THE MYSTERY
OF THE SEA-LARK
[Illustration: “The moment I jump swing her ’round”]
THE MYSTERY
OF THE SEA-LARK
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AND
H. P. HOLT
ILLUSTRATED BY
C. M. RELYEA
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
THE CENTURY CO.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I CAP’N CRUMBIE IS SURPRISED 3
II GEORGE SIGNS ON 19
III BACK TO THE WATER 37
IV THE TRIAL TRIP 53
V A RESCUE 81
VI PROWLERS 98
VII THE CLUE 115
VIII JACK COUNTS HIS PROFITS 138
IX THE SEA-LARK TO THE RESCUE 154
X SALVAGE 168
XI THE STRUGGLE IN THE DARK 182
XII FIGHTING A GALE 201
XIII THE SIMON P. BARKER GOES OUT 220
XIV CASTAWAYS 238
XV JACK LOSES COMMAND 254
XVI CAST ADRIFT 272
XVII TRAPPED! 283
XVIII THE CANVAS BAG 311
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The moment I jump swing her ’round” _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
“We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly” 244
“Put that thing down and stop your nonsense” 266
“You’re too late, Hegan,” he said 292
THE
MYSTERY OF THE SEA-LARK
[Illustration: map]
THE
MYSTERY OF THE SEA-LARK
CHAPTER I
CAP’N CRUMBIE IS SURPRISED
“A lucky thing so few of the boats were out when the storm came up!”
said Jack Holden. “I guess they’d have had a pretty hard time of it
yesterday.”
“Cap’n” Crumbie nodded in satisfaction. “Only one missing,” he replied.
“And why? _Why?_ ’Cause Cap’n Crumbie told ’em what to expect. Not far
out, I ain’t, as a rule. There was nigh a dozen o’ ’em wanting to get
away to the grounds when I told ’em the gale was coming. And most o’
’em took my advice and stayed safe an’ snug at home. ’Tain’t that I’m
wanting to blow my own trumpet, as the saying is, but facts is facts.
Bob Sennet laughed at me and put to sea. _Laughed_ at me, mind you!
Obstinate as they make ’em, Bob is――or should say _was_――just like his
father afore him. If he hadn’t been so obstinate he’d ha’ been here
to-day, alive an’ well. An’ instead o’ that, see where he is!”
“Where, Cap’n?” asked the boy, gravely.
The Cap’n dropped his voice to a sepulchral rumble. “Fathoms deep,
son! Fathoms deep somewheres out there, he and the _Ellen E. Hanks_
together; aye, and all hands as well. Fathoms deep; mark my words!”
Jack, suppressing a disrespectful grin, glanced seaward in the direction
of the Cap’n’s pointing hand. The scene there held no suggestion of
tragedy. The storm of the last two days was over. Since early morning
the leaden skies had turned to blue and the fresh, salty breeze that
swept in from the broad Atlantic was but the tag-end of the terrific
gale that had lashed the waters of the harbor and raced, shrieking, up
the quaint, narrow streets of the town. Now, instead of the storm-wrack,
a few white clouds sailed eastward, and, in place of the fury of
tormented waters, the harbor and the sea beyond the breakwater reflected
the blue of the heavens in their dancing, white-capped waves.
A mile away, Gull Island was fringed with creamy foam, and, farther
still, at the tip-end of the Point, the squat stone lighthouse gleamed
snowy-white against the clear horizon. Washed and swept by rain and
wind, the little Massachusetts fishing-town of Greenport looked bright
and clean this May afternoon. The fishing-schooners, some at anchor,
some lying snug at the wharves, were drying their sails in the warm
sunlight.
Cap’n Crumbie viewed them approvingly as, with Jack at his side, he
paced to and fro on Garnett and Sayer’s wharf, his short, slightly
bowed legs working with the regularity of a pendulum, six paces
nor’east, then six paces so’west. He had traveled a good many miles in
that fashion in the last twenty years, for he was watchman at Garnett
and Sayer’s, and this stretch of clear space on the busy wharf was
the Cap’n’s quarter-deck. He was, let it be confessed, no ancient
deep-sea mariner, although he had all the marks of the ocean-going
skipper――leathery, crinkled face, with crow’s-feet at the corners of
his twinkling eyes, skin tanned deeply from long exposure to the salt
sea air, a fringe of yellowish-white whiskers, and a deep growl of a
voice. True it is that he had been a captain, but captain only of a
center-board sail-boat in which, before he had given up the precarious
life, he had taken out pleasure parties for a day’s fishing――including
chowder――or for a run around the Head. But everybody didn’t know that,
more especially the “summer folks,” and among the latter he held the
reputation for being not only the most dependable weather-prophet along
the coast but a perfect example of the old-time ship’s captain, with
experience gathered from Iceland to Fiji, from Seattle to Siam. And
many a good yarn Cap’n Crumbie could spin, too, of his adventures in
far-off climes. Indeed, he had related some of them so frequently that
he had long since grown to believe them!
Jack had spent all of his sixteen years in Greenport and so knew the
Cap’n for what he was, a kind-hearted, eccentric, and amusing old
character.
“But,” he said, suppressing a smile, “if Bob does come back he’s pretty
sure to have a tremendous catch. The mackerel are in and the water’s
boiling with them, they say.”
“Maybe, maybe,” blustered the Cap’n; “but what good’s a load o’
mackerel to a drowned man? Terrible bad weather it was yesterday. Don’t
know when I’ve seen such a snorter. Guess the last one was three years
ago, the time your father was robbed.”
“I remember,” replied Jack. “There was a fierce gale that night, wasn’t
there? Poor Dad was wet through when they brought him home. He’s never
talked much about the robbery, Cap’n, and I never really understood
just what happened that night. But I do know that poor Dad’s never been
quite the same since.”
“And no wonder,” answered the Cap’n. “He was hard hit, Jack. More’n a
thousand dollars went, as near as I recall.”
“Twelve hundred and forty. I asked him once and he told me, but he
said I wasn’t to talk about it again.”
“Well, by gravy, ’twas a shame, anyway!” said the Cap’n, emphatically,
with a belligerent glance at Barker’s wharf across the slip.
“Wasn’t it queer that they never caught any one!” Jack observed.
“That’s what Simon Barker always said,” replied the Cap’n, dryly, “but
when he says that, he’s trying to suggest that Samuel Holden knows more
about the affair than he cares to tell.”
Jack flushed slightly, and threw his shoulders back.
“I had forgotten that,” he said quietly. “I remember, though, that it
was you who found Dad. You didn’t see anybody about, of course?”
Cap’n Crumbie shook his head.
“And I don’t know as they mightn’t have suspected me, if it hadn’t so
happened that the new Baptist parson was with me, and they had to take
his word.”
“Well, what’s your theory of it, Cap’n?” Jack asked.
Cap’n Crumbie paused in his sentry-go to stuff shreds of tobacco into
the much blackened bowl of his old brier pipe and then, with deftness
born of practice extending over many years on the exposed wharf, struck
a match, cupped it in both hands under the lee of a broad shoulder
turned away from the breeze, and puffed contentedly for a moment.
“Well, if I don’t know what happened that night, there ain’t no one as
does,” he said at length, with a slightly judicial air. He had told
the story a good many times, not because there was anything specially
stirring about it, but because he was directly concerned and because
it happened to be the nearest approach to an adventure ever happening
to him in all his three score years――if one excepted the time when he
fell overboard from his sail-boat and, after a few thrilling seconds,
was ignominiously pulled back to safety by one of his passengers, who
passed a boat-hook through his trousers. “Your father and Simon Barker
were partners, as you know, as fish-merchants. ’Twas a pity Samuel
Holden ever joined up with a feller like Barker, because nobody ever
did any good harnessed to a mean cuss like that. They started in a
small way, with one schooner, the _Grace and Ella_. There she is, now,
lying up against Barker’s wharf. And many a thousand-dollars’ worth of
fish has been landed from over her side since then. At the time I’m
speaking of, she’d come in with a big haul, that fetched high prices. A
day or two after that the gale sprang up. And it _was_ a storm. Never
since I was in the Indian Ocean――umph――er――er――”
Cap’n Crumbie coughed discreetly, remembering that his audience was
“home folks,” and then resumed quite without embarrassment:
“Well, as I was saying, it was a gale that fair knocked Greenport
galley-endwise. It started all of a sudden, raining cats and dogs,
and the wind was so strong you couldn’t stand up. We lost two of our
best fishing-vessels that day; windows were blown in and roofs ripped
off; and a bunch o’ little sail-boats lying at their moorings were
blown clean out to sea. Some of ’em never were found again. One or
two got smashed up on the rocks. One of ’em went ’way up ’round Indian
Head, drifted up the tide way o’ the Sangus River, and lodged on the
sand-dunes there. Then the sea piled the sand up, changed the course o’
the river, and she’s been left high and dry ever since.”
“You mean the old _Sea-Lark_?” put in Jack.
The watchman nodded.
“I know where she is,” observed the boy. “I’ve climbed aboard her
several times. She’s lying a couple of hundred yards from the river
now.”
“Well,” Cap’n Crumbie went on, “that night, just when the gale was
starting, your father left the office with the money he’d drawn from
the bank to pay off the crew of the _Grace and Ella_. It was in a
canvas bag, notes and silver together, and he didn’t like leaving it
at the office all night. I was coming down High Street, when I met the
parson, and we walked along together a ways. It was hard going and
all-fired dark, when we turned down Wharf Street and fell right over
your father. He was lying all in a heap on the sidewalk. I didn’t
know it was him at first, mind you, because it was so dark. Parson and
me tried to get him onto his feet, but he was all limp, like a wet
string, and so we carried him into Simmons’s house, and there we saw
who it was. When he recovered a bit he told us he’d been robbed. He
had no idea who’d done it. All he knew was that he was hurrying along,
with his head bent down, when some one laid hold of him. Then he got a
smashing blow on the head, and didn’t know anything more until he came
to in Simmons’s kitchen.”
“And the police never found any clue?” Jack asked.
“Not as I ever heard of. But Simon Barker went nearly crazy. You’d
have thought, by the way he fussed, that Sam Holden was the biggest
criminal unhung. Barker lost his head. He’s that mean he hates to see a
mosquito walking on his wall-paper ’cause it’s wearing out the paper.
You’d have thought it was him that had been half killed instead of Sam
Holden. He swore ’twas a put-up job, and that your father had done it
himself somehow, to get away with the money. And mighty unpopular he
made himself by saying such things. Some of us told him what we thought
o’ him, next day, and then he began to calm down a bit, but by that
time the thief had covered up his tracks, and nobody has ever heard
any explanation o’ what happened, from that day to this. It cost your
father his partnership in the business, ’cause he had too much pride
to go on working with a man who had as good as called him a thief, and
he sold his home to replace the money that was stolen. I did hear that
Simon Barker came near dropping dead when your dad handed it to him.
You see, if things had been t’other way round, Barker couldn’t have
brought himself to do such a thing in a month o’ Sundays, and so he
couldn’t understand any one else doing it. Your father wasn’t obliged
to pay the money to Barker, o’ course. If a thing gets stole, it’s
stole, and that’s all there is to it. But your father wanted to clear
his name. And he did, don’t you ever doubt it, Jack! Maybe Barker still
has a sneaking notion that it was a put-up job, but if he does I can’t
see how he figures your father made anything by it!”
“How _can_ he?” protested Jack.
Cap’n Crumbie shook his head, and cast a glance in the direction of the
tug _Simon P. Barker_, which was being coaled noisily at its owner’s
wharf thirty yards away.
“I ain’t no Shylock Holmes, son,” he said. “Maybe he thinks what he
says, and maybe he says what he don’t think. I shouldn’t faint right
now if some one told me here and now that Barker knew more than your
father did about the robbery.”
“You don’t mean――”
“No, Jack, no. I ain’t saying Barker had anything to do with it,
because, to give him his due, he wasn’t never convicted o’ theft. I
b’lieve he’s honest, and if he is, it’s only because he’s too mean to
give his time to the Government, in prison.”
The conversation was interrupted by the approach of a stranger, who,
after looking across the harbor, addressed the watchman.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but will you tell me where I can find the ferry
to East Greenport?”
“There ain’t no ferry, and there ain’t never been one,” replied the
watchman, “though ’tain’t for the want o’ customers. Sometimes in the
summer I’ve been asked that same question a dozen times a day.”
“How can I get over there?” the stranger asked, looking dubiously at
the intervening mile of water. “There is no trolley and it is rather a
long way to walk with this grip.”
“A little ways round that corner,” replied the watchman, pointing off
the wharf, “you’ll find Hinkley’s stable, and you’ll get a carriage
there.”
Cap’n Crumbie watched the man speculatively until he had disappeared,
but Jack was looking out at the stretch of water between the wharf and
the distant hotel, with a puzzled expression.
“I say, Cap’n,” he said a few moments later, “did you mean it when you
said lots of people want to be ferried across to the Point during the
summer?”
“Why, yes, son,” replied the watchman. “You never heard me say anything
that wasn’t the truth, did you?”
Jack smiled and almost made some reference to the Indian Ocean; but
other thoughts were buzzing at the back of his brain.
“Why hasn’t anybody ever started a ferry, then, if there’s need of one?”
he asked.
Cap’n Crumbie put his head on one side and looked down at the ocean.
“Ever swallow sea-water, Jack?” he asked.
“When I was swimming, many a time.”
“What does it taste of?”
“Salt, of course.”
“Salt is right. But there’s all manner o’ things in it besides
salt――even gold, I’ve heard say. It’s there, for the taking, and no
danger o’ the ocean running dry. Well, did you ever hear o’ any one in
Greenport starting to take salt or gold out o’ the sea. No. O’ _course_
you didn’t. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But I reckon it’s about the
same reason why nobody ever started to run a ferry across to the Point
from here. Either they didn’t think of it, or it’s too much trouble.”
“When the summer cottagers come back and the hotel opens, I guess there
would be plenty of business,” Jack mused. “You’d think the hotel alone
would make it pay.”
“Probably ’twould,” the Cap’n agreed.
“I’m sure of it,” said Jack, thoughtfully; and then, as his eyes fell
on something away out to sea, beyond the breakwater, he suppressed an
exclamation and glanced amusedly at Cap’n Crumbie, who was engaged in a
contest with his obstinate pipe.
“Too bad about Bob Sennet!” the boy said. “You think the _Ellen E.
Hanks_ must have foundered with all hands, don’t you?”
“Aye, with all hands,” declared Cap’n Crumbie, wagging his head.
“Fathoms deep, they must be now, floating around among the fish they
went after. I’m not denying they’d ha’ made a big haul o’ mackerel, and
they’d ha’ had the market all to themselves. But there, obstinate folks
have to pay for their obstinacy sooner or later! I warned Bob, but
’twas no use.”
“There’s a boat coming in now,” said the boy, pointing to the craft,
which, with all sail set, was rounding the end of the breakwater, her
hatches evidently full, for her hull was low. “If she isn’t the _Ellen
E. Hanks_ she’s awfully like her.”
Cap’n Crumbie shot a glance over the harbor, and a look of mingled
surprise and chagrin crossed his rugged face.
“Humph!” he said finally. “Some folks are like Jeff Trefry’s old
tom-cat for luck. Jeff tied the cat up in a sack and dropped him
off the wharf and afore he’d more than turned around that cat comes
marchin’ into the kitchen with a flounder in his mouth!”