?

Four days had pa.s.sed since, on that morning following the fire, the _Surprise_ had turned the point of the island that marked an entrance to the thoroughfare where, a half-mile to leeward, a big black sloop was coming fast up the wind.

"There he is!" Harvey had cried. "Come, boys, get into shape now; but stay below till I give the word,-all but you, Joe,-and when I yell you pile out and get aboard that sloop the quickest you ever did anything in all your lives. He will fight, and we have got to act quick."

If the thick-set, ill-visaged man who sat at the wheel of the black sloop felt any concern at the sudden appearance of this new craft, dead ahead and coming down the narrow thoroughfare toward him, his alarm must have abated as on its near approach the apparent number of its occupants became disclosed.

"She looks harmless enough," he muttered, between his teeth. "Pshaw!

There's only a couple of boys aboard. But it did give me a start for a moment." And he slapped a hand at his jacket pocket.

"He's taking long chances, if he did but know it," said Harvey, as the big sloop came about after a tack close in sh.o.r.e. "That boat cannot more than clear those ledges by an inch, if it does that. It's a regular stone field where he's sailing. The channel here winds like a cow-path in a pasture. However, if he can clear there, we can, so we'll begin to crowd him."

It was no easy matter now to close in on a boat beating across the thoroughfare and not arouse suspicion. To follow him, tack by tack, and point so as to head him off every time he went about, must inevitably put him on his guard long before the time came to strike, and might even allow him, by clever sailing, to slip by.

With his cap pulled down over his eyes, so that the stranger could not by any chance identify him as the youth he had knocked down in the pasture the night of the fire, and his head bent low, Jack Harvey watched the man's every move, and calculated every inch of the way.

"Three more tacks will bring him up to us," he said. "And there's shoal water to starboard and some ledges just beyond them. He's got to meet us about in that spot," and Harvey laid his own course according to his calculation and held to it steadily.

It must have served to allay the man's suspicions, if he still had any, but now, as he came about on the third tack, he viewed the oncoming _Surprise_ with anger.

"Keep away, there!" he cried, in a fierce, violent tone. "Keep off! Can't you see you're going to foul me if you don't keep off?"

"Ready to jump, now, Joe," said Harvey, in a low voice. "I'm going to run him down. It's the only way to be sure, though it may wreck us.

"Fellows," he called, softly, to the boys below, "all ready, now. You know what you've got to do the moment she strikes."

The man at the wheel had risen to his feet, and he shook one fist threateningly, while his other hand clutched the wheel, throwing his sloop off as far as he could.

"Curse you!" he cried. "You're running me down. Keep off, I say, or I'll blow your stupid head off your shoulders."

The next moment Harvey, with a sudden turn of the tiller, threw the _Surprise_ full tilt at the oncoming sloop. There was a sharp crash of splintering wood, the tearing of head-sails, and a shock that shook the yachts from keel to topmast, as the _Surprise_ rammed the big black sloop just by the foremast stays, snapping her own bowsprit short off and making an ugly hole in her own planking.

Leaping just as the boats crashed, and holding a coil of rope on his arm, Joe Hinman landed on the top of the big sloop's cabin in the very midst of the confusion. A moment more and he had made a few quick turns about the mast, las.h.i.+ng the two yachts fast together at the moment when Harvey, followed by the rest of his crew, who came swarming out of the cabin, sprang aboard the strange sloop.

"I'll shoot the first boy that steps a foot on this boat," cried the man; but the words were scarce out of his mouth before they were upon him. He had been in danger before and knew how to make the most of his chances, and he stood, desperate but cool, as they made their rush.

There was a shot, and Jack Harvey, who was leading, gave a cry of pain, for a bullet just grazed his left shoulder. He stumbled and fell full at the feet of the man as another shot was fired and young Tim thought his right hand was gone.

The next moment Harvey had the man by the legs, while Allan Harding and George Baker and Joe made a rush for him. The man fell heavily, Joe Hinman clinging with both hands to one wrist, so that he could not fire again. They rolled over and over in the c.o.c.kpit for a moment, the boys and he. Twice the man got to his knees and twice they dragged him down again; till, at length, young Tim, whose hand was not shot away, but only slightly wounded, managed to run in and deal the man a blow with the end of an oar, which stunned him for a moment, so that they got him flat and had bound the loose end of a halyard about him before he came fully to his senses. Then, as they proceeded to complete the job and tie him fast, hand and foot, he recognized Harvey for the first time.

"Hulloa!" he exclaimed. "Why, where have I seen you before? You're not the chap in the pasture, are you?"

"The same," said Harvey.

"Well, the game's up," said the man, coolly. "'Twas a mistake, and I knew it the moment after I had done it. I was a fool to hit you that night.

It's my temper, that's what has beat me. It gets away from me sometimes.

I dare say if I had gone along about my business you wouldn't have followed me, eh?"

"Probably not," answered Harvey. "That is why I am glad you knocked me down," and then, taking a quick glance over the side of the boat, he cried:

"Joe! Allan! George! Out with the sweeps, lively! We're going aground."

Harvey sprang to the wheel, hauling in on the main-sheet as he did so.

But it was too late. There was a gentle shock that shook the sloop from end to end, a dull, grating sound, and the next moment the big sloop rested firmly on a jagged rock of the reach, listing as she hung, and wrenching the bilge so that she made water rapidly.

"Whew!" cried Harvey. "Here's a mess. We're wrecked, and badly, too. How in the world are we ever going to get out of this?"

It was, indeed, a serious problem. The _Surprise_, her bow planks ripped open by the collision, had sunk within a few minutes, and now lay on bottom, with her deck covered. The big sloop, hard aground and full of iron ballast, was not a thing to be moved easily.

"This is a sc.r.a.pe and no mistake," said Harvey. "Here we are, where a boat may pick us up in a day or a week, but more likely not for a week.

We've got our man, but the reefs have got us. Well, we have got to figure out some way to get out of it ourselves."

But first they took account of their wounds, which had, now that the excitement was over, begun to sting and smart. They found that neither Harvey's nor Tim's wound was at all serious, mere surface flesh-wounds.

The back of young Tim's hand was bare of skin for the length of three inches across, and Harvey's shoulder bled badly till it was cleansed and bandaged, but it was the price of victory, and they accounted it cheap.

All of them had honourable scars of battle, bruises and scratches without number, and every one of them was proud of his, and wouldn't have had one less for the world.

Taking their prisoner, securely bound, they all rowed ash.o.r.e to survey their surroundings, build a fire and get breakfast, and make plans for getting away.

"There's only one thing to be done," said Harvey, after they had finished breakfast and sat by the sh.o.r.e, surveying the wrecks of the yachts. "The _Surprise_ is done for. We can't raise her. But the big sloop is not so badly hurt but what we can repair her, if we can only float her. The first thing we have got to do, when the tide goes out, is to get all that pig iron out of her, and that's a day's job, at the least. Then we may beach her at high tide and patch her up. It's a big contract, though."

That day they brought the spare sails of the sloop ash.o.r.e and pitched a tent with them; and, when the tide was low enough for them to work, they began the hard labour of lightening the big sloop of its ballast.

They worked all that tide like beavers, and by night the yacht was light.

They camped on sh.o.r.e that night, standing watch by turns over their prisoner.

The next day at low water they found the worst of the leaks in the sloop, and made s.h.i.+ft to patch them up temporarily with strips of canvas tacked on and daubed with paint, which they found in the sloop's locker, and by recaulking some of the seams with oak.u.m. By the next high tide, with hard pumping, she was sufficiently lightened to float clear of the reef, though still leaking badly, and they got her around to a clear, steeply shelving strip of beach, where they rested her more easily when the tide fell, and so could work on the repairs to better advantage.

Another night in camp ash.o.r.e, and the next day they floated the sloop off again at high tide and loaded about half of her ballast in again.

"That will keep her right side up till we can get back to Southport,"

said Harvey. "I think we can make it, if we carry short sail, so as not to strain her and open up those places where we have patched her. We will try it, anyway, for I have half an idea that our running off so soon after the fire may have made talk about us, and the quicker we get back and put an end to that the better."

So that afternoon they began their voyage home again, looking very serious as the mast of the yacht _Surprise_, sticking out of water, faded from their view, but swelling with pride and satisfaction as they peered in now and then at a form that lay secure on one of the cabin bunks.

They sailed all that night, for the breeze held fair and light, and by daybreak of the following morning they came into the harbour of Southport.

Harvey and Joe Hinman rowed ash.o.r.e, soon after they came to their old moorings off the camp, to see how the land lay; but came back on the run in about twenty minutes, and made the water boil as they rowed out to the yacht.

"We're off for Mayville," cried Harvey. "We'll put on more sail, too, if it pulls the bottom out of her. Why, what do you think! Who's arrested for the fire?"