THE SINKING OF THE _Sachem_
He still lived!
Dirk drew himself up on one elbow, choking. His mouth was filled with
powdery dust, and every bone ached. Frenziedly, he thrashed about, and
found he had shaken free of the rope that had bound his hands together.
He reached up and tore off his blindfold.
In the light of the waning crescent moon, he looked up. A few inches
above his head lay the bank from which he had leaped into the unknown.
Standing there, doubled with silent laughter, were the three figures of
his torturers. Instead of jumping to death from a precipitous cliff, he
had plunged dramatically from a ledge barely a foot high!
He knew where he was now. To his scattered senses came the knowledge
that he had landed sprawling in the dirt road that led to camp. The
tents could not be far away, although, blindfolded, he had thought that
Ryan and his gang had led him for miles through the woods. He scrambled
painfully to his feet and ran up the road.
Behind him rose an alarmed, muffled shout from Brick Ryan. “Head him
off, Kipper! He’s goin’ back to camp! Get him, Ugly!” The shout only
made him run faster. Up the rutted road he sped, flying to
security—anywhere, away from the clutches of those who had so brutally
mistreated him. His pursuers scattered, seeking to head through the
woods and cut him off from the tent. Dirk lost a slipper, but did not
pause. If they got their hands on him again——!
A shape darted out at him from behind a tree. He dodged, and raced
ahead, gasping for breath. Now he could see the gray sheets of canvas
that marked the tents close beside the dark silhouette of the lodge.
Behind him hammered the running feet of Brick Ryan. He was almost upon
him!
Dirk stumbled into Tent One, and fell upon the bunk where Sax McNulty
slept the sleep of the weary councilor.
“Save me! They’re after me!”
The leader started up open-mouthed, blinking his eyes. “What—who——” he
mumbled. “Get off!”
“Save me, sir! It’s Brick Ryan, and he made me jump over a cliff, and
they chased me—— Don’t let him get me again!”
Others in the tent stirred. Slim Yerkes, in the bunk above the
councilor, sat up and silently looked at the sobbing figure beneath him.
Young Eddie Scolter woke and giggled uncomprehendingly at the scene.
“Why, it’s Van Horn!” exclaimed McNulty. “Having a nightmare, old chap?
Wake up!”
Brick Ryan had halted just outside the tent, and taking advantage of the
commotion, sought to gain his bunk unobserved. He had not intended that
his captive should escape him and return thus to the tent and arouse the
ire of the leader. He began shedding his garments quickly, hoping to be
found peacefully snoring when Sax should waken sufficiently to take
charge. But McNulty caught a glimpse of him just as he was pulling the
blankets over his head, and read the situation in an instant.
“This some of your work, Brick?” he asked grimly. “There, there, calm
down, Van, old man—why, you’re shaking like a leaf! What happened?”
“They hazed me!” Dirk gulped back the tears. “I’m sorry to make such a
fuss, but it hurt——”
The councilor snapped on the flashlight he always kept under his pillow,
and examined the haggard boy at his side. “Anything serious the matter
with you? No bones broken, or anything like that?”
“I—I don’t think so, sir. I’m ashamed to act this way,” Dirk stammered
bravely, “but you see, there were three of them, and they were pretty
rough——”
“All right. Now, just get back to bed, and we’ll straighten things out
in the morning. We’ve already roused the whole tent, so don’t make any
more noise tonight.” McNulty climbed from his bunk, helped the shaking
boy to his own blankets, covered him gently, and looked about the tent
to assure himself that all was well. Then he crossed to where Brick Ryan
lay crouched, listening furtively.
“You know what the Chief thinks about hazing, Brick,” he said sternly.
“You’ll start the day tomorrow with two hours on the wood-pile.”
“All right, Sax,” the Irish boy answered sullenly. “But I didn’t know
the big baby was going to run and tattle! Why didn’t he take it like a
man?”
“That’s enough! Now, everybody get to sleep again. We’ve had enough riot
for one night.”
Dirk stretched out his aching body, and closed his eyes. Through the
dark drifted the vengeful tones of his enemy.
“All right! But anyway, he’s a tattle-tale, and I’ll fix him for it—you
see if I don’t!”
The morning period of camp duty found Brick Ryan on the wood-pile,
serving his time chopping sawn logs into stove lengths and vowing
vengeance upon the boy who had brought the punishment on him. He looked
darkly from time to time toward the rear door of the camp kitchen, where
the rest of the Tent One campers were helping to make the ice-cream for
the Sunday dinner. Among them lounged Dirk Van Horn, who now and then
lent a hand at the job of turning the heavy churn in the freezer, or
packed some more salted ice around the revolving container. Brick noted
that his foe was now dressed in garments more suited to a Lenape
camper—basketball shorts and a light, sleeveless shirt. If Van Horn
didn’t watch out, Brick mused, he would be laid up with a bad case of
sunburn, for his shoulders were pale and lacked the protective coat of
tan that marked the boys who had already spent a month in the mountain
sunshine.
“Some people never learn,” Brick muttered, viciously splitting a stick
of smooth birchwood. “Runnin’ home to mama just because we was havin’ a
little fun with him, and squealin’ to Sax so he’d make me do wood-pile
duty! Well, all I can say is, my time will come yet!”
He was interrupted by the noisy clatter of the motor of the camp flivver
which, driven by Mr. Lane, rattled down the road and drew up at the rear
of the lodge. In the back of the small truck, tightly lashed to prevent
jolting, was a long, curved object wrapped securely in burlap. As Brick
watched, Dirk Van Horn gave a shout and ran to the driver, who was just
descending.
“That’s my canoe you have there, isn’t it, sir? Listen—doesn’t it say
it’s for Van Horn? That’s me!”
“Yes, it’s for you, I guess,” answered Lane; “and the dickens of a time
I had bringing it over these roads up from Elmville. We’ve got plenty of
canoes here at camp—what any boy wants with one all to himself, I don’t
know.”
Dirk was not listening. He ran to the group around the ice-cream
freezer, and summoned them excitedly.
“Come on, you chaps! I made my father buy me a new canoe because I
promised to come to camp, and here it is! Help me unpack it, and then
we’ll try it out. It’s a beauty!”
“Listen!” Lefty Reardon protested. “We’re on squad duty—we have to make
this ice-cream, and if we go away now, it won’t freeze——”
His tent-mates paid no attention to his objection. Dirk darted into the
kitchen and returned with a long butcher-knife, with which he began
ripping the seams of the burlap that wrapped the canoe. In a few minutes
the casing was torn away, and the beautiful slim craft, painted a bright
crimson, lay on the ground with its paddles along its bottom.
Dirk was jumping around excitedly, pointing out the features of the
superb workmanship that made the canoe a delight to the eye. “Look at
her lines, you fellows! See those soft seats. Those duck-boards on the
bottom are to keep your feet dry. I tell you, you have to pay plenty of
money for a boat like this! She’s a real Indian canoe, and I gave her a
real Indian name, too. See?” He pointed to the shapely bow, where in
golden letters was blazoned the name _Sachem_. “Now, who wants to help
me try her out?”
“Yes, let’s try her out!” echoed Eddie Scolter. “Come on!”
“Down to the lake!” shouted Dirk. “Here, Slim, grab hold of that end.
She’s light as a feather—we’ll have her in the water in no time!”
Slim Yerkes obediently lifted one end; Eddie, Nig Jackson, and Joey
Fellowes seized the sides, and led by the excited Dirk, the group made
off down the path to the boat dock, bearing the gleaming canoe aloft,
leaving her burlap wrappings to clutter the ground. Lefty, wrestling
alone with the heavy churn of the ice-cream freezer, shouted a last
warning to them, but by this time his truant comrades were out of sight
down the hill, bent on taking part in the first launching of the lovely
little vessel.
Brick gazed after them disdainfully, impressed in spite of himself. It
was a swell canoe, all right, and no boy could help being proud of it.
Think of hitting the Long Trail in a craft like that! But the fellows
had no right to leave their squad duty and run off to play with Van
Horn’s new toy——
An amazed shout rose from the back of the kitchen. Sax McNulty, who had
been working up in the ice-house, digging out large blocks of ice and
heaving them down to his young assistants, had finished and returned to
the scene to find that his squad, with the exception of the faithful
Lefty, had disappeared.
“Hey, what’s happened? Where is everybody, Lefty? Have they walked out
on the job?”
Lefty grunted, struggling with the freezer handle that grew stiffer at
each turn. “Yeah, Sax—I told ’em not to beat it, but Van Horn just got a
canoe, and they all took it down to the lake to christen it.”
“They did, eh? Well, they’ll have to learn that they can’t run away like
this when their duty is still to be done. Here, let me take a turn at
that, Lefty. When you’re rested, you can chop some more ice. Huh! If you
hadn’t stuck to the job, the camp would be missing its dessert this
noon, all right!”
The leader grappled with the freezer. Brick turned to his chopping once
more, and at the sound of his ax, McNulty looked over toward the
wood-pile and saw him.
“Oh, Brick! I guess you’ve served your time. Do me a favor, will you?”
“Sure, Sax. What do you want?” replied Brick, sinking the ax blade into
the chopping block.
“Chase down to the lake and head off that bunch of runaways. Tell ’em to
come right back and finish what they started, before playing around with
canoes and things.”
Brick needed no urging. He wanted to see what would happen at the lake
shore. By this time, the canoe was no doubt already in the water. He ran
off down the hillside in a bee-line for the dock. Behind the lower row
of tents he sped, across the stone wall, and cut across the edge of the
baseball field to the grove of trees that fringed the rocky lake shore.
Here he almost tumbled over the bent backs of Wally Rawn, director of
water sports and captain of the camp life-saving crew, and the seven
boys who made up his tent-group. Rawn had chosen as his squad duty the
task of repairing the steps that led down the steep bank to the dock;
and Brick had to circle around the busy group to gain the edge of the
lake where the boat dock jutted out from the shore.
Here, in the shallows of the bathing beach, the _Sachem_ was already
afloat, riding high above the rippling, shadowed waters of Lenape. She
was held at one end by the proud Dirk, while the other boys gazed
admiringly at her daintiness, that made the moored string of
round-bottomed steel rowboats of the camp fleet look like clumsy craft
indeed.
“Watch me get in her!” Dirk was shouting in a high voice. “Let me paddle
her around a bit, and then maybe I’ll take you all for a ride!”
He drew the light vessel close beside the flooring of the dock, and
balancing the paddles in one hand, started to step into the bow. Brick
clattered on to the end of the pier.
“Say, you fellows!” he began. “Sax says to come back on the job right
away. He’s pretty mad, too—you’re not supposed to sneak off squad duty.”
Dirk turned upon him coldly. “Don’t be foolish, Ryan. Can’t you see
we’re busy christening the _Sachem_? If you don’t make a fuss, I’ll take
you for a little spin after a while.”
“But——”
The blond boy was not listening. He was too much interested in making
his maiden trip in the newly-launched crimson canoe. Teetering
precariously, he stepped into the bobbing bow. Before he could clutch
the piles of the dock to hold the craft steady, the _Sachem_ sheered off
and, overburdened by the standing figure at one end, began rocking
dangerously from side to side. Dirk swayed, trying to keep his balance
as a wave slapped the dancing vessel.
“Sit down!” shouted Nig Jackson. “Look out, she’ll turn over!”
Dirk, alarmed, dropped the paddles overside and grabbed at the gunwale
to keep himself from following them into the shallow waters of the
beach. In sudden panic, he scrambled to a seat; but it was too late. The
_Sachem_ heeled over across the wind; a sheet of water slid easily over
the low side, slapped the light canoe to leeward, and dipped it once
more below the surface. Water filled half the interior, sloshing about
and rocking so that still more water was taken over the gunwale. Dirk
gripped the seat desperately, trying to right the canoe; but his efforts
were now of no avail.
Slowly, steadily, the _Sachem_ sank to rest on the pebbled shallows
beneath the surface of the lake, and Dirk Van Horn, with a comic look of
amazement on his face, found himself sitting waist-deep in the water
with his lovely possession beneath him, out of sight.