THE SEA-LARK TO THE RESCUE
Jack was whistling cheerfully as he cleaned out his boat. As the
sloop’s regular berth was occupied by one of Garnett and Sayer’s
schooners, which was taking in ice for a trip, Jack had tied up across
the slip to one of Simon Barker’s boats. He looked round with a start
when a gruff voice hailed him from the wharf, and saw Simon Barker
himself glaring down from the string-piece.
“Get out of that!” Mr. Barker ordered gruffly.
The boy, puzzled for a moment, as he was doing no harm, looked back in
frank astonishment.
“D’ye hear me? Get out of that!” the ship-owner repeated, more
truculently. “What d’ye mean by rubbing the paint off my boat?”
Silently Jack cast off, and let the _Sea-Lark_ swing back across the
slip.
“Don’t let me catch you over here again!” bellowed Mr. Barker, as he
made his way back toward his office at the head of the wharf.
“Don’t you worry about that,” muttered Jack, smarting, as he fended
the sloop from a spile and tossed her line over it. “You wouldn’t have
found me there then if I’d realized where I was.” He looked disgustedly
after the ship-owner, whose back was disappearing through a doorway.
“I wouldn’t tie up to one of your old tubs if it were the only thing
afloat, you old skinflint!”
But in that Jack was mistaken, as events soon proved.
Two days later there came a blustery, rainy day――the sort of weather
known to the down-east fishermen as a “smoky so’easter.” For a brief
spell summer was in a grumpy mood. Drizzle fell constantly, and sharp
gusts of wind swept at intervals across the harbor. Jack, having made
one profitless run across to the Point, was wondering whether or not
there was any chance of the sun taking another peep at Greenport that
day. He hoped that for once Cap’n Crumbie was wrong in his assertion
that it was going to last till nightfall. George was not on board that
morning, as it was one of the days when his father needed assistance,
but Rodney had joined the sloop, in no wise discouraged by the weather.
Both boys were enveloped in oilskins.
While the _Sea-Lark_ was lying at her berth Cap’n Crumbie strolled to
the edge of the wharf, casting a glance far out to sea for some sign of
a break.
“There’s a schooner in trouble down near Four Fathom Shoal,” he
announced. “They’ve just telephoned from the Light about her.”
“A Greenport schooner?” Jack asked.
“Don’t know,” replied the watchman. “The light-keeper said he could
only just make her out in the haze.”
“Is she ashore on the shoal?”
“Don’t seem to be. As far as he can see, she’s a bit to the south o’
the shoal, but she’s had her sticks blown out of her, or something.”
“I haven’t seen the tug go off,” observed Jack.
“She ain’t here, but Barker’s on the job, all right. He’s scared stiff
lest the schooner is one o’ his boats. Shouldn’t wonder if she is. The
_Grace and Ella_ ought to ha’ got in last night, but she didn’t.”
“The _Grace and Ella_!” repeated Jack. The name had a peculiar
significance for him. That was the schooner which his own father had
owned in partnership with Simon Barker when the robbery had led to the
severing of their business relations.
“I hope it isn’t the _Grace and Ella_,” said the boy anxiously.
“Somehow――I don’t know――well, she isn’t in the family now, of course,
but all the same I hate the idea of anything happening to her.”
“So does Barker!” grinned the watchman, whose sympathies lay more with
the men on the schooner than with the owner’s pocket. “His tug went
up to Rockmore this morning with a tow, and he’s hanging on to the
telephone and nearly having a fit, trying to get hold o’ Burke, the
cap’n.”
“Rockmore is a tidy distance off,” commented Jack. “Anything might
happen to the schooner by the time the tug reaches her from there. But
the schooner isn’t ashore, you say?”
“Not as far as the light-keeper could make out. And the tide is making
the other way, so she’ll be all right for a while, so long as she ain’t
leaking bad.”
Jack looked up sideways at the gloomy sky. Though the wind was coming
in puffs, it by no means had the force of a gale.
“What do you say to a run out there, Rod?” he asked suddenly, turning
to his friend.
“Out where? To Four Fathom Shoal?” His face lighted up at the prospect
of such an adventure. “I’m game, if you are.”
“Why not?” said Jack. “I don’t know that we could do much when we got
there, but the sloop can make it easily enough, and you never know!
They might be jolly glad to let us bring them ashore.”
“Well, I ain’t saying you wouldn’t get there safe,” observed Cap’n
Crumbie, “though you’d have to tack all the way against this so’easter.
But the tug may get there afore you can.”
“According to you, though, the tug hasn’t started from Rockmore yet,”
protested Jack. “There isn’t a soul wants to go across the ferry at
present, so why shouldn’t we make the run?”
“Go to it!” said the watchman. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
“Come on, Rod,” said Jack, suiting the action to the word and a few
moments later the sloop was standing straight down the harbor, past
Gull Island, past the end of the breakwater, out into the open. Jack
found the sea was rougher than he had anticipated when they came
abreast of Greenport Light, but the wind was nothing to cause alarm.
The _Sea-Lark_ danced and cavorted, heeling well over as she raced up
one side of a green sea and dived down the other. The water boiled in
her wake, for Jack was carrying every stitch of canvas he could spread
to the breeze.
_Thump-thumpety-thump!_ went the curling crests of waves as they
slapped her bow. Always she rose before the onrushing swirl like a bird
in fact as well as in name, but sometimes the crest curled a little
higher, swished up at her prow, and shot over the deck, drenching
everything on board. Several times her cockpit was awash, and some
of the water went down the companionway into the cabin, but the rest
gushed back through the scuppers into the sea.
“This rain must have got worse since the light-keeper telephoned,”
Jack said when they had run a mile south of the breakwater and he was
thinking of swinging over on to the other tack. “The shoal is four
miles away from the Point, and you can’t make anything out more than
half a mile away now. It may let up again soon, though. Keep your eyes
skinned, Rod.”
Jack came about as soon as he had room to run clear of the Point’s
eastern shore. The loom of the shore was hazy, and as soon as he went
about once more and bore away almost due south the mist swallowed up
the coast-line entirely. The wind sang shrilly in the rigging and the
boys’ faces smarted with the salt spume which whipped their cheeks and
at times half blinded them.
“Want to go back?” Jack shouted to his chum, jokingly, when the
_Sea-Lark_ in a particularly playful moment had kicked up her heels
and dived with somewhat alarming suddenness down a steep green
mountain-side, fetching up at the bottom with a splash and burying her
nose.
“Not likely,” replied Rod, reveling in the spice of danger which
flavored the adventure. “It’s just beginning to be interesting.”
“She’ll fairly skate home straight before this wind,” replied Jack,
laughingly. “Here comes a whopper! Look out! Isn’t she a daisy? See the
way she rose to it? We must be about half-way out to the Four Fathom
bell-buoy now. I thought I heard it ringing just then. Listen!”
_Ding-ding-ading!_ The sound was faintly audible.
“It’s safe enough to keep on till we work our way to that buoy,”
said Rod. “Dad and I have been as far as that several times in the
motor-boat, but of course only in fine weather.”
“I know the shallow water is all to the north of that buoy,” replied
Jack. “What I’m worrying about now is, where is the schooner? There
doesn’t seem to be any sign of her. Maybe she’s close up to the shoal.”
For another twenty minutes the sloop ran on, tacking occasionally, and
ever approaching nearer the sound of the bell-buoy, the melancholy note
of which now came clearly enough across the water.
“Hark!” cried Rod, suddenly.
_Swish!_ came the waves against the prow of the sloop. Overhead there
was the constant song of the wind in the halyards. The only other thing
Jack could hear for a while was the bell-buoy.
“What was it?” he asked after a while.
Just then a gust of wind brought across the water the squawk of a
boat’s fog-horn.
_Conch-conch!_
“There she goes! That’s the schooner, all right,” cried Jack, swinging
the wheel over and heading in the direction of the sound.
_Conch-conch!_ It was more distinct now, the wind bringing it directly
toward them.
“The tug hasn’t arrived, evidently,” Jack shouted to his companion.
“Didn’t I see something away across there just now?” he added, pointing
over to the starboard bow and peering into the haze.
“Yes, there she is!” he cried a few moments later, as a vague blur
became visible through the rain. “And she’s the _Grace and Ella_, too.
But what’s happened to her? There isn’t a spar standing!”
Another five-minutes’ manœuvering brought the _Sea-Lark_ within hail of
the distressed vessel, and soon she was under her lee.
“Ahoy, Captain Jordan!” Jack called. “The tug is coming off for you.”
“Hello, youngster! Where is she?”
“Don’t know. They telephoned up to Rockmore for her. She’d gone up
there with a tow.”
“Well, if she ain’t quick she won’t be a powerful lot o’ use to us,”
replied Captain Jordan. “We could drift home in another month or two,
with this wind. What are you doing out here? This ain’t your beat with
the ferry.”
“Why, I didn’t know how bad a fix you might be in,” replied Jack. “We
could have carried you ashore if the schooner had been sinking. What
happened to your masts?”
Only a few yards separated the two craft. The little boat was rising
and falling on each wave, Jack keeping her clear, headed up into the
wind.
“A squall struck us about four o’clock this morning and made a clean
sweep. The dories went, and everything, and afore we knew it the
schooner was bumping her bottom out on the shoal. If the tide hadn’t
turned just then we’d ha’ been all broken up by now.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you, is there?” asked Jack. Apart
from the natural desire to serve those on another craft in trouble, the
boy would have been pleased to be of service to Captain Jordan, for he
had been on particularly friendly terms with that stalwart fisherman
ever since he himself first began to potter about the harbor. Indeed,
many a time he had paddled about in one of the _Grace and Ella’s_
dories, and despite Mr. Barker’s enmity, the lad had received more than
one invitation from Captain Jordan to make a trip in the schooner to
the fishing-grounds, though he had declined to do so, at the desire of
his father.
“You say the tug ain’t coming straight out o’ Greenport?” the skipper
asked.
“No telling when she will be here,” replied Jack. “I don’t think she
can be long, though.”
“Well, I’ll have to drop my anchor soon as the tide turns again,”
replied the fisherman, “unless you like to give us a tow. We can’t do a
thing now, except wait. We’ve got a big trip o’ fish aboard, too, and
she sprang a leak when she hit the sand. We’ve had to keep on pumping.”
“I can tow you, all right,” replied Jack, “if you’ll pass me a hawser.
You won’t move so very fast, but I can get you there.”
“Well, that’ll be a salvage job, won’t it?” said Captain Jordan. “You’d
better put a price on it before we start.”
Jack, who had not thought of turning his adventure into a business
affair up to that moment, hardly knew what to reply.
“What’s a fair price, Captain?” he asked.
“You’d better settle that with the owners, after we get ashore.”
Jack laughed outright.
“No, thank you,” he replied. “Mr. Barker and I are not what you’d call
particularly good friends. What’s it worth to you to be taken into the
harbor?”
“If the tug comes along,” replied the captain, “it won’t cost the owner
anything, but there’s no sign of her yet and if we keep on drifting the
way we’re headed we’re due to land up on the Big Popple Beach before
long. I’ll take the first tow I can find and I guess I wouldn’t kick at
five hundred dollars for the job.”
There was a gasp from Rodney. Jack blinked once or twice, and the smile
vanished from his face. Then:
“Let me have that hawser,” he said in a businesslike tone. “Only,
Captain, if I start towing you, I want to finish the job.”
“Glad to have you,” replied Captain Jordan, who, though he did not
say so, was by no means heartbroken at the idea of running up a bill
against his employer, in the circumstances. For, like everybody else
with whom Simon Barker had had any dealings, the captain of the _Grace
and Ella_ had been a victim of Barker’s meanness. Most of the gear on
the schooner was little better than junk. To wring a new set of sails
out of her owner was one of the hardest tasks in the world. It was just
the same with halyards, spars, and everything else aboard that needed
to be renewed from time to time after hard wear and tear. Captain
Jordan was convinced that the loss of the two masts was due to Barker’s
stinginess. Twelve months previously the skipper had pointed out a
defect in the mainmast and suggested that it would be safer to have the
spar replaced, but Barker would not hear of it. It was that mast which
gave way first when the squall hit them, and the foremast, unable to
bear the additional strain, followed suit. Barker, therefore, was only
paying for his own niggardliness.