THE PURSUIT
Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they
discovered that the boys had escaped.
“But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end,” said the
squire. “The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and
will count hard against them when we once get them into court.
“Colonel,” he continued, gazing off on to the bay, “I believe that’s them
now, about two miles down along the shore. Cap’n Sam, you’re a sure judge
of a sail. Isn’t that the _Spray_ beating down along the island, just off
Billy Jones’s beach?”
Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco
twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically:
“That’s the _Spray_, sure’s a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of
that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as
crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there’s the
youngsters, and no mistake.”
Captain Sam did not see fit, however, though a constable, sworn to do his
duty, as the others had suggested, to explain that he had seen the
_Spray_ for the last hour or more, and that he had been conscious all
along of the precious time they were losing. But a sharp observer might
have detected him chuckling down deep in his throat as the colonel and
the squire stormed and raged.
“Well, what are we going to do?” cried Squire Brackett. “We’re losing
valuable time here. That little boat eats fast into the wind, they say,
and we have got to get started pretty quick if we expect to overhaul her
between now and dark.
“Come! What do you say, Cap’n Sam? You know the boats in the harbour
better than I do. Whose is the best one to go after them with?”
“Wa-al,” drawled Cap’n Sam, “if I do say it, I suppose the _Nancy Jane_
is about as good as any in a long thrash to windward,—if she does belong
to me. She’s big and she’s roomy, and there’s a comfortable cabin in her
for you and the colonel—for I suppose you’ll want to go along.”
“Go along!” exclaimed Colonel Witham. “I should say we did—eh, squire?
When these ’ere warrants are served I want to be there to see it done,
and so does the squire, I reckon.”
“That’s what I do,” responded Squire Brackett. “We’ll go along with you,
sure enough.”
“Then you want to be getting some grub aboard right away,” said Captain
Sam, with a fine show of energy and haste, “while I break the news to my
wife. She’ll put me up a bite to last a day or two. You can’t tell, you
know, when you start off on one of these ’ere cruises, where you’ll end
up nor how long you’ll be out,—so you want to come prepared to stay.”
And then, as the colonel and the squire hurried off down the road, he
turned back for a moment to Mrs. Warren, who stood weeping, and said,
with rough good-heartedness:
“Now, don’t you go to taking on, Mrs. Warren. There’s some mistake here.
Depend upon it. I’ve known them youngsters ever since they was no
bigger’n short lobsters, and I know they ain’t got nothing bad enough in
’em to go to setting a hotel afire.
“P’r’aps there might have been some little accident,” he added, more
conservatively. “Accidents always is happening, you know, and we’re all
of us liable to ’em. I’ve got to do my duty, Mrs. Warren, bein’ as I am a
constable of this town, sworn to obey my orders as I get ’em, signed and
sealed from the court; but I’m goin’ to stand by them boys, all the same.
“So you just go and get your husband down here, quick as ever you
can,—and we’ll settle this ’ere difficulty pretty soon, I reckon.
“And see here,” he said, in conclusion, “if Mr. Warren gets here by
to-morrow noon, that’ll be time enough. And that gives you a chance to
take the boat up to-day if you hurry, and bring Mr. Warren back with you.
I’ll sorter guarantee we don’t fetch up here again till to-morrow
afternoon, so don’t you worry.” And with a sly twinkle in his gray eyes
the captain took his leave, and rolled along lazily toward his home.
He was still eating a hearty breakfast when the colonel and the squire
burst in upon him, hot with impatience. But the captain was provokingly
deliberate, and finished a few more huge slices of bread and a biscuit or
two, and two cups of coffee and a few of his wife’s doughnuts, before he
would budge an inch.
“The boys can’t escape,” he said, by way of assurance to the impatient
pair. “They can’t go across the Atlantic in a little sardine-box like
that, if it has got a mast and a bowsprit and a cabin to it. We’re bound
to fetch up with them quick enough. Have a cup of coffee, colonel!
Squire, sit down and drink a cup of coffee! Mrs. Curtis knows how to make
it, if anybody does.”
But the colonel and the squire refused impatiently, and by dint of
nagging and voluble persuasion they got Captain Sam started, and the
three went down to the shore.
The news had spread abroad by this time,—thanks to the colonel and the
squire,—and quite a number of villagers and cottagers had gathered to see
them off.
What they said was not complimentary to the worthy two, for the boys, in
spite of their pranks, were universally liked, and the whole village had
not done with praising them for their bravery at the fire.
“Why don’t you go and arrest Jack Harvey and his crew?” cried one of the
villagers. “Looks mighty queer to have them clear out, every one of them,
the morning of the blaze. Dan French, he saw them standing out by his
point early that morning while the fire was blazing its hardest. Reckon
that looks a sight queerer than it does to wait a whole day.”
“Well! Well! I guess they had a hand in it,” cried Colonel Witham, as he
stepped into the yacht’s tender. “We’ll hunt them up, too, later on. They
are all mixed up in it, I’ve no doubt. Wait till we get the boys we are
after now, and we’ll make them confess the whole thing.”
It certainly did look suspicious, this flight from both camps and from
the Warren cottage, just after the fire; and the villagers, however well
disposed they might be in the boys’ favour, or however much inclined to
show leniency, could not explain it away.
“They must have been up to some of their pranks,” they said to one
another, “and somehow got the hotel on fire. Colonel Witham must be
right,—and, besides, Squire Brackett says he’s got the proof. He must
know something bad, or he would not be so certain.”
And to this conclusion, reluctant as they might be to come to it, there
fitted, in startling corroboration, the coincidence of their being the
first to discover the fire,—the first to give the alarm.
And the villagers sympathized all the more, for this conclusion, with
Mrs. Warren, as she took the boat for home that morning, bravely keeping
back her tears, and receiving courageously their kindly assurances,
though her heart was breaking.
The _Nancy Jane_ was a heavy fishing-boat, of the centreboard type, big
and beamy and shallow of build, able to “carry sail” in the worst of
weather, but not so marvellously fast as one might have been led to
believe by the recommendation of her owner. However, it was quite true
that she could overhaul the _Spray_—only give her time enough, and
provided no accident should happen.
“She’s got a bit of water in her,” said Captain Sam. “So make yourselves
comfortable, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable, while I pump her
out. She’ll sail faster and point up better with the water out of her,
and we’ll all be more comfortable.”
And the colonel and the squire made themselves anything but comfortable,
fretting and fuming at the delay.
The captain took it leisurely, however, yanked the pump for ten minutes
or more, to the accompaniment of short puffs of his pipe, and then
pronounced her dry as “Dry Ledge at low tide.”
The colonel and the squire were neither of them sailors; so they could
only wait on Captain Sam’s pleasure. He finally made sail on the _Nancy
Jane_, got up anchor, brought her “full and by,” and they began the long
zigzag chase down the bay in the teeth of the wind.
The breeze freshened as they drew out of the shelter of the island shore,
and down between the nearer islands Captain Sam could see the line of
breeze show black upon the water.
“Looks like a right smart blow by afternoon,” he said.
Colonel Witham looked up apprehensively.
“It doesn’t get dangerous, does it?” he asked.
Captain Sam laughed dryly.
“Guess you’re not much on sailing, colonel, are you?” he asked, by way of
reply. “Bless you! We don’t get a dangerous blow in the bay once in a
summer. No, you need not worry about that. There’s no danger; but I
wouldn’t wonder if we had a bit of a chop-sea when the wind freshens.”
The colonel looked more at ease.
“No,” he said, “I’m no sailor. I manage to make the voyage down the river
to the island, but that is as much seagoing as I have ever wanted, and
this will be my first real ocean experience.”
“Not what you’d hardly call an ocean experience, either,” said Captain
Sam, grinning from ear to ear. “No,” and he said the words over to
himself as though they afforded him no end of amusement, “a slat to
windward from the point to Gull Island ain’t just what one would call an
ocean experience, though it does shake a body up now and then in a blow.”
Dinner-hour came, and they had the _Spray_ well in sight, some miles
ahead and pitching hard.
“We’ll eat a snack,” said Captain Sam, who was never so happy and hearty
as when he had his hand on the wheel of the _Nancy Jane_. “Colonel, have
one of Mrs. Curtis’s fresh doughnuts, just fried this morning, make you
feel like a schoolboy.”
But the colonel, pale of face, declined.
“I—I don’t seem to feel very hungry just this moment,” he stammered.
“Late breakfast, you know. Er—by the way, is it going to blow much
harder, do you think?”
“No great shakes,” responded the captain. “Guess there may be another
capful or two of wind in them ’ere light clouds out yonder. It may
freshen a bit, but that’s all right. That’s just what we want. The harder
it blows the more the _Spray_ will pitch and get knocked back. It’s the
kind of a breeze that the _Nancy Jane_ likes, plenty of wind and a rough
sea. The wind is bound to go down by sunset. It’s the way these
southerlies act.”
“By sundown!” groaned the colonel. “That’s hours yet, and I’m sure we’ll
tip clear over if this boat leans much more.”
“Built to sail on her beam,” explained Captain Sam. But at this moment
the _Nancy Jane’s_ bow snipped off the whitecap of a roller somewhat
larger than its predecessor, and the spray flew in, drenching the colonel
from head to foot.
He yelled with terror. “We’re upsetting, sure!” he cried. “Let’s turn her
about, Captain Sam, while there is time, and start again when it’s
lighter.”
“Nonsense!” said Captain Sam, with a grin. “You’re a bit shaken up, but
you’ll feel better by and by. Just go into the cabin and lie down a
little while. That may make you feel better.”
Perhaps it had been so many years since Captain Sam had experienced the
awful misery of seasickness that he did not realize that the worst thing
the colonel could do was to go down into the dark, damp, musty-smelling
cabin of the old fishing-sloop. Perhaps he really did think that the
colonel would feel better for it. But whatever his motive was, it had a
sudden and deadly effect on Colonel Witham. Indeed, he had scarcely stuck
his head into the stuffy cabin, had certainly no more than gotten fully
within, before he staggered out again, with an agonized expression on his
face, and sank, limp and shivering, to a seat, with his head over the
rail.
“Oh! Oh!” he groaned. “I think I’m going to die. I’m awfully sick; never
felt so bad in all my life. Can’t you put me ashore, Captain
Sam—anywhere, anywhere? I don’t care where, even if it is a deserted
island. I’d wait there a week if I could only get on shore.” And the
colonel groaned and shivered.
It was obvious there was no way of going ashore, however, as they were
some miles distant from it. There was nothing for the unhappy colonel to
do but to make the best—or the worst—of it.
“Cheer up, colonel,” said Captain Sam, pulling out the stub of a black
clay pipe, lighting it, and puffing away enjoyably. “I’ve seen ’em just
as sick as you are one hour, and chipper enough to eat raw pork and climb
the mast the next. You will be feeling fine before long,—won’t he,
squire?”
But as the squire evidently had his doubts in the matter, owing
particularly to the fact that he was not too much at ease himself, his
response was rather faint; and the captain was left to the entertainment
of his own society. He enjoyed himself for the next hour or two with a
sort of monologue, in which he proceeded to analyze audibly the relative
chances of the little yacht ahead and the _Nancy Jane_.
“They are doing surprisingly well for a small craft in windward work,” he
muttered. “They handle her well. Still, the _Nancy Jane_ is eating up on
them. I say about sundown we shall be able to run alongside—Hulloa! If
they are not changing their course to run down the Little Reach! Thought
they knew better than that. Why, it’s what they call a ‘blind alley’ in
the cities. Well, I’m surprised. They know the bay pretty well, too; and,
only to think, they go to running in to a thoroughfare which really is
nothing more than a long cove. They’ll fetch up at the end of it in an
hour or two, and there’s no way out.”
The captain’s voice almost seemed to express disappointment that the
chase should end so tamely.
“Colonel,” he cried. “Squire. It will be all over in a few hours now.
They’re running into a trap.”
But the colonel and the squire were beyond interest in the pursuit.
The yacht _Spray_ had, indeed, started its sheets, and now, with the wind
on its beam, was running off toward a group of small islands, or ledges,
on a course nearly at right angles with that which it had been taking.
The boys had watched the _Nancy Jane_ anxiously for the last few hours.
“They are steadily coming up on us,” George Warren had said. “Too bad we
could not have got a few hours more start. We might have given them the
slip then when night shut down.”
“But we are not sure that they are after us, are we?” asked young Joe.
“No, but it looks pretty certain,” replied his brother George. “There’s
nothing particular to start the _Nancy Jane_ down here, and she is
Captain Sam’s boat and he is the town constable.”
“Then what had we better do?” queried Tom. “There is not much use running
away, if we are sure to be caught inside of a few hours. We’d a sight
better turn about and start back, as though we had finished our sail.
That would look less like running away.”
It was noticeable that, having once set out to escape, they accepted the
situation now fully, without more pretence.
“We have got to decide before long,” said Henry Burns. “The _Nancy Jane_
is overhauling us fast.”
“George,” said Arthur Warren, “I know one chance, if you want to try it,
and if you are willing to risk the _Spray_,—and I think it would save
us.”
“What is it, Arthur?” asked George. “If it is any good, I’m for trying
it. I can’t see as we have anything great to risk, with a twenty-five
thousand dollar fire charged to us.”
“What is it, Arthur?” exclaimed the others, excitedly. It did not seem
possible there could be any chance of escape open, but they jumped
eagerly at anything that offered a faint hope.
“Well,” said Arthur, in his deliberate manner, “you know the small
opening between Spring and Heron Islands at the foot of Little Reach?
Nobody ever ran a sailboat through there because it’s choked up with
ledges. But you remember when the mackerel struck in to the Reach there
last August, we all went down in the _Spray_ for a week’s fishing. Well,
one day Joe and I took the tender and worked our way clear through
between Spring and Heron Islands to the bay outside. Now the _Spray_,
with the centreboard up, does not draw very much more water than the
tender, and by dropping the sails and all poling through, I think we can
work her in clear to the other side.”
“We’ll try it,” said George Warren. “It is the only chance we have, so
we’ve really no choice.”
And he put the tiller up and threw the _Spray_ off the wind, while Arthur
and Joe started the sheets. It was this sudden manœuvre which had
startled Captain Sam.
They soon passed the entrance to Little Reach, two barren ledges shelving
down into the water, and were well down the Reach when Captain Sam and
the _Nancy Jane_ headed into it.
“There they go,” cried Captain Sam, “like an ostrich sticking its head
into the sand. Well, what can you expect of boys, anyway? We’ll overhaul
them faster than ever now, because this big mainsail draws two to their
one this way of the wind, and the jibs aren’t doing anything to speak of,
the wind varies so in here.”
It was smooth water inside Little Reach, and, as there was now scarcely
any motion to the _Nancy Jane_ as she skimmed along by the quiet shores,
the colonel and the squire began to revive a little, sufficient at least
to regain their interest in the pursuit.
They were about a mile and a half down the Reach, and the _Spray_, not
quite half a mile ahead, was apparently at the end of her cruise.
“They are at the end now,” cried Captain Sam, whose blood was up when it
came to a race between the _Nancy Jane_ and another, though smaller,
craft. “We’ve got ’em like mice in a box.”
“By George! look there, colonel—look, squire!” he exclaimed, excitedly.
“They have given it up. There go the sails. It’s all over. They may scoot
ashore, but the island on either side is nothing more than a rock. Well,
I vow! But I didn’t think they would quit so tamely after a game race.”
“We’ll make ’em smart for what we have suffered to-day, eh, colonel?”
growled the squire.
The colonel grunted assent. He was not yet sufficiently himself to be
very aggressive.
“What on earth are they doing?” said Captain Sam, a few moments later.
“Looks as though they were trying to hide away among the rocks, like a
mink in a hole. They’ll have the _Spray_ aground if they jam her in among
those ledges.”
The _Spray_, however, slipped in among the rocks, and was shut out from
the view of the pursuers.
“Let ’em hide,” said Captain Sam, contemptuously. “That is a boyish
trick. We’ll be up with them now in fifteen minutes.”
But the _Spray_, hidden from view of Captain Sam and the colonel and the
squire, was not running itself upon the rocks nor poking its nose,
ostrich-like, among the ledges.
The instant the sails were dropped young Joe sprang out on the bowsprit
and lay flat, holding a pole, with which he took soundings as the others
pushed and poled with the sweeps of the yacht.
They ran the bow gently on to rocks a dozen times, but a warning yell
from Joe stopped them, and they turned and twisted and wormed and worried
their way in among the ledges, turning about where a larger craft would
have had no room to turn, and slipping over reefs that just grazed the
bottom of the little _Spray_, and which with two inches lower tide would
have held them fast.
“It’s just the right depth of water,” said Arthur, exultantly. “Luck is
with us this time, for certain. An hour later and we could not have done
it. But we’re going through. There is only the bar ahead now. If we clear
that we are free of everything.”
Just ahead, where two thin spits of sand ran off on either end of the two
islands into shoal water, was a narrow, shallow passage, where the water
was so clear that it looked scarcely more than a few inches in depth, as
it rippled over the bar.
“All out!” cried Arthur, as the _Spray_ grated gently on the bottom, “We
will lighten her all we can,” and they sprang overboard into water
scarcely above their knees.
“Now, Joe,” said Arthur, “you and Henry take the head-line out over the
bows and go ahead and pull for all you are worth. George and I will get
alongside and push, and keep her in the channel, and Tom and Bob can get
aft and push. We have got to rush her over that shallow place, and we
must not let her stop, for if she once hangs in the centre we cannot
budge her. The _Spray_ is not a ninety-footer, but she’s got enough pig
iron in her for ballast to hold her high and dry if she once sticks.”
The boys seized hold quickly, and the _Spray_, lightened of her load,
slid along, at first sluggishly, and then gathering speed, as the twelve
strong, brown, boyish arms pulled and tugged and pushed.
“Jump her, now, boys! Jump her!” cried Arthur, as they neared the shoal.
“We’re doing it. Don’t let her stop, now! Oh, she mustn’t stop! We’ve got
to put her over or die.”
And the little _Spray_ seemed to feel the thrill and joy of freedom
throughout its timbers; for at the words it surged forward with a rush,
as though it would take the bar at a flying leap. The white sands reached
up from the bottom, and the whole bar seemed to be rising up to hold the
boat prisoner, as the water shoaled. But the little _Spray_ kept on.
It hung for one brief, breathless moment almost balanced on the middle of
the bar, and the white sands thought they had it fast; but the next
moment it slid gently from their grasp, gave a sort of spring as it felt
itself slipping free, and the next moment rode easily in clear water,
just over the bar.
The next instant six exultant boys, their faces blazing with excitement
and exertion, had scrambled aboard, falling over one another in their
eagerness to seize the halyards.
They hoisted the sails on the _Spray_ again in a way that would have made
Captain Sam himself sing their praises, and now, with evening coming on,
there was just enough breeze left in among the rocks to waft them gently
along out of the inlet.
They watched breathlessly, as they neared the entrance to the outer bay,
for a glimpse of the _Nancy Jane_; but the _Nancy Jane_, good boat though
she was, was just a moment too late. Scarcely had they turned the little
bluff and were hidden behind it, on their way whither they might choose,
when the _Nancy Jane_ rounded to at the entrance to the channel.
“It’s all done,” Captain Sam had exclaimed, as he threw the wheel of the
_Nancy Jane_ over and came up into the wind, but when he looked to see
the _Spray_, she was not there. Not so much as a scrap of a sail nor the
merest fragment of a hull, absolutely nothing.
Captain Sam was so dumfounded he could only gasp and stare vacantly at
the place where, by all rights, the _Spray_ ought to be.
The colonel and the squire, who had no preconceived ideas about the
passage between the islands, solved the problem at once; but not so the
captain.
“They’ve gone through there, you idiot,” exclaimed the squire, growing
red in the face. “Where else can they be? They can’t fly, can they?”
The captain groaned, as one whose pride had been cruelly smitten.
“To think,” he muttered, “that I’ve sailed these waters, man and boy, for
forty years, only to be fooled by a parcel of schoolboys from the city.
Why, every boy in Southport knows you can’t run a sailboat through
between Heron and Spring Islands. There ain’t enough water there at high
tide to drown a sheep.”
“Well, it seems they got through easy enough,” answered the colonel.
“That’s it! That’s it!” responded the captain, warmly. “They do say as
how fools rush in where angels don’t durst to go, and sometimes the fools
blunder through all right. And here’s these boys gone and done what I’d a
sworn a million times couldn’t be done.”
“Yes, and we probably can get through, too, if we only go ahead and try,
instead of lying here like jellyfish,” exclaimed the squire. “Cap’n Sam,
seems as though you weren’t so dreadful anxious to catch up with them
youngsters as you might be. P’r’aps you might have told Mrs. Warren back
there a few things that might explain this ’ere delay.”
“Yes, and if them boys can go through there, I, for one, don’t see what’s
to hinder us,” chimed in the colonel. “Cap’n Sam, I don’t see what we’re
a-hanging back for.”
And so, his pride humbled, and too mortified to stand by his own better
judgment, Captain Sam reluctantly yielded to their importunities, and
pointed the nose of the _Nancy Jane_ in toward the opening amid the
rocks.
“It can’t be done,” he said, doggedly, “but if you say that I am not
trying to do my duty as a sworn officer of the town, I’ll just show you.
Only don’t blame me if we’re hung up here hard and fast for twelve
hours.”
The _Nancy Jane_, like a horse that is being driven into danger that it
somehow apprehends, seemed almost intelligent in its reluctance to enter
the stretch of reef-strewn water. It bumped and scraped its way from one
rock to another, balked at this ledge and that, and, finally, after an
extra amount of pushing and pulling by the three men, jammed itself fast
on a reef studded with barnacles and snail-shells, and refused to budge
one way or another. In vain they tried to bulldoze and cajole, to push
and to pull, to plead with and to denounce the obstinate _Nancy Jane_.
Stolid and deaf alike to entreaty and expostulation, the boat squatted
down upon the reef like an ugly fat duck, comfortably disposed for the
night and refusing to be disturbed.
“I told you so!” roared the captain, now aroused to his rights as
skipper, and finding himself thus exasperatingly vindicated as to the
impassability of the channel. “We’re hung up fast for the night, for the
next twelve hours, till next flood. Then, if Lem Cobb is living in his
fishing-shack on Spring Island, and will lend us a hand and a few pieces
of joist to pry with, mebbe we’ll get off, and mebbe we won’t.”
The colonel and the squire boiled inwardly; but as it was apparent they
had only themselves to blame, they felt it useless to engage in
discussion with the indignant captain. So they wisely remained silent,
and left him to consume his wrath alone.
“Well,” he said, finally, “I for one am curious to see just where those
young rascals are; and if you’re of the same mind you can satisfy your
curiosity by coming ashore with me.” And the captain waded off to the
rocks of Spring Island and clambered up the bank, closely followed by the
colonel and the squire.
“There they go, slipping along as slick as eels,” exclaimed the captain,
as he and his panting companions achieved the ascent of the highest bit
of rock on Spring Island and looked down the bay. “They’re off down among
the islands,” he continued, “and here we stand like natural-born idiots
and bite our fingers. If ever I get into a mess like this again, I’ll
resign my office of constable and hire out to Noddy Perkins for a
clam-digger.” But the colonel and the squire, too angry and chagrined for
words, stayed not to listen to the captain’s denunciation.
They turned and walked rapidly in the direction of the fishing-shack, the
only shelter the island afforded; while the captain, standing out in
relief upon the rock, like some disappointed Napoleon, was the last
solitary object that the boys saw as, looking astern from the _Spray_,
the little island faded from their view into the twilight.