“Schooner Ashore!”
They awoke the next morning with the crash of the surf in their ears,
a northeasterly gale blowing around the side of the hill and a leaden,
cloudy sky overhead. The _Crystal Spring_ was rocking to and fro at
the mouth of the river and Jack viewed her anxiously as he dressed
shiveringly in the tent. Hal arose rather pale and heavy-eyed, but not
much the worse for his over-indulgence in baked clams, and viewed the
depressing outlook distastefully. But after a hearty breakfast, which
they had to eat inside the tent because of the wind, they all felt more
cheerful. Hal was for going back to Greenhaven, but Jack refused to
make the trip.
“Look at that sea, Hal,” he said. “The launch wouldn’t do a thing but
fill up with water by the time we’d made the point there. And as for
the _Crystal Spring_, well, I guess she’d make harbor finally, but
she’s no heavy weather boat and I don’t fancy trying to sail her
today. Maybe it’ll clear up by afternoon.”
“What can we do here, though?” asked Hal dismally.
“Dig,” replied Bee. “It’s a dandy day for digging; cool and without any
glare to hurt your eyes. We can get a lot done today.”
“We can, can we? Well, I don’t intend to freeze to death out there,”
replied Hal rebelliously. “I’m sick of digging, anyway.”
“You’ll be lot warmer digging than you will sitting here,” laughed
Jack. “Come on and get up an appetite for dinner, Hal.”
But Hal refused and they left him hugging the fire, with a blanket over
his shoulders. Jack took the pick and Bee seized a shovel and they made
the dirt fly. It was really the only way to keep warm, as Jack had
said. They were just finishing the first trench when Hal joined them.
“A fellow could freeze to death up there,” he muttered, picking up the
second shovel. “What’ll I do, Bee?”
After that the work went merrily and Hal soon forgot his ill-temper.
They finished the second trench by noon and then Bee suggested having
a swim. And a glorious battle with the breakers they had! To dive
through a six-foot comber and ride back to the beach on the crest of
another is rare sport and splendidly conducive to the cultivation of
appetites. At dinner even Hal agreed that so far they had had a bully
time and he said no more about returning to Greenhaven that day. They
went back to digging about two and managed to excavate most of the
third trench before the wind, which was growing harder and harder
every hour, drove them back to shelter. They saw to the guy-ropes and
pegs, as Jack pointed out that it wasn’t pleasant to have your tent
blown down on top of you; gathered a new store of wood and retired to
their inside, watching the cloud-wrack go sailing overhead and the
waves dashing into spray against Toller’s Rock. A sea-going tug passed
a mile out, making hard weather and shipping water at every plunge.
They watched her until she had rolled herself out of sight behind the
spray-drenched headland. By four o’clock the wind was little short of
a young hurricane, as Jack expressed it, and the tent was rocking and
swaying. The wind rushed under the flaps and inflated the canvas until
it threatened to sail into the air like a balloon. Jack began to look
anxious.
“I think I’ll go down and see how the sloop’s getting along,” he
announced. “It looks to me as though she was a little farther up than
she was. I’ve got another anchor aboard and I guess I’d better drop it.”
The others volunteered to accompany him and they went staggering down
the slope to the wharf, clutching at their caps and stumbling over
bushes under the rude buffets of the wind. The river was running
high, with masses of driftwood and froth piled along the margin. The
_Corsair_ had swung in amongst the spiles and was apparently trying to
rub her varnish off, while the dory――
The boys looked at each other in dismay. Where was the dory? There was
not a vestige of it. It had been securely tied to one of the spiles;
Jack had attended to it himself; and that it could have tugged loose
seemed impossible.
“Bill Glass,” breathed Hal with a kind of “I-told-you-so” inflection.
“I don’t believe it,” replied Bee stoutly. “You’re getting so you blame
Bill Glass if you bite your tongue, Hal. Besides, I saw him when he
went off and he certainly didn’t have Jack’s dory.”
“He could have come back last night and taken it, couldn’t he?” asked
Hal scathingly. “Oh, he’s got it all right enough!”
“But he wouldn’t dare to,” persisted Bee. “Why, he couldn’t hide a
dory, could he?”
“He doesn’t have to hide it. He’s painted it blue by this time!”
“Well, somebody must have taken it,” said Jack troubledly, “for I don’t
believe any amount of wind would have untied those hitches of mine.
Still, I suppose I’d better go up the river a ways and look. May I take
the launch, Hal?”
“Of course, and we’ll go along.”
But although they chugged up the stream for a half-mile or more they
saw no trace of the _Faith_ and finally Jack declared that it was
useless to look farther unless they meant to go all the way to Bill
Glass’s. “That dory never got around three bends in the river,” said
Jack, “without being towed. She’d have gone ashore long before this.”
So they turned the launch and went back in the teeth of the gale.
Fortunately, although the tide was unusually high, the banks of the
stream still afforded some protection from the wind. Otherwise the
_Corsair_ would have blown on the sand-bars time and again. Back at
the island, they kept on to the _Crystal Spring_. The sloop had worked
pretty well over to the south side of the river entrance and was
rolling and plunging most undignifiedly. Jack scrambled aboard as soon
as the launch was under her lee and presently returned with his second
anchor. They ran around the stern of the sloop and almost across to
the opposite beach. There Jack tossed the anchor over. Then, paying
the cable out, the launch pitched her way back to the sloop and Jack
made the rope fast on the bow. They were all pretty well drenched by
the time they got back into the quieter water of the river, and as soon
as they had made the launch secure where she could not rub against the
spiles they got back to the tent as quickly as their legs would carry
them.
They heaped wood on the dying fire and tried to dry their garments, but
it was not so easy. If they got in the lee of the fire they were choked
with smoke and deluged with sparks, while if they moved elsewhere they
got little heat and the wind went through their wet clothing until
their teeth chattered. Jack finally announced that there was but one
thing to do, and that was to get their clothes off, rub themselves dry
and warm with towels and dry the garments at the fire. This proved
a good idea, for by the time they had applied the rough bath towels
vigorously to their bodies they were in a comfortable glow. Draping
themselves in blankets, they threw more fuel on the fire and held their
clothes in the warmth until they were at least fairly dry. By that
time it was long after five o’clock and supper was to be thought of.
They decided that hot coffee would be appropriate and that it would be
useless to try and do any cooking. So half an hour later they huddled
in the tent and ate cold canned tongue, bread and butter, cheese and
vanilla cookies and drank plenty of steaming hot coffee.
“That coffee is certainly what I needed,” sighed Hal, “but I won’t be
able to sleep a wink before ten o’clock.”
“Perhaps you wouldn’t anyhow,” replied Jack, “with this wind howling
so. I wish I was sure this old tent wouldn’t leave us in the middle of
the night.”
They lighted the lanterns and heaped up the fire again and strove to be
cheerful. But the lanterns flared and guttered and the boom of the sea
and the roar of the wind were depressing. Even Bee began to look glum,
and long before it was nearly their usual bed-time, conversation had
entirely died out and the three boys were huddled under their blankets
silently watching the lanterns swaying from the roof-pole. They had
decided that they would not take their clothes off, since, as Jack
pointed out, it might be necessary for them to get up and chase the
tent across the island before morning.
“I’d give something to be at home just now,” observed Hal once, “with
my back to the library fire. This camping-out isn’t all it’s cracked up
to be, fellows.”
“And this is certainly camping _out_,” agreed Bee. “I suppose it was on
nights like this that Old Verny used to light his trusty lantern and
take a stroll along the beach, eh, Jack?”
“I dare say. I guess there’s more than one boat in trouble tonight. The
wind must be blowing a good forty miles.”
There was not much pleasure in talking, however, even if they had had
anything to say, for the noise of the elements was so great that they
had almost to shout to make themselves heard across the tent, and so
they relapsed into silence again and regretted having drank that coffee.
About nine o’clock a flurry of rain set in and the drops dashed against
the tent like hailstones. Several crashes of thunder followed, and
once the lightning flared so brightly that the glow of the swaying
lanterns was dimmed in the tent. Then the rain blew over, the thunder
died away as quickly as it had come and only the dry gale remained. But
its fury continued unabated and by ten o’clock had even perceptibly
increased. The only thing that saved the tent was the fact that it
was protected from the direction of the storm by the shoulder of the
hill and the grove. Even as it was, it seemed every moment that at
the next onslaught the canvas would be ripped into ribbons or torn
from its ropes. The boys huddled under their blankets with taut nerves
and staring eyes, watching the canvas above them bulge and flap and
the lanterns rock and flare, with sleep a long way off. And yet it
is probable that, an hour or so later, each was drowsing a little,
for when the first sudden _boom_ of the cannon came Jack heard it as
though in a dream, while Bee and Hal, being questioned, declared they
had heard nothing. They waited. The minutes passed and only the howling
and screeching of the tempest was audible. Jack had about reached the
conclusion that he had imagined the sound when it came again:
_Boom-m-m-m!_
The boys started, and Jack, tossing aside his blankets, jumped to his
feet.
“What is it?” shouted Bee anxiously.
“A ship ashore,” answered Jack, buttoning his jacket and pulling his
cap down on his head. “Come on!”