DOWN THE BAY
Jack Harvey’s father, awakening next morning in his comfortable
state-room aboard the liner, would have been not a little astounded had
he known how strangely the facts belied his remark to Mrs. Harvey that
Jack must, by this time, be well on his way north. By no possible stretch
of fancy could the vision of their son, lying asleep in the crazy cabin
of the old schooner, appear to the minds of Harvey’s parents. In blissful
ignorance of his strange adventure, they sailed away. Miles and miles
behind, the schooner followed in the liner’s wake.
Jack Harvey was a good sleeper. The sun came up out of the bay and shed
its light far and wide upon hundreds of craft, borne lightly by the wind
and tide. It penetrated, even, the cabin of the dingy schooner, and it
lighted the way for the youthful sleeper to come back from dreams to
consciousness.
For some moments, as Harvey lay with half opened eyes, he wondered where
he was. Then it all came back to him in a flash: the Baltimore
water-front; the picturesque fishermen; the strange young man—and then,
the remembrance that he had signed for a month aboard the schooner. For
an instant he almost regretted that act, and the thought brought him up
quickly on one elbow, to look about him.
One resolve he made at the moment. He would not back out now. He might
find that impossible, anyway, since he had signed the paper. But he would
send a line to Miss Matilda Burns, letting her know what he was doing. It
was no more than fair to her.
The next moment, Jack Harvey leaped to his feet. He was fully awake now.
Dressed, as he was,—for he had removed only his shoes and coat,—he sprang
to one of the ports. He had sailed too much not to know that the vessel
was under weigh, although, on a perfectly smooth sea and with no swell,
there was but slight perceptible motion to the schooner.
One glance told him the truth. He waited no longer, but ran up the
companion-way on deck. Amazed, he looked about him. Far astern, some
fifteen miles, the outlines of the city showed. The nearest shore was a
mile away. The schooner, foresail and main-sail set, and winged out, was
slowly gliding before the wind down the bay.
Jack Harvey gave a whistle of astonishment. Then a feeling of resentment
toward young Mr. Jenkins arose in his breast.
“That’s a cool trick!” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t he tell me we were going
to sail so soon? He said we’d have time to get a few things in the shops
before we sailed. I’ll tell him what I think of it.”
Without waiting to speak to anyone on deck, or scarce take notice of who
was there, Harvey darted down the companion-way and hastened to the bunk
where he had seen Mr. Jenkins turn in, the night before.
It was empty.
Strangely puzzled, Harvey made his way out on deck. A tall, keen-eyed
man, smooth-shaven save for a light blond moustache, sat astride the
wheel box, steering. Harvey turned to him, somewhat excitedly.
“Where’s that fellow Jenkins?” he asked.
Coolly surveying Harvey, with a pair of steady, blue eyes, the man
replied, “You call me ‘Mr. Blake,’ young feller; I’m mate.”
Harvey’s face flushed, angrily. A feeling that he had been somehow
tricked came over him. Ignoring the man’s order, he stepped nearer to
him.
“I want to see that chap, Jenkins,” he repeated. “He didn’t tell me we
were going to sail this way in the night. Where is he?”
The lines about the mouth of Mr. Blake, mate, tightened as he looked the
boy over from head to foot. Later experience enlightened Harvey as to
what would have happened to him had they been well down the bay. But, as
it was, the man merely uttered something softly under his breath. “I’ll
leave you for Haley to deal with,” was what he said. And he added, in a
mollifying tone, addressing Harvey:
“Why, it’s too bad about that young feller, Jenkins. You see he got left.
He slipped up town for some stuff, early this morning—about three
o’clock, I guess, and didn’t show up when the tide served for starting.
Scroop wouldn’t wait, and you can’t blame him. But he left word for
Jenkins to come down on that boat that lay alongside us. She starts
to-morrow. We’ll pick him up down the bay. It’ll be all right. You’re the
young feller that Joe told about, eh—going a trip with us?”
The man’s manner, changing thus suddenly from sharp to kindly, was
surprising—and a bit comforting, too. Without a companion, even though
Jenkins were a chance acquaintance, the venture seemed to have taken on a
somewhat different and less pleasing aspect to Harvey.
“Yes,” he said, in answer to the mate’s query, “I’m going one trip, just
for a month.”
“I see,” said the mate, quietly. “Well, you’ll like it. You’re the right
sort. I can tell that. Ever shipped before?”
Harvey shook his head, as he explained that he had done some bay sailing.
He was about to explain further under what circumstances, but something
made him pause. Under the same sudden impulse—he knew not the reason for
it, but obeyed it—he became reticent when Mr. Blake, mate, plied him with
questions concerning himself and where he was from.
“I’m just knocking around a bit,” he replied, and kept his own counsel. A
fortunate thing for him, perhaps, in the light of subsequent events.
The conversation was abruptly broken off. Up from the forecastle there
burst three men, clinching in a confused, rough-and-tumble fashion, and
struggling together. Had Jack Harvey been on deck the night before, and
observed the man who had been carried, sleeping, from the cabin to the
forecastle, he might perhaps recognize him now as one of these three.
Somewhat recovered from his condition of stupefaction was he; sufficient
to gaze about him wildly, wrestle with the two men who attacked him,
strike at them furiously, and cry out several times that he was up to
their tricks, that he couldn’t be trapped like a dog and shanghaied down
the bay—and let them come on, if they dared.
That they did dare was quite apparent; for they rushed him almost off his
feet the next moment. And then, to Harvey’s surprise, he found himself
suddenly at service aboard the schooner.
Leaping to his feet, the mate exclaimed, hastily, “Here, you, hold that
wheel a minute.”
Harvey obeyed. The mate made a few bounds across the deck, took advantage
of the opening that offered as the strange man’s back was turned to him,
and dealt him a blow behind one ear that felled him, half stunned. The
next moment, Harvey saw the three lift the vanquished fighter by head and
heels and carry him below again.
Harvey’s heart sank a little. It was hardly an auspicious beginning of a
cruise on a strange craft.
Mr. Blake was back again in a few minutes. He was as cool as though
nothing unusual had taken place.
“No, you keep the wheel a moment, while I light my pipe,” he said, as
Harvey started to relinquish the post. Then he laughed, drew forth his
pipe and a piece of tobacco, and proceeded to cut a pipeful with his
knife.
“That’s Tom Saunders,” he said. “Gets foolish drunk the minute he steps
on shore; never’s sober except when he’s afloat. Comes aboard a-boilin’
every trip, fights, and makes a mess about being carried off against his
will. He’ll straighten out tomorrow and be the best man in the crew.”
Harvey felt a bit easier. There had come over him, as he watched the
struggle, a feeling that perhaps he, too, had been trapped aboard here.
It was strange, certainly: the disappearance of Mr. Jenkins, and the
words the man had just uttered about being shanghaied. However, he was in
for the cruise; and come what would, Harvey resolved to make the best of
it.
There came aft, presently, the man Scroop, captain of the schooner, whom
Harvey eyed curiously, when the mate addressed him.
“Well?” inquired Mate Blake.
Captain Scroop gave vent to a vigorous expletive. “We’ve fixed him!” he
said. “He’ll shut up for a while. Hullo, who’s this?”
“A friend of Jenkins,” replied the mate, giving a sly wink as he spoke.
Captain Scroop looked at Harvey keenly. Harvey eyed him, eagerly, in
return. What he saw was not wholly favourable. Scroop, a hard-featured,
shifty-eyed man of middle stature, had not been rendered more
prepossessing by his recent encounter. A swelling under one eye showed
where the stranger’s fist had landed heavily. His woollen shirt was torn
open at the neck, wherein the veins were distended from wrath and
excitement. He gave one quick, shifting glance at Harvey and said
abruptly, “All right. Get below now and tell Joe to give you breakfast.”
Harvey went below.
Captain Scroop turned angrily upon the mate.
“Who got him aboard?” he asked.
“Jenkins—who do you suppose?”
Captain Scroop’s face darkened, and he shook a clenched fist in the
direction of Baltimore.
“Won’t he never tell the truth, nohow?” he exclaimed. “Lied to me last
night, up and down. Twenty-five years old, or near that, was what he
swore. Haven’t I told him not to get these boys? That’s a kid—if he’s
seventeen he’s doin’ better’n I think. He’s got to go, though. I’ll put
him through, now. But wait till we get back. Won’t I settle with
somebody? They’ll have the law on us some day.”
“Pooh! You’ve said all that a million times,” replied the mate, coolly.
“What’s the odds? Aren’t we taking chances, every trip we make? Haven’t
we had boys before? Look at the lot of ’em we’ve had from New York.
What’s it to us? Leave Haley to work it out. And don’t you go to getting
down on Artie Jenkins. He knows his lay. He wouldn’t have shipped this
fellow unless he knew it was all right. He’s no fonder of trouble than we
are.”
Jack Harvey, the innocent subject of the foregoing remarks, was, in the
meantime, getting into a better frame of mind. There was no great fault,
surely, to be found with the grub aboard the schooner. Nothing that he
had ever cooked and eaten at his camp by the shore of Samoset Bay tasted
better than the corn flap-jacks handed out from the galley by the boy,
Joe. Smeared with a substance, greasy and yellow, but that never was nor
ever could be suspected of being butter, and sticky with a blackish
liquid that was sweet, like molasses, they were still appetizing to a
hungry youth who had never known the qualms of sea-sickness. A muddy
compound, called by extreme courtesy coffee, warmed Harvey to the marrow
and put heart in him. A few slices of fried bacon tasted better than the
best meal he could have had aboard the ocean liner.
Eating heartily, despite his disappointment to find himself forsaken by
Mr. Jenkins, Harvey essayed to draw the boy, Joe, into conversation; but
the latter was sullen, and chary of his words.
Would Jenkins surely be down by the next vessel? The boy nodded, somewhat
blankly. He guessed so. Where would they begin fishing, and how? Harvey
would see, later. And so on. There was clearly little to be gotten from
him.
Once there came down into the cabin the same, odd individual who had sat,
huddled in the cabin, smoking, the afternoon before. He got a dish of the
flap-jacks and a pail of the coffee, and started out again. Harvey fired
a question at him, as the man waited a moment to receive his grub.
“How do we fish, down the bay, anyway?” asked Harvey.
The man turned a little, stared at Harvey in a surly manner for a moment,
and then—apparently not all in sympathy with methods aboard the schooner
and in the trade generally—answered, “Hmph! You breaks yer back at a
bloody winder.” And with this somewhat enigmatical reply, went about his
business.
“Say,” said Harvey, turning to the boy, once more, “what’s a winder?”
“Why, it’s a—a—winder,” responded the boy.
“That’s just what I thought,” said Harvey, smiling in spite of his
perplexity. “And what’s it for?”
“You get oysters with it,” replied the boy. “You heaves the dredge
overboard, and you winds it in again.”
“Oh, I see,” said Harvey, enlightened by this lucid explanation. “It’s a
sort of windlass, eh?”
Joe nodded.
“Hard work?” continued Harvey.
“Naw—easy.”
But Harvey had his misgivings. And again he comforted himself with the
thought, at worst, the cruise would be over and done in a month.
“I guess I’m good for that,” he muttered; and went out on deck again.
The schooner’s course had been changed a little, and they were now
sailing almost directly south, down Chesapeake bay. The schooner was no
longer winged out, but had both booms off to port, getting the wind on
the quarter. Fore-staysail and jib and main gaff top-sail, as well, were
set, and the old craft was swinging southward at a fair clip. The wind
had begun to increase.
This was action after Harvey’s own heart, and he walked forward, toward
the gruff sailor, who was stationed near the forecastle. He observed, as
he advanced, that there was still another man forward by the jibs; and
that these two sailors, the captain and mate and the boy, Joe, were
apparently the only ones aboard the vessel, besides himself.
Harvey glanced at the man forward. He was almost dwarfish in stature,
thick-set, with unusually broad shoulders. Clearly, this was not the man
that Harvey had seen asleep, amid the bundle of blankets, in the cabin.
Harvey had not seen the face of the sleeper, but he had noted once, when
the man had stirred, that he was a tall man; that the figure stretched
out at length took up an unusual amount of room.
It flashed over Harvey that the man he had seen asleep in the cabin, the
night before, was missing from there now. Harvey was certain he had not
seen him, as he sat eating. To make sure, he went back and looked. The
man was not there.
“That’s odd,” said Harvey to himself, as he came on deck again. “I wonder
if they’ve lugged him down into the forecastle, too. They must have done
it in the night. By jimminy! I wonder how many they’ve got stowed away
down there, anyway.”
Somewhat startled at the idea that there might be other men held there,
and curious to see for himself, Harvey approached the companion. As he
did so, the surly seaman barred his way.
“Keep out ’er there,” he said, roughly. “You can’t go below now. Them’s
my orders.”
Harvey stepped back, in surprise. There was a mystery to the forecastle,
then, sure enough. He hazarded one question:
“What’s the matter? What’s down there?”
The man made no reply.
Harvey went forward to where the other man stood.
“Say, what’s there to do aboard here?” he asked.
The fellow turned and eyed Harvey for a moment, curiously.
“Nothin’ now,” he replied, finally. “Nothin’ till we get down the bay. We
all takes it easy like, till then.”
But further than this, he, too, became uncommunicative when Harvey
questioned him about the cruise. It was discouraging, and Harvey gave it
up. He seemed likely to have little companionship, if any, aboard the
schooner, and the thought was not pleasing. Again he wondered at the
strange disappearance of Mr. Jenkins, and hoped it might be true that the
young man would rejoin them down the bay.
The day passed somewhat monotonously for the most part. The schooner was
holding an almost straight course down the bay, along the western shore.
Harvey, having an eye for safety, noted that the coast was almost
unbroken for miles and miles, affording no harbour in case of storm. He
spoke of it once to the sailor by the forecastle.
“Plenty of harbours down below,” replied the man. “We’re goin’ well;
reckon we’ll lie in the Patuxent tonight. There’s harbour enough for
you.”
It was a positive relief to Harvey when, some time in the afternoon, it
came on to blow very fresh, and the foresail and mainsail were both
reefed. He lent a hand at that, tieing in reef points with the other two.
They seemed surprised that he knew how to do it.
But, with the freshening of the wind, it altered its direction and blew
up finally, towards evening, from the eastward; so that they made slower
progress, running now on the wind, close-hauled. Rain began falling at
twilight, and a bitter chill crept into the air. Harvey thought of the
oil-skins he had intended buying in Baltimore, and wished he had them.
There was nothing for him to do on deck now, however, and he gladly went
below.
He ate his supper alone, for all hands were on deck. The schooner pitched
and thrashed about in the short, rough seas. It was gloomy in the dimly
lighted cabin, and the boy Joe, at work in the galley, positively
declined to enter into conversation. Jack Harvey, left to himself,
mindful of his strange situation, of the mysterious forecastle with its
imprisoned men, and depressed by the wretched night, didn’t dare admit to
himself how much he wished himself ashore. The confinement of the cabin
made him drowsy, not long after he had eaten, and he was glad enough to
roll up in a blanket on one of the bunks and go off to sleep.
While he slept, the schooner thrashed its way in past a light-house on a
point of land on the western shore, and headed up into the mouth of a
broad, deep river. They sailed into this for something like half a mile,
Scroop at the wheel, and the mate and two seamen forward, peering ahead
through the rain.
Presently the mate rushed aft.
“There she lies,” he said, pointing, as he spoke, to where a lantern
gleamed in the fore-mast shrouds of a vessel at anchor.
“I see her,” responded Scroop.
The old schooner, under the guiding hand of Scroop, rounded to and came
up into the wind a few rods astern of the other vessel. And now, lying
astern, the light from the other’s cabin shone so that the forms of three
men could be distinguished vaguely, standing on the deck. The schooner’s
anchor went down, the foresail was dropped, and, the jibs having already
been taken in, the craft was soon lying snug, with her mainsail hauled
flat aft, to steady her. A small boat was launched from the deck, and
made fast alongside.
Mr. Blake, mate, pointing toward the cabin, inquired briefly, “Take him
first?”
“No,” said Scroop. “Clear out the forecastle. He’ll make a fuss, I
reckon. When we drop him, I want to get out and leave him to Haley.”
Advancing hastily across the deck, the four men, captain and mate and the
two sailors, disappeared into the forecastle. They reappeared shortly,
bearing an unconscious burden between them, much as they would have
carried a sack of potatoes; which burden, however, showed some sign of
animation as the rain fell upon it, and muttered something
unintelligible. They deposited the burden in the bottom of the small
boat.
Another disappearance into the forecastle, and a repetition of the
performance; another and similar burden being laid alongside the first in
the boat.
Then five men emerged from the forecastle, the fifth man walking upright,
held fast by the others. It was the man that Harvey had seen struggling
with the two sailors that morning. But he went along quietly now, the
reason being apparent in the words of Scroop.
“You go along or you go overboard,” he said. “The first yip out of you
and you get that belayin’ pin in the head.”
The boat, with its conscious and unconscious cargo, rowed by the two
sailors and guided by Scroop in the stem, put away from the schooner and
was soon alongside the other vessel.
“Hello,” said a voice.
“Hello, Haley.”
“How many?”
“Three here and one to come; good men, too—sailors, every one of ’em.”
A snort of incredulity from the man on deck.
“Let you tell it!” he exclaimed. “I’m in luck if there’s one of ’em that
hasn’t been selling ribbon over a counter. Well, fetch ’em on.”
A hatch-way forward received the three men; a short, thick-necked, burly
individual—the same being Hamilton Haley of the bug-eye Brandt—eying them
with evident suspicion as they were taken below. After which, the two
worthy captains repaired together to the cabin of the bug-eye, and
partook of something in the way of refreshment, which was followed by the
transfer of forty dollars in greasy bills, from a chest in the cabin to
the wallet of Captain Scroop.
“Dredging good?” inquires Scroop.
“Not much. Lost a man day before yesterday—took sick and died. Went
overboard in the chop, down below, and I couldn’t get him.”
“Wasn’t near time for his paying off, eh?” suggests Scroop, leering
skeptically.
“Never you mind what it was near. It couldn’t be helped, and the mate
will swear to it.”
This asserted by Haley, red of face, wrathful of manner, and bringing a
heavy fist down hard on the chest.
Some time later, Jack Harvey awoke suddenly from sound sleep. Someone was
shaking him. Dazed and hardly conscious of where he was, he recognized
the mate.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
The mate shook him again.
“Get up!” he said. “Get up. We’re going to row ashore. Hurry now, jump
into your boots and coat.”
Harvey, blinking and drowsy, did as he was ordered. Escorted by the mate,
he went out into the drizzle on deck. It was almost like an unpleasant
night-mare, the act of stumbling down into the boat, the short, pitching
ride in the rainy night. Then, all at once, the side of the other vessel
loomed up. Another moment, Harvey found himself lifted roughly aboard,
and, before he knew hardly what had happened, the rowboat was going away
and leaving him.
“Here!” he cried, thoroughly frightened. “What are you doing? What are
you leaving me here for? This isn’t ashore. Here, you, keep your hands
off me.”
But there was no hope for Jack Harvey. In the grasp of two stalwart
sailors, seeing in a flash the truth of what had befallen him, knowing,
all too late, that he had been tricked and trapped aboard a strange
vessel, he found himself dragged across the deck. He was half carried,
half thrown down the companion-way. He found himself in a stuffy,
ill-smelling forecastle, not much bigger than a good sized dog-kennel. It
was already crowded with men; but there, by lying at close quarters with
this forsaken lot of humanity, he might sleep out the rest of the night,
if he could.
And thus Jack Harvey was to begin his adventures aboard Hamilton Haley’s
bug-eye. Nor would it matter, as he should find, that the satchel
containing the articles which had occasioned so much hilarity on the part
of young Mr. Jenkins, had been left behind, in the confusion. Jack Harvey
surely would not need them aboard the Z. B. Brandt.