GEORGE SIGNS ON
A few minutes later Jack left the watchman, and made his way through
town toward the cottage in which he lived. And as he went, his mind
busied itself with the idea of the ferry suggested by Cap’n Crumbie.
Jack Holden was as care-free as any boy of his age in Greenport. For
him, life so far had contained little but healthy sport and amusement,
and the question of earning money had never concerned him. Nor was
it the wish of his father that it should. Yet, despite his natural
light-heartedness, Jack had a level head. The time would come, and
before very long, when he must face the problem of winning a place
for himself in the world. It had been decided that, if it could be
arranged, he was to spend another two years at High School, after
which he would seek a position. But two years is a long time, and
Jack was by no means certain that he would not have to turn out and
become a wage-earner long before his education was completed. For his
father was now a very different man from the old Samuel Holden. Since
the robbery, troubles had piled themselves on his shoulders somewhat
seriously. First had come the loss of Jack’s mother, from which Mr.
Holden had never really recovered. Then had followed that blow on the
head inflicted by the thief, which had necessitated numerous visits to
a costly eye specialist, in order to preserve his sight. Finally, with
his business taken away from under his feet, he had been in financial
straits ever since. After selling his home to make good the missing
money, he had taken a small cottage on the outskirts of Greenport and
gone to work as a bookkeeper for Garnett and Sayer, the fish-packers.
Had his wife lived, with her indomitable spirit and unending
courage――characteristics which, fortunately, she had bestowed upon her
son――she would have buoyed him up and kept alive his old ambition. But
now his worries told on him, and it was that fact which caused Jack to
wonder sometimes whether his own education would ever be completed as
he would like it to be.
If, he reflected, as he walked home, he could only start that ferry and
so bring a little grist to the mill, it would at least help to relieve
his father of some of his anxiety. But one cannot make bricks without
straw. And he was face to face with the cold fact that he had no boat,
nor any chance of acquiring one. At home, he looked over his sum total
of worldly possessions. There was four dollars and twenty cents in
the savings-bank. He had a nickel and two dimes in his pocket. Also,
he owned a silver watch, of little value, as most of its works were
missing. There was a penknife, which he had bought after much careful
deliberation, and there was――well, little else save rubbish, worth
nothing when it came to a question of raising enough money to buy a
boat suitable for Holden’s Ferry.
“Holden’s Ferry!” Jack repeated aloud, smiling a little at the sound.
The name had an agreeable ring to it. It would be fun. And at the same
time it might be fairly profitable fun.
In the evening, when his father returned, Jack immediately introduced
the subject uppermost in his thoughts.
“Dad,” he began impulsively, “how can I get a boat, twenty feet long,
or something like that――one that will hold ten or a dozen people and
won’t leak more than about ten buckets of water an hour.”
“Eh? What’s that?” asked Mr. Holden, in surprise.
“I’ve got an idea, and I want a boat, Dad,” replied Jack. “I
thought――perhaps――somehow――”
“I wish I could buy you one, my lad,” said Mr. Holden, a trifle
dejectedly, “but you’ll have to wait till my ship comes in.”
“I don’t want it for pleasure――not altogether, that is,” the boy
declared.
“Not for pleasure? Then what on earth―― Are you thinking of setting up
in the shipping business?”
Jack chuckled.
“I may do a little freight-carrying,” he said with mock seriousness,
“but the passenger trade is what I was thinking of chiefly.”
“Modest youth! You’ll want to go into steam for that, though,” said Mr.
Holden, jokingly. “It is a pretty tall proposition for a youngster of
your age. Have you fixed on just what ports you are going to trade at?”
“Only Greenport, Dad. But I’m in earnest.”
Still slightly amused, Mr. Holden stroked his chin and eyed his son
inquiringly.
“Well, what is this wonderful scheme of yours?” he asked.
“I want to run a ferry between Garnett and Sayer’s wharf and the hotel
landing on the Point,” the boy replied. “There is no way of getting
across except by hiring a boat or walking around, or taking a carriage;
and plenty of people would pay a dime to be run across there in a
ferry-boat.”
“Yes, but――”
“Wait a minute, Dad. I’ve had this in my mind all the afternoon. Cap’n
Crumbie tells me there are lots of people who inquire for the ferry in
the summer. He says there never has been one, but that is no reason why
there shouldn’t be one now. Perhaps I wouldn’t make _lots_ of money
at it, but I’m old enough to help you a bit, and I don’t want to loaf
all through vacation, because I know you’ve had worry enough and that
you’re going to have a tough time keeping me in school until I finish.”
“Well?” observed Samuel Holden, rather vaguely.
“I was wondering,” continued the boy, “whether you could manage somehow
to buy me the sort of boat I’d need. Almost anything would do that was
half-way decent――and clean, too, because summer folk wouldn’t want to
get into her if she wasn’t.”
Mr. Holden shook his head slowly. “I dare say it might work out all
right, Jack,” he said, “and a little more money would come in very
handy, but you’d better get the notion out of your head, son, before
you waste any more time thinking about it. I couldn’t afford to buy
you even a dory, and it’s about six times too far across the water at
that point to row, anyway.”
“All right, Dad,” said Jack, quietly. He realized that there was no use
in asking his father to perform impossibilities. Later in the evening
Mr. Holden noted an expression of quiet determination in the lad’s face
such as he had so often seen in Mrs. Holden’s when, things not going
well, her resourceful brain and stout heart had set themselves the task
of getting affairs back in order.
The next day was Saturday, and shortly after breakfast, there being
no school, Jack and his chum, George Santo, started off on a hike
toward the sand-dunes and salt-flats which lay for miles to the north
of Greenport. This region the boys had made their playground ever
since they were old enough to go about together. It was on the bold
summit of Indian Head, a rocky barrier which for centuries had kept
the encroaching sea at bay, that they had built their first wigwam
out of driftwood, and stood, at the mature ages of nine and ten
respectively, adorned with feathers and armed with spears, guarding
their hunting-grounds from the hated palefaces who never seemed to
approach much nearer than Greenport. From there they let their eyes
wander in imagination over vast herds of buffalo, moose and antelope
grazing peacefully on a far-stretching prairie. At times, as the hated
palefaces all seemed to be fully occupied elsewhere, phantom palefaces
had to blunder upon their hunting-grounds, and these intruders were
hastily despatched or led captive to the driftwood wigwam, there to be
held as hostages. There were terrific battles up on Indian Head, but
somehow or other, whatever the overwhelming odds with which they were
faced, the two lone braves invariably came out from the encounters
unscathed. But the wigwam was now scattered to the four winds of
heaven. The boys had grown too old for that sort of make-believe; yet
their love for the region of dunes and marsh endured.
On this particular morning they headed over toward the salt-flats above
Cow Creek, and then followed the course of the Sangus River toward the
sea. They must have trudged half a dozen miles by this circuitous route
before Jack, standing on the rippled summit of a wind-swept dune, drew
his companion’s attention to the fact that the Sangus had changed its
sandy course.
“It must have been caused by the flood and the last gale,” he said.
“See, the water has come right across this low bit and――and――say,
George, the old sloop, the _Sea-Lark_, was lying nearly buried just
along here. I shouldn’t wonder if the river has swept her away now.
Come on, let’s see how the old dear is.”
Ten minutes’ tramping brought them to the place, and each gave a cry of
joy when they saw that the sloop lay exactly as she had lain for three
years. But she had escaped the effects of the recent gale by a narrow
margin only, for the Sangus had swirled over its banks, eating its way
through the sand to a new course, until it now flowed within twenty
feet of the _Sea-Lark_.
The boys climbed aboard the derelict, and with their legs dangling over
the side, with healthy appetites attacked a parcel of sandwiches.
“I’m glad she’s still here,” said Jack. “Do you remember when I was a
pirate king last summer and made you walk the plank? We’ve had lots of
fun on this sloop. If she’d been lying a mile or so nearer Greenport,
crowds of kids would have been swarming all over her and she’d have
been broken up.”
George nodded, and poked the last of the sandwiches into his mouth.
“Talking of boats,” Jack went on, “where do you suppose I could get
one, George?”
“What do you want her for? There’s my dory. You can have that any time
you want.”
“Thanks, George,” Jack replied. “But a dory isn’t just what I _do_
want.”
Then he explained.
“I don’t know. I guess a boat like that, one you could use for a ferry,
would cost money,” declared the other, when Jack had finished.
“I thought maybe, your father being a boat-builder, you might know
of some way I could manage it,” said Jack. “There’s plenty of time,
because it’s early in the season yet, and maybe I’ll find what I want
somewhere.”
“If you do start the ferry I want to help. May I?” asked George.
“Why not?”
“You’ll be skipper and I’ll be mate,” said George, laughing.
“You mustn’t laugh at the captain――that is, not after you’re properly
appointed mate――” said Jack, “or I’ll order you put in irons. That’s
what they always do. Yes, laugh now, if you like, but wait till I’m
your captain. But why wait? See here, George Santo, weren’t you making
an application to me for a job just now?”
“Yes, sir,” replied George, meekly touching his cap.
“How old are you?” This, brusquely, as befitting a fearsome master
mariner.
“Fifteen, sir.”
“Umph! Pretty young for my class of trade. What’s your rating?”
“Chief mate, sir.”
“Got your certificate?”
“I left it at home, sir.”
“Umph! Very careless of you. Well, you want to sail with me, eh? What
about the compass? Can you box it?”
“I’m a pretty fair boxer, sir.”
“Not that sort of boxing, chump! All right, you’re engaged. _Now_, Mr.
Mate, laugh at me if you dare!”
Whereupon the mate promptly laughed, and Jack as promptly hurled him
overboard into the raging billows of sand. Jack then strolled aft and
stood for a few moments, measuring the distance between the embedded
sloop and the river.
The mate, clambering aboard again, shouted something which fell on
deaf ears. Again George spoke, and again Jack made no answer. At last,
however, he emerged from his abstraction, and, “Come here,” he called.
George obeyed, and Jack passed his arm through that of his friend.
“Now, use your brain,” he said. “How far is it from here to the
stream?”
“Thirty feet,” the other guessed. “Why?”
“Wrong. It’s nearer twenty. And don’t ever ask the captain ‘why’
anything. He’s in supreme command; see? Tell me what is to prevent us
digging the _Sea-Lark_ out of this and getting her afloat.”
“Afloat!” gasped the mate. “Why, you can’t do it! She’s stuck here.”
“Why can’t I do it?”
“Well,” began the mate, dubiously.
“You’ll be disrated if you don’t use more intelligence,” snapped the
skipper. “What are shovels for but to dig with?”
“Yes, but――” began George.
“But what?”
“Well, if you got her afloat she’d only sink. Her timbers will all be
rotten.”
“Show me a rotten timber!” said Jack. “I don’t mean these planks that
have got broken on deck. I mean in the hull. She’s as sound as a bell.
A boat like this would take years and years to rot. She’d need some
calking, I guess, but that’s what I engaged you for, isn’t it?――while I
sit in my deck chair and give orders. George, honestly, I believe it
could be done.”
“But she isn’t yours to float,” parried the mate, “nor to use after you
get her afloat.”
“That’s true,” agreed the skipper, frowning. “But you have got a way of
raising difficulties since I signed you on. Who does she belong to?”
“She used to belong to Mr. Farnham,” replied George. “He’s a New York
man with pots of money, who lives over on the Point in the summer. The
sloop was in my father’s boat-yard for repairs the summer before she
broke away and got stranded here.”
“Well, do you suppose he wants her? I don’t believe so.”
“Don’t know,” observed George, doubtfully.
“Well, if he does want her, why doesn’t he come and get her? And what
could he use her for? A coal cellar, or what? She’s abandoned, I tell
you.”
“If you took her away from here, which you couldn’t do, anyway,”
observed the younger boy, “you’d be committing ship theft.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a dreadful offense, worse than piracy. I believe they hang you
for it, or something.”
“I certainly don’t want you to get hanged,” said the captain. “Good
mates are scarce; and they always hang the mate, because he’s engaged
to make himself useful in little ways like that. But it wouldn’t
be ship theft if I wrote a letter to this Mr. Farnham and got his
permission, would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“Of course not. Where does he live?”
“My dad will have his address.”
“Well, don’t forget to ask him for it, and I’ll write. He can only
refuse.”
George, beginning to awake to the possibilities of the plan, cast a
more critical eye over the stranded sloop.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right,” he said at length. “We
_might_ get her into the water.”
“It wouldn’t be exactly easy, because she’s pretty big,” Jack admitted,
“but it would be worth trying, anyway. What a prize if we got her,
though! She’s thirty foot over all, if she’s an inch. And ten――no,
twelve-foot beam. The only thing is, if she did float, we couldn’t row
her very well.”
“There’s bales of junk gear up at our yard,” put in George. “I suppose
her mast got broken off in the gale when she stranded. I think I could
get that fixed all right, though. There’s an old spar that came out of
her when she was refitted. I don’t know why it was taken out, but it
looks all right. We can find an old mainsail and jib somewhere. Even if
they need a bit of patching, they’ll do.”
“The boat is the chief thing,” Jack mused. “The rest will be easy, once
we get her. I’m going to send that letter off to-day. Let’s go home now
and do it.”
Letter-writing was not an occupation which, ordinarily, filled Jack
with joy. But this was not an ordinary occasion. After a first attempt
which he regarded as a failure, the boy produced a missive that was
both frank and polite, and then, feeling that he did not stand a
ghost of a chance of having his request granted, posted it. Later,
he and George walked to the boat-yard, there to consult George’s
father, Tony Santo, on the question of moving the _Sea-Lark_ from
her sandy bed. Tony promised to go down the river and look the sloop
over, the following day, and was as good as his word. Jack and George
accompanied him in his sailing-dory, and to the delight of the boys
the boat-builder declared that there ought not to be a great deal of
difficulty in getting the sloop off, though he cautiously declined
either to have anything to do with such operations or allow his son to,
unless definite permission was received from Mr. Farnham. He pointed
out, however, that the accumulation of sand in the sloop’s cabin would
have to be removed before any attempt could be made at shifting her.
Her companionway door had evidently been open when she grounded, with
the result that in the three years which had since elapsed the space
below deck, a roomy cabin twelve feet by nine, had been half filled
with the fine white sand.
During the next three days the boys, taking a shovel with them,
employed themselves busily at this task until the last of the undesired
ballast was removed. Jack now began to keep an anxious lookout for the
postman. Four days elapsed, and still no reply arrived. Thursday came,
and on returning from school he found an envelope bearing his name, on
the mantel-shelf. His fingers unsteady with excitement, he tore it open
and read:
DEAR SIR:
I thought my old sloop must have been broken up by now. Yes,
she is still my property, and if you want her you are welcome
to her, on one condition. If you get her afloat, you must take
me for a sail in her some day.
Yours sincerely,
CHARLES FARNHAM.