ALL-OVER-THE-WORLD LIBRARY
By OLIVER OPTIC
_Illustrated, Price per Volume $1.25_
FIRST SERIES
A MISSING MILLION
Or THE ADVENTURES OF LOUIS BELGRAVE
A MILLIONAIRE AT SIXTEEN
Or THE CRUISE OF THE GUARDIAN-MOTHER
A YOUNG KNIGHT-ERRANT
Or CRUISING IN THE WEST INDIES
STRANGE SIGHTS ABROAD
Or A VOYAGE IN EUROPEAN WATERS
SECOND SERIES
AMERICAN BOYS AFLOAT
Or CRUISING IN THE ORIENT
THE YOUNG NAVIGATORS
Or THE FOREIGN CRUISE OF THE MAUD
UP AND DOWN THE NILE
Or YOUNG ADVENTURERS IN AFRICA
ASIATIC BREEZES
Or STUDENTS ON THE WING
THIRD SERIES
ACROSS INDIA
Or LIVE BOYS IN THE FAR EAST
HALF ROUND THE WORLD
Or AMONG THE UNCIVILIZED
FOUR YOUNG EXPLORERS
Or SIGHT-SEEING IN THE TROPICS
_OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION_
ANY VOLUME SOLD SEPARATELY
LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers Boston
[Illustration: “COME BACK, MR. BELGRAVE! FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE COME BACK!”
Page 278.]
_All-Over-the-World Series_
A
MILLIONAIRE AT SIXTEEN
OR
THE CRUISE OF THE GUARDIAN-MOTHER
BY
OLIVER OPTIC
AUTHOR OF “THE ARMY AND NAVY SERIES” “YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD”
FIRST AND SECOND SERIES “THE GREAT WESTERN SERIES” “THE WOODVILLE
STORIES” “THE STARRY FLAG SERIES” “THE BOAT-CLUB
STORIES” “THE ONWARD AND UPWARD SERIES” “THE YACHT-CLUB
SERIES” “THE RIVERDALE STORIES” “THE BOAT-BUILDER
SERIES” “TAKEN BY THE ENEMY” “WITHIN THE ENEMY’S
LINES” “ON THE BLOCKADE” “STAND BY THE
UNION” “FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT”
“A MISSING MILLION” ETC.
BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
10 MILK STREET
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
_All Rights Reserved_
A MILLIONAIRE AT SIXTEEN
TYPE-SETTING AND ELECTROTYPING BY
C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON
TO
MY FRIEND AND CO-LABORER IN OUR VINEYARD
Nathan Bangs Williams
THIS VOLUME IS VERY CORDIALLY INSCRIBED
WITH MY KINDEST REGARDS
PREFACE
“A MILLIONAIRE AT SIXTEEN” is the second volume of the “All-Over-the-World”
series; and while the book may be read independently of the first,
it is the continuation of the adventures of Louis Belgrave, who was
presented to the reader in the preceding story. Possibly some of my
numerous friends may have accused me, after reading the first volume,
with being unnecessarily liberal to my hero, in supplying him with “the
missing million,” even augmented to nearly half as much more, so that
he is actually a millionaire and a half; but the present story will
assure such critics that even this vast sum was necessary in carrying
out the purpose of the writer. But no one need tremble for his moral
safety, for he will find that the young man in his moneyed abundance
is well guarded by his “guardian-mother,” and by his prudent and
conservative trustee.
The magnificent steam-yacht, the purchase of which required the figure
at which the fortune of the hero was placed, was not obtained for
sporting and pleasure uses; for Louis Belgrave has no taste for racing,
and is utterly opposed to betting, or anything that can be construed as
such. He had acquired a relish for yachting, though he was extremely
modest in his desire in regard to the character and cost of his craft.
The exigency of the story demanded such a steamer as he was persuaded
by his accomplished nautical friend to purchase. This was the only
excuse he could find for such a degree of extravagance; but happily
his income enables him to stand the expense of sailing such a steamer.
He was actuated by the very highest of motives in consenting to buy
the yacht, and, in fact, it seemed to him to be his duty to do so. His
mother, whom he almost worships, is borne away from him over the ocean,
and the steamer seemed to him and his advisers the only means by which
he could recover her, and restore her to her friends. With such an
object in view, money was hardly to be considered.
The writer still holds to his belief set forth in the preceding volume
that exciting incidents do not corrupt or mislead the minds and hearts
of young people, and he still keeps his hero above reproach morally;
and his magnificent venture is intended to promote his education, to
make him a wise and good man. He has no vices, and under the system of
his nautical friend, he is not likely to acquire any.
WILLIAM T. ADAMS.
DORCHESTER, MASS., March 5, 1892.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCING SIR LOUIS BELGRAVE 1
CHAPTER II
SOMETHING ABOUT THE BELGRAVE FAMILY 10
CHAPTER III
INTRODUCING ANOTHER MILLIONAIRE 17
CHAPTER IV
THE PARTY THAT WENT TO SOUTHFIELD 25
CHAPTER V
THE VICTIM OF A CONSPIRACY 33
CHAPTER VI
A DISAGREEABLE REVELATION 41
CHAPTER VII
THE CONFERENCE IN THE STATEROOM 49
CHAPTER VIII
BOUND TO ENGLAND 57
CHAPTER IX
A DINNER IN THE SECOND CABIN 65
CHAPTER X
A SKIRMISH WITH LIGHT WORDS 73
CHAPTER XI
A BATTLE IN POLITENESS 81
CHAPTER XII
THE POSSESSOR OF A MIGHTY SECRET 89
CHAPTER XIII
CLOSING WITH THE ENEMY 97
CHAPTER XIV
THE VICTORY IN THE CABIN 106
CHAPTER XV
AN OBDURATE PRISONER 113
CHAPTER XVI
ALLEGIANCE TO THE POWERS THAT BE 121
CHAPTER XVII
THE MAUD’S NEW COMMANDER 129
CHAPTER XVIII
SOME SIGNS OF TREACHERY 137
CHAPTER XIX
EUCHRED ON THE SHORE 145
CHAPTER XX
IN PURSUIT OF THE MAUD 153
CHAPTER XXI
FELIX MCGAVONTY ON WATCH 161
CHAPTER XXII
MRS. BELGRAVE’S PROTECTOR 170
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SEARCH FOR THE MAUD 178
CHAPTER XXIV
THE GUARDIAN-MOTHER 186
CHAPTER XXV
ON BOARD OF THE PHANTOM 194
CHAPTER XXVI
AMONG THE PINES 202
CHAPTER XXVII
AN AGENT OF THE ENEMY 210
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LAST OF THE PHANTOM 218
CHAPTER XXIX
LEFT ON A SANDBANK 226
CHAPTER XXX
A HUNGRY MILLIONAIRE 234
CHAPTER XXXI
THE MAGNIFICENT STEAMER 242
CHAPTER XXXII
A FORMAL PRESENTATION 250
CHAPTER XXXIII
ON BOARD THE GUARDIAN-MOTHER 258
CHAPTER XXXIV
A WRECK ON THE BERMUDA REEF 266
CHAPTER XXXV
THE RETURN TO THE GUARDIAN-MOTHER 274
CHAPTER XXXVI
A HAPPY REUNION 282
CHAPTER XXXVII
JOHN SCOBLE’S ANTECEDENTS 291
A MILLIONAIRE AT SIXTEEN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCING SIR LOUIS BELGRAVE
“Buy a yacht!” exclaimed Squire Moses Scarburn, a gentleman whose
avoirdupois exceeded two hundred pounds, honest weight, as he shook his
fat sides with wholesome laughter. “Why not buy an elephant?”
“I am not in want of an elephant just now,” replied Louis Belgrave, of
whose worldly goods and chattels the stout gentleman was the trustee.
“A yacht is a very expensive plaything, my little joker,” added the
trustee.
“So is an elephant; besides an elephant is clumsy, and a yacht is not.
I can’t say that I have the least desire to see the elephant.”
“I should as soon have thought of your proposing to buy an elephant as
a yacht,” continued Squire Scarburn, a shade more seriously.
“An elephant may be a luxury to some people, like the nabobs of India;
but my fancy does not lead me in that direction.”
“You could put a howdah on his back and ride him all over the State,
to the wonder and admiration of great crowds of small boys,” said the
squire, chuckling as he did habitually, sometimes even when discussing
serious subjects.
“I don’t care to make any such sensation as the huge beast would
produce. He would frighten horses and children, and I might be mulcted
in heavy damages, which would not please you any more than it would
me,” replied the millionaire of sixteen; for such he was, with an
income of seventy thousand dollars a year, which was a frightful
revenue for a young fellow of his age, to say nothing of a surplus,
as the trustee called it, of a hundred thousand or more for any
extraordinary expenditure.
His mother was a most excellent woman, rather timid by nature, and made
more so by the circumstances which had surrounded her recently. The
greatest fear of her present existence was that her beloved son, her
only child, would be ruined by his million, though the trustee insisted
that there was not the slightest danger of such a calamity.
Though Squire Scarburn held the purse strings, Louis’s mother was
his legal guardian, and the trustee could refuse to advance money
for anything she did not approve. Mrs. Belgrave held the key to the
situation; but she was the most indulgent of mothers, and her son had
a great influence over her, not only because he was one of the most
considerate, devoted, and reasonable young men in the world, but for
other reasons which appear in the past history of the family; and
practically the young gentleman was his own master.
“Well, Sir Louis Belgrave, an elephant may be expensive in the
direction you indicate, and perhaps an elephant is not precisely the
beast to carry a young knight-errant about the country. Possibly a
mule would be more appropriate and less expensive,” continued Squire
Scarburn, intensely amused at the picture he was painting at the
expense of Louis. “Suppose you buy a mule; and then you will want a
donkey for Felix McGavonty, for I conclude you intend to make him your
squire.”
“Not a bit of it, Uncle Moses,” as the two boys mentioned usually
called him, for both were his _protégés_; “I want you for my Sancho
Panza. Nothing less than a justice of the peace and a man of some
weight in the community shall be my squire. Oh, I desire to carry out
your brilliant idea in a respectable manner!”
“I certainly have the weight; but don’t you think I am a little too
stout for an errant squire, though I should do very well for office
practice? I weigh over two hundred pounds,” replied Uncle Moses,
greatly amused at the fancy of his ward; and he enjoyed it none the
less because the jest was at his own expense.
“You are not a pound too heavy!” exclaimed Louis. “The fatter you are
the more ridiculous the whole thing will be; and I know that is what
you are driving at. If you weighed five hundred pounds I should like
you all the better for my squire.”
“I fear I should not be spry enough for you, Sir Louis, and I must
decline the situation in favor of Felix. I shall have no serious
objection to the expense of a mule for you and a donkey for Felix. That
would not exhaust your income of seventy thousand for this year.”
“I don’t believe it would, sir. Why, the other day you were making
fun of me because you could not see how I was to spend even half of
my income! The fact of it is, Uncle Moses, you have invested the
million and more too well, five and six per cent; and you are going to
make it hard work for me to get away with what is coming to me every
twelvemonth.”
“The misfortune is, Sir Louis, that you and your mother are not
accustomed to this plethora of income, and you have not yet got a fair
hold on the seventy thousand a year. You don’t exactly know which way
to turn to make a big hole in your revenue. But I have no doubt you
will improve in good time,” chuckled the trustee.
“I have no idea of being whipped out by an income, however large it
may be,” replied Louis, still in the best of humor, in spite of the
heavy burden imposed upon him by Fate and his grandfather of spending
his income. “I have projects and schemes in my head, Uncle Moses,
that would make you dizzy if I should mention them; and as I wish you
to have a level head I will not say anything at all about them yet a
while.”
“A million dollars, more or less, is a sufficiently large fortune for
any American citizen to possess,” continued the trustee, smoothing down
his fat face for the first time in a full hour, as though he intended
to say something more serious.
“I should say that a man with a million ought to escape starvation, if
his money is as well invested as you have placed mine,” replied Louis.
“No levity, my little joker, for I was about to say something very
serious,” added the squire.
“Are you about to propose the fat man in the Dime Museum for my squire?”
“I have done with that subject for the present, though I don’t know how
soon you may compel me to resume it. I am, unhappily for you, Louis,
the sole trustee of all your property.”
“Unhappily! Why, the fact that you are my trustee is the one thing
under the sun that saves me from the necessity of committing suicide
by over-eating!” exclaimed the young millionaire. “I might have had
some old hunks for a trustee, who wouldn’t do a single thing to help
me spend my bulky income. In that case I should rather not have any
million.”
“You keep flying off at a tangent so that I can’t ventilate my views in
regard to big fortunes,” said Uncle Moses, trying to look serious. “I
dare say you have forgotten my introduction to this subject.”
“No, sir, I have not; you observed that a man with a million was just
as well off as a rich man.”
“I did not put the remark in just that form; but that is the substance
of what I said. Compared with some men in this country, Louis, you
are a poor boy with only a million. But you need not starve, and you
need not go about the streets in ragged garments, if you are only
economical.”
“I have already learned to live within my means, and so has my
mother; so I think we shall contrive to get along without any
absolute suffering. On seventy thousand a year we ought to be fairly
comfortable. But I wonder how those poor people who have only twenty or
thirty thousand a year contrive to get along. Do they go hungry and out
at the elbows?”
“I suppose they do, metaphorically at least. They have to live on their
fat as I do.”
“They don’t all have it to live on.”
“They grub along somehow; and you who have enough to keep you out of
the almshouse ought to be kind and charitable when you meet a poor
fellow with only twenty thousand a year. But we wander. A million is
enough for you; and in view of the fact that you are confronting some
difficulty in spending even half of your income, my responsibility as
trustee is becoming very serious.”
“I am sorry for you, my dear trustee, and I am sure I shall make your
duties come easier upon you by and by; but I hope this heavy burden
will not cause you to lose any of your flesh,” laughed Louis.
“I am willing to sacrifice half of my fat in any good cause, such as
saving you from the disaster of becoming a double millionaire, or
even worse than that. Buy a yacht? Certainly! Purchase half a dozen
of them rather than have your fortune increased. That would compel me
to make additional investments for you, and I should be overworked,”
said the good man, puffing as though he were already suffering from his
financial exertions.
“I don’t want a high-flyer yacht like the Blanche. I have my own ideas
of yachting; and I am afraid I shall not be able to do a great deal in
getting rid of the income; but I will exert myself in that direction.”
“That’s right, Sir Louis; do the best you can for me,” added Uncle
Moses, fanning himself with a newspaper, as though wrestling with the
young man’s income had unduly heated his corpulent frame.
“I am afraid I am not competent to scatter a very large income; but I
will do the best I can. I was not brought up to that occupation.”
“I suppose you have your eye on a yacht that will suit you?”
“No, sir; not my eye, but my mind is on one. I was talking with a
gentleman at the hotel to-day about yachting, and he did me the honor
to say that I had the right ideas on the subject.”
“What are your ideas, Sir Louis?”
“I do not desire an expensive yacht; an ordinary schooner that will not
cost over five thousand dollars, with not over six men, will satisfy
me. I want to go from port to port, and enjoy myself in a quiet way,
and take my mother with me.”
“That sounds very sensible for a young knight-errant,” added the squire.
“You insist upon setting me down as a sort of Don Quixote who wants
to be tilting at windmills and wine-sacks all the time; but I don’t
believe I am that sort of a fellow at all,” said Louis seriously.
“I think you are fond of adventures, like the average boy, wherever
you find him, if he has any life in him. Now that you have plenty of
money you can gratify your tastes, whatever they may prove to be, for
heretofore you have had no chance to spread yourself.”
“I have had all the excitement I needed, and I have never ceased to
enjoy my studies, especially French and German.”
“Now, Sir Louis, my boy, I am not an old woman, or a man without
any vertebral stiffening. You have always been a good boy; you have
faithfully attended to all your duties, and have not been in the least
inclined to be a spendthrift. For these reasons I have full confidence
in you. But I solemnly warn you, little joker, that if you get to
running too fast, if you are in danger of spoiling yourself or letting
others spoil you, I shall shut down upon you like an avalanche in money
matters, even if I am compelled to invest your unexpended income.”
“That’s fair, Uncle Moses; but Don Quixote was a cheap sort of
knight-errant, and if I imitate him, I am not likely to follow the
career of the Prodigal Son.”
“I am willing to pay all reasonable bills approved by your mother, who
is your legal guardian. What would be reasonable for a young fellow
with seventy thousand a year would not be at all reasonable for one
with only ten thousand; so that I shall be liberal with you. Though you
inherit your grandfather’s money, you are to a considerable extent the
architect of your own fortune, for you unearthed the missing million.”
“I think I understand you perfectly, Uncle Moses.”
“I should think you might; but understand, above all things, that
I have not the remotest idea of permitting myself in any degree to
contribute to your ruin or injury by giving you too much money, though
you shall have all you can use in a reasonable manner, your mother
and myself to be judges of what is proper. As you are aware, I have
over a hundred thousand dollars surplus, which can be used for any
extraordinary expenditure needed at the beginning of your career?”
“What could I possibly want with that?” asked Louis rather blankly.
“If you desire to live in a brownstone front on the Fifth Avenue, near
your good friend Mr. Woolridge, I should consider that within your
means,” replied the trustee with a pleasant smile.
“Whew!” exclaimed the young millionaire. “I don’t want anything of that
sort. It would be putting me into a cage, like a monkey.”
“Prefer adventures, Sir Louis,” added the squire with one of his
jelly-like laughs.
“I shall be satisfied for the present with a cheap yacht, of good size,
handsomely fixed up, with my mother’s parlor on board of her. I have
bigger ideas behind this one, but I will not lift the curtain yet. If
you don’t want to lecture me any more now, I will go and see Mr. Frinks
Fobbington at the hotel; and he is the gentleman who talks yacht with
me.”
“Nothing more now, Sir Louis,” replied Uncle Moses. “But when you get
ready to buy the vessel, I shall want my friend Captain Ringgold to see
her.”
Louis left the office, and soon reached the hotel.