BULLY BANJO’S SCHOONER.
“Guess this will be your getting-off place.”
One of the deck hands of the smoke-grimed, shabbily painted old
side-wheeler, plying between Victoria, B. C., and Seattle, paused
opposite Mr. Dacre and the Bungalow Boys. They stood on the lee side of
the upper deck regarding the expanse of tumbling water between them and
the rocky, mountainous coast beyond. The sky was blue and clean-swept. A
crisp wind, salt with the breath of the Pacific, swept along Puget Sound
from the open sea.
The surging waters of the Sound reflected, but, with a deeper hue, the
blue of the sky. The mountainous hills beyond were blue, too,—a
purplish-blue, with the dark, inky shadows of big pines and spruces.
Here and there great patches of gray rock, gaunt and bare as a wolf’s
back, cropped out. Behind all the snow-clad Olympians towered whitely.
Off to port of where the steamer was now crawling slowly along—a pall
of black, soft coal smoke flung behind her—was a long point, rocky and
pine-clad like the mountains behind it. On the end of it was a white,
melancholy day-beacon. It looked like a skeleton against its dark
background.
“There’s Dead Man’s Point,” added the friendly deck hand.
“And Jefferson Station is in beyond it?” asked Mr. Dacre.
“That’s right. Must look lonesome to you Easterners.”
“It certainly does,” agreed Mr. Dacre. “Boys,” he went on, looking
anxiously landward, “I don’t see a sign of a shore boat yet.”
At this point of the conversation the captain pulled his whistle cord,
and the ugly, old side-wheeler’s siren emitted a sonorous blast.
Poking his head out of the pilot house window, he shouted down at Mr.
Dacre and the boys:
“I’m a goin’ ter lay off here for ten minutes. If no shore boat shows up
by that time, on we go to Seattle.”
“Very well,” responded Mr. Dacre, hiding his vexation as best he could.
“We must—but,” he broke off abruptly, as from round the point there
suddenly danced a small sloop. “I guess that’s the boat now, captain!”
he hailed up.
“Hope so, anyhow,” ejaculated Tom, while the captain merely gave a
grunt. He was annoyed at having to slow up his steamer. As the engine
room bell jingled, the clumsy old side wheels beat the water less
rapidly. Presently the old tub lay rolling in the trough of the sea
almost motionless. On came the boat under a press of canvas. She heeled
over smartly. In her stern was an upright figure; the lower part of his
face was covered with a big, brown beard. As he saw the party, he waved
a blue-shirted arm.
“That’s Colton Chillingworth!” exclaimed Mr. Dacre. “I haven’t seen him
for ten years, but I’d know that big outline of a man any place.”
The deck hands were now all ready with the travelers’ steamer trunks.
The boys had their suit cases, gun bags, and fishing rods in their
hands.
“How on earth are we ever going to board that boat?” wondered Jack,
rather apprehensively, as the tiny craft came dancing along like a
light-footed terpsichorean going through the mazes of a quadrille.
“Jump!” was Mr. Dacre’s response. “These steamers don’t make landings.
I’m glad Chillingworth was in time, or we might have been carried on to
Seattle.”
And now the boat was cleverly run in alongside. She came up under the
lee of the heavily rolling steamer, her sails flapping with a loud
report as the wind died out of them.
“Hul-lo, Dacre!” came up a hearty hail from the big figure in the stern.
“Hullo there, boys! Ready to come aboard?”
“Aye, aye, Colton!” hailed back Mr. Dacre. “We’ll be with you in a
minute.”
“If we don’t tumble overboard first,” muttered Jack to himself.
“Better take the lower deck, sir,” suggested one of the deck hands.
Accordingly, our party traversed the faded splendors of the little
steamer’s saloon and emerged presently by her paddle box. Between the
side of the vessel and the big curved box was a triangular platform.
“Stand out on this, sir, and you and the boys jump from it,” suggested
the deck hand.
“A whole lot easier to say than to do,” was Tom’s mental comment. He
said nothing aloud, however.
In the meantime their baggage had been lowered by a sling. A second
person, who had just emerged from the cabin of the little boat, was
active in stowing it in the cockpit. This personage was a Chinaman. He
wore no queue, however, but still clung to the loose blue blouse and
trousers of his country.
“Allee lightee. You come jumpee now,” he hailed up, when the baggage was
stowed.
“Here goes, boys,” cried Mr. Dacre, with a laugh. He made a clean spring
and landed on the edge of the deck of the plunging sloop. The Chinaman
caught him on one side, while the lad’s uncle braced himself on the
other by grabbing a stay. Another instant and the boys could see him and
Mr. Chillingworth warmly shaking hands.
“Go ahead, Jack,” urged Tom. But for once Jack did not seem anxious to
take the lead. He hesitated and looked about him. But he only saw the
grinning faces of the deck hands.
“Come on!” shouted his uncle, extending his arms. “It’s easy. We’ll
catch you.”
“Hum! If I had my diving suit here, I’d feel better,” muttered the lad.
“But—here goes!”
Like a boy making a final determined plunge into a cold tub on a winter
morning, Jack leaped forward and outward. He landed right on the sloop’s
deck, falling in a sprawling heap. But the active Chinaman had him by
the arms and he was on his feet in a jiffy. Tom followed an instant
later.
Hardly had his foot touched the deck before the steamer gave a farewell
blast and forged onward, leaving them alone in the tossing, tumbling
wilderness of wind-driven waters. Somehow the waves looked a lot bigger
from the cockpit of the sloop than they had from the deck of the
steamer.
They watched the big craft as with a dip and a splash of its wet plates,
it gained speed again, several passengers gazing from its upper decks at
the adventurous party in the little sloop. Introductions were speedily
gone through by Mr. Dacre. The boys made up their minds that they were
going to like Colton Chillingworth very much. He was a big-framed
six-footer, tanned with wind and sun, and under his flannel shirt they
could see the great muscles play as he moved about.
“This is Song Fu, my factotum,” said Mr. Chillingworth, nodding toward
the Chinaman, whose yellow face expanded into a broad grin as his master
turned toward him.
“How do you do, Song Fu?” poetically asked Tom, not knowing just what
else to say.
“Me welly nicely, t’ank you,” was the glib response.
By this time Mr. Chillingworth had set the helm and put the little sloop
about. She fairly flew through the water, throwing back clouds of spray
over the top of her tiny cabin. It was exhilarating, though, and the
boys enjoyed every minute of it.
But as they sped along, it soon became apparent that the wind was
freshening. The sea, too, was getting up. Great green waves towered
about the boat as if they would overwhelm her. The combers raced along
astern, and every minute it seemed as if one of them must come climbing
over, but none did.
“Got to take another reef,” said Mr. Chillingworth presently. “Can
either of you boys handle a boat?”
“Well, what a question,” exclaimed Mr. Dacre. “If you had seen them
managing the _Omoo_ in that gale off Hatteras, you’d have thought they
could handle a boat, and well, too.”
“That being the case, Tom here can take the tiller, while I help Fu take
in sail.”
Mr. Chillingworth resigned the tiller to Tom, who promptly brought the
sloop up into the wind, allowing her sails to shiver. This permitted Mr.
Chillingworth and the Chinaman to get at the reef points and tie them
down. This done, the owner of the boat came back to the cockpit and she
was put on her course once more.
“You handled her like a veteran,” said Mr. Chillingworth to Tom, who
looked pleased at such praise coming from a man whom he had already made
up his mind was a very capable citizen.
The rancher went on to explain something of his circumstances. He and
his wife had come out there some years before. They were doing their
best to wrest a living from the rough country. But it was a struggle.
Mr. Chillingworth admitted that, although he had big hopes of the
country ultimately becoming a new Eldorado.
“Just at present, though, it’s a little rough,” he admitted.
“Oh, we don’t mind roughing it,” responded Tom. “We’re used to that.”
“So I should imagine from the newspaper accounts I read of your
prowess,” said Mr. Chillingworth dryly.
“Oh, they wrote a lot of stuff that didn’t happen at all,” put in Jack.
“Not to mention the pictures,” laughed Mr. Dacre.
“Well,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “if there were some enterprising
reporter out here now, he would find plenty to write about.”
“How’s that?” inquired Mr. Dacre.
“Why, you may have heard of Chinese smugglers—that is to say, men who
run Chinamen into the country without the formality of their obtaining
papers?”
Mr. Dacre nodded.
“Something of the sort,” he said.
“Well, they have been pretty active here recently. Some of the ranchers
have had trouble with them.”
“But surely they have notified the authorities?” exclaimed Tom.
“That’s just it,” said Mr. Chillingworth. “They are all afraid of the
rascals. Scared of having their buildings burned down, or their horses
hamstrung, or something unpleasant like that.”
“Well, if you are the same old Colton Chillingworth,” smiled Mr. Dacre,
“I’m sure you do not belong in that category.”
A look came over Colton Chillingworth’s face that the boys had not
noticed on that rugged countenance before. Under his brown beard, his
lips set firmly, and his eyes narrowed. Colton Chillingworth, with that
expression on his features, looked like a bad man to have trouble with.
But to Mr. Dacre’s astonishment, and the no less surprise of the boys,
his reply was somewhat hesitant.
“Well, you see, Dacre,” he said uncertainly, “a married man has others
than himself to look out for. By the way, my wife doesn’t know anything
about the troubles. Please don’t mention them to her, will you?”
“Certainly not,” was the rejoinder. “But——”
A sudden cry from the Chinaman cut his words short. The Mongolian raised
a hand, and with a long, yellow finger pointed off to the west. The
boys, following with their eyes the direction in which he pointed, at
first could descry nothing, but presently, as the sloop rose on the top
of a wave, they could make out, in the blue distance, the sudden flash
of a white sail on the Sound.
“It’s the schooner, Fu?” asked Mr. Chillingworth eagerly.
The Celestial nodded. No change of expression had come over his
mask-like features, but the boys vaguely felt that behind the
impenetrable face lay a troubled mind.
Mr. Dacre looked his questions.
“What is there about the schooner particularly interesting?” he asked,
at length.
“Oh, nothing much,” said Mr. Chillingworth, with what seemed rather a
forced laugh. “Except that she is Bully Banjo’s craft.”
“Bully Banjo?” echoed Mr. Dacre, in a puzzled tone.
“Yes. Or Simon Lake’s, to give the rascal his real name. Lake is the man
who is at the present time the real ruler of the ranchers in this
district,” said Mr. Chillingworth bitterly. “Dacre,” he went on, “I’m
afraid that I have invited you into a troubled region. I’ll give you my
word, though, that when I wrote to you things were quiet enough.”
“My dear fellow,” was the rejoinder, “don’t apologize. I myself relish a
little excitement, and here are two boys who live on it.”
“If that is the case,” replied the other, with a wan smile, “they are on
the verge of plenty—or I’m very much mistaken.”