A SURPRISE
With hearts beating quick and hard, they lifted the canoe from the rock,
fearful of what they might find beneath it; but there was nothing there.
Then they searched along the beach in the darkness as best they could,
peering anxiously into clumps of seaweed, and standing now and again
fixed with horror as some dim object, cast up by the sea, assumed in
shadowy outline the semblance of a human form. The shore was heaped here
and there with piles of driftwood and ends of logs that had come down
through countless tides and currents from the lumber-mills miles up the
river, and this stuff had lodged among the ledges and boulders at various
points along the beach. Here and there among these they hunted, groping
amid the seaweed, cold and chill to the touch, and suggesting to their
minds, already alert with dread, the most gruesome of discoveries which
they feared to make.
That the boys had crossed the bay in the frail craft which they had just
found there seemed to be no possible doubt. Furthermore, they were now
led to believe that Tom and Bob, having once reached a point where they
could have found shelter, had chosen to keep on past the head of the
island in an effort to make the harbour of Southport. They must at least,
as the wind had blown, have reached a point opposite where the boys had
found the canoe, and have, perhaps, paddled some distance beyond.
But it was clearly useless to continue the search further in the darkness
and storm. They lifted the canoe and carried it up from the beach, and
hid it in the bushes upon the bank. Then they went slowly back to the
road.
“I tell you what we can do,” said Arthur Warren. “I hate to go back to
the cottage without making one more search. Let’s get a lantern and come
back. We shall not have to go far for one,—and we shall have done all we
can, then, though it is a bad night to see anything.”
The rain was, indeed, pouring in torrents and driving in sheets against
their faces.
“Yes, we must do that much,” said George. “And then—then we can come back
in the morning—” His voice choked, and he could not say more. They went
on down the muddy road in silence.
Shortly below the hill, upon the road, was a big farmhouse, arriving at
which they turned into the yard. The house was in darkness, save one dim
light in a chamber; but they pounded at the door with the heavy brass
knocker till they heard the shuffling of feet in the entry, and a voice
inquired roughly what was wanted. They answered, and the door was opened
cautiously a few inches, where it was held fast by a heavy chain. An old
man’s face peered out at them. The sight of the boys was evidently
reassuring, for, in a moment more, the man threw open the door and
invited them to walk in.
“There be rough sailors come by some nights,” he said, in a manner
apologizing for his suspicion. “I’m here alone, and”—he lowered his voice
to a husky whisper—“they do say that I have a bit of money hid away in
the old house. But it’s a lie. It’s a lie. It’s the sea and the garden I
live on. There’s not a bit of money in the old house. But what brings you
out in such a storm? You haven’t lost your way, have you?”
They told their story, while the old man sat in a chair, shaking his head
dubiously. When they told him of the finding of the canoe, and their
certainty that the boys had crossed in it, he declared that it could
never have lived to get to the island.
“It must have come from down below,” he said. “It could never have been
paddled across the bay against this sea. Two boys, d’ye say, paddled it?
No. No, my lads, never—upon my life, never. Two stout men in a dory, and
used to these waters, might have done it; but two lads in a cockle-shell
like that would never have reached the Head, let alone getting beyond
it.”
He seemed to regard them almost with suspicion, when they told him of how
they had sailed up along shore in search of their comrades, and was
perhaps inclined to believe their whole story as some kind of a hoax.
Certain it was he gave them little comfort, except to say he would look
alongshore in the morning. If any one had drowned offshore in the
evening, they might not come ashore till the next day, he said.
But he got a battered lantern for them and handed it over with a
trembling hand, cautioning them to be careful of it, and to leave it by
the door on their way back. They heard him bolt the heavy door behind
them as they turned out of the yard into the road. A clock in the kitchen
had struck the hour of ten as they left the house.
“Isn’t it very probable, after all,” said George, as they walked along,
“that the man may be right, and that this canoe we have found is one that
has been lost off some steamer?”
“It seems to me perhaps as probable,” answered Henry Burns, “as that the
boys should have attempted to keep on in the storm, having once reached a
place of safety.”
“I wish I could think so,” said Arthur. “But I can’t help fearing the
worst,—and if the boys are lost,” he exclaimed bitterly, “I’ve seen all I
want to of this island for one summer. I’d never enjoy another day here.”
“I won’t believe it’s their canoe until I have to,” said George. “They
are not such reckless chaps as we have been making them out.”
And he tried to say this bravely, as though he really meant it.
They tramped along the rest of the way to the shore in silence, for none
of them dared to admit to another that which he could not but believe.
By the lantern’s dim and flickering light they searched the beach again
for a half-mile along in the vicinity of where the canoe had come ashore.
But nothing rewarded their hunt.
“The old man must be right,” said George Warren. “The canoe must have
come ashore from some steamer. Let’s go home, anyway. We’ve done all we
can.”
Heart-sick and weary, they began the tramp back to the cottage. At about
a mile from the old farmhouse, where they left the lantern, they turned
off from the road and made a cut across fields, till they came at length
to the shore of the cove opposite the Warren cottage. They could see
across the water the gleam of a large lantern which young Joe had hung on
the piazza for them; but the boat they had expected to find drawn up on
shore was gone.
“Old Slade must be over in town,” said Henry Burns; “and he won’t be back
to-night, probably. So it’s either walk two miles more around the cove or
swim out to the tender. We’re all of us tired out. Shall we draw lots to
see who swims?”
“I’ll go, myself,” volunteered George. “I’d rather swim that short
distance than do any more walking. I’m about done up, but I am good for
that much.” And he threw off his clothing once more, and swam pluckily
out to the tender and brought it ashore. They pulled across the cove to
the shore back of the cottage, and, springing out, carried the boat high
up on land.
They were at the cottage then in a twinkling; but, even before they had
reached the door, dear Mrs. Warren, who had heard their steps upon the
walk, was outside in the rain, hugging her boys who had braved the storm
and who had come back safe. She was altogether too much overcome at the
sight of them, it seemed, to inquire if they had found those in search of
whom they had set out.
And then the dear little woman, having embraced and kissed them as though
they had been shipwrecked mariners, long given up for lost,—not
forgetting Henry Burns, who wasn’t used to it, but who took it calmly all
the same, as he did everything else,—hurried them into the kitchen, where
young Joe had the big cook-stove all of a red heat, and where dry
clothing for the three from the extensive Warren wardrobe was warming by
the fire.
A comical welcome they got from young Joe, who had been just as much
worried as Mrs. Warren, but who hadn’t admitted it to his mother for a
moment, and had scornfully denied the existence of danger, and yet who
was every bit as relieved as she to see the boys safe. He tried not to
appear as though a great weight had been removed from his mind by their
return, but made altogether a most commendable failure.
The big, roomy, old-fashioned kitchen—for the Warren cottage had
originally been a rambling old farmhouse, which they had remodelled and
modernized—had never seemed so cosy before. And the fire had never seemed
more cheery than it did now. And when they had scrambled into dry, warm
clothing, and Mrs. Warren had taken the teakettle from the hob, and
poured them each a steaming cup of tea, to “draw out the chill,” they
forgot for the moment what they had been through and their sad discovery.
In fact, it seemed as though Mrs. Warren and young Joe were strangely
indifferent to what had sent them forth, and were easily satisfied with
the opinions expressed by the boys, who had agreed not to mention the
finding of the canoe until something more definite was learned, that Tom
and Bob had in all probability not left the river.
So easily satisfied, indeed, and so little affected by the fruitless
errand they had been on, that all at once Henry Burns, who had been eying
Mrs. Warren sharply for some moments, suddenly rose up from where he was
sitting, and rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining-room, into the
front part of the house. Wondering what had come over him, the others
followed.
What they saw was a tableau, with Henry Burns as exhibitor. He had drawn
aside the heavy portière with one hand, and stood pointing into the room
with the other.
There, seated before the fireplace, were two boys so much like Tom and
Bob, whom they had given up for lost, that their own mothers, had they
been there, would have wept for joy at the sight of them. And then, what
with the Warren boys pounding them and hugging them, like young bears, to
make sure they were flesh and blood, and not the ghosts of Tom and Bob,
and with the cheers that fairly made the old rafters ring, and the
happiness of Mrs. Warren, who was always willing to adopt every boy from
far and near who was a friend of one of her boys,—what with all this,
there was altogether a scene that would have done any one’s heart good,
and might have shamed the storm outside, if it had been any other kind of
a storm than a pitiless southeaster.
Then, though the hour was getting late, they all sat about the big
fireplace, and Tom narrated the story of the shipwreck.
But, just as he began, young Joe said, with mock gravity:
“We haven’t introduced Henry Burns to the boys yet. Henry, this is Tom
Harris, and this is Bob White.”
“I don’t think we need an introduction to one who has risked his life for
us,” said Tom Harris, heartily, as he and Bob sprang up to shake hands
with Henry Burns. But Henry Burns, carrying out the joke, bowed very
formally, and politely said he was extremely happy to make their
acquaintance. At which Tom and Bob, unfamiliar with the ways of Henry
Burns, stared in astonishment, which sent the Warren boys into roars of
laughter.
The boys thus introduced to Henry Burns were handsome young fellows,
evidently about the same age,—in fact, each lacked but a few months of
fifteen,—thick-set and strongly built. The sons of well-to-do parents,
and neighbours, they had been inseparable companions ever since they
could remember. Tom Harris’s father was the owner of extensive tracts in
the Maine woods, from which lumber was cut yearly and rafted down the
streams to his lumber-mills. In company with him on several surveying and
exploring expeditions, the boys had hunted and fished together, and had
paddled for weeks along the streams and on the lakes of the great Maine
wilderness.
They had hunted and fished in the Parmachenee and the Rangeley Lake
region, and knew a great deal more of real camp life than most boys of
double their age. Further than this, they were schoolmates, and were so
equally matched in athletic sports, in which they both excelled, that
neither had ever been able to gain a decided victory over the other. Tom
was of rather light complexion, while Bob was dark, with curly, black
hair.
It was through their friendship with the Warren boys, who lived not far
from them, in the same town, that they had decided to spend the summer
camping on Grand Island.
As they all gathered around the cheerful blaze of the fire, Tom told the
story of the day’s adventures.
With so much of their camp kit as they needed for cooking along the
river, they had started from the town of Benton at about four o’clock
that morning, just as the tide began to ebb. Hardened as they were to the
use of the paddle, by the time the tide had ceased to ebb and slack water
ensued, they had left the city miles behind and were well down the river.
Then the flood tide began to set strong against them, and a wind arose
that furrowed the river with waves that were not big enough to be
noticeable to larger craft, but which seriously impeded the progress of
the frail canoe. They kept steadily on, but made slow headway.
At Millville, a few miles above the mouth of the river, where it
broadened out into the bay, they had met the steamer, and had hastily
scrawled the note which Captain Chase had brought to the Warren boys.
Sure enough, Captain Chase had warned them of the impending storm, and,
furthermore, had offered to transport them and their canoe across the
bay; but they had declined his offer, wishing to paddle the entire
distance to the island. They had set their hearts on making the trip of
forty miles in one day; and partly for this reason, and partly because
Captain Chase had looked askance at their canoe, and had assured them
that it was not a fit craft for bay work in any weather, let alone in a
heavy sea, they had set out, toward the latter part of the afternoon, to
cross the fifteen miles of bay which lay between them and Grand Island.
The storm which had threatened gradually closed in around them, but they
held on stubbornly, until, when too far across the bay to put back, it
rapidly gathered strength, and soon turned what had been a comparatively
safe pathway across the sea into a wilderness of waves, that at one
moment rose high above the bow of the canoe, dashing them with spray as
the sharp canoe cleaved them, and the next dropped down beneath them,
opening a watery trench, into which they plunged.
They had seen storms like this, that came quick and sharp upon the lakes,
heaving up a sea almost in a moment, with squalls that swept down from
the hills. They had been safely through them before; but at those times
it had been a short, sharp battle for a half-hour at most, before they
could reach a friendly shore. But here it was different. Here were miles
of intervening water between them and the nearest land. This was no lake,
to be quickly within the shelter of some protecting point of land.
But they had never for a moment lost courage nor despaired of coming
through all right. They struggled pluckily on, and might have gotten
safely to land without mishap, if they had been familiar with the shore
of the island. To a stranger, the shore about the head of the island
presented a sheer front of forbidding cliffs, rising abruptly from the
water, and against which, in a storm, the sea dashed furiously.
There was apparently no place at which a boat could be landed; and yet,
hidden behind the very barrier of ledge that sheltered it, lay Bryant’s
Cove, as quiet and sequestered a pool as any fugitive craft could wish to
find. Had the boys known of its existence, they would have landed there,
and have been at the Warren cottage before the _Spray_ had left the
harbour.
As it was, there seemed to them to be no alternative but to keep on to a
point about half a mile farther along the shore, where they hoped to be
able to make a landing upon the beach.
They had accomplished the distance, and were fast nearing a place where
they could land in safety, when a most unexpected and disastrous accident
happened. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning of its weakness,
the paddle which Bob was using snapped in two in his hands. At the same
moment a wave hit the canoe, and, with nothing with which to keep his
balance, Bob was thrown bodily from the canoe into the sea, upsetting the
canoe and spilling Tom out at the same time.
The boys were able to grasp the canoe and cling on for a few minutes.
They were both good swimmers, and often, in smooth water, had practised
swimming, with the canoe upset, and were able to accomplish the feat of
righting it, bailing it with a dipper, which they always carried attached
to one of the thwarts by a cord, and then climbing aboard over the ends.
But it was useless to attempt such a thing in this boisterous sea.
Indeed, it was more than they could do, even, to cling to the overturned
craft, for soon an enormous wave struck it a blow broadside and tore it
from their grasp. Then ensued a fight for life that seemed almost
hopeless. They were near to shore, but the sea seemed to delight in
mocking them; tossing them in at one moment, so that they could grasp at
seaweed that lay above the ledges, and then clutching at them and drawing
them relentlessly back.
It was then that their athletic training stood them in good stead. Less
hardy constitutions and weaker muscles than theirs would have quickly
tired under the strain. Refraining from useless struggles to gain the
shore, they waited their opportunity, and strove merely for the moment to
keep themselves afloat. In this manner they were, several times, almost
cast up on shore.
All at once Tom Harris felt a sharp pain in his right hand. Then he
realized, with a thrill of hope, that he had struck it upon a rock. It
was, indeed, a narrow reef that made out some distance from shore. They
had narrowly escaped being dashed upon it head-foremost. Tom waited and
gathered his strength as the next wave hurled him on its crest in the
direction of the ledge. Then, as the wave bore him with great force
against it, he broke the force of the shock with his hands, was thrown
roughly up against it, and managed to cling fast, with his fingers in a
niche of the rock, as the wave, receding, strove to drag him back again.
Then, holding on with one hand, he managed somehow to grasp at Bob as he
was drifting by, and hold him fast and draw him in. Clinging to the ledge
as each succeeding wave broke over them, they waited till they had
regained their strength and recovered their wind, and then slowly worked
their way along the ledge to shore, and at length were safe, out of the
sea’s fury.
Then they had rested awhile, before setting out on foot. Their canoe they
could see at some distance out from shore, tossing about at the mercy of
the waves. It must of necessity come ashore in due time, but it might not
be for an hour, and they resolved not to wait for it, but to push on to
their destination, returning on the morrow to look for it. They followed
the shore for about a mile down the island, till they met a fisherman,
who told them how to get to the Warren cottage by the same route the
Warren boys and Henry Burns had taken a few hours later.
They had crossed the cove in old Slade’s boat, and, expecting to astonish
the Warren boys by their appearance, in the midst of the storm, had
found, to their dismay, that those whom they had expected to find safe at
home were imperilling their lives for them out in the bay.
“Well, I must be up and moving,” said Henry Burns, when Tom had concluded
his narrative. “I don’t mind saying I’m a bit tired with this night’s
work—and I guess you are, by the looks. I can sleep, too, now that I know
that you are not down among the mermaids at the bottom of Samoset Bay.”
“Why don’t you stay here with the boys to-night, Henry?” said Mrs.
Warren. “You cannot get into the hotel at this hour of the night, without
waking everybody up. Colonel Witham closes up early, you know.”
“No one but Henry Burns can, mother,” said Joe Warren. “Henry has a
private staircase of his own.”
“It’s a lightning-rod staircase, Mrs. Warren,” explained Henry Burns. “I
use it sometimes after ten o’clock, for that is my bedtime, you know.
Mrs. Carlin—good soul—sends me off to bed regularly at that hour, no
matter what is going on; and so I have to make use of it occasionally.”
Mrs. Warren shook her head doubtfully.
“You shouldn’t do it, Henry,” she said. “Although I know it is hard for a
strong, healthy boy to go off to bed every night at ten o’clock. Well,
that comes of being too strict, I suppose,—but do look out and don’t
break your neck. It’s a bad night to be climbing around.”
“Don’t worry about Henry Burns, mother,” said Arthur. “He wouldn’t do it,
if he wasn’t forced to it,—and he knows how to take care of himself, if
anybody does.”
“Well, good night,” said Henry Burns. “And don’t forget, I hold my
reception to-morrow night; and I extend to Tom and Bob a special
invitation to be present.” And, with a knowing glance at George Warren,
Henry Burns took his departure.
As the boys went off to bed that night, George Warren explained to them
that on the next night, the occasion being an entertainment in place of
the regular Wednesday night hop at the hotel, he and Henry Burns had
planned a joke on Colonel Witham, in which they were all to take part,
and, with this prospect in view, they dropped asleep.
In the meantime Henry Burns, arriving at the hotel, and having learned by
previous experience that a lock on a rear door of the old part of the
hotel, which was not connected with the new by any door, could be
manipulated with the aid of a thin blade of a jack-knife, crept up to the
garret by way of a rickety pair of back stairs, and from thence emerged
upon the roof through a scuttle. Then, carefully making his way along the
ridge-pole to where the new part joined the old, he climbed a short
distance up a lightning-rod, to the roof of the new part.
This was a large roof, nearly flat. He walked across, about midway of the
building, to where another rod, fastened at the top to a chimney, came
up. Clinging to this, Henry Burns disappeared over the edge of the roof,
found a resting-place for his foot on a projection which was directly
over his own window, and then lowered himself, like an acrobat, down the
rod to a veranda. Raising the window directly beside the rod, he slipped
inside, closed it softly, and in a few minutes more was abed and sound
asleep.
While all Southport slept, the storm spent its force, and toward morning
gradually subsided. In the place of the beating rain there stole up
through the islands, in the early morning hours, great detached banks of
fog,—themselves like strange, white islands,—which shut out the bay from
the shore. They lay heavy over the water, and, as the boisterous seas
gradually gave way to the long, smooth waves that rolled in without
breaking, one might have fancied that the fog, itself, had a depressing
and tranquillizing influence upon the sea.
Yet old fishermen would have ventured out then, without fear, for there
were signs, that might be read by the weather-wise, that a light west
wind was soon to be stirring that would scatter the fog at its first
advance, and sweep it back out to sea.
But, brief as was the visitation of the fog, it sufficed to hide all
things from sight. And if a boat, in which one boy rowed vigorously, had
put forth from the camp of Jack Harvey, down in the woods, and had come
up along the shore to the wharf, and the box, which was a part of the
belongings of Tom Harris and Bob White, had been lowered from the wharf
into the boat and conveyed back to the camp and hidden away there,—if all
this had happened, it is safe to say that no one would have seen what was
done, nor would any one have been the wiser.
Perhaps some such a thing might, indeed, have occurred, for when Tom and
Bob, Henry Burns, and the Warren boys met at the wharf the next
fore-noon, they found the box gone. They hunted everywhere, ransacked the
storehouse from one end to the other, but it was nowhere to be found.
“And to think that it’s all my fault,” groaned young Joe, as they stood
at the edge of the wharf, after the unsuccessful search. “I might have
known John Briggs would forget to lock it up! It was left in the open
shed there, boys, protected from the rain, and he promised to look out
for it; but he must have forgotten. I spoke to him about it the last
thing last night, on our way home to the cottage.”
“Was it very valuable?” asked Henry Burns.
“Ask Tom what he thinks,” laughed Bob, while Tom tried to look
unconscious, but blushed furiously.
“There’s a pretty sister of mine,” continued Bob, “that thinks so much of
us that she spent a week cooking up a lot of things for us to start our
camping with. There’s a box full of the best stuff to eat you ever
tasted, that somebody will gobble up, I suppose, without once thinking or
caring about the one that made them. Pretty tough, isn’t it, Tom?”
Tom turned redder still, and felt of his biceps, as though he was
speculating what he would do to a certain person, if that person could
only be discovered and come up with.
“I tell you what it is, boys,” said George Warren; “things have had a
strange way of disappearing here this summer, as they never did before;
and, what’s more, if Jack Harvey and his crew haven’t stolen them, they
have at least got the credit for taking the most of it,—and you may
depend upon it, that box is down there in the woods, somewhere about that
camp.”
“Then what’s to hinder our raiding the camp and getting it?” Tom broke
in, angrily. “Bob and I, with two of you, could make a good fight against
all of them.”
“No doubt of that, Tom,” answered George Warren; “but there are two
things to be considered. First, we want to get the box back; and, second,
we are not absolutely certain that they have it. If they have it, you may
be certain that it is carefully hidden away, and we shouldn’t recover it
by making an attack on them. We must find out where it is hidden first,
and then, if we cannot get it away otherwise, we will fight for it.”
“So it seems that we have two scores to settle now,” said Henry Burns,
dryly. “We owe a debt now to Jack Harvey and his crew, and there’s a
long-standing account with Colonel Witham, part of which we must pay
to-night. Be on hand early. The latch-string will be out at number
twenty-one.” So saying, Henry Burns left them.
Late that afternoon Tom and Bob, looking from the door of their tent
across the cove, saw a sight that was at once familiar and strange. It
was a canoe, in which were two occupants, and it was being paddled toward
their camp. The long seas, smooth though they were, still rolled in
heavily, and the light canoe tossed about on their crests like a mere
toy. Still, it did not take long for them to discover that the canoe was
their own. They had supposed it lost, though they had intended to set out
in search of it on the following morning.
In the bow and stern, propelling the craft with paddles roughly
improvised from broken oars, were George and Arthur Warren.
“Tom, old fellow,” said Bob, as the canoe came dancing toward them,
“we’ve lost the box, but we’ve got the luck with us, after all. Not only
are we proof against drowning, but we own a canoe that refuses to be
wrecked.”
And then the bow of the canoe grated on the sandy shore.