ESCAPE AT LAST
The old Warren homestead, alight with many lamps from parlour to kitchen,
presented a cheery and genial aspect to whoever might be passing by along
the road, on the night of December 24. The shades, half drawn in the
front room, revealed the glow of a big hearth fire, reddening the light
of the lamps, and adding its cheer and welcome to the general atmosphere
of comfort within. From the kitchen there came the sound of banjos
tinkling, and the laughter from a merry company of coloured servants, the
Christmas eve guests of Jim and Mammy Stevens. The whole house, in fact,
was keeping holiday.
But if the appearance, viewed from the exterior, was one of brightness
and Christmas warmth, it was doubly so within. The large room, that
fronted on the bay and commanded a view from its windows of Drum Point
lighthouse and a sweep of the river, was a comfortably furnished,
old-fashioned affair; with quaint, polished furniture; mirrors that
reflected the dancing fire-light; a polished oak floor that shone almost
as bright as the mirrors; and, in one corner, a tall clock, that ticked
away in dignified and respectable fashion, as befitting a servant that
had belonged to the Warren family for a hundred years, and had descended,
as a precious heirloom, from father to son.
From the upper panelling of the walls there hung, in festoons, some
trailing vines, ornamented with bright berries, gathered from the woods
back on the farm; and sprigs of holly also decorated the mirrors and a
few portraits of one-time members of the household.
Edward Warren, stretched comfortably before the fire in a big chair,
gazed about the room approvingly, and then at his younger companions.
“Well,” he exclaimed, heartily, “you’ve saved me from spending a dull
Christmas, sure enough. What with the folks away, I don’t know what I’d
have done without you. Say, can’t you young fellows give us a song? We
don’t want to let them make all the noise out in the kitchen.”
“Go ahead on Old Black Joe, Henry,” said George Warren. “We’ll all join
in.”
So Henry Burns led off on the plantation melody, and the brothers joined
in with a will. Edward Warren came in with a fine bass effect, and
altogether they did Old Black Joe in a way that almost made the faces in
the oil paintings on the wall smile.
Then, on the second verse, the banjos in the kitchen, and a guitar that
had been added to the group, took up the refrain, and all the darkey
melody in that part of the house concentrated itself on the same tune. So
that the old house fairly rang from one end to the other with the
plantation music, and the sounds floated off on the crisp night air far
and around.
In the midst of which, it was suddenly discovered by the others that
young Joe had disappeared from the front room, and a hurried search was
begun for the missing youth. It resulted in his discovery, in a pantry
off the dining-room, gloating over the contents of the Christmas box that
had been sent from home to the brothers. From this young Joe had
abstracted a generous slice of nut cake, which was rapidly disappearing
down his throat.
Howls of wrath from George and Arthur Warren were united with yells of
dismay from Young Joe, as he was dragged from his hiding place, still
holding a piece of the cake in his hand, loth even then to part with the
evidence of his guilt.
“Ow, wow!” yelled George Warren. “Pilfering from to-morrow’s feast, are
you, Joey? Say, what’ll we do with him, Arthur?”
“Invite him out into the kitchen and make him eat some of those raw
oysters that Mammy Stevens has to stuff to-morrow’s turkey,” replied
Arthur Warren, who always had some original idea in a matter of this
kind.
Young Joe gave another howl of dismay, and made a bolt for a side door
that led out into the yard. The mere thought of raw oysters caused him to
drop the slice of cake and consider nothing but flight. The brothers and
Henry Warren darted after him, but he slipped the catch of the door,
opened it—and, with head down, butted all unexpectedly into a thick,
short, burly man, who had been about to knock for admittance at the very
moment.
The result was, that the stranger lost his balance and fell off the
stoop, rolling over and over on the ground. He was unhurt, for he sprang
up quickly, shook his fist at the surprised youth, and roared out in a
hoarse sea voice.
“Confound you, for a clumsy, butting young lubber!” he cried, rubbing the
pit of his stomach, and glaring at Young Joe. “What kind of a way is that
to treat folks as comes to your door? Ain’t you got eyes? If you has ’em,
why doesn’t you use ’em, and not be a ramming heads into other folks’s
stomachs?”
The man, in his wrath and excitement, spoke as though there had been
several Young Joes and at least a half dozen of himself, engaged in a
most extraordinary encounter—all of which did not tend to abate the mirth
of Young Joe and his companions, who also had caught a glimpse of the man
rolling over on the lawn.
“He has a habit of doing that,” spoke up Henry Burns, in a quiet, serious
tone. “We haven’t been able to break him of it ever since he was a kid.
We keep him chained up most of the time, but he just got loose.”
The man, flushing redder, turned an angry eye on Henry Burns.
“Who asked you what was the matter?” he demanded. “You’d get chained up,
if I had you out aboard. You wouldn’t be talking so smart to folks as has
their stomachs run into by a crazy, June-bug booby of a boy. I reckon the
end of a jib halliard would teach you some manners.”
The man’s reply surprised Henry Burns, and interested him. He looked at
the squat, chunky figure, the big, round head with its shock of reddish
hair, and the dull gray eyes that glinted angrily at him. His retort was,
on its part, a surprise to the man.
“Do you knock your crew down?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact way, as
though he had been merely inquiring the time of day.
The stranger was too taken aback for a moment to reply. It was a new type
of boy to him—one who could put a query of that kind as calmly and
dispassionately as though he were a lawyer, trained to keep his temper.
Then the man advanced, with hand raised threateningly.
“Get out of my way, you young rascals!” he said. “Where’s the man as
lives in this ere house? His name’s Warren, isn’t it—where is he?”
Edward Warren, who had remained in the background, amused at the unusual
situation, now stepped to the door and inquired what the man wanted.
“I want to do some trade,” replied the man. “At least, that’s what I came
for, when that boy, he comes out at me like a crazy steer. I hear you
have some potatoes to sell. My name is Haley, and I’m lying off shore
there.”
He pointed with a jerk of his thumb out toward the river, evidently
intending to convey the idea—somewhat different from his words—that it
was his vessel, and not himself, that was “lying off shore.”
“Well,” answered Edward Warren, “it’s a time I don’t usually do business,
on Christmas eve, but since you’ve come up, I guess you can have them.
I’ve got two or three barrels in the cellar. Come on out.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, muttering a retort that Christmas eve was as good
a time for buying potatoes as any other, so far as he knew, so long as he
had a chance to come and get them, followed Edward Warren away. A third
man, who had remained in the background, went along with them. It was Jim
Adams, the mate.
The bargain was made, Haley saying that he would be back the day after
Christmas for the potatoes; whereupon he and the mate went on again up
the country road. Edward Warren returned to the house.
“That’s a rough customer, that man Haley,” he remarked, as he resumed his
seat by the fire. “He’s a specimen of the dredging captain that gives the
fleet a hard name.”
“The kind that knocks his men down,” remarked Henry Burns.
“That seems to have made a great impression on your mind,” said Edward
Warren, turning to the boy. Henry Burns’s face was serious, and he spoke
with unusual demonstrativeness for him, for he doubled up his fist and
struck the arm of his chair with it.
“Ever since I saw that fellow knocked down,” he replied, “I’ve wanted to
tell one of those captains what I think of it. I’d have done it to-night,
if he hadn’t said he came to trade with you.”
Edward Warren laughed. “You could have told him anything you liked, for
all of me,” he said. “But you chaps better turn in pretty soon. We’re
going after rabbits, to-morrow forenoon, you know. Mammy Stevens makes a
rabbit saddle roast that beats turkey.”
“Great!” murmured Young Joe.
The darkness that enveloped the old Warren homestead, when, one by one,
its lights went out and the household sank into stillness, was illumined
by brilliant starlight in the heavens. It was a glorious Christmas eve,
clear, frosty, cold—just the night a traveller on the road, warmly
dressed and well fed, might enjoy to the utmost. The wind had died down
and the night was very still. The vessels in the Patuxent swung lazily
with the tide. Now and then the sound of an untiring banjo, or guitar or
accordion, or a snatch of song, came across the black water to those that
lay nearer the Solomon’s island shore. Across on the western shore, all
was still, save for the occasional barking of a dog in some farmyard.
The bug-eye Brandt, for the convenience of its owner in going up country
after some supplies, lay nearer the latter bank of the river, though with
the usual discretion in the matter of distance—greater even than
customary, following the escape of the mulatto seaman. There was no other
craft near by. All aboard were apparently asleep, and not even a light
showed in the fore-rigging, to warn others where she lay.
Down in the dingy forecastle, however, two persons were astir. They moved
about quietly, not to disturb the other sleepers, though the latter
slumbered heavily and would not be easily aroused.
“Well, Jack,” said the taller of the two, buttoning his coat and
proceeding to thrust his legs into a pair of oil-skin trousers, “this is
the night we celebrate, eh?”
Jack Harvey turned a face, set with determination, toward his companion,
and answered, huskily, “Tom, old man, I’m going ashore to-night, if I
have to swim for it. Celebrate! You bet I’m going to celebrate—and so are
you. We can do it, too. I’ve watched and watched, and it’s our chance.
Haley and Jim Adams both gone, and no one here to stop us.”
“Except the cook,” interrupted Tom Edwards.
“Let him try it!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, his face flushing angrily at the
mere suggestion. “Just let him try it! I tell you I’m going ashore
to-night, Tom Edwards, and there isn’t any George Haley in Maryland that
can stop me.”
Tom Edwards slapped the boy on the shoulder.
“That’s the way to look at it, when we once start,” he said. “My muscles
aren’t so soft, either, as when I came aboard. I guess I could do
something on a pinch. But he’s got a revolver, probably.”
Harvey shrugged his shoulders.
“He can’t stop us this time,” he said. “I tell you it’s Christmas eve,
and we’re in luck. Haley’s left us a Christmas present of that old float
and junks of fire-wood and odds and ends of stuff, in the hold; and we’ll
sail ashore on it like sliding down hill. Come on.”
They went cautiously out on deck.
“My! but it’s chilly,” muttered Tom Edwards, turning the collar of his
slicker up about his neck. “If we didn’t have these oil-skins we’d pretty
nearly freeze to death.”
“We’ll warm up when we get to work,” replied Harvey.
The two proceeded to the main hatch, through which the most of the
oysters were put into the hold, and lifted it a little. It was a huge
affair, and so heavy it took their united strength to stir it and drag it
away, so they could have access to the hold.
“We’ve got to have that lantern,” said Harvey, and he went and got the
one from the forecastle. Then he sprang down into the hold.
“I’ll pass the stuff up to you,” he said, “and you set it down on the
deck. But look out and don’t drop any.”
Hanging the lantern so he could see to work, Harvey presently passed a
piece of timber out to Tom Edwards. This was followed by several pieces
of planking, exceedingly heavy, bits of board and even some long sticks
of firewood—branches of oak that had been picked up by the crew down
along shore. It was all more or less soggy with the dampness of the hold;
some of it seemed to be completely soaked through. It nearly proved their
undoing.
Tom Edwards, disregarding Harvey’s admonition to wait till he could
assist in carrying the wood to the side of the vessel, started with a
stick of the timber. Of a sudden, a rotted edge of it crumbled and broke
away in his hands. The heavy stick slipped from his grasp and slammed
down upon the deck. The next moment Harvey leaped out on deck, in alarm.
“Tom, that made an awful racket!” he said, anxiously. “Listen. By Jove!
we’re in for it now. There’s somebody stirring—it’s in the cabin. Tom,
you get down into that hold quicker’n scat; and if Haley comes, you talk
to him, but don’t let him see you. I’ll take care of him.”
It was an odd situation, that the positions of man and boy should be
reversed at the crisis. But Tom Edwards was not the equal of Jack Harvey
in strength, and he knew it. Years of activity, at baseball, swimming,
yachting and the like, had developed Harvey into an athlete of no mean
proportions, as the muscles that played beneath his sweater denoted; Tom
Edwards had been flabby and easily winded when he came aboard the
dredger, and he had had little chance to gain strength with the bad food
that Haley provided. Now he obeyed Harvey, without a question. He sprang
into the hold, and Harvey darted back and hid behind the shadow of the
forecastle.
They were not much too soon, nor had Harvey been deceived in the sounds
he had heard. The cook, awakened by the noise, and mindful of the parting
injunction of Hamilton Haley that the vessel and crew were in his
keeping, stepped out of the companion and looked forward. In his right
hand he held Haley’s revolver.
He started, as his eye fell upon the mass of wood heaped at the edge of
the hatchway. He advanced quickly, holding his weapon ready. At the edge
of the hatchway, he stopped and listened. Then he aimed the revolver into
the lantern light and called out, “Here you, who’s down there? You’re
caught. I’ll shoot the first man that tries to escape.”
The answering voice of Tom Edwards came from the hold.
“I’m down here—Tom Edwards. I’ll come out, all right. Don’t shoot. I’m
wedged in here, though. I can’t be quick.”
“Well, the lubber!” exclaimed Haley, in surprise. “You’re the last one
I’d have expected—” He broke off and stooped, to peer into the hold.
The next moment, the cook felt himself thrown violently backwards on the
deck. The revolver was wrenched from his hand, and Jack Harvey stood over
him.
“Don’t you make any cry,” muttered Harvey, “or you’ll get hurt. Come on
out, Tom, I’ve got Mr. Haley.”
The cook, lifting himself to a sitting posture and gazing at the two in
astonishment, still sought to intimidate them.
“Don’t you go trying to escape,” he said. “You’ll get the worst of it.
Haley’ll make trouble, and you’ll be back here again inside of a week,
and you’ll get it worse than ever. Besides, you can’t get ashore on that
stuff.”
He changed his tone to a wheedling, mollifying one.
“Just you go back now, like good fellows,” he said, “and I’ll promise
Haley I won’t say a word about it. And I’ll promise you the best grub you
ever tasted, all the rest of the season. There won’t be anything too good
for you two.”
Harvey laughed softly.
“It’s no use,” he replied. “You’ll have to settle with Haley when he
finds us gone. I hope he takes it out of you, too, for the stuff you’ve
made us eat. Get up, now, and march aft.”
Haley, whimpering, threatening and begging by turns, obeyed orders. They
escorted him back to the cabin. In five minutes, Harvey had him tied up
as ship-shape and as securely as ever a captive was bound. They laid him
down on a bunk and left him.
With the revolver in their possession, there was no longer need of
caution or quietness. Boldly they worked away, with the stuff from the
hold, hitching it with bits of rope and making a raft of it alongside the
vessel. They laid a flooring of the stuff and Harvey stepped on to it. To
his chagrin, the raft sank under his weight.
“It’s water-soaked!” he exclaimed to Tom Edwards, as he scrambled aboard
again. “Well, we’ll lay a cross-flooring and see what that will do.”
They threw over the rest of the planks and wood, cross-wise, on the raft
they had made. Harvey again stepped on to it.
It was, alas, little better than before. The wood, rotten and water
soaked, had scarce sufficient buoyancy to float itself, let alone support
two of them. Of its own weight, it sank so that the upper tier of wood
floated clear of the lower.
Jack Harvey and Tom Edwards looked at each other, silently. Harvey’s face
was drawn with disappointment.
“Tom,” he cried, desperately, “I’ll take an axe and chop the old cabin of
the Brandt apart before I’ll give up. Come on, we mustn’t lost time.”
Tom Edwards, whose wits had been trained in years of successful business,
proved more resourceful.
“What’s the matter with using that hatch cover?” he said, pointing to it.
Harvey stopped short and gave a roar of delight. “Tom Edwards,” he cried,
“you’re a daisy. I’m a simple-minded, brainless, wooden-headed,
thick-skulled land-lubber. I never thought of that hatch, and there it
was all ready to use. Here we’ve been working like dogs, and that old
hatch will float us ashore like a ship. Come on. In with it.”
It cost them some effort, for the hatch was a big one. But it floated
buoyantly when they had dragged it overboard; and it scarcely sank at all
under Harvey’s weight; and it held him and Tom Edwards when the latter
had stepped cautiously off on to it. They made it fast alongside, with a
piece of rope cut from dredging gear. Then they ran joyously for the
cabin.
The cook met them with a flood of protestations, but they shut him up in
short order. With the lantern light, they helped themselves to the meagre
stores of the Brandt, and stuffed their pockets with biscuit and corn
bread, baked for Haley and the mate. They also took matches, and they
exchanged their ragged oil-skins for better ones. They had earned them
ten times over, and they were leaving without a penny of wages for all
the hard labour they had done.
“Say good-bye to Haley for me,” said Tom Edwards, pausing a moment before
the helpless captive. “And tell him I hope to meet him again some day.
And if I do, he’ll be sorry.”
They carried the cook into his galley, and shut him in. Then they found
an extra pair of oars, stepped aboard the inverted hatch, the finest
craft in all the world to them, and pushed for shore.
It was not easy, sculling the clumsy hatch, but Harvey made fair work of
it, after he had cut a scull-hole in the combing, with his knife; and Tom
Edwards aided by paddling on either side, making up with energy what he
lacked in skill. The work warmed them, and they threw off their oil-skin
coats.
The tide was running up the river and carried them some distance out of
the course they had tried to make; but they came in to land finally and
sprang out on shore. Harvey stooped and picked up a handful of the coarse
dirt and gravel, and handed it gravely to Tom Edwards.
“Merry Christmas, Tom Edwards,” he said. “It’s the real thing—the
shore—the dry land once more. Isn’t it bully?”
Tom Edwards threw his arms about his stalwart companion and fairly hugged
him.
“Harvey,” he said, “you’re a comrade worth having. You’ve stood by
through thick and thin, and you’ve lost chances to escape in order to
stand by me. I won’t forget it.”
Harvey, freeing himself from his friend’s grasp, offered his hand and
they shook heartily. They started off, but Harvey turned back once and,
seizing one of the oars, shoved the hatch out into the stream. Then he
threw the oars after it.
“We owe Haley that much,” he said—“and more. He’ll have to follow the
tide up river some time before he finds that stuff. Now, Tom, what shall
we do? We’re ashore—by Jove! there was one time I began to think we’d
never get here. And now we’re here, I’m blest if I know what to do next.”
“Well, we’ll stop and hold a council of war,” said Tom Edwards. So they
paused at the top of the little bank they had ascended, adjusted their
oil-skins once more, and looked off on to the river and the vessel that
they had left behind.
Harvey whistled a tune and looked at his comrade, jubilant in spite of
their perplexity.
“It’s a regular jim-dandy Christmas eve!” he exclaimed.
“I’ll remember it as long as ever I live,” replied Tom Edwards.