It was pretty confused for a while, what with fending off and getting
the engine started, and I guess Mr. House and Mr. Robbins were too busy
to notice what we were up to. At last we got to moving, though, in the
blackness, it was hard to see where we were moving _to_. Not much to go
by but the flashes of lightning.
Catty got hold of my arm and drew me aft. “Guess we can’t do much more
good here,” says he.
“No,” says I, “and so far as I can see, we haven’t done a heap of good
anywhere.”
“Never can tell,” says he. “Wonder if they pulled the dink up on the
davits?”
“Dunno,” says I.
We were back on the after-deck by this time, and Catty started feeling
for a line. “It’s here,” says he. “The dink’s towing astern.”
“What about it?” says I.
“We’re going off in her,” says he.
“In this storm?”
“You bet.”
“All right,” says I, “if you aren’t scairt to do it, why, I guess I can
stick along. But I don’t like it.”
“Shucks,” says he. “Pull in on the line.”
We pulled and got the dink right under the stern. “Get in,” says he,
“while I hold her.”
I managed to get in the dink without going overboard, and then held her
there while Catty got in. Then we cast off. It seemed as if we were
fifty feet away from the _Porpoise_ in less time than it takes to tell
about it.
“Wait a minute,” says Catty, “and we’ll start the engine just as soon as
we’re out of earshot.”
Well, that was easier said than done. Neither of us knew much about gas
engines, and we didn’t know a thing about this particular engine, and we
didn’t dare make a light. We didn’t have anything to make a light with.
We sort of nosed around to find the switch and then I cranked her.
Nothing happened. I cranked some more, and then Catty cranked, and then
I cranked, and then Catty cranked.
“Never saw such an engine,” says Catty.
“For me,” says I, “I’d a heap rather have oars. You don’t have to crank
a rowboat.”
“There aren’t any oars,” says he.
“Wonder which way we’re drifting,” says I, “and I wonder what Mr.
Browning is thinking.”
“Bet we catch it,” says Catty.
“We can’t drift out to sea, can we?”
“Not very handy,” says he. “We’d have to go through the long channel,
and we’d be sure to run ashore before we did that. Wish this rain would
stop. I’m wetter than a drowned rat.”
“Let’s crank some more,” says I.
So we went at it again, and cranked until we wore the skin off our
hands, and until our backs were ’most busted. I never thought I could
hate anything like I hated that little gas engine. I could have taken a
sledge hammer and busted it and then thrown the pieces overboard to the
fish. But it wouldn’t start.
“Let’s holler,” says I.
“And have the _Porpoise_ come and pick us up?” says he.
“Anyhow,” says I, “let’s sit back and rest and see what happens. We’re
bound to drift ashore some place.”
“I guess that’s the best we can do,” says he.
It was mighty cold and disagreeable; the water was pouring down the
backs of our necks and dripping off our noses, and the wind was trying
to blow our clothes off, and the bay was kicking up so the dink rolled
and pitched like it was crazy, and every once in a while a wave would
come _splash_ against it and duck us good and plenty.
“Say,” says Catty, “if we don’t look out we’re going to fill up with
water and sink. Between the rain and these waves we’re getting more than
we need. Hunt around for a pail or something.”
We felt around and found a can, and for half an hour we took turns
bailing. I couldn’t see that we gained much, for every time we threw a
pailful out a wave threw one in again. But we broke even, which was
something. I never was so cold and uncomfortable in my life.
“If this is having an adventure,” says I, “I’ll stick to a quiet,
peaceful life.”
“Huh,” says Catty, “you won’t mind it in a week.”
“In a week,” says I, “I won’t mind anything. I’ll be frozen to death.”
“Fiddlesticks,” says he.
“I’m hungry,” says I.
“You’re like to be hungrier before you eat,” says he.
Just then there came a bright flash of lightning and not more than fifty
feet away we could see the shore—low, sandy shore.
[Illustration: WE CRANKED UNTIL WE WORE THE SKIN OFF OUR HANDS, AND
UNTIL OUR BACKS WERE ’MOST BUSTED]
“We’re drifting in,” says Catty. “We’re almost there.”
He was right for once. In about five minutes we did drift ashore, and
you can bet we jumped out mighty spry and pulled the dink up on the
beach.
“Wonder where we are?” says I.
“There’s the lighthouse ’way over there,” says he. “We must have drifted
almost back to the place where Mr. House was digging.”
“No comfort in that,” says I.
“The rain’s slacking up,” says he.
“Let’s run up and down to get warm,” says I, and for five minutes we
galloped up and down in the sand until we got up a sweat and felt a lot
better. By that time the rain was over and the moon came out and it got
some warmer.
“If we could only make a fire,” says I.
“And somebody would come along with some hot coffee and fried cakes,”
says he. Then after a minute, “Well, we might as well have some fun out
of it. Let’s pretend we’re marooned on a desert island by pirates. We
found out the secret of the place where they hid their treasure, so they
set us ashore and sailed away and left us.”
“Without a gun or any food,” says I.
“Yes. And we’ve got to live some way. The first thing to do is to
explore,” says he, “and see if there are any savages, or any animals we
can trap. Come on.”
So we started to walk—the way we thought Nantucket town was. All at once
the sand gave way under my feet and I slid down into a hole that was
half full of water.
“Here’s where the pirates were digging,” says I. “The rain’s caved in
the sides of their hole.”
I started to crawl out when my hand grabbed onto something hard and I
pulled at it. Whatever it was came loose and I tossed it out.
“What’s that,” says I. “Maybe it’s good to eat.”
“Looks like an old tin chart case,” says he. “Must have drifted ashore
and got buried in the sand.”
We looked at it as best we could in the moonlight. It was a tin tube
about three feet long and maybe three inches in diameter, and there was
a water-tight cap at the end that opened. “Huh,” says I, “I’d rather
have found a beefsteak—all smothered with onions.”
“Probably off some wreck,” says Catty, “and full of old charts. No good
to anybody.”
“Let’s save it,” says I.
“What’s the use,” says he.
“Tell you what,” I says, “let’s pretend it’s the chart to a treasure.
We’ve been hunting for it, and just as we find it, the pirates get on
our trail, and we can’t use it to go find all the buried gold. So we
have to hide it again. Hurry. They’re after us. Get down and sneak along
like they were all around and we were like to run into one any minute.”
So we went along hiding behind bushes and clumps of grass and such like,
and making believe the place was as crowded with pirates as a
county-fair grounds is with farmers.
“It’s funny those pirates didn’t find these maps,” says I, “when they
were digging. I picked this right out of the hole they dug.”
“Just luck,” says Catty. “They _almost_ found it. It was right on the
edge of their digging, I guess, and when the rain washed the sand down
it was uncovered. Mighty lucky, wasn’t it?”
“Mighty lucky it wasn’t the real treasure,” says I, “that Mr. Topper is
so hot after.”
“You bet,” says Catty.
Well, we kept going along till we came to a little tumbledown shanty
that Catty said he guessed had been used for a fisherman’s shack once,
and we stopped there and rested.
“Here would be a good place to hide our treasure map,” says he.
“Fine,” says I. “How’ll we do it?”
“Have to do it scientific,” says he. “Let’s see. Um.... Start at the
corner of the cabin toward town and walk eleven paces. Then face the
lighthouse off there on the end of the claw and walk fifteen paces.” I
did it. “Now face the light at the entrance to the harbor and walk nine
paces,” says he, and I did that.
“There,” he says, “dig a hole and bury it.”
So with our hands, we scraped a hole and stuck in the old chart case and
buried it and smoothed over the spot.
“Now,” says he, “we’ll have to have a map of the place where it’s
buried, so we won’t forget it or so we can send somebody to get it.”
“Nothing to make a chart of,” says I.
“We’ll find something,” says he.
So we went back to the shanty and nosed around, and inside we found a
shingle.
“We can cut a chart on this,” says Catty.
He got out his knife and started to cut. “We’ll make a better one when
we escape from this place,” says he, “but this will do to make us
remember the number of paces and the directions.”
“Sure,” says I, “and now let’s hit out for town. I’m fed up with this.
What I want is a bed and some hot food. Let’s get a hustle on us.”
With that we started out, and we hustled some. It was an hour or more
before we got to town, and then we wandered around quite a while before
we found our way to the dock.
“However will we get aboard?” says I, as we walked down to the water.
“Don’t know,” says Catty, “but there’ll be some way.”
And there was. Right at the end of the dock was a dink and in the dink
was Naboth.
“Hello, Naboth,” says Catty, “what you doing here?”
“What you doin’ here’s what I’d like to know,” Naboth says. “Never seen
such kids. Gallivantin’ off and worryin’ everybody to death—like as if
we didn’t have enough troubles without you cuttin’ up capers. I’d skin
you if I had my way.”
“Hope you don’t have it,” says Catty. “Where’s Mr. Browning?”
“Some’eres with Mr. Topper, lookin’ for a doctor or a horspittle. Mr.
Topper’s gone wrong in his inn’ards. All of a sudden he started to
holler with some kind of a misery in his stummick or some’eres, and
nobody couldn’t do him no good, though the cook filled him up with
mustard water and what not. Mr. Browning, he got scairt a while back,
and we loaded Mr. Topper into the dink, and lugged him ashore. Never see
sich doin’s in all my years afloat, and neither did Rameses III.”
“Well,” says Catty, “can you take us aboard? We’re wet and hungry and we
want to get to bed.”
“Pile in,” says Naboth, kind of cross-like.
So we got in and he started the engine and in a couple of minutes we
were aboard the yacht. Naboth went back to wait for Mr. Browning, and we
went down to see if we could tease some food out of Rameses III.
“Hungry,” says he, and he scowled at us like he wanted to throw us
overboard to the sharks. “Mealtimes is mealtimes. Them that can’t fill
up to the table goes hungry till next feedin’ time.”
“But,” says Catty, “this is a special case. It’s an emergency.”
“A what?”
“Emergency.”
“New kind of sickness?” says Rameses III. “Ketchin’?”
“Not catching,” says Catty, “an emergency means a special time, not like
other times, when something _has_ to be done.”
“Um.... And in this emergency eatin’ has to be done, I judge.”
“That’s what,” says Catty.
“You wouldn’t have got it if it hadn’t been for that word,” says Rameses
III, “but that’s a good word, and I kin use it arguin’ with Naboth. I
calc’late if I shove that word at him when he’s goin’ strong, it’ll jest
collapse him like a busted paper bag. Emergency, eh? Well, fer this
emergency you git coffee and a ham sandwich apiece and a handful of
fried cakes. Now go git them wet clothes off and roll into your bunks,
and I’ll fetch in the grub. Skedaddle out of this here galley.”
We skedaddled, and in five minutes Rameses III came in with a lunch that
would have made a cannibal’s mouth water even if he was chuck-full of
missionary. We gobbled it down, and that’s the last I remember. I went
to sleep so fast and so hard that I guess it set a new world’s record.