When Tom and Lanky had turned to the right and investigated the
fishermen’s shanties that were nearest to the marshes, David had turned
to the left, in the direction of the ocean. He had no particular object
in view, except to see what the man they had met on the other bank of
the cove was doing and exchange a few more words with him, if the
opportunity offered.
He looked through the clutter of small, weatherbeaten sheds without
seeing the man, and came to the beach on the ocean side. A short
distance to the south was a spit of sand, and there, seated on a log,
was the fellow with the straw hat.
David enjoyed an argument. He was not by nature so curious about other
people as Ben was, but he liked to tease. So, with his hands stuck in
his pockets and a little swagger in his walk, he went toward the man.
“Looking for a boat to come along and take you for a sail?” he said.
“It’s a long walk to town.”
“You’d better be on your way then,” the man retorted. His tone was not
very civil, and it made David flush.
“I can look out for myself.”
“Oh, you can, can you?” The man turned round and glared at the young
fellow. “Well, my advice to you is to make yourself scarce pretty
quick.”
David squared his shoulders. “You don’t want me and my friends round
here, do you? A person might think you owned the beach.”
“No,” said the man, “I don’t want you round here.” He looked at the boy
fixedly for a minute. “That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s plain enough,” David admitted. “But I don’t see that it’s any
reason why we should go.”
“I’ve business here, and you haven’t.”
“Business? You don’t seem very busy.”
The man got up from the log and walked away, down the beach toward a
ledge of rock that shut off the southern end.
What was the man’s business? David, rather amused at the other’s
surliness, followed after, walking jauntily.
He climbed the ledge of rock. There was another scallop of beach, with
bushes close down to the sand. The man was not in sight. But there was a
small fishing-smack at anchor not far from the shore, and a dory was
just pulling away from her.
David stepped down on the beach, and the first thing he knew something
had knocked him flat. He lay sprawling on the sand, a heavy weight on
his back. Someone had caught his two hands and held them like a vise.
“Holler if you want to,” said the man with the straw hat.
David had no wish to shout. The breath was knocked out of him.
The man pinned him down, and after kicking a little, David decided the
wisest course was to lie still.
After a few minutes there was a grating sound on the sand. David twisted
his head enough to see that the dory had landed and that two men were
coming ashore.
“Hello, Sam, what you got there?” exclaimed one of the strangers.
“A fresh guy, who wouldn’t mind his own business,” was the answer. “Now
I’m going to teach him not to meddle:”
“Good for you, old sport! Give him a good licking.”
“Pity we left the cat-o’-nine-tails out on the boat,” said the second
man.
“Three of them came to the cove,” said the man on David’s back. “The
other two went away; but this fellow had to go nosing around into other
people’s business. I told him to make himself scarce. But not he! Oh no,
he had to find out what I was doing. And now I’m going to take him out
on the boat and watch me do some fishing.”
There was a laugh at this. “You’ll let him bait your hook, won’t you,
Sam?” asked one.
“I’ll let him take the fish off,” Sam retorted. “You fellows row us out,
will you?”
The others agreed. The man on David’s back eased his position. “Now,”
said he, “you can come along without any fuss or trouble, or you can
come with a black eye. Suit yourself; it doesn’t make any difference to
me.”
Three to one was greater odds than David cared to tackle. “I’ll go
along,” he grunted.
The man got up. David followed. Assuming a care-free manner he walked to
the boat and climbed over the high side. A man sat at the oars, and Sam
and the two others took seats on the thwarts. The oars dipped in the
water, and the dory was rowed out to the smack.
David and Sam went aboard, and the dory with her crew of three rowed
away again in the direction of the cove.
“Now,” said Sam, “make yourself comfortable. You’ve found out my
business. I’m going to fish for flounders.” And he walked aft and down
into the cabin.
David was puzzled. He could understand that this man might have had a
grudge against him, even that he might have lost his temper and attacked
him as he had; but why should he carry a grudge so far as to make him a
prisoner on his fishing-boat?
He stared at the shore some time, then walked up toward the bow. Sam had
reappeared from the cabin with fishing-tackle and was angling over the
side. There was a line for David, and so, there being nothing better to
do, David also set to fishing.
Fish were not biting on that particular afternoon, however. Presently
Sam hauled in his line. “The pesky things never come when you want
them,” he said morosely. “I suppose there are lots of them swimming
around everywhere except where _I_ cast my hook.”
“You’re not a real fisherman,” said David. “There’s a knack to catching
fish.”
“No, I’m not; and I don’t want to be,” was the man’s answer. “Of all the
stupid jobs, I think fishing takes the cake.”
David was about to argue this point when another man came out from the
cabin and joined them. At once David, wise in the look of sailormen from
his acquaintance with them on the docks of Barmouth, decided that this
was the skipper. The new arrival stretched his arms and yawned
prodigiously. “Golly, I’m only half-awake yet,” he declared. “Sam,
where’d you pick up this fellow?”
“He wanted to have a look at the boat,” said Sam. “In fact he was so set
on having a look at her that I just had to invite him aboard.”
He said this with a sly glance at David, but if he had expected to get
an angry denial he was disappointed, for David, leaning his arms on the
rail, appeared to be in such a deep study of the shore as to allow for
no interruption.
“The others gone ashore?” asked the skipper, evidently regarding the
reason for David’s presence on the boat as a matter of small importance.
“Yes,” said Sam. He pulled a large watch from the upper pocket of his
coat and looked at it. “And it’s about time they were coming back.”
There was no sign of them, however; and the sun began to slant toward
the west, and then to dip behind the trees, and still there was no boat
to be seen coming out from the cove. David, strolling up and down the
deck, noticed that Sam was becoming impatient. After a while there was a
fragrant odor of cooking, and David, putting his head in at the cabin
door, saw that the skipper was getting supper in the galley.
The sun had set when the skipper’s voice announced that food was ready.
“Come along,” Sam said to David, and though the invitation was not very
cordial David went down to the cabin and ate his fair share of the meal.
Afterwards the three, on deck, watched the shore for a boat. And when
the beach was quite dark and Sam had looked at his watch a dozen times,
he said, almost angrily, “Well, Captain, I think it’s about time to beat
it. They must have changed their plans. We don’t want to stay here all
night.”
The skipper glanced at David. “How about him?” he asked, with a jerk of
the head.
“He can help you sail the boat down to Gosport. That’ll pay for his
supper.”
David was tired of inaction. To sail to Gosport attracted him much more
than staying here at anchor any longer. He spoke up quickly:
“Yes, Captain. I know something about handling sails.”
“Good enough. That’s more than Sam does,” remarked the skipper. “He’s
about as useful in handling this boat as a belaying-pin.”
Shortly the anchor was up and the fishing-smack under way. David carried
out the skipper’s orders with proper efficiency. With a gentle breeze
the boat stole southward along the shore, and in half-an-hour the lights
of the little settlement of Gosport were glimmering over the water.
The smack came up to a wharf. “Now,” said Sam to David, “you can go
ashore if you like. The captain and I may do a little cruising, but we
don’t need you any longer.”
“Thanks,” said David. He had a retort on the tip of his tongue, but
wisely forbore to utter it. He jumped ashore. “If you come to Barmouth,
look me up,” he called back. “I’ll be glad to show you the town.”
There was a laugh from the skipper, but none from Sam. Immediately the
fishing-smack pushed out again.
Gosport was a small place, and David knew no one there. He felt in his
pocket, and found he had no money to pay his fare to Barmouth. He walked
along the waterfront, considering what he should do, and presently came
upon a young man, who was starting the engine of a small motor-boat.
“You’re not going anywhere in the neighborhood of Camp Amoussock, are
you?” David asked the man in the boat.
The other looked around and surveyed the fellow who had asked the
question. “Are you one of the boys from the camp?”
“I was there at dinner.” And in a few words David told the story of what
had happened to him during the afternoon.
“Well,” said the man, “that’s a queer yarn. I was just going out for a
moonlight spin, and I might as well go up to the camp as anywhere. Jump
aboard.”
David accepted with alacrity. The motor-boat chugged out from the
landing-stage, and leaving a smooth silver ripple, darted north.
The owner of the motor-boat—he had told David that his name was Henry
Payson—said that, although he had only been a month at Gosport, he knew
that part of the coast quite well, and had never happened to see any
fishermen in the cove that David described. “That fellow Sam was a
vindictive chap,” he added musingly. “But you know, it almost seems as
if he had some other object than merely showing his spitefulness when he
took you off in his boat.”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed David. “But Tom and Lanky were still at
the cove. He didn’t lay hands on them.”
“Well,” said Payson, “the cove’s around that next point of land. No use
stopping there now, I suppose. Your friends will surely have gone back
to camp.”
When the motor-boat rounded the point, however, Payson changed his mind.
On shore there were a score of lanterns; both banks of the cove fairly
bristled with them. “Hello,” exclaimed Payson, “there’s something doing
there all right!” And he altered his course so as to bring his craft
into the mouth of the river.
As the boat ran up to the bridge boys came down from both sides,
apparently all the boys of Camp Amoussock.
“Why, it’s Dave!” cried John Tuckerman. And immediately the two in the
boat were the target of a volley of questions.
“Hold on!” cried David. “Wait a minute.” He swung himself out of the
boat and up to the bridge.
“Where are Lanky and Tom?” someone asked.
“Aren’t they here?” said David. And as Tuckerman and Mr. Perkins and the
boys from the camp crowded around he told them briefly his adventures
since dinner.
“We’ve been hunting for you ever since supper,” said Mr. Perkins. “I
can’t imagine where Larry and Tom can have gone.”
“Those three men rowed in here in the dory,” said David. “Perhaps they
carried Larry and Tom off somewhere.”
“We’ve hunted through every shack,” said Bill Crawford. “And we’ve been
down the coast a couple of miles.”
The chorus of voices explaining where they had hunted started in again,
interrupted by Mr. Perkins giving the order to his troop to take the
road back to camp.
David thanked Henry Payson, and the motor-boat chugged away. By the path
along the shore the searchers regained Camp Amoussock. And there Mr.
Perkins and John Tuckerman and David held a council as to what to do
next.
The upshot was that Mr. Perkins got out a small car, and with Tuckerman
and David set out to see if they could learn any news of the missing
boys.