AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY
Two weeks had passed by. Craigie and French were in jail awaiting trial,
and the sensational arrest had run its course in the papers. Messages had
sped here and there, and the police of many cities and towns were
watching day and night for the missing Chambers. But watchers’ efforts
were futile. If the sea had opened and swallowed him up, the man could
not have disappeared more completely. Not one of the harbours along the
coast sighted him, nor did he run to any for shelter. It had come on
stormy the morning he sailed away, and something like a gale had set in
the next night. So that there were some who believed it more than likely
that the yacht _Eagle_ had foundered, with only one man to handle her.
Be this as it may, yacht and man had utterly disappeared. Several times
it was thought she was sighted by some pursuer, but it always turned out
to be some other craft. Chambers had made good his escape. And he alone
knew to what use he intended to put that freedom.
The bright August sun glared in through the canvas tent on a hot
afternoon. It fell warm upon Tom, who, divested of his jersey and bared
to the waist, stood in the centre of the tent, performing a series of
movements with a pair of light wooden dumb-bells. A fine specimen of
sturdy young manhood was Tom, lithe and quick in action. A skin clear and
soft, bright eyes, muscles that knotted into relief when flexed and
rounded into nice proportion when relaxed, quick, decisive movements, all
told of athletics and an abstinence from pipes and tobacco.
“It’s your turn,” he said, presently, to Bob, after he had counted off
several hundred numbers. Tossing his chum the dumb-bells, he slipped on
his jersey again, and, reclining at ease on one of the bunks, watched Bob
go through the same drill.
“Bob, I’m envious of you,” he said. “You are blacker by several shades
than I am. I’ll have to take it out of you with the gloves.”
“It’s pretty hot,” said Bob, “but come on.”
“Heat doesn’t bother a man when he is in training,” said Tom. “It’s the
flabby fellows that get sun-strokes. Sun does one good when he’s hardened
to it.”
He fished out a pair of old boxing-gloves, that looked as though they had
seen hard service, from the chest, and then he and Bob went at it, as
though they had been the most bitter enemies, instead of the most
inseparable of friends. They led and countered and pummelled each other
till the perspiration poured down their faces and they had begun to
breathe hard.
“Time!” cried Tom. “That’s enough for to-day. I think you had just a
shade the better of it, old chap. Now let’s cool off in the canoe. You
know what’s on the programme this afternoon.”
“I should say I did,” answered Bob; “and I’ll be hungry enough for it by
the time things are ready.”
They carried their canoe down to the shore, and in a moment were paddling
down the island toward the narrows. But they were not destined to go
alone. Turning a point of ledge some little distance below Harvey’s camp,
they came all at once upon Arthur and Joe Warren, walking along the
beach.
“Take us in there, Tom,” cried Joe.
“I can take one of you,” answered Tom, pointing the canoe inshore with a
turn of his paddle.
Arthur caught the end of the canoe as it came up alongside a ledge on
which the boys stood, and steadied the frail craft.
“Might as well let us both in,” he said. “The more the merrier.”
“The more the riskier, too,” said Tom; “but if you fellows will take the
chance of a ducking, I’m willing. Water won’t spoil anything I’ve got on.
Climb in easy, now, and sit cross-legged, so if we tip over you’ll slide
out head-first, clear of the thwarts.”
The canoe was brought to within nearly an inch of the water’s edge by the
addition of the two to its burden. Tom gave a strong push with his
paddle, and the heavily laden craft glided away from the shore.
There was an extra paddle, which Arthur wielded after a fashion, and it
did not take long to come within sight of the narrows. There upon the
shore were gathered some fifty or sixty persons. Over against a ledge a
fire of driftwood blazed. When they had gotten in nearer they could see a
smaller fire at a little distance from the other. Over this was hung a
monster iron kettle, and bending over it and superintending the cooking
of its contents was a familiar figure. It was Colonel Witham, and he was
making one of his famous chowders.
At the same time that the occupants of the canoe discerned the colonel,
he in turn espied them, and also noted a circumstance which they did not.
A half-mile or more distant from them a big, ocean-going tugboat was
passing down the bay, without a tow and under full steam.
“There come those mischief-makers,” said the colonel, muttering to
himself. “I’m blessed if the canoe isn’t filled with them. If there’s an
inch of that canoe out of water, there’s no more.” Then, as he noted the
tug steaming past, an idea came to him that made him chuckle.
“Kicks up a big sea, that craft does,—as much as a steamboat,” he said.
“Perhaps they’ll see it and perhaps not. If they don’t just let one of
those waves catch them unawares. There’ll be a spill.” The colonel,
chuckling with great satisfaction, went on stirring the chowder.
The possibility of a wave from a chance steamer had, indeed, not been
thought of by Tom or any of the others. The water was motionless all
about them, but rolling in rapidly toward them were a series of waves big
enough to cause trouble, if they did but know it.
The colonel watched the unequal race between the waves and the
heavily-laden canoe with interest. He looked out at them every other
minute from the corner of his eye. He was afraid lest others on shore
should see their danger and warn them.
“Let them spill over,” he said. “They can all swim like fish, and a
ducking will do them good.” So he stirred vigorously, watching them all
the while.
“That stuff won’t need any pepper if he cooks it,” remarked young Joe,
looking ahead at the colonel.
“Lucky for us it’s not his own private picnic,” said Tom, “or we
shouldn’t get much of it. Even as it is, it sort of takes my appetite
away to see him stirring that chowder.”
“I’ll risk your appetite—” The words were hardly out of Arthur’s mouth
when precisely what Colonel Witham had been hoping for came to pass. All
at once Tom, seated in the stern, saw the water suddenly appear to drop
down and away from the canoe. The canoe was for an instant drawn back,
then lifted high on the ridge of a wave and thrown forward, with a sharp
twist to one side. Tom gave one frantic sweep with his paddle, in an
effort to swing the canoe straight before the wave, but it was too late.
The canoe was overloaded, and as the weight of the four boys was thrown
suddenly to one side the sensitive thing lost its equilibrium and
capsized.
In a moment the four boys were struggling in the water. Thanks to Tom’s
precaution, they all went out headforemost, and came to the surface clear
of the canoe, blowing and sputtering. A cry went up from the shore, and
for a moment Colonel Witham was seized with a sudden fear. What if any of
them should be drowned, and he, to vent a petty spite, had given no
warning? In his excitement he failed to notice that he had spilled some
pepper into the ladle which he held in one hand.
Two rowboats were hastily started out from the beach, and, impelled by
strong arms, surged toward the canoe.
Tom was prompt to act. He and Bob had had many a drill at this sort of
thing. Each of the boys was a good swimmer, and soon they were all
clinging to the canoe, which had completely overturned. The boys were in
about the same positions as they had occupied in the canoe, Tom at one
end, Bob at the other, and the other two clinging each to one side.
“Quick, boys, let’s right her before the boats get here,” cried Tom.
Under his directions the two Warren boys now took their positions both on
the same side of the canoe, with himself and Bob at the ends. Then all
four took long breaths, treaded water vigorously, and lifted. The canoe
rose a little and rolled over sluggishly, two-thirds full of water.
While the others supported it, Tom bailed the canoe nearly dry with a
bailing-dish, which he always kept tied to a thwart for just such an
emergency. Then he climbed in over one end, and Bob followed over the
other. The Warren boys clung to the gunwales until one of the boats from
the shore picked them up. The paddles were recovered for Tom and Bob, and
the three craft proceeded to shore.
There, stretching themselves out on the hot sands before the blaze, they
waited for their clothing to dry on them. They were much liked by the
boys and girls of the village, and were at once a part of a jolly group,
each of which party had a separate detail to recount in the capsizing of
the canoe as they had seen it.
All at once the picnickers were startled by a howl of rage from Colonel
Witham. All eyes were turned upon him. He was executing the most
extraordinary contortions and dance-steps that could be imagined. An
Indian chief, excelling all his tribe at a war-dance, could not have
outdone the grotesque movements of the colonel.
“What ails the man?” cried Captain Sam. “He must have gone clean crazy.”
And he started for the colonel on the run.
But before he could reach him another accident happened. In his dancing
about, the colonel trod most unexpectedly on a small log of wood, his
heels flew out from under him, and down he came with a mighty splash in a
little pool of sea-water that had been left in a hollow of rock by the
last receding tide.
There the colonel lay, like an enormous turtle, helpless for a moment
with rage and astonishment, and all the while sputtering fiercely and
crying out.
“What on earth ails you, colonel?” asked Captain Sam, hurrying to his
assistance. “You haven’t gone crazy, have you?” And he helped the colonel
to his feet with a great effort.
“Pepper!” roared the purple-faced colonel. “Pepper!”
“Pepper!” cried Captain Sam. “What about pepper?”
“Everything about it!” sputtered the colonel. “It’s in the chowder! Taste
it and see.”
“What’s that?” cried Captain Sam. “If those young scamps have peppered
the chowder I’ll thrash every one of them myself. Here, let me see,” and,
picking up the ladle which the colonel had dropped, he cautiously tasted
the chowder.
“Why, there’s no pepper in it,” he said. “It’s just right. I don’t taste
any pepper.”
As, indeed, he did not, the colonel having got it all.
“You must have a strong imagination, colonel,” he said.
“Imagination!” bellowed the colonel. “Imagination! I just wish your
tongue was stuck full of a million red-hot needles and your mouth was
filled with hornets, that’s all I wish. Where’s the boy that put that
pepper into that spoon? Where is he? Show him to me and I’ll make an
example of him right here. I’ll put him head first into the chowder by
the heels.”
As no one had put the pepper into the ladle, no culprit could be found to
show to the colonel; and as the colonel could not select a victim out of
a score or more of boys who were present, he could only vent his rage to
no purpose, while the villagers, who had laughed themselves nearly sick
over the colonel’s antics, gave him what sympathy they could feign.
It ended in the colonel’s taking himself off in a great fury, declaring
that any one who pleased could make the chowder, and he hoped it would
choke them all, and that fish-bones innumerable would stick in the
throats of whoever ate it.
The colonel’s departure, however, far from putting any damper on the
occasion, seemed rather to afford the party a relief; and his mishap made
no small part of their amusement, as they went on with the preparations
for the feasting.
Captain Sam, who could turn his hand to anything, took the position left
vacant by the colonel, and declared he could bring the chowder to
completion in a way vastly superior to the colonel’s. And indeed it was a
decided improvement in the appearance of things to see the good-natured
captain standing over the steaming kettle and cracking jokes with every
pretty girl that went by.
The preparations for the clambake went merrily on. A huge pile of
driftwood was brought up from the shore and heaped on the fire by the
ledge. There were pieces of the spars of vessels, great junks of
shapeless timber that had once been ship-knees and pieces of keels,
timbers that had drifted down from the mills away up the river, now
thrown up on shore after miles and miles of aimless tossings, and crates
and boxes that had gone adrift from passing steamers and come in with
weeks of tides. The flames consumed them all with a fine roaring and
crackling, and, dying down at length after an hour or two, left at a
white heat beneath the ashes a bed of large flat rocks that had been
carefully arranged.
Several of the boys, with brooms made of tree branches, swept the hot
stones clean of ashes; clean as an oven they made it. Then they brought
barrels of clams, big fat fellows, with the blue yet unfaded from their
shells, and poured them out on the hot stones, whence there arose a
tremendous steaming and sizzling.
Quickly they pitched damp seaweed over the clams, from a stack heaped
near, covering them completely to the depth of nearly a foot. Then on
this, wherever they saw the steam escaping, they shovelled the clean
coarse gravel of the beach, so that the great broad seaweed oven was
nearly air-tight.
Then they heaped the hot ashes in a mound and buried therein potatoes and
corn with the thick green husks left on it.
The women, meantime, had not been idle, for in a grove that skirted the
beach they had spread table-cloths on the long tables that always stood
there, winter and summer, fastened into the ground with stakes driven
firm. If all that great steaming bed of clams and the chowder in the
mammoth kettle had suddenly vanished or burned up, or had some other
catastrophe destroyed it, there would still have been left a feast for an
army in what was spread on the snowy tables from no end of fat-looking
baskets.
There were roast chickens and ducks, sliced cold meats, and country
sausages. There were pies enough to make a boy’s head swim,—apple, mince,
pumpkin, squash, berry, custard, and lemon,—in and out of season;
chocolate cakes and raisin cakes and cakes of all sizes and forms. There
were preserves and pickles and a dozen and one other messes from country
cupboards, for the good housewives of Grand Island were generous souls,
and used to providing for a hearty lot of seafaring husbands and sons and
brothers, and, moreover, this picnic at the Narrows was a yearly event,
for which they made preparation long ahead, and looked forward to almost
as much as they did to Christmas and New Year.
Never were tables more temptingly spread, and when, late in the
afternoon, the benches around these tables were filled with expectant and
hungry picnickers, it was a sight worth going miles to see.
Captain Sam pronounced the chowder done, and the great kettle, hung from
a stout pole, was borne in triumph by him and Arthur Warren to the grove
near the tables. Somebody else pronounced the clams done, and the gravel
was carefully scraped off from the seaweed, and the seaweed lifted from
the clams, and the great stone oven with its steaming contents laid bare.
The very fragrance from it was a tonic.
Bowls of the chowder and big plates of the clams were carried to the
tables. There were dishes of the hot corn piled high; potatoes that came
to table black as coals, and which, being opened, revealed themselves
white as newly popped corn. There was a mingled odour of foods, piping
hot, and over all the grateful aroma from half a dozen coffee-pots.
“Cracky! do they expect us to eat all this?” exclaimed young Joe, as he
surveyed the prospect. “I wonder where it is best to begin—and what to
leave out.”
“Don’t try to eat it all, Joe,” said Arthur. “Give somebody else a
chance, too. You know the night you went to Henry Burns’s party you ate
so many nuts and raisins you woke up dreaming that somebody was trying to
tie you into a square knot, and when you got fully awake you wished
somebody would, and I had to get up and pour Jamaica ginger into you.
Don’t try to eat more than enough for three ordinary persons this time,
Joe, and you’ll be all right.”
Young Joe tried to smile, with a slice of chicken in one hand and a
spoonful of preserves in the other, and a mouthful of both. His
reputation at the table had been made long before that day, and had gone
abroad, and here was the opportunity of a lifetime, for every
good-hearted motherly-looking housewife within reaching distance was
passing him food.
“I hope there’s a seat for me,” said Henry Burns, who came hurrying up.
He and George Warren had made the run down the island on bicycles.
“Come on, both of you,” cried the crowd. “There’s always room for you,”
and made places for them at once.
“It seems too bad not to invite those other campers up on the shore,”
said one of the women. “I’m sure they haven’t had anything as good as
this for all summer.”
“What! Harvey’s crew?” queried a chorus of voices, in astonishment.
“Well, you don’t live near enough to where they are camping to be
bothered by them. If you did, you wouldn’t want them.”
“We don’t mind some kind of jokes so much,” continued one of the
villagers, at which Tom and Bob and Henry Burns and the Warren boys tried
to look unconscious, “but when it comes to taking things that don’t
belong to them and continually creating a disturbance, we think it is
going a little too far. Perhaps it might do them good to get them over
here and repay them with kindness, but some of us are not just in the
mood for trying it.”
“Besides,” said another, “it’s too late now, if we wanted to, for I saw
them starting out about half an hour ago in their yacht, and wondered
where they could be trying to go, with wind enough to barely stir them.
Some mischief, like as not, they’re up to. No good errand, I’ll be
bound.”
Which was quite true.
However, in most surprising contradiction to the speaker’s assertion,
there suddenly appeared along the shore Harvey and all his crew, walking
close to the water’s edge, but plainly to be seen.
“Well, those boys must have changed their minds quickly,” said the man
who had spoken before. “It is not more than half an hour, surely, since I
saw them all starting out in the yacht. I guess they found there was not
enough wind.”
Perhaps, however, there had been wind enough for the purpose of Harvey
and his crew. There was enough, at all events, to carry them up past the
village and back again to their mooring-place. If they had had any object
in doing that, there had been wind enough to satisfy them. They seemed,
moreover, in high spirits when they returned from this brief voyage, and
laughed heartily as they made the yacht snug for the night.
Now they went whistling past the picnic party, all of them in line, and
went down along the shore till they were lost to view in the woods.
“Hope they’re not going down my way,” said some one. “They’re up to
altogether too much mischief around here; that is, I know well enough
it’s them, but I can’t ever succeed in catching them at it. I’d make it
hot for them if I could.”
But Harvey and his crew had surely no designs on the property of any one
down the island, for they had not gone far in the grove of woods before
Harvey called a halt, and they all sat down and waited. It was rapidly
growing dusk, and they waited until it had grown quite dark. Then they
arose, cut across through the grove toward the Narrows again, but keeping
out of sight all the while, both of chance villagers who might be passing
along the road, and of the crowd about the picnic fire.
When they had come to the Narrows, Harvey again called a halt, and stole
ahead to see if the coast was clear. The island was a narrow strip of
land here, with the bay on either hand coming in close to the roadway,
but by keeping close to the water’s edge, and dodging behind some low
cedars, provided the campers were all about the fire, they might pass
unobserved. This they managed successfully, for, the driftwood fire
having been renewed, the picnic party were seated about it, singing and
telling stories.
Harvey and his crew went on up through the woods to their own camp, where
two of them remained, while Harvey and George Baker and Allan Harding
took their yacht’s tender and rowed rapidly on up toward the town. After
they had started, Joe Hinman and Tim Reardon stole down through the woods
again, and kept watch for a long time on the group about the fire. They
did not return to their camp till the sound of a horn, some hour and a
half later, signified to them that Harvey and the others had returned
from their mission, whatever it was.
The driftwood fire began to blaze low as the evening wore on, and by nine
o’clock the greater number of the picnickers had said “Good night” and
started on their journey home. Some of them had come from away down at
the foot of the island, and still others from the little settlement at
the head. These now harnessed in their horses, which had been allowed to
feed near the grove, and drove away, their flimsy old wagons rattling
along the road like so many wrecks of vehicles.
Around the fire, however, there still lingered a group of fishermen and
village folk, telling stories and gossiping over their pipes.
“I wonder whatever became of that fellow Chambers,” said one. “He was the
slickest one of the lot, so that Detective Burton said. Do you recall how
he sailed away that morning, as cool as you please, with the pistols
popping all around his head?”
The subject had never ceased to be the one great topic of interest in the
village of Southport.
“I reckon he’ll never be seen around these parts again,” remarked
another. “Like as not he’s up in Long Island Sound long before this. Or
maybe the yacht’s hauled up somewhere, and he’s got clear out of the
country. There’s no telling where those fellows will travel to, if
they’re put to it, according to what I read in the papers.”
“It’s mighty mysterious,” said Captain Sam. “For my part, I think it’s
queer nobody’s sighted him somewhere along the coast. A man don’t sail
for days without somebody seeing him. He ought to be heard from along
Portland way, that is, if he ever left this bay, which I ain’t so sure
of, after all.”
This remark seemed to amuse most of the group.
“Seems as though you expected you might see him and that crack yacht some
night sailing around here like the _Flying Dutchman_,” said one, at which
the others took their pipes out and chuckled. “You’ll have to get out
your old _Nancy Jane_ and go scouring the bay after him, Cap’n Sam. If he
ever saw her coming after him, he’d haul down his sail pretty quick and
invite you to come aboard.”
“Well,” replied Captain Sam, good-naturedly, “there’s no accounting for
the strange things of the sea, as you ought to know, Bill Lewis, with the
deep-water voyages you’ve been on. Still, I’m free to say I don’t see how
that ’ere craft can have got out of here and gone clear up Boston way or
New York, without so much as a sail being sighted by all them as has been
watching for her. I don’t try to explain where he may be, but I stick to
my idea that there’s something mighty queer about it.”
“He may be at the bottom of this ’ere bay,” said the man addressed as
Bill Lewis. “Stranger things than that have happened, and he was but one
man in a big boat on a coast he couldn’t have known but little of.
There’s many a reef for him to hit in the night, and the day he escaped
was stormy. For that matter, I give it up, too. He was a slick one,
that’s all I can say.”
And so they rolled this strange and mysterious bit of gossip over, while
the fire burned to coals and the coals died away to ashes.
“Tom,” said Bob, as they launched the canoe from the shelving beach some
time after ten o’clock, “it’s too glorious a night to go right home to
bed. What do you say to a short paddle, just a mile or so out in the bay,
to settle that terrible mixture of pie and clams that we’ve eaten? We’ll
sleep all the sounder for it.”
“Perhaps ’twill save our lives,” replied Tom. “I ate more than I’ve eaten
in the last week. Let’s take it easy, though. I don’t feel like hard
work.”
So they paddled leisurely out for about a mile, enjoying the brilliant
starlight and watching the dark waters of the bay flash into gleams of
phosphoric fire at every stroke of the paddle. It was like an enchanted
journey, gliding along through the still night, amid pools of sparkling
gems.
It was nearing eleven when they drove the bow of their canoe in gently
upon the sand at their landing-place and stepped out upon the shore.
“One, two, three—pick her up,” said Tom, as each grasped a thwart of the
canoe, ready to swing it up on to their shoulders. Up it came, fairly on
to the shoulders of Bob, who had the bow end, but Tom, who never fumbled
at things, seemed somehow to have made a bad mess of it. His end of the
canoe dropped clumsily to the ground, twisting Bob’s head uncomfortably
and surprising that young gentleman decidedly.
“What’s the matter, Tom?” he asked, laughing good-naturedly, as he turned
to his companion. But Tom for a moment answered never a word. He stood
staring ahead like one in a dream. Bob, amazed, looked in the same
direction.
“Bob,” whispered Tom, huskily, “do you see—it’s gone—it isn’t there. Do
you see—the camp—the old tent—it’s gone, as sure as we’re standing here.”
They rushed forward to where the tent had been but a few hours before
that afternoon, and stood there dismayed. There in the open air were
their bunks, their camp-stools, their camp-kit, and the great chest; but
the tent that had sheltered them had disappeared. Around about the spot
were holes where the stakes that had held it had been hastily wrenched
out, but not a scrap of canvas nor a piece of rope that had guyed it were
to be seen. Only the poles that had been its frame lay upon the ground.
Their tent had utterly vanished.