CASTAWAYS
As the wild swirl of water rushed over Jack, he clung desperately to
the handle of the sloop’s pump. The vessel staggered under her load,
but righted herself bravely.
“Are you there?” the boy spluttered, as soon as he could breathe once
more. It was too dark to see anything.
“I――I think so,” came back the mate’s voice. “I didn’t expect to be,
though. We don’t want much more of that stuff!”
The hours dragged along with leaden heels. Twice again during the
night the sloop almost foundered beneath a terrible blow, but each
time managed to right herself. It seemed to the distressed lads almost
a week of darkness must have passed before a faint blur of light
appeared in the eastern sky. When dawn began to approach Jack had
arrived at that state of physical exhaustion when further effort was
almost intolerable, but the sight of returning daylight, with the
possibilities it brought of being sighted, filled him anew with life.
Then, a little later, his eyes opened wide with blank surprise.
“Why――why, where _are_ we?” he exclaimed.
The boys stared into the half-gloom away to the west. The roar of surf
was distinct above the rushing wind, and as the light increased it was
possible for the lads to make out a line of broken water less than half
a mile away.
“That isn’t the mainland,” George declared presently. “It’s only a
little bit of a place. It surely can’t be Lobster Island! That’s forty
miles or more away from Greenport.”
“Well, how far do you think we’ve drifted in the last twenty hours or
so?” asked the other. “I haven’t the least notion where this place is,
but I shouldn’t be surprised if we had gone as far as Lobster Island.
It’s a mercy we didn’t bump up against it during the night. We’d have
been broken to splinters in that surf.”
“I guess it _is_ Lobster Island,” said George. “There isn’t any other
place it could be. Does anybody live on it?”
“I don’t believe so,” replied the captain. “But even so, I’m going to
dump this packet on the shore.”
“You can’t, Jack, without wrecking her.”
“Maybe, and maybe not. Anyway, it’s about the only chance I see
sticking up at present. Wait till we drift more to leeward of the
island; then I’m going to make it or bust.”
This sudden appearance of land was the most welcome sight Jack could
have imagined, but there remained a good deal of deep water between
them and it; and he was by no means certain that, in the sloop’s badly
crippled condition, she could be urged under the lee shore. Meanwhile,
as the _Sea-Lark_ drifted, the boy made ready to hoist the throat of
the mainsail, and when the sloop was slowly going past he hauled up
part of the jib.
The sloop shipped a heavy sea during this operation, and when
the canvas bellied she was almost awash. But, on reaching the
comparatively smooth water under the lee of the little island she
became more tractable and by dint of delicate handling the boy was able
to run her ashore on a sheltered, sandy beach.
The moment the keel grounded the two lads, dripping wet though they
were――worn out with the hardest and longest spell of toil they had ever
known, and hungry as hunters――looked at each other and laughed.
“Gee! but that was what I call a narrow squeak!” commented George. “If
you’d told me an hour ago that we should be safely ashore by now, I
should have thought you’d gone crazy.”
“It didn’t look much like it!”
“Have you cut yourself?” the mate asked, seeing something dark drop
from his chum’s hand.
“That’s nothing,” replied Jack, dipping his hand over the side in the
water. “Just a bit of a blister that burst. Let’s look at your hands.
Mine _hurt_, I don’t mind admitting, now.”
George displayed the palms of his hands, which were in no better
condition than those of his friend.
Suddenly Jack sprang from his seat and, opening the door of the
companionway, dived into the cabin. A moment later he emerged with a
dry package of crackers and a bottle of water.
“You think I’ve had my mind fixed on saving the sloop, all the night,
don’t you?” he asked, proffering the package to the mate, and stuffing
a cracker into his own mouth. “But you’re wrong. I kept remembering
those crackers, but we’d both have been drowned as sure as eggs are
eggs if we’d opened that door and shipped a sea. This stuff has been in
a locker for almost a week, and I’d forgotten about it.”
“If ever you see me turn up my nose at a cracker after this,” said
George, munching away, “I give you full permission to kick me from one
end of Greenport to another.”
“We’re not in Greenport yet,” replied Jack. “Oh, my back’s nearly
broken! I don’t think I could have gone on pumping for another hour if
my life had depended on it.”
Though their position was dismal enough, stranded as they were on a
barren beach, with their boat half full of water, the lads were now
strangely happy. The strain of their recent unnerving experience had
been greater than they realized, and now it was over, the sheer joy
of being alive, and of knowing that death was not likely to overtake
them any minute, was more than enough to compensate for the fact that
they were still far from being out of the wood. The sloop was resting
firmly enough on the sand, the receding tide leaving her high and dry.
There remained a great deal of water to be pumped out of her bilge,
but that could stay where it was for the present. No sign of any human
habitation was visible on the island, but after resting a few minutes
longer the boys went ashore and explored. They found nothing much
to reward them. The island was little more than a barren rock, with
sparse, coarse grass growing in places, and also a few low, straggling
bushes. It was less than a thousand feet long, and only about two
hundred feet across at its widest point. Possibly no human foot had
stepped ashore there for years. Still, it offered a secure haven, and
on that account the boys were thankful enough. By eating very sparingly
of their slender supply of crackers they would at least be able to keep
alive for the present.
“I don’t remember the geography of this part of the coast awfully
well,” said Jack, after they had made a cursory examination of the
place, “but if this is Lobster Island it can’t be so far off the
mainland. The wind certainly isn’t quite so strong now. I believe the
worst of the gale is over. I’m going to climb up to the top of that
rock and see if I can spot the coast.”
The rock in question was not easy to scale, as it offered no secure
foothold, but its summit was a full twenty feet above the level of
the ocean, and before long the captain of the _Sea-Lark_ was perched
precariously on the top.
“Hooray!” he cried, shouting down to his chum, and pointing away to
the north-west. “We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly.
And there are two ships in sight――schooners, I think. That must be
Bristow harbor over there.”
[Illustration: “We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly”]
In his excitement he descended from his lofty perch a little too
rapidly. Some distance from the bottom he slipped and came perilously
near to breaking a bone or two as he rolled heavily to the spot where
George stood. He barked his shins, and bruised one of his elbows, but
was otherwise unhurt, and after rubbing the sore places for a few
moments almost forgot about them, in view of the important discovery he
had just made.
“If I can get that eye-bolt fixed in the top of the mast again,” he
said, “we’ll be away from here within the next few hours.”
“There’s a biggish sea running,” George cautioned, his eyes roving the
tumbling surface.
“It isn’t so bad,” replied the skipper. “Why, hang it! the wind isn’t
half as strong as it was during the night. In another six hours or so
we shall be able to slip across to Bristow in no time. You don’t want
another night of it, do you?”
“Go ahead,” said George. “I’m just crazy about sailing in lovely
weather like this. And the pump is the best part of it, too, isn’t it?
It seems years since I used a pump. Guess I must have forgotten how to
work the thing by now. If I have forgotten, Jack, I hope you’ll do any
little bit of pumping that might be necessary,” he added with a laugh.
They had walked back to the _Sea-Lark_, and Jack was now standing on
her deck, surveying the damage aloft. He soon realized that to replace
the eye-bolt as it had been was a task beyond him, but, equipping
himself with a few yards of spare manila rope, he climbed the mast and
set about making temporary repairs. It had to be a clumsy job at best,
but elegance was of less importance than strength; and before long he
slipped down to the deck, convinced that the gear would hold.
“The tide will float us again in about another eight hours,” he
declared. “If it’s safe to make a start by then, we shall have two or
three hours’ daylight to make the run across.”
Toward noon, when the ebb tide had ceased, and the water was coming
in the direction of the sloop once more, Jack fished the entire
commissariat supply out of the locker again. It consisted of exactly
five crackers and about half a pint of luke-warm water at the bottom
of the bottle. The wind had by now dropped considerably, and there
was every prospect of the lads being able to start on the journey to
Bristow as soon as the _Sea-Lark_ floated.
“Two crackers and a piece of one for you,” said the captain, dividing
them out equally. “After we’ve eaten this we’ve got to starve to death
or eat sand. Gee! it’s funny how small a cracker is when you’ve only
got two and a half of them for dinner! If we’d only thought to lash
down that bluefish of yours!”
George, having eaten his share of the lunch, yawned. It was more than
thirty hours since he had been asleep.
“It’ll be hours before the sloop’s afloat again,” he said. “I’m going
to turn in and have a snooze.”
He went into the cabin, and stretching in his bunk just as he was, fell
asleep instantly. Jack sat on the deck, with his back against the
deck-house. He did not remember ever having been so sleepy and tired.
Presently his head nodded. He raised it with a jerk and then lowered
his chin to his chest once more, while leaden weights seemed to be
dragging his eyelids down. Just a short nap, he reflected lazily, would
make him feel much fresher. A moment later he, too, was sound asleep,
and when he awoke a puzzled expression swept over his face. The water
was lapping the side of the sloop. It must have been that which awoke
him. He had been asleep for hours.
“Come on, George!” he shouted, leaping to his feet. “We’ll be afloat
soon.”
Rubbing his eyes, the mate emerged from the cabin.
“Why, the wind’s gone right down,” he said. “That’s fine!”
The sloop, which had been canting over on her side while ashore, now
lay almost on an even keel. Jack, armed with the boat-hook, and George
with a pole which had been picked up from the beach in anticipation of
this moment, leaned over the side when the _Sea-Lark_ began to rock
slightly, and without much difficulty they got her afloat once more. Up
went the mainsail and jib, and away the sloop ran, in the direction of
the shore which Jack had observed from the top of the rock. In half an
hour they raised land, and not long after that their craft was nuzzling
one of the pile wharves in Bristow harbor.
“I’ve got just a dollar and fifteen cents,” said Jack, turning out his
pockets. “How much have you?”
“A dime.”
“We’ll manage all right. First of all we ought to telephone to
Greenport. You’d better speak to your mother.”
They found a telephone booth near the harbor, and presently with Jack
standing by his side, George was talking over the wire.
“Hello,” he said. “Is that you, Mother?... We’re at Bristow.... No, we
haven’t got drowned yet.... Yes, we’re all right. You might tell Mr.
Holden.... I’m jolly hungry, that’s all.... Well, it _was_ a bit rough
but you needn’t have worried.... No, everything’s all right, really....
We’re going to sleep on the boat here to-night, and if the weather
holds good we’ll sail back in the morning.... Yes, thanks, a dollar and
a quarter between us, and we sha’n’t need any more.... In the _paper_!
Our _pictures_! Oh, _crickey_!... All right, Mother. See you in the
morning. G’by.
“Oh, splash!” he exclaimed, hanging up the receiver. “That’s done
it! Jack, we’re dead and drowned and given up for lost, and in the
‘Greenport Gazette’ as corpses, and half the town’s almost in mourning
for us already.”
“Two eggs,” Jack was saying, already hurrying his chum away by the arm;
“no, three eggs, and bacon. Lots of bacon. And toast and butter. And
coffee, and――”
“Stop it! you’re making my mouth water,” protested George. “Here’s a
place to get eats.”
Two of the hungriest boys who had ever sat down in the restaurant were
soon giving their orders and appealing to the waitress to hurry; and
it took every cent of their available cash to settle the bill.
After supper they strolled around the little town for an hour or two,
and then returned to the sloop for a good night’s rest.
“We ought to get some one to fix that gear for us properly before we
start off,” said Jack, when they had turned in. “It’s all right as it
is if we don’t strike any more bad weather, but we don’t want another
time like the last.”
“We’ll find somebody to do it,” replied George, sleepily, from his
bunk; and a few moments later the two young adventurers were lost in
slumber.
The next thing Jack knew, he was sitting bolt upright in bed. Footsteps
on the deck had awakened him.
“George!” he said.
“Eh? Eh? What’s wrong?” asked the mate, in the darkness.
Already Jack was out of his bunk.
“There’s somebody prowling about,” replied the skipper. “Listen! He’s
in the cockpit now.”
The cabin door opened, and Jack threw himself into a defensive attitude.
A light flared up in the doorway as a match was struck, and both boys
burst into laughter.
“Well, you two!” said the familiar voice of Tony Santo.
“Dad!” George exclaimed. “How did you get here?”
“By train, of course,” replied Tony. “I just thought I’d run down and
see that you were all right.”
“It’s awfully good of you,” said George. “But I told Mother there was
nothing wrong.”
“Oh, no! Nothing at all wrong!” replied Tony, sarcastically. “What
happened?”
“Some of the gear gave way and we couldn’t use our sails,” Jack
explained.
“Well, my boys,” said Tony, “I’m glad it’s no worse. You certainly did
throw a scare into us all, but it wasn’t your fault. Go back to bed
now. There’s a hotel near here, and I’ll find a bed there. I’ll take
you ashore for breakfast, and as soon as we get her overhauled we’ll be
off for home.”
Next morning Tony strengthened the temporary repairs which Jack had
made, and, with the breeze still favorable, the _Sea-Lark_ headed for
Greenport while most of the good folk of Bristow were still in bed. The
summer gale had vanished as quickly as it had come, and the sloop had
an easy passage back.