Old Verny’s Wharf
The sun came up over a heaving sea and the gale diminished. By five
o’clock, although the wind still blew hard, it had shifted a point
or two and Bill Glass predicted that by forenoon it would be gone.
Sleepy-eyed the boys tumbled out of the tent and followed Bill around
the side of the hill. There is always something depressing in the sight
of a wrecked ship and none of them spoke for several minutes.
The schooner lay gripped between the two ledges, her bow high out of
the water and the seas rushing across her abaft of the foremast. Her
deck had been swept clean and not a boat was in sight. She had settled
on a nearly even keel. The mainmast was broken short off some eight
feet above the deck and although it had been cut away it still wallowed
alongside, held by a rope or two. The foremast stood, but the topmast
hung in splinters. As far as could be seen, however, the hull had not
broken and Bill thought she was not leaking much.
“She be an old-timer,” said Bill. “The _Jupiter_, just as I told ye
last night. They made ’em staunch and able twenty years ago, mates.
She be one o’ your father’s boats, mate, an’ likely she be well filled
with fish. Maybe they’ll get her off, but she’s lyin’ ugly, she’s lyin’
ugly.” And Bill shook his head.
“They’ll send tugs around pretty soon, I guess,” said Jack. “But
they’ll have to wait for high tide, won’t they?”
“Aye, along toward two o’clock, I cal’ate. They’ll lighten her first,
though. Maybe if the sea goes down they can save the cargo. I don’t
know though.”
“There’s one ship right under her now,” said Bee. “We saw her the other
day.”
“Aye, the _State o’ Maine_,” agreed Bill. “She went to pieces there
forty-odd years ago, I cal’ate. A brig, she was. Seven men went down
with her, they tell.”
Bee shivered. “I’m glad I didn’t see any of them,” he murmured.
“Gone long afore this, they be,” answered Bill. “Well, I must be
gettin’ home. Cal’ate, though, I’ll be back again later.”
“Won’t you have some breakfast with us?” asked Bee.
“Thank ye, mate, but I’ll be goin’ back. There’s Benjamin Franklin to
feed an’――”
“Benjamin Franklin!” exclaimed Bee.
“The cat,” replied Bill with one of his hidden smiles. “He an’ me be
old friends an’ Ben don’t take kindly to waitin’ for his breakfast.”
They watched Bill go down the hill and across the sandy stretch to the
wharf and then set about preparing breakfast, everyone taking a hand
since all were hungry. The wind had sensibly diminished and it was
possible to build a fire outside. Jack was just touching a match to
the kindlings when a faint shout reached them and they saw Bill Glass
a hundred yards or so up the river waving his hand and pointing across
the flat between the river and the sea.
“Now, what’s he mean?” muttered Jack as they moved around the shoulder
of the hill. Then three ejaculations of astonishment burst from as many
throats. Across what yesterday had been a level stretch of dry sand and
beach-grass flowed a twenty-foot inlet! The sea had claimed its right
of way once more and once more Nobody’s Island had become an island in
fact as well as in name! At the ocean end the waves had eaten a wide
indentation in the shore, from which the new stream curved westward
until it joined the river. Even as they looked a long section of the
bank crumbled and splashed into the water and the little cove widened.
“Well, what do you think of that!” exclaimed Bee.
“Father always said that inlet would come back some day,” said Jack,
“and last night’s storm was just the kind to do it, for it was blowing
straight across that sand. It’s a good thing it wasn’t there when we
came back from Bill Glass’s or we might have turned into it and found
ourselves in the surf. Look at the wreckage over there, fellows.
There’s wood enough to last us all winter.”
“There’s a whaling big boat down there,” announced Hal. “See it! Lying
on its side where all that seaweed is piled up.”
“That’s right. It’s probably one of the _Jupiter’s_. We’ll have to go
down there after breakfast and look at it.”
“Now,” said Bee, as they ate, “we can go ahead. There’s no use trying
to find buried treasure on an island that isn’t an island at all.
That’s what has been queering us, fellows. Now that it is really an
island again, though, we can’t miss it!”
“You don’t mean that you’re going to start that business again?”
groaned Hal.
“Right away,” answered Bee cheerfully. “That storm has removed the
hoodoo from――from our undertaking, Hal.”
“Well, it certainly removed a lot of other things,” laughed Jack, “and
why not a hoodoo?”
“I’m hoping it removed our shovels,” said Hal. “We left them down there
where we were digging and I don’t see them now!”
“They’re in the trenches,” answered Bee. “I looked. And the trenches
are pretty nearly filled up again.”
After breakfast they went down to the new cove. The dory lay on the
opposite side of the inlet, however, and although Bee suggested wading
across, investigation proved that the water was at least four feet deep
in the shallowest place. So they removed their clothes, plunged in and
swam to the opposite side, Bee remarking that it was quite a thing to
be the first bathers there. When they reached the dory, however, they
found that it was half full of sand and that their united efforts
failed to even budge it.
“Well,” said Jack, “it won’t get away in a hurry. We’ll leave it for
someone else to rescue, I guess. There are probably more dories along
shore.”
They returned across the inlet and ran up and down in the wind to get
dry. It didn’t take long, but it was cold work and they were glad to
pull their clothes on again. Afterwards they set out along the edge of
the stream. The tide had begun to rise and the water was running in
fast. Now and then the edge of the sandy bank on their side would break
away and topple down, dissolving like sugar in a tea cup. Bee, who had
loitered a few steps behind the others, stopped and said “Hello!” in a
surprised voice and the others turned back.
“What have you found?” asked Jack.
Bee was kicking the sand with his foot and by the time Jack and Hal
reached him he had laid bare the top of a roughly-laid stone wall
or pavement. “It’s a cabin,” he exclaimed eagerly. “I mean it’s the
foundation of it. I’m going to get a shovel.”
“Bring them both!” called Jack as Bee sped off around the island.
Five minutes of digging, however, showed them that instead of finding
the foundations of the wrecker’s cabin they had unearthed the end of a
little stone wharf, and Bee was greatly disappointed. “Still,” he said
presently, “if the wharf was here it’s possible the cabin was nearby.”
He looked about for a probable site, but the sand continued for nearly
a hundred feet before the hill began and he finally agreed with the
others that Verny would not have been likely to build his house
thereabouts. “Just the same, I don’t see why he needed two wharves,” he
objected.
“I guess that other one must have been put up by someone else,”
pondered Jack. “When you come to think of it, those wooden spiles
wouldn’t have lasted for over forty years, would they? This was
probably Old Verny’s wharf and he put it here so he could get to it
from either side of the point.”
“Well, we’ve found something,” said Hal, “even if we haven’t discovered
the treasure. What’s that?”
The sound he had heard proved on investigation to be the whistle of a
tug and by the time they had reached the seaward side of the island
it was evident that the task of getting the _Jupiter_ off was about to
begin. Two tugs and a small lighter were lying off The Tombstones and
already a boat was putting off from one of the tugs. In the stern of it
sat two men whom Hal recognized even at that distance.
“That’s dad and Tom Dickenson,” he said. “They’re going to look things
over, I guess.” Hal waved his cap and after awhile the men saw and
waved back. “Look here, why can’t we go out there?” asked Hal eagerly.
“Not in the launch,” replied Jack. “We’d be on the rocks in five
minutes with that wind and tide. Let’s wait awhile. Maybe by noon the
wind will be gone. It’s holding up every minute now.”
So they perched themselves in a partly sheltered corner of the big
ledge overlooking The Tombstones and watched operations. The row boat,
with four men at the oars, circled around the _Jupiter_, tossing and
rocking on the waves. The two tugs, one having the lighter in tow,
wallowed and pitched at a safe distance, drifting in toward shore and
then steaming back again, until the row boat returned. Then activity
began in earnest. The tugs drifted down to within a rope’s throw of
the ledges and dropped anchors. Cables were payed out into rowboats
and in a few minutes the bow of the _Jupiter_ was alive with men. The
lighter was hauled alongside, cables were made fast, hatches thrown
off, wreckage was cleared away and the work of unloading the schooner
was begun. The work went merrily in spite of the high seas that still
swept now and then across the after deck. The men disappeared under
clouds of spray at times, but the baskets were lowered and filled with
fish and hauled up again by block and tackle and swung over the side
to the lighter, which lay under the bow, with remarkable regularity.
The mainmast, floating alongside, was hauled away by two men in a
cockleshell of a dory and made fast to one of the tugs. At the end of
an hour the wind, always drawing further into the north, was scarcely
more than a good blow and the surface of the sea perceptibly calmed.
Bill Glass reappeared just before noon and joined the boys on the hill.
The last of the unloading was finished shortly after and it was evident
that all was in readiness for an attempt to haul the _Jupiter_ off the
ledges; all, that is, save the tide. That would not be at its height
until 1:56, Bill Glass announced. The lighter was pulled safely away
from the schooner meanwhile and taken around the point and anchored.
Then the tug which had towed her lowered a boat and Hal, watching,
jumped to his feet.
“That’s dad,” he said. “He’s coming ashore. Come on, fellows.”
Hal hurried around the hill and down to the beach toward which the boat
was making, and the others, including Bill Glass, followed more slowly.
The boat ran up on to the sand on the crest of a breaker, a tall sailor
in rubber boots leaped over the bow and pulled and tugged, another wave
helped and Mr. Folsom jumped nimbly ashore. When the others arrived
father and son were already walking up the hill toward the tent. Mr.
Folsom was a man of medium size, with sharp black eyes, a dark beard
and a seamed and weather-tanned face that told of the days when he had
been a sailing captain instead of the head of a great business. He wore
glasses, had a voice at least one size larger than his frame led you to
expect and talked quickly and incisively.
“How are you, Bee?” he greeted, nodding briefly. “Having a good time
here? Who’s this, Harry?”
“This is Jack Herrick, dad. Jack, this is――”
“Glad to know you, Jack.” Mr. Folsom shook hands quickly. “I knew your
father very well. Hello, Bill Glass? What are you doing here? Keeping
an eye on these young Crusoes? How’s your health?”
“Ain’t complainin’, sir, ain’t complainin’. Sorry to see the old
_Jupiter_ gone, Mr. Folsom.”
“Gone? Not a bit of it! There isn’t hole or a crack in her, Bill. She’s
good for another ten years. We’ll have her on the railway by sunset. A
couple of dollars worth of pitch and oakum’s all she needs.”
“Glad to hear it, sir, glad to hear it. How about the crew, Mr. Folsom?
All safe be they?”
“Every mother’s son of them. Jasper White has a broken arm and a
Portugese named Paletto or something like that got a couple of ribs
busted. That’s all. I’ve got them in the hospital. Where’s this camp of
yours, Harry?”
Hal led the way up and Mr. Folsom viewed it with interest.
“Good thing you pitched it on this side the island,” he observed.
“You’d have blown away otherwise. What time do you serve dinner?”
“It’s time now,” answered Hal. “Will you stay, dad?”
“If I get an invitation,” replied Mr. Folsom dryly.
“We’ll have to have canned things, I guess,” said Jack. “We are all out
of fresh meat.”
“Anything is good when you’re hungry, Herrick. By the way, I want to
tell you youngsters right now that the next time a storm like that
comes up you’re to put out for home. Understand? Your mother had
conniption fits all night, Harry. And I guess your folks must have
been worried about you, Herrick. You ought to have known enough about
weather to have seen what was coming, eh?”
“Yes, sir, but by that time it was too stormy to get back,” replied
Jack. “Hal wanted to go but I was afraid to risk it.”
“I see. Well, you might have reached the railroad and picked up a
train. Don’t try it again. Found that treasure yet, Bee?”
“No, sir, not yet. We’re still hunting. We found Verny’s wharf this
morning, though.”
Mr. Folsom had to hear about that and Bill Glass asked no end of
questions and presently they all trooped down to see it.
“You remember this, Bill?” asked Mr. Folsom when they had looked it
over.
“Seems like I do, sort of,” responded Bill, scratching his head to aid
memory. “Seems, too, like there was a way alongside where the old man
used to pull his boat up. That would be gone now, though, I cal’ate.”
“Yes, there’s been many a sea through here since Old Verny left,”
agreed Mr. Folsom. “Well, that’s interesting, but not vastly important,
boys.”
Hal pointed out the dory to him and he said he would send someone for
it. Then they retraced their steps to the tent. Bill Glass, disclaiming
any desire for food, nevertheless accepted an invitation to dinner and
Jack set about opening the choicest of their canned delicacies.
“I suppose you boys slept right through the trouble last night,”
observed Mr. Folsom presently. “Or did you know about the _Jupiter_?”
The boys looked at each other and Hal began to laugh. Mr. Folsom
frowned. “Well, what’s the joke, Harry?” he asked.
“Why――why, dad, I thought you knew!”
“Knew what? What tomfoolery have you been up to now, eh?”
“I like that!” laughed Hal. “If it hadn’t been for us, especially Jack
and――Mr. Glass――things would have been a heap worse, I guess! It was we
who sent word to the life savers, dad.”