The bad weather kept up all the next day, but by night the wind went
down, and next morning after that it was warm and fine. Mr. Browning got
us up mighty early, because he had planned with Mr. Topper to try to
sneak out at daylight and so dodge the _Porpoise_. We got up the anchors
as quietly as we could and off we went, and no sign of life aboard the
enemy ship. It was fine, but as we came out of the harbor we found out
that the sea doesn’t always go down the minute the wind does. There was
a big sea running, a sort of enormous swell, and our course was right in
the trough of it. I was kind of scared at first when I saw those waves.
Why, when we got on top of one and looked down, it seemed as if we were
a hundred feet in the air, and when we slid down between two waves, with
one of them racing right down onto us, it seemed as if we were in a
valley and one of the sides was sure to fall right over on us and finish
us. But the motion was so easy and the waves were so big, that it got to
be real pleasure, like sliding down hill. There didn’t seem to be a bit
of danger, though we could see where the waves dashed against the rocks
on the shore and the spray was thrown a hundred feet into the air. It
was easy to imagine what would happen to us if we got swept in there. It
would be good-by _Albatross_ and good-by Wee-wee and good-by everybody
else.
But we didn’t get swept.
There weren’t many boats out, though we did see a few lobster men, and a
destroyer wallowed past us going like the mischief. I noticed that Catty
stuck to the after-deck, with Mr. Browning’s glasses, watching the mouth
of the harbor, and every little while Mr. Topper would go back there and
strain his eyes over the course we had taken. All at once Catty sung
out, “Here she comes,” and sure enough, there was the black yacht, four
or five miles back, just nosing between the rocks. We hadn’t dodged her
worth a cent.
There was nothing to do but keep on going, so we kept. I was helping
navigate and keep the log, marking down when we passed each spar and
buoy and nun and lighthouse. In a few hours we passed the Hen and
Chickens, and a little while afterward we sighted the lightship, and
then we turned to the northward and entered Buzzards Bay. It got
smoother right away, because we got under shelter of the islands that
shut the bay off from the ocean, and then we picked our course up the
channel and rounded the lighthouse just this side of New Bedford, and
wiggled through the opening in a stone breakwater, and cast anchor in a
harbor full of yachts. There must have been close to a hundred of
them—all kinds. It was Padanaram, where the New Bedford Yacht Club has a
clubhouse and where most of its yachts lay.
About half an hour later in came the _Porpoise_ and dropped her anchor
not far from a whopping big schooner yacht. She sort of settled down
with a grunt of satisfaction that she had come up with us again. Well,
we hadn’t gained anything.
Catty and I went in for a swim. It was Catty’s idea and it turned out he
wanted to go in so we could swim around out of earshot and talk things
over.
“The trouble with this crowd,” says he, “is that they don’t plan
anything. They just run, and trust to luck to throw the _Porpoise_ off
our track. No sense in that. The enemy is planning. They’re keeping
watch all the time, and they’re ready. The only way we can duck them is
to plan _better_ than they do.”
“All right,” says I, “go ahead and plan.”
“I’m going to,” says he. “I’ve been studying the chart of these waters,
and it ought to be easy to give them the slip. Over across there are a
lot of islands, and harbors and channels to fiddle around in. Off at the
end is Penikese Island where the Leper colony is, and next is Cuttyhunk,
and the chart shows a little land-locked basin that you get into through
a sort of canal. I bet if we could manage to duck in there, nobody could
see us from outside. Then there’s Robinson’s Hole and Wood’s Hole, and
farther up the bay are inlets and things. Then, once we get through one
of the Holes, we’re in Vineyard Sound, and across that is Martha’s
Vineyard and Nantucket. I’d say this was a part of the coast made on
purpose to hide in.”
“Suits me,” says I, “let’s hide.”
“Yes,” says he, “but the _Porpoise_ won’t blind and be it while we hide.
If we could get them to count up to a couple of thousand while we find a
place to hide, it would be all right.”
“Might ask ’em,” says I.
“Wish they’d run on a sandbar,” says he.
“But they won’t,” says I.
“No chance. So we’ve got to plan it. We’ve got to fix it so we can go
while they’ve got to stay. They’re pirates, aren’t they? Well? It’s fair
and lawful to do anything to pirates.”
“Sink ’em,” says I.
“Guess we hadn’t better go that far,” he says with a grin, “but there’s
something we _can_ do. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll find out.”
“What,” says I, “do you s’pose they’re after? What has Mr. Topper got
that they want?”
“Treasure,” says he.
“What kind of treasure?”
“Oh, gold and precious stones, and rings and jewelry and all the things
old Captain Kidd and those other pirates used to hide in chests.”
“Think he’s got a map?”
“Yes,” says Catty.
“Um ...” says I.
“Say,” Catty says, and he lifted his head out of water, “wouldn’t it be
a joke if we could send them off on a wild-goose chase?”
“How?”
“By letting them get hold of the wrong map,” says he. “We could fix up a
map, and let it fall into their hands—and make them think they’d got
hold of the right one. Then they’d leave us alone and go hiking off as
fast as they could to get the treasure before we could.”
“Good idea,” says I, “but how could we fix it so’s they’d get the map?”
“That’s what we’ve got to figure out,” says he.
“Let’s get back, then,” says I, “and make the map.”
So we swam back and dressed. Catty hunted up Mr. Browning and asked him
if he had an extra chart of that part of the coast, and Mr. Browning
said he had an old one we could have. Well, Catty and I took that chart
and studied over it, and picked out a place a long way off. We thought
it would be a good idea to send them sailing as far as we could get them
to go handily. The island we picked was Nantucket, because that looked
like it was about as far as sounded reasonable, and then we went to
work.
We studied over the map of the island, and figured out where we would
bury treasure if we were pirates. The island is shaped kind of like a
long claw. There’s a channel into a harbor right at the town of
Nantucket where the old whalers used to sail from, and the harbor looks
like it stretched quite a ways back from the town, and almost through to
the ocean on the other side.
“I’ll bet there weren’t many people living there when the pirates were
doing business,” says Catty. “The pirates would use that harbor, because
it’s sheltered, and they could go in and out without being seen. Most
likely they would have hid their treasure some place where they could
get to it in any weather, so it wouldn’t have been on the open coast. It
would be some place where they could row to it in a small boat. So the
likeliest place is off at the far end of that basin somewheres. It looks
on the chart as if it was all low and sandy. There’s a good spot back
there,” he says, pointing with a pencil.
“Good enough,” says I, “let’s bury our treasure there.”
So we did. We didn’t try to make believe we had an old map, but just a
copy of one on a modern chart. As careful as we could we measured off on
the chart by the scale of miles, and made a cross in ink. Then we wrote,
or printed rather, down at the bottom of the chart. What we printed was:
“Intersection of lines drawn N. by E. from Steamship Dock, and S. by S.
E. from light on tip of claw. Fifty feet from highwater mark. Six feet
down.”
“There,” says Catty, “that looks interesting, eh?”
“You bet,” says I, “but now what do we do with it?”
“That,” says he, “is for us to find out.”
A little while afterward Mr. Browning said he was going ashore to
telephone, and asked if we didn’t want to go along, which we did. We
used the little dinghy, and hauled her up on the club float. Then we
walked up the dock to the clubhouse, and the steward met us and made us
welcome. Mr. Browning went inside to telephone, while we sat on the
porch. Pretty soon he came out again, and said he would have to go down
to New Bedford on some business, and that we could go along if we wanted
to, but Catty says, “Thanks, but I guess we better stay here where we
can keep an eye on the yacht. Kind of an int’resting place, this is, and
I’d like to hang around and see what’s to be seen.”
“All right,” says Mr. Browning. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Now what?” says I, when Mr. Browning had gone.
Catty pointed and there was a dinghy coming in from the _Porpoise_. It
rowed up to the float and Mr. House stepped ashore and walked up toward
the clubhouse. Right then Catty pulled the chart out of his pocket and
pretended like he was studying it hard. When Mr. House came up the steps
Catty looked up and says, “Good afternoon,” and Mr. House spoke back as
pleasant as pie.
“Fine day,” says he, stopping and looking us over. “Bully harbor. Live
here, you boys?”
“No,” says Catty, “we live aboard a yacht. Just came in. There she
lies.”
“Um....” says Mr. House, “the _Albatross_, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Who owns her? We’ve seen her quite a bit on this cruise.”
“Mr. Browning, of New York.”
“Just cruising, or going somewhere?”
“Just cruising.”
“Same here,” says he. “What you doing? Studying navigation?”
“No,” says Catty, “this is just an old chart we picked up on deck this
morning. Got some funny marks on it, and we’re trying to figure what
they mean. Guess Mr. Topper threw it away.”
“Oh.... Funny marks, eh? I’m quite a navigator, maybe I can help you
out.”
“Here you are,” says Catty, and he handed over the map. Mr. House took
it, and we watched his face. He bit his lips, and that was the only sign
he gave of anything going on inside his head. He studied it over.
“Old chart,” he said. “Out of date. The new surveys and new channel
markings aren’t here. Kind of a curiosity.”
“Yes,” says Catty, “but what’s the idea of those marks in Nantucket
harbor? Nobody’s been charting a course like that.”
“Looks like somebody had checked a place to dig clams or something,”
says Mr. House. He kind of hesitated like he was thinking, and then he
says: “Say, if you haven’t any special use for this chart, I’d like to
have it. I was arguing with my friend last night about the old harbor
markings over at Cuttyhunk. He claimed they had been the way they’re
shown now for six years. I was sure they were changed a couple of years
ago. This shows I was right. I’d sort of like to show it to him to prove
it.”
“Go ahead,” says Catty. “It’s no use to us. Mr. Topper threw it away.
You’re welcome.”
“Much obliged,” says Mr. House, and right there he forgot all about what
he came ashore to do, but hurried right back to his dinghy and had
himself rowed back to the _Porpoise_.
“He bit,” says Catty. “He swallowed hook, line, and sinker. In about ten
minutes we’ll see the _Porpoise_ hauling up her anchor and making away.”
“On a wild-goose chase,” says I, “and that’s the last we’ll see of
_her_.”
But I was just a little mistaken in that last guess.