FLIGHT AND DISASTER
When Jack Harvey awoke, the next morning, it was in a confused state of
mind that he turned out of his bunk. The reason for this was at once
apparent. A heavy south-easter was on, and a rough sea was tumbling in
between the two projections of land that marked the entrance to the river
from the bay—Drum Point and Hog Point. Lines of white breakers were
foaming and crashing about the light-house.
The bug-eye, Brandt, lying well out in the river, and exposed to the sea,
had been tossing about violently, although Haley had given the
anchor-rode good scope, in order to ease the strain. The unconscious
sleepers in the forecastle had been thrown about against the hard wooden
sides of the bunks in which they lay; and Harvey found himself bruised
and lame. He put his head out of the companion-way just as a sea sprayed
over the vessel, wetting him. He rubbed the salt water from his eyes and
hair, and looked out into the bay beyond.
It was certainly rough, outside. As far as he could see, the broad
expanse of water was rioting in high frolic. Seas leaped and tumbled in
wild confusion. The sharp flaws of the south-easter whipped the white
caps from the curling breakers and sent the scud and spindrift flying.
Far out, a few stray vessels, close reefed and rolling heavily as they
ran, were making for the harbour; the ends of their lean booms, with
sails tied in, looked like bare poles. Jack Harvey noted one thing, with
especial satisfaction. Not a single craft in all the harbour fleet was
going out, or making any preparation therefor. Harvey gave a sigh of
relief, as he went below again.
“Tom,” he said, as he stepped to his comrade’s bunk and roused him, “Tom,
we’re in luck. It’s blowing a gale outside. No dredging to-day. Hooray!”
Tom Edwards sat up, and groaned.
“Oh, but I’m lame,” he said. “What with that tough day’s work, yesterday,
and this confounded slatting about, I’m just about done for. Haley’ll
kill us yet, if we don’t get away.”
Tom Edwards, erstwhile travelling man and frequenter of good hotels,
stepped stiffly out on to the floor and proceeded to rub his arms and
joints, to limber them up.
“Jack,” he said, “I’m sorry now that you didn’t take the chance up the
river, that night, and swim for it. You’d have got away, and they’d be
after us all by this time. Jack, I tell you, we’ve got to get out of here
pretty soon, or there’ll be no Tom Edwards left to go anywhere. I can’t
stand this much longer.”
Harvey stepped to the side of his friend, and whispered softly.
“Neither can I, Tom,” he answered, “and what’s more, I don’t intend to.
We’ll get away. We’ll escape.”
To their surprise, the conversation was interrupted by the sharp call of
the mate for them to hustle out and help get the bug-eye under weigh.
They looked at each other in astonishment, for one moment. Then Harvey
reassured his friend.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We can’t be going out. Haley wants a snugger
berth. We’re getting too much of the sweep here.”
Harvey’s conjecture proved correct. They were lying at a bad anchorage
for a south-easter, and Haley, to his chagrin, had observed the signs of
wind and sky and knew the weather was growing heavier instead of
clearing.
The anchor was hove short and brought up to the bow, while a jib and the
main-sail, both reefed, were set. The Brandt, with Haley at the wheel,
stood in nearer to the southern shore of the river, within a quarter of a
mile of the bank. The anchor went down again, and sails were once more
made snug.
They lay more comfortably here, in the bight of the southern river bank.
But it was a tantalizing sight to the prisoners on the Brandt—the near
and friendly looking shore, with an occasional house in the distance, the
smoke of hearths blown from the chimney tops, and now and then a
traveller going on up a country road.
And to what mad act Jack Harvey might have been wrought, could he have
seen, in his mind’s eye, the interior of one of these same houses, and a
certain one of these hearths, encircled by a certain group of boys, is
beyond all conjecture. But he only gazed longingly in ashore, and wished
he were there.
There was more definiteness to his thoughts when, an hour or two later,
following the wretched breakfast served—all the meaner and more wretched
because there was no work to be gotten out of the crew for the day—he saw
Haley and the mate launch the small skiff, bring it alongside and get in
and row away.
Not that there was any immediate purpose of escape in his mind. For, just
before his departure, Haley had designated where he was going—a small
shed just back from shore was his object, where a man kept some trifling
supplies that he wanted.
“And I’ll be in sight of this vessel from start to finish,” Haley had
added, and winked significantly at Jim Adams.
But the small boat and its possibilities was imprinted on Harvey’s brain
as he watched it toss flimsily about, while the captain and mate sculled
ashore. He had thought of it before, but no good opportunity had offered.
There had been chances, to be sure, down along the marshy intricacies of
the eastern shore. Once, when they had lain in Honga river over night,
inside Middle Hooper island, he had thought strongly of rousing Tom
Edwards and attempting flight to shore. But the country around had been
too forbidding. Wild salt marshes bordered the eastern coast of Hooper’s,
and across on the land to the east it was so shelterless, with salt
marshes on shore and a great fresh water marsh inland, that he had given
over the project for the time.
Occasionally, on a Saturday night, when the bug-eye lay in the Patuxent,
it was the habit of Haley and Jim Adams to take the skiff and go ashore.
Sometimes they spent the night, and were back again Sunday morning.
Sometimes they passed the greater part of Sunday back inland. There lay
Harvey’s hope. Yet he hardly knew how to work out a plan of escape. To
attempt to make sail on the bug-eye and run her either to shore or up the
bay, would, he discovered, be useless. It would involve making a prisoner
of the cook and the man, Jeff, and, possibly, Sam Black, also; though
Harvey looked for no great interference from him.
The cook and the sailor, Jeff, he found, had a certain dogged loyalty to
Haley. The former surely would stand by the vessel under all
circumstances; the latter, it was certain, would not compromise himself
with the authorities of the state by any attempt to take possession of
the craft in Haley’s absence.
But, with the mate and Haley away, there must be some means, surely, of
gaining one of the shores of the river. In milder weather, Harvey would
have thought nothing of swimming the distance, even of a mile, from the
middle of the wide part of the river; but the weather and the icy cold
water precluded that way of flight now. At least, Harvey did not care to
venture it, especially as, once on land, he would know not where to seek
shelter; for he knew that, bound by many mutual ties of interest, the
dredgers and the settlers along shore—unless the latter had oyster beds
to be robbed—worked for each other’s interests.
“Tom,” said Harvey, quietly, indicating the skiff with a glance, “that’s
the way you and I are going ashore one of these nights, and take our
chances when we get there. And,” he added, eagerly, “isn’t it lucky you
warned me to hide that money? That will help us out, when we do escape.”
Tom Edwards glanced at the bobbing skiff, that looked to his eyes about
as substantial as a child’s toy boat, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll try it, if we get the chance,” he said, somewhat dubiously; “but I
don’t like the looks of it.”
Harvey laughed. “You’re a landsmen, sure enough,” he said. “Why, that’s
an able little boat as a man might want, in a river like this. Look how
nicely it rides the waves.”
“Oh, I’d go on a bunch of shingles, if it would only take me out of
this,” exclaimed Tom Edwards—“that is, I think I would now. But you’ll
have to run the thing. I’ll confess, I don’t know one end of a boat from
another, except what that brute, Jim Adams, has ground into me.”
Harvey’s hopes, which had been raised by the shifting of the anchorage of
the vessel nearer land, were dashed late that afternoon, with the return
of Haley and the mate. Rain mixed with sleet poured down in torrents, and
drove laterally across the vessel. It was as much as one could do to keep
his footing on the slippery deck, even with one hand clutching a rope.
The sleet stung as it struck Harvey’s face, and made it smart as though
from a volley of small pebbles. He was only glad to seek shelter below,
even in the dreary forecastle. He learned, that night, how all
circumstances are relatively good or harsh. From the boisterous night
outside, the forecastle of the Brandt was a refuge that seemed almost
cheery.
The next morning, it was apparent that the strength of the storm was
wearing away. Moreover, there was a sudden peculiar change in the
weather. The wind had swung around more to the southward; and, with that,
there had come a decided moderation of the temperature. But the change
was of no immediate advantage to Haley, for there rolled in a heavy fog,
and a dense mist also rose up from the surface of the river.
Again Haley gave the order to make sail and raise the anchor. Once more
the bug-eye got under weigh, stood out toward the middle of the river and
cast anchor again, just beyond the path of any passing steamer. Captain
Haley, ever watchful, ever suspicious, was taking no chances. His rule
was invariable, in any kind of smooth water—to lie for the night beyond
swimming distance from shore. At least, to offer little chance for that.
He had known desperate, venturesome men to attempt it, even then.
He was in a bad humour, was Haley, that day. There was nothing to eat,
for the crew, but the bread, or dough, fried, and a few scraps of pork
mixed with it. It was Saturday, and, about the middle of the afternoon,
he and Jim Adams took the skiff again and went ashore. They were out of
sight in the fog before they had gone two rods, but the wind sufficed to
give them their direction for the distance they had to go.
“Tom,” said Jack Harvey that night, as they turned in, “keep your shoes
on, and don’t go to sleep.”
Tom Edwards looked at his young companion, in surprise.
“We’ve got a chance,” explained Harvey, “as good as we’ll ever get,
perhaps. We’ve got to break away from here some time. The sooner the
better.”
“In this beastly fog?” interrupted Tom Edwards.
“Of course,” replied Harvey. “It’s just what we want. The wind’s
southerly and will take us across to the Drum Point shore. We can’t help
hitting that, or Solomon’s Island. We’ll have the chance, too. I heard
Jim Adams say we’d put out of here early to-morrow morning, if the fog
lifts. Haley’s lost so much time, he won’t stay ashore Sunday. They’ll be
back with the skiff late to-night, or toward morning. We’ll give them
just time to go off to sleep and then make a try for it.”
The crisis thus suddenly facing Tom Edwards, he pulled himself together.
“Good for you!” he said. “I’ll go, if we have to row across the
Chesapeake. Anybody with us?”
“Not a soul,” said Harvey. “The skiff will hold only us two. And we
can do it better alone. Now you sit up first, will you, and let me
get two hours sleep, and then you wake me and I’ll keep watch,
because—because—”
Tom Edwards laughed good-naturedly.
“I know,” he said. “You’re afraid that I’d fall asleep later on, and we’d
miss the chance.”
“Well,—well,” stammered Harvey, “you are an awful sound sleeper when you
get a-going, you know. I didn’t mean anything—”
“You’re all right,” exclaimed Tom Edwards, softly, but with heartiness.
“You turn in. Let me have your watch. I’ll wake you, say, at eleven.”
Jack Harvey’s nerves were good, and he was not one to worry over coming
events. He turned in, and, in ten minutes, was sound asleep. Tom Edwards,
sitting uncomfortably in his bunk, counted the minutes as they dragged
away, drearily. It was a lonesome vigil, with only the sleeping crew for
company. He started up now and again, as some sound in the night outside
seemed to his active fancy a warning of the returning skiff.
Ten o’clock came, and then eleven; he arose and awakened Harvey.
“Too bad, old chap,” he said, “but it’s your turn.”
Harvey roused and turned out, sleepily.
“Tom,” he said, “I had the queerest dream. I dreamed we were chasing that
fellow, Jenkins, through miles of swamps, and every time we’d get near
him, he’d turn into Henry Burns and laugh at us. Then we’d see him again
a little way ahead.”
“You’re thinking of that chap you thought you saw through the telescope,
eh,” suggested Tom Edwards.
“He’s on my mind sure enough,” replied Harvey. “I can’t quite make it
out, though, whether I saw him or not.”
Tom Edwards rolled into his bunk, and Harvey, stretching and yawning,
began his watch. He didn’t dare tell Tom Edwards till long afterward; but
he went off soundly to sleep once, some time later, and woke with a
fearful start. What if he had been the one, after all, to upset their
plans by his carelessness!
He stole cautiously out on deck, and tip-toed aft. He breathed a sigh of
relief when there was no sign of the skiff. He hurried back to the
forecastle and struck a match, to read the face of his watch. It was
half-past twelve o’clock. He dared not trust himself, then, to return to
his bunk, but crouched down at the foot of the companion ladder, with the
sting of the night air in his face.
Suddenly a steady, creaking sound came to his ears. He started up and
crawled to the top of the ladder. It was the sound of an oar. Then his
heart gave a bound, as he heard voices through the fog.
“There she lies,” came the words in the voice of the mate. “I tells you,
Mister Haley, I’s pretty extra good on findin’ my way ’bout this river.
We’re goin’ to get a good day, all right, too. This wind be shiftin’
right; swingin’ round with the sun to the west by mornin’, sure’s you
born.”
They came indistinctly into view of the boy, as he crouched in the
companion-way, just peering over so he could see across the deck. The
skiff scraped alongside. The two men sprang out, shaking the fog and wet
from their coats. Harvey, still as though frozen to the spot, noted with
joy that they did not fetch the skiff aboard, but made the painter fast
near the stern. They hurried below, and a light gleamed in the cabin. It
burned a few minutes, only. Then the vessel was in darkness again, save
for the lantern in the foremast shroud, to warn any chance craft where
they lay.
Harvey waited. The minutes seemed like hours. Fifteen minutes were ticked
off by his silver time-piece; then fifteen more. It was a quarter past
one o’clock when he stole back, shivering, and awoke Tom Edwards.
“Sh-h-h!” he warned. “Don’t speak. They’re here; turned in half an hour
ago. Come on.”
They had no belongings to gather up; only their coats to button about
them. They crept out on deck and stood for a moment, waiting and
listening. There was no sound aboard the bug-eye. They darted quickly
aft. Tom Edwards stepped nervously into the little skiff, Harvey
following. Harvey cast off, took his seat astern, pushed away and began
sculling.
Two rods off from the bug-eye, they could discern the thin lines of its
masts and a dull blur that was its hull. Harvey gave a little murmur of
exultation, and paused in his sculling. But the next moment he uttered a
cry of surprise and alarm. He rose from his seat, and peered anxiously
through the fog.
“What’s the matter? What is it, Jack?” asked Tom Edwards, almost
breathless.
“Something’s coming!” exclaimed Harvey. “Don’t you hear that rushing
sound? Oh, hang this fog! If it would only lift a little.”
Suddenly Harvey dropped to his seat and began plying the single oar in
the scull-hole, with desperation. Then he sprang up again and gave a
warning call as loud as he dared.
It was too late. Out of the fog and mist there rushed a craft—so swiftly
that it was upon them before they had half seen it. It was a long, narrow
canoe, with full sail set, the wind on its quarter, flying for the mouth
of the river. Harvey had one fleeting glimpse of a man in the stern of
the craft, springing up and uttering an exclamation of rage and fright.
Then Harvey jumped from his own seat, literally tumbling over Tom
Edwards.
The man at the stern of the fleeing canoe had jammed the helm hard down,
at his first sight of the little skiff. But he could not clear it wholly.
There was a crash and a splintering of wood; the skiff half upset, and
took in nearly half a barrel of water. The main boom of the canoe swept
across the skiff, knocking both its occupants into a heap.
The next thing they knew, the man at the stern of the canoe and another
by the foremast were standing up, uttering maledictions upon the
unfortunate victims of the collision.
“Help us! Don’t leave us! We’re sinking!” called Harvey, in desperation,
as the canoe kept on its course. The only answer was a wrathful shake of
his fist from the skipper of the canoe. Another moment, and it was gone.
Harvey and his companion, ankle-deep in water, scrambled up, and Harvey
turned anxiously to the stern of the skiff. There was a hole there, and
the boat seemed to be sinking under them. They stripped off their outer
jackets, prepared to swim for their lives. But Harvey quickly reassured
his comrade.
“It isn’t coming in very fast,” he said. “We can get back to the bug-eye,
if we work lively. You take your hat and bail. I’ll jump her all I can.”
He gave a cry of dismay as he seized the oar, which was floating in the
bottom of the skiff. The blow from the canoe had broken half the blade
away. It was still of some use, but he could not make fast time with it.
Heartbroken and fearful of what awaited them, they turned the skiff in
the direction whence the wind was blowing, and toiled with desperate
energy. The water leaked steadily into the little craft, but Tom Edwards
dashed it out by hat-fulls, as he had never worked in all his life—not
even at the dredges under the eye of Jim Adams.
The bug-eye came more plainly into view. They neared it with quaking
hearts. Already they could seem to hear the torrent of imprecation that
awaited them from Haley and the mate, and could feel the hurt and pain of
“dredging fleet law.”
To their amazement, silence reigned aboard the vessel. That silence was
unbroken as they struggled up alongside. With not a sound aboard, they
grasped the foot of a shroud and Harvey sprang noiselessly to the deck.
Tom Edwards followed. Harvey took a quick turn with the painter. The half
submerged skiff was made fast, where it had been before.
They fled along the deck, and down into the forecastle, on the wings of
fear. Wet and exhausted, they tumbled into their bunks. It was some
moments before either of them could find breath to speak.
“Oh, the brutes!” murmured Tom Edwards, after a time. “How could any
human being do a thing like that? They left us to drown, Jack, and didn’t
care.”
“Of course they did,” answered Harvey, “and good reason. I know why.
Don’t you? Did you see the load they had aboard? They’d been lifting an
oyster dump. Some fellow’ll find his week’s tonging of oysters gone, when
he looks for them. They were poachers. They’d have killed us in a minute
if we’d stood between them and getting away. Cheer up, old Tom. We’re in
the greatest luck we’ve ever been in all our lives. Is your back cold?
Well, how would it feel, think, if Haley had caught us? Did you ever hear
Sam Black tell how he’s seen men rope’s-ended for trying to run away?
Wait till Haley sees that skiff in the morning. You’ll be glad you’re
alive. Never mind. We’ll escape yet. I’m going to sleep when I get these
boots off.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, standing by the wheel, some hours later, when the
sun had risen and the fog was lifting over the river, was not a pleasing
object to behold. What he had to say about poachers and their ways and
habits and carelessness would have warmed the water under the bug-eye, if
it hadn’t been in the dead of winter. To have heard his outburst of
indignation, over the evils of poaching and night sailing, would almost
have convinced a listener that he was the most averse to that habit of
any man in Chesapeake Bay. Also he berated Jim Adams, as much as he
thought that gentleman would stand, for not bringing the skiff aboard.
Haley bargained for a new skiff that day, and gave Jim Adams another
dressing down,—and Jim Adams took it out of the crew, for which Harvey
and Tom Edwards were sorry—although they got their share. And so their
night adventure passed into the history of the cruise; and there even
came a time, long afterward, when the two laughed at it—that is, when
they thought of Haley. The remembrance of their own fright remained, to
dream of, for many a night.
Two days afterward, there happened one of those sudden, mysterious
changes that told of the comradeship of a certain clique of the dredging
captains, and of their facility for dodging trouble.
Down along the western shore a strange craft sailed up, and Haley took a
man aboard from it; though not without some warm words with the strange
captain. He seemed not to welcome the recruit. But he took him, and
exchanged one of his own crew, the sailor, Sam Black, for the man. This
latter recruit was a swarthy man, tall and muscular. His face was
discoloured, as though by blows; and a long scar, freshly made, showed on
the back of one hand and wrist. He obeyed Haley’s and the mate’s orders
sullenly. Why he was aboard, none knew except the mate and captain. But
it was plain enough, the captain of the other craft had wanted him out of
the way.