KIDNAPPED.--THE PROMISE.
Finding that no notice was taken of his shouts to be released from the
cabin, Breeze finally sat down on the transom beside the bunk in which
Wolfe was now sleeping heavily, and tried to puzzle out the meaning of
what had taken place. At first he thought it might be a sort of a
practical joke, and perhaps the _Vixen_ was only being carried out in
the bay to get a good position for an early start in the morning. In
that case he did not doubt but he would be allowed to return to the city
when she came to anchor. As time wore on, and the schooner still
continued to move rapidly through the water, even this hope began to
disappear. At last the motion of the vessel convinced him that she had
passed out of the bay, and was now riding the long, regular swells of
the open sea.
He now remembered that the _Vixen_ had been fitting for a trip to the
Grand Bank, and realized that she had really begun the long voyage that
might last for months. If he could only have bidden his mother good-by,
and told her where he was going! Now the thought of her distress at his
unexplained absence completely overcame him. Throwing himself at full
length on the hard transom, he buried his face in his hands and sobbed
as though his heart would break. Finally, tired out by his long, hard
day’s work, his recent excitement, and the strength of his emotions, he
fell into a troubled sleep.
Soon afterwards the companion-way slide was pushed back, and the
skipper, Hank Hoffer, and another man entered the cabin and tumbled into
their bunks, but without waking the prisoners.
“Sleep sound enough, don’t they?” remarked the skipper.
“Yes,” answered Hank Hoffer. “Drunken men always do.”
It was broad daylight when Breeze awoke, cramped and stiff from lying so
long on the bare boards of the transom. As he sat up and looked about
him, his thoughts were in such confusion that he could not for a moment
recall where he was. Seeing Wolfe Brady asleep in the bunk beside him
brought back the events of the preceding evening with a rush, and
starting up, he went on deck. There a single glance showed him that they
were out of sight of land and heading to the eastward.
A young man whose face looked somewhat familiar to him was at the wheel,
though he could not recollect where he had seen it.
“Hello!” exclaimed this individual. “Turned out, have yer? Feel any
better than you did last night?”
Breeze started at the sound of the voice. It was that of Wolfe Brady’s
companion of the night before, of whose face he had not at any time
obtained a good view, but whom he now recognized. “What do you mean,” he
asked, stepping up to the young man, “by playing such a trick on me? How
dared you lock us into that cabin and bring us off in this way?”
“Ho, ho!” laughed the other, “I dare do almost anything. As for what I
meant by it, I told you a while ago that I’d get even with you for
laughing at me when that mackerel seine broke and pitched us all
overboard. I’ve only kept my word.”
Now it flashed across Breeze where he had seen the face before. It was
while on his trip in the _Curlew_, and this young man had been one of
the crew of the Rockhaven schooner--the one who had shaken his fist and
threatened him for laughing at their ridiculous mishap.
“I laid up another grudge agin you yesterday,” continued Hank Hoffer.
“When I went to Captain Coffin and asked for a chance on the
_Fish-hawk_, he said he had just engaged you and your mate, and didn’t
want any more hands. So I had to ship on this old packet. When I found
your mate hanging around alone last evening, I saw a chance to fix him,
and thought I’d get even with you that way. Then you had to come along,
like the greenhorn that you are, and walk right into the trap too. I
tell you what, young feller, you won’t never gain nothing by running
afoul the hawse of Hank Hoffer! So put that in your pipe and smoke it,
and see that you remember it too.”
It was all plain enough to Breeze now, and he turned away angry and
heart-sick, to think that his own carelessness should have led him into
such a predicament. He thought he could not feel any worse than he did,
but a minute later he found himself confronted by a new trouble, beside
which the other became insignificant.
As he re-entered the cabin he found the skipper awake, and at once began
to charge him with having kidnapped them, and to threaten that if they
were not set aboard the first homeward-bound vessel they met, he would
have him arrested the moment they again reached Gloucester.
The skipper listened to all this in amazement, and when Breeze had ended
said,
“You’d better be careful in your choice of words, my young friend, or
you may get yourself into trouble. I never kidnapped you or anybody else
in my life, and I don’t know what you mean. You came aboard this vessel
of your own free-will just as she was about to start. Your friend on
deck there told me that you wanted to ship with us for the pleasure of
sailing in his company. I took his word for it instead of talking with
you, because you were too drunk to--”
“I drunk!” interrupted Breeze, excitedly. “I never drank a drop of
liquor in my life, and anybody who says I was drunk last night lies;
that’s all.”
“Oh, come now,” said the skipper, beginning to get angry in turn,
“that’s too thin. Didn’t you come stumbling aboard last night as no
sober man would have done? Didn’t you raise particular Cain down here in
the cabin for a while, and then fall into such a heavy sleep that
nothing could wake you from it? Don’t your eyes show that you have been
drinking? Wasn’t the smell of whiskey almost strong enough to knock a
man down when I came into the cabin to turn in, and nobody’d been here
but you and your mate? Besides all this, didn’t I see you myself hanging
round Grimes’s not more than half an hour before you came aboard? Don’t
tell me again you wasn’t drunk. There’s nothing I despise so much as a
sneak that tries to crawl out of a scrape by lying about it. Now wake up
that partner of yours and turn him out, or I’ll come down here and do it
for you with a bucket of salt-water.”
With this the skipper went on deck, leaving Breeze bewildered and
stunned by the charge just made against him, and the amount of apparent
proof brought to sustain it.
The worst of it all was that if the skipper had seen him in the vicinity
of Grimes’s, others might also have seen him there, and would report the
fact when inquiries began to be made for him. Then, too, if the whole
crew of the _Vixen_ believed as their captain evidently did, that he had
been drunk, would anybody ever believe his simple assertion that he had
not been so, against their statement that he was? What would Captain
Coffin think? What would his mother think? Would not her heart be broken
by this horrid report coming on top of his mysterious and unexplained
disappearance? In his agony of mind the poor boy groaned aloud. At this
sound a voice behind him exclaimed,
“Hello! What’s the matter, Breeze?”
Turning quickly, he saw Wolfe Brady awake, but still lying in his bunk
and regarding him with dull eyes.
“Matter enough,” he answered; “for if ever a fellow was in a worse fix
than I am I should like to know it. You ought not to be the one to ask,
anyhow,” he added, bitterly.
“Why, what do you mean, old man?” inquired Wolfe, leaning upon his elbow
and gazing about the dirty cabin with a perplexed air. “Where are we,
anyhow? What craft is this? Somehow, it doesn’t seem like the
_Albatross_.”
“_Albatross!_” exclaimed Breeze. “I should say not. We are on board the
_Vixen_, bound for the Grand Bank, with only our shore clothes for an
outfit, and nobody in Gloucester knows what has become of us.”
“You don’t mean it!” cried Wolfe, now thoroughly aroused. “How did it
all happen?”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Breeze, “that you do not remember
anything of what happened to us last night?”
“Not a thing. ’Pon my honor. The last I remember is that after waiting a
while for you I fell in with a pleasant fellow on the wharf who wanted
me to stroll uptown with him. He said we would not be gone more than
fifteen minutes. We stopped in at some kind of a place to get a drink.
He treated me, then of course I had to treat him, and after that I don’t
remember anything more. What vile stuff it must have been! Ugh! my mouth
tastes like brass and my head feels as though it were made of red-hot
lead.”
“Well,” said Breeze, “that drink of yours has got us into about as mean
a scrape as I know of, and if it hasn’t completely ruined my reputation
and broken my mother’s heart, I shall be thankful.”
“My dear fellow, you don’t mean to tell me it is as bad as all that!”
exclaimed Wolfe, now sitting up, and with a tone of deep concern. “It
doesn’t seem possible. I wish you would explain what you mean.”
“There isn’t time now,” answered Breeze; “the cook called breakfast ten
minutes ago, and we’ll have to hurry if we want to get any. You’d better
get on deck and douse your head in a bucket of cold water. It will do
you good. After breakfast I’ll tell you the whole story, and then we can
make up our minds what to do.”
The men who sat at the breakfast-table with Breeze and Wolfe regarded
them curiously, winked slyly to one another, and made a few jokes in low
tones upon their appearance, but nobody spoke to them.
After the meal was over, as no particular attention was paid to them,
they found a sheltered place forward, away up in the eyes of the
schooner. There Breeze related to Wolfe all that had happened during the
preceding night, bringing his story down to that morning, and not
omitting the remarks the skipper had made to the effect that he had been
intoxicated.
Before he had finished, Wolfe was worked up into a state of furious
anger. “You miserable low-lived scoundrel!” he muttered through his
clinched teeth, shaking his fist in the direction of Hank Hoffer, whom
he now recognized as the one who had played him such a mean trick the
night before; “I’ll pay you off for this; see if I don’t.”
“It was a mean trick, and I hope he’ll live to be sorry for it,” said
Breeze; “but don’t you think you were almost as much to blame as he?”
“I!” exclaimed Wolfe, in surprise; “how do you mean? By being so soft as
to let that fellow get the best of me?”
“I mean by having anything to do with him when you found out that he
wanted you to drink with him.”
“Why, man! I thought he only wanted me to take a glass with him in a
friendly way.”
“And do you think it is right to take that kind of a glass?”
“Certainly; where’s the harm?”
“Well, I expect you and I have been differently brought up, then. My
father thinks it is the very worst and most dangerous habit a young man
can get into. As for the harm, seems to me it is plain enough in this
case at any rate. If it hadn’t been for that glass we wouldn’t be in
this fix now, and mother wouldn’t be breaking her heart at home, as I’m
sure she is at this minute, for not knowing what has become of us.”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that light,” said Wolfe, who had never been
taught as Breeze had, to regard drinking as a sin.
“I wish I could get you to think of it in that light now,” said Breeze.
“Oh, Wolfe! if you would only promise, this very minute, that you’d
never touch another glass of liquor as long as you live, I believe I
should be glad that all this had happened--will you?”
Wolfe looked at him for a moment without speaking, then he said, “Would
you rather I’d promise you that than anything else, Breeze?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Then I’ll do it. Not long ago you risked your life to save mine, and I
told you that from that time on it was at your service. This is the
first thing you have asked of me since, and I’m not the lad to go back
on my word. So now I promise you, and there’s my hand on it, that so
long as I live I’ll never taste another drop of strong drink unless you
ask me to.”
“Then you never will,” said Breeze, smiling; “and, Wolfe, if you only
knew how glad I am to have that promise, it would make you very happy to
think you had given it to me.”
“It makes me happy already to see you smile again, for I begin to see
now how I have brought on all this trouble.”
“Let’s not call it trouble any longer,” said Breeze, cheerily, “but do
as my mother does, and try to look on the bright side of it. We were
coming to the Banks, anyway, in a week or so, and perhaps this trip will
be luckier than the one on the _Fish-hawk_ would have been, who knows?”
Just then the skipper came up to where they were sitting, and said,
“Well, boys! how goes it now? Feeling any better than you did?”
“Yes, very much,” answered Breeze, “but not so well as we should if
you’d only get rid of the idea that I was drunk when we came aboard last
night.”
“It’s true, skipper,” added Wolfe, earnestly, “I was a little under the
weather, I acknowledge, but Breeze, here, never drinks, and was as sober
as a halibut. I can vouch for that. And I’m never going to get that way
again either. I’ve sworn off.”
“Oh, well,” answered the skipper, carelessly, “it’s all right now. There
isn’t a drop aboard this craft,[F] so I ain’t afraid but that you’ll
keep straight enough till the end of the trip anyhow.”
-----
Footnote F:
As a rule, the Gloucester fishing skippers pride themselves upon never
allowing any liquor to be carried to sea aboard their vessels.
-----
“Now that you have got us off here,” said Wolfe, “what are you going to
do in the way of finding us something to wear, besides these store
clothes?” Here he looked ruefully at the new suit he had bought the day
before, which was already showing signs of hard usage.
“What!” exclaimed the skipper, “are those all you’ve brought with you?”
“Of course they are; we have not a rag except what we stand in.”
“Well, now, that’s bad; but perhaps some of the other fellows can spare
a few old things, and there are a couple of extra oil suits aboard that
you can have and I’ll charge ’em up to you. By-the-way, I suppose you
two will go dorymates?”
“Of course,” answered Breeze, promptly; “we’ve already been dorymates on
one trip, and we mean to be on every other we ever take together.”
“You’ll use dory No. 6, then,” said the skipper, “and you’d better get
to work overhauling your trawls right off. You want to have everything
in order before we get to the Banks, ’cause there won’t be any time to
waste then. When we once get to fishing I shall expect every man on
board the old packet to jump quick and make every minute tell, or else
he’ll have to reckon with me for it.”
“That’s all right, skipper. We’ve made up our minds to do our best so
long as we are here and can’t help ourselves,” said Breeze. “But we
belong to the _Fish-hawk_, you know, and if we should happen to run
across her at any time while we are on the Banks, you must not be
surprised if we turn up missing some fine day.”
“We’ll see about that when the time comes,” replied the skipper, grimly;
“but mind you, if you leave the vessel before the trip’s finished,
you’ll lose all interest in what has been caught up to that time, and
can’t claim a cent’s worth of it.”
Both sides having thus arrived at a fair understanding with each other,
the boys proceeded to make themselves as comfortable as possible under
the circumstances. Though they declined to have anything to do with Hank
Hoffer, they soon established friendly relations with the rest of the
crew. They found the _Vixen_ to be a dirty old craft, and very
uncomfortable in many respects. She was, however, an able sailor and a
good sea-boat, and after weathering a pretty stiff gale she reached
Grand Bank, nearly nine hundred miles from Gloucester, during the night
of the sixth day out.
Although the boys had said nothing more about deserting her, if they had
a good chance they had fully made up their minds to do so. Little did
they imagine, however, under what circumstances this leave-taking was to
be effected, or how they should long to once more set foot on the
well-worn deck of the old _Vixen_.