[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: Its rays fell on the craft just in time to see Tom's
limp form being hauled on board.--_Page_ 26.]
THE BUNGALOW BOYS
ON THE GREAT LAKES
BY
DEXTER J. FORRESTER
AUTHOR OF "THE BUNGALOW BOYS," "THE BUNGALOW BOYS MAROONED
IN THE TROPICS," "THE BUNGALOW BOYS IN
THE GREAT NORTHWEST," ETC.
_WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
BY J. PAUL BURNHAM_
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1912,
BY
HURST & COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. A Lake Huron "Hummer"
II. Lost Overboard
III. Tom Encounters Some Old Foes
IV. A Craft of Mystery
V. Tom Is in the Thick of It
VI. Along a Trail of Troubles
VII. Two Brave Lads at Bay
VIII. A Tour of Exploration
IX. "Fifty Dollars to the Man that Gets Them!"
X. A Trap of Nature's Making
XI. Out of the Dark
XII. Mr. Ironsides' Submarine--Huron
XIII. The Strangest Vessel on the Lakes
XIV. Off on a Long Chase
XV. "We've Struck a Submerged Wreck!"
XVI. In the Grasp of Calamity
XVII. Captain Rangler Re-appears
XVIII. A Man of Queer Manners
XIX. Within the Tower
XX. The Enemy's Victory
XXI. "There is a Way--I Mean to Try It"
XXII. A Bit of Madcap Daring
XXIII. Brains and Grit--A Combination Hard to Beat
XXIV. "Coward!"
XXV. What Will Happen Next?--Conclusion
The Bungalow Boys on the Great Lakes
CHAPTER I.
A LAKE HURON "HUMMER."
"Looks as if it might be blowing up for nasty weather, Tom."
Jack Dacre, the younger of the Bungalow Boys, spoke, as his head
emerged from the engine room hatchway of the sixty-foot, motor-driven
craft, _Sea Ranger_.
Tom nodded, and spun the spokes of the steering wheel ever so little.
The _Sea Ranger_ responded by heading up a trifle more into the seas,
which were already growing threatening.
"I've been thinking the same thing for some time," he said presently.
"If Alpena wasn't so far behind us, I'd turn back now."
"We can't be more than three miles off shore. Why not head in toward
it?"
The elder Dacre boy shook his head.
"Don't know the coast," he said; "and it's a treacherous one."
The sky, cloudless but a short time before, was now heavily overcast.
To the northwest, black, angry-looking clouds were banked in
castellated masses. Their ragged edges would have shown a trained
eye that, as sailors say, "there was wind behind them."
The waters of Lake Huron, recently sparkling under the bright sun,
were now of a dull, leaden hue. The long water rows began to rise
sullenly in heaving billows, over the crests of which the _Sea
Ranger_ plunged and wallowed.
"What are we going to do?" asked Jack presently, after an interval in
which both brothers rather anxiously inspected the signs of "dirty
weather."
"How are your engines working?" was Tom's way of answering with
another question.
"Splendidly; as they have done ever since we left New York. I'm not
anxious about them."
"Then we'll keep right on as we are. It would be risky to turn back
to Thunder Bay now. The _Sea Ranger_ is stanch. We saw to that
before we chartered her. She will weather it, all right."
"I guess you're right. But I can see here and now that our camping
cruise isn't going to be all fun. These Lake Huron storms have a bad
reputation. When we were down off Florida, old Captain Pangloss said
that they were as bad as anything he had encountered, even in the
China seas."
"At any rate, that trip taught us a lot about boat-handling," said
Tom, "and other things, too," he added, with a rather grim smile, as
he recalled the stirring times they had had on the voyage referred
to. Those adventures were all set forth in full in _The Bungalow
Boys Marooned in the Tropics_.
"They sure did," agreed the younger Dacre. "The weather looked like
this off Hatteras, before the time we beat out Dampier and Captain
Walstein in the search for the sunken treasure-ship."
"And thereby helped to get large enough bank accounts to plan this
trip," interpolated Tom. "By the way, I wonder whatever became of
those two rascals after their escape from jail?"
"The papers said that they were supposed to have made their way to
Canada. But nobody knows for certain."
While he spoke, the sea was growing more and more turbulent.
"I'll go below and rouse up Sandy and Professor Podsnap. We want to
have everything secure and snug in the cabin before the storm hits
us."
Jack found the professor and Sandy deep in a game of chess. One, at
least, of the players, namely Sandy, was not sorry to have the game
broken up. The professor had his hand poised above his bishop, and
was about to make a move that would speedily have checkmated the
Scotch youth, when Jack burst into the cabin.
They had been so interested in the game that they had not noticed the
increased motion of the _Sea Ranger_. But, as Professor Podsnap
leaped to his feet, when Jack rapidly made them aware of the
situation, the bald-headed professor went sliding off to leeward
across the cabin floor. An unusually heavy lurch had propelled him,
and his speed was great.
To save his angular form from an ignominious tumble, he clutched at
the cloth on the cabin table. As might have been expected, it did
not prove a substantial support. Before either of the boys could
interfere, the professor was in a heap on the floor, struggling
blindly to extricate himself from the folds of the drapery which
enveloped him. Struggling to check their laughter, the boys rescued
him. But their subdued mirth broke into a loud shout as they beheld
the professor's countenance. A bottle of ink had been standing on
the table, and its contents were now spilled in black rivulets all
over the professor's face. His bony features fairly streamed with
the black fluid, while his spectacles hung suspended from one ear, in
a most undignified manner.
He gazed about him in a bewildered fashion, as he scrambled to his
feet. He made such a comical sight that the boys, in spite of their
respect for his learning and age, could no longer check their
merriment at the ludicrous figure, and they laughed till the tears
ran down their cheeks, only stopping to gasp out apologies and then
go off into more paroxysms of mirth.
"The sea--as someone has observed--is no respecter of persons,"
observed the professor, wiping the ink in long smudges with his
pocket handkerchief.
"Of parsons, sir?" inquired Sandy.
"Of persons," said the professor solemnly.
"Which reminds me," said Jack, controlling his laughter and rapidly
describing to the professor and Sandy the condition of things
outside. They at once set to work securing everything movable. The
professor didn't even take time to clean his face.
In the meantime, Jack had returned to the deck, passing through the
engine room on his way. The _Sea Ranger_ was driven by a powerful
forty-horsepower, six-cylinder, gasolene engine. The boy paused only
to ascertain that everything was in good order before he rejoined
Tom, who stood on a sort of bridge amidships.
Even in the short time he had been below, the weather had noticeably
roughened. It was almost dark.
"What time is it?" inquired Jack, as he gained Tom's side. The other
drew out his watch.
"Only a little after five. But it's getting as dark as if it were
three hours later."
"It certainly is. We are in for a hummer, all right."
"Don't make any mistake about that."
The rising wind began to scream about the laboring craft. Whitecaps
flecked the lead-colored waves. The sky was overshadowed by a dark
canopy of clouds.
Across the tempest-lashed waters, Tom, by straining his eyes, could
manage to make out a dark point of land.
"That ought to be Dead Fish Point," he observed to Jack. "But I
couldn't be sure unless I saw the light."
"What kind of a light is it?" asked Jack.
"White and red, in one-minute flashes, I looked it up on the chart
before we left Thunder Bay."
"Well, they ought to light up now. It's dark enough," opined Jack.
"By the way," he went on, "wasn't it from that lighthouse that they
drove off the gang that has been wrecking vessels by displaying false
lights?"
"Yes. The men visited the light just as an increased force of
lighthouse keepers had been put on, owing to the number of wrecks
that have happened recently from the operations of this gang. They
were driven off. But they had a swift tug and escaped. The
authorities have been looking for them since."
"If the newspapers are right, it is the same outfit that has been
operating on all the Great Lakes."
"Yes. It's a new and up-to-date method of piracy, as the police
claim. The gang engaged in it wrecks vessels by means of changing or
extinguishing lights, and then raids the cargo. It is dastardly
business!"
"Well, I should say so!"
At this point the professor and Sandy came on deck.
"Hoot mon!" exclaimed the Scotch youth, "it's as dark as an unco'
dark tunnel."
"It resembles midnight," put in the professor, who had, by this time,
removed the traces of his encounter with the ink bottle.
The four, who were the only ones on board the _Sea Ranger_, stood
side by side on the bridge, holding tightly to the hand-rail to avoid
being thrown off their feet.
"D'ye ken if it'ull get wurss?" asked Sandy presently.
"It will get worse before it gets better," was Tom's pithy rejoinder.
The _Sea Ranger_ had set out from New York three weeks before. Her
destination was a small island situated in the Mackinac Straits,
called Castle Rock Island. The trip was in the nature of a holiday
outing following the Bungalow Boys' trying experiences with the
Chinese smugglers, as related in The _Bungalow Boys in the Great
Northwest_.
Mr. Chisholm Dacre, the Bungalow Boys' uncle, with the mystery of
whose life the first volume of this series--_The Bungalow Boys_--was
concerned, had decided, after some persuasion, to allow the lads to
go. It had been a trip which they had often longed to take. Mr.
Dacre and the parents of Sandy MacTavish, whose father was a wealthy
importer, agreed that a vacation cruise would do the lads no harm
after their really trying experiences in the hands of Simon Lake.
The _Sea Ranger_ had, therefore, been chartered, being a suitable
craft for the expedition. Mr. MacTavish, who had a partial claim to
Castle Rock Island, had permitted the boys to make it their
rendezvous. They meant to use it as a sort of headquarters during
their stay on the Great Lakes.
Well provisioned, and manned by as happy a crew as ever left New York
harbor, the _Sea Ranger_ had set out on her long trip through the
Hudson River and through the canals, to Buffalo. From Buffalo, they
voyaged by easy stages to Detroit, and thence to Port Huron. Till
that afternoon when they had started on the last "leg" of their
cruise, from Alpena, on Thunder Bay, they had not encountered any but
ordinary incidents of travel. Now, however, it looked as if they
were going to have an unpleasant change. But all the lads were
adventurous and daring, and the prospect of a lively blow did not
scare them.
A word of explanation is necessary in regard to Professor Podsnap's
presence on the _Sea Ranger_. Two days before she had sailed from
New York, the professor, whom the boys and Mr. Dacre had rescued from
a drifting raft in Florida waters, appeared at the lads' home. He
was about to start out on an expedition in search of Indian relics.
By a strange chance, Lake Huron was to form part of his hunting
ground. Mr. Dacre, deeming it a good thing to have an elder person
along with the boys, had responded to the professor's somewhat broad
hints by inviting him to join his nephews. As for the boys, they
respected the professor's learning, and had a genuine liking for him,
even if his eccentric ways did, at times, amuse them.
And now, what had promised to be a tame voyage, suddenly became
fraught with excitement.
"Hold hard, everybody!" cried Tom suddenly.
He had seen a white wall of water sweeping down toward the _Sea
Ranger_. The full fury of the storm was about to burst upon them.
"Here she comes!" yelled Jack, as the howling wind rushed down on
them as if it would rend them apart.
This was the beginning of a storm which endured through the night,
and which was to have a curious influence on the strange events which
lay in the Bungalow Boys' future.