The
Rival Campers Afloat
Or, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING
By
Ruel Perley Smith
Author of “The Rival Campers”
ILLUSTRATED BY
LOUIS D. GOWING
BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
1906
_Copyright_, _1906_
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
First Impression, August, 1906
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston. U. S. A._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Down the River 1
II. The Collision 15
III. A Rescue Unrewarded 28
IV. Squire Brackett Discomfited 39
V. Harvey Gets Bad News 56
VI. Out to the Fishing-grounds 73
VII. Near the Reefs 91
VIII. Little Tim a Strategist 108
IX. Harry Brackett Plays a Joke 126
X. Mr. Carleton Arrives 143
XI. Squire Brackett Is Puzzled 160
XII. The Surprise Sets Sail Again 180
XIII. Stormy Weather 192
XIV. The Man in the Cabin 206
XV. Mr. Carleton Goes Away 224
XVI. Searching the Viking 239
XVII. A Rainy Night 259
XVIII. Two Secrets Discovered 278
XIX. The Loss of the Viking 298
XX. Fleeing in the Night 318
XXI. A Timely Arrival 336
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Crew of the Viking Meet Skipper Martel (_Frontispiece_) 98
“The boom brought up with a smashing blow against the Viking’s
starboard quarter” 25
“‘Nonsense,’ roared the infuriated Squire. ‘He can sail a boat as
good as you can’” 54
“‘Here, that’s our boat,’ cried Joe. ‘You’ve got no right to
touch it’” 112
“‘Just tell them that you heard me say I was going back to
Boston’” 236
“‘Get out of here,’ exclaimed Mr. Carleton, sharply” 335
THE RIVAL CAMPERS
AFLOAT
CHAPTER I.
DOWN THE RIVER
It was a pleasant afternoon in the early part of the month of June. The
Samoset River, winding down prettily through hills and sloping farm lands
to the bay of the same name, gleamed in the sunlight, now with a polished
surface like ebony in some sheltered inlet, or again sparkling with
innumerable points of light where its surface was whipped up into tiny
waves by a brisk moving wind.
There had been rain for a few days before, and the weather was now
clearing, with a smart westerly breeze that had come up in the morning,
but was swinging in slightly to the southward. The great white
cloud-banks had mostly passed on, and these were succeeded at present by
swiftly moving clumps of smaller and lighter clouds, that drifted easily
across the sky, like the sails below them over the surface of the water.
There were not a few of these sails upon the river, some set to the
breeze and some furled; some of the craft going up with the tide toward
the distant city of Benton, the head of vessel navigation; some breasting
the tide and working their way down toward Samoset Bay; other and larger
craft, with sails snugly furled, tagging along sluggishly at the heels of
blustering little tugs,—each evidently much impressed with the importance
of its mission,—and so going on and out to the open sea, where they would
sail down the coast with their own great wings spread.
The river was, indeed, a picture of life and animation. It was a river
with work to do, but it did it cheerfully and with a good spirit. Far up
above the city of Benton, it had brought the great log rafts down through
miles of forest and farm land. Above and below the city, for miles, it
had run bravely through sluice and mill-race, and turned the great wheels
for the mills that sawed the forest stuff into lumber. And now, freed
from all bounds and the restraint of dams and sluiceways, and no longer
choked with its burden of logs, it was pleased to float the ships, loaded
deep with the sawed lumber, down and away to other cities.
There was many a craft going down the river that afternoon. Here and
there along the way was a big three or four masted schooner, loaded with
ice or lumber, and bound for Baltimore or Savannah. Or, it might be, one
would take notice of a trim Italian bark, carrying box-shooks, to be
converted later into boxes for lemons and oranges. Then, farther
southward, a schooner that had brought its catch to the Benton market,
and was now working out again to the fishing-grounds among the islands of
the bay.
Less frequently plied the river steamers that ran to and from the summer
resorts in Samoset Bay; or, once a day, coming or going, the larger
steamers that ran between Benton and Boston.
Amid all these, at a point some twenty miles down the river from Benton,
there sailed a craft that was, clearly, not of this busy, hard-working
fraternity of ships. It was a handsome little vessel, of nearly forty
feet length, very shapely of hull and shining of spars; with a glint of
brass-work here and there; its clean, white sides presenting a polished
surface to the sunbeams; its rigging new and well set up, and a handsome
new pennant flung to the breeze from its topmast.
The captain of many a coaster eyed her sharply as she passed; and, now
and then, one would let his own vessel veer half a point off its course,
while he took his pipe from his mouth and remarked, “There’s a clean
craft. Looks like she might go some.” And then, probably, as he brought
his own vessel back to its course, concluded with the usual salt-water
man’s comment, “Amateur sailors, I reckon. Humph!”
That remark, if made on this particular occasion, would have been
apparently justifiable. If one might judge by their age, the skippers of
this trim yacht should certainly have been classed as amateurs. There
were two of them. The larger, a youth of about sixteen or seventeen years
of age, held the wheel and tended the main-sheet. The other, evidently a
year or two younger, sat ready to tend the jib-sheets on either side as
they tacked, shifting his seat accordingly. The yacht was beating down
the river against the last of a flood-tide.
“We’re doing finely, Henry,” said the elder boy, as he glanced admiringly
at the set of the mainsail, and then made a general proud survey of the
craft from stem to stern and from cabin to topmast. “She does walk along
like a lady and no mistake. She beats the _Surprise_—poor old boat! My,
but I often think of that good little yacht I owned, sunk down there in
the thoroughfare. We had lots of fun in her. But this one certainly more
than takes her place.”
“Who would ever have thought,” he continued, “when we saw the strange men
sail into the harbour last year, with this yacht, that she would turn out
to be a stolen craft, and that she would one day be put up for sale, and
that old Mrs. Newcome would buy her for us? It’s like a story in a book.”
“It’s better than any story I ever read, Jack,” responded the other boy.
“It’s a story with a stroke of luck at the end of it—and that’s better
than some of them turn out. But say, don’t you think you better let me
take my trick at the wheel? You know you are going to teach me how to
sail her. I don’t expect to make much of a fist of it, at the start; but
I’ve picked up quite a little bit of yacht seamanship from my sailing
with the Warren boys.”
“That’s so,” conceded the other. “You must have got a pretty good notion
of how to sail a boat, by watching them. Here, take the wheel. But you’ll
find that practice in real sailing, and just having it in your head from
watching others, are two different things. However, you’ll learn fast. I
never knew any one who had any sort of courage, and any natural liking
toward boat-sailing, but what he could pick it up fast, if he kept his
eyes open.
“The first thing to do, to learn to sail a boat, is to take hold in
moderate weather and work her yourself. And the next thing, is to talk to
the fishermen and the yachtsmen, and listen when they get to spinning
yarns and arguing. You can get a lot of information in that way that you
can use, yourself, later on.”
The younger boy took the wheel, while the other sat up alongside,
directing his movements. But first he took the main-sheet and threw off
several turns, where he had had it belayed on the cleat back of the
wheel, and fastened it merely with a slip-knot, that could be loosed with
a single smart pull on the free end.
“We won’t sail with the sheet fast until you have had a few weeks at it,
Henry,” he said. “There are more boats upset from sheets fast at the
wrong time, or from main-sheets with kinks in them, that won’t run free
when a squall hits, than from almost any other cause. And the river is a
lot worse in that way than the open bay, for the flaws come quicker and
sharper off these high banks.”
Henry Bums, with the wheel in hand and an eye to the luff of the sail, as
of one not wholly inexperienced, made no reply to the other’s somewhat
patronizing manner; but a quiet smile played about the corners of his
mouth. If he had any notion that the other’s extreme care was not
altogether needed, he betrayed no sign of impatience, but took it in good
part. Perhaps he realized that common failing of every yachtsman, to
think that there is nobody else in all the world that can sail a boat
quite as well as himself.
He knew, too, that Jack Harvey had, indeed, had by far a larger
experience in sailing than he, though he had spent much of his time upon
the water.
In any event, his handling of the boat now evidently satisfied the
critical watchfulness of Jack Harvey; for that youth presently exclaimed,
“That’s it. Oh, you are going to make a skipper, all right. You take hold
with confidence, too, and that’s a good part of the trick.”
At this point in their sailing, however, the yacht _Viking_ seemed to
have attracted somewhat more than the casual attention of an observer
from shore. A little less than a quarter of a mile down the river, on a
wharf that jutted some distance out from the bank, so that the river as
it ran swerved swiftly by its spiling, a man stood waving to them.
“Hello,” said Henry Burns, espying the figure on the wharf, “there’s a
tribute to the beauty of the _Viking_. Somebody probably thinks this is
the president’s yacht and is saluting us.”
“Well, he means us, sure enough,” replied Jack Harvey, “and no joke,
either. He’s really waving. He wants to hail us.”
The man had his hat in hand and was, indeed, waving it to them
vigorously.
They had been standing across the river in an opposite direction to the
wharf; but now, as Jack Harvey cast off the leeward jib-sheets, Henry
Burns put the helm over, and the yacht swung gracefully and swiftly up
into the wind and headed off on the tack inshore. Jack Harvey let the
jibs flutter for a moment, until the yacht had come about, and Henry
Burns had begun to check her from falling off the wind, by reversing the
wheel. Then he quickly trimmed in on the sheets, and the jibs began to
draw.
“Most beginners,” he said, “trim the jib in flat on the other side the
minute they cast off the leeward sheet. But that delays her in coming
about.”
Again the quiet smile on the face of Henry Burns, but he merely answered,
“That’s so.”
They stood down abreast the wharf and brought her up, with sails
fluttering. Jack Harvey, looking up from the side to the figure above on
the wharf, called out, “Hello, were you waving to us?”
“Why, yes,” responded the man, “I was. Are you going down the river far?”
“Bound down to Southport,” said Harvey.
“Good!” exclaimed the stranger, and added, confidently, “I’ll go along
with you part way, if you don’t mind. I’m on my way to Burton’s Landing,
five miles below, and the steamboat doesn’t come along for three hours
yet. I cannot get a carriage and I don’t want to walk. You don’t mind
giving me a lift, do you? That’s a beautiful boat of yours, by the way.”
The man had an air of easy assurance; and, besides, the request was one
that any yachtsman would willingly grant.
“Why, certainly,” replied Harvey, “we’ll take you, eh, Henry?”
“Pleased to do it,” responded Henry Burns.
They worked the yacht up alongside the wharf, and the stranger, grasping
a stay, swung himself off and leaped down on to the deck. Then he pushed
the boat’s head off with a vigorous shove and advanced, smilingly, with
hand extended, to greet the boys. The _Viking_ gathered headway and was
once more going down-stream.
The stranger was a rather tall, well-built man, light on his feet, and
handled himself as though he were no novice aboard a boat. He descended
into the cockpit and shook hands with Jack Harvey and Henry Burns.
His voice, as he bade them good afternoon, was singularly full and deep,
and seemed to issue almost oddly from behind a heavy, blond moustache. As
Henry Burns expressed it afterward, it reminded him of a ventriloquist he
had seen once with a travelling show, because the man’s lips seemed
hardly to move, and the muscles of his face scarcely changed as he spoke.
His eyes, of a clear but cold blue, lighted up, however, in a pleasant
way, as he thanked them.
He wore a suit of navy blue, and a yachting-cap on his head.
“This is the greatest luck in the world for me,” he said. “You see, I
want to catch the train that will take me down to Bellport, and I can get
it at the Landing below. This fine craft of yours will take me—”
He stopped with strange abruptness. If the attention of Jack Harvey and
Henry Burns had, by chance, been directed more closely to him, and less
upon the handling of their yacht, they might have observed a surprised
and puzzled look come over his face. They might have observed him
half-start up from his seat, like a man that had suddenly come, all
unwittingly, upon a thing he had not expected to see.
But the two boys, intent upon their sailing, noticed only that the man
had left a sentence half-finished. They turned upon him inquiringly.
“What were you going to say?” asked Henry Burns.
The man settled back in his seat, reached a hand calmly into an inner
coat-pocket, and drew forth a cigar-case.
“I dare say you don’t smoke,” he said, offering it to them. “No, well, I
didn’t think so. You’re a little bit young for that. Let me see, what was
I saying?—oh, yes, I was about to remark that this boat would take me
down to the Landing on time. She does walk along prettily, and no
mistake.”
With which, he lighted the cigar and began puffing enjoyably. But his
eyes darted here and there, quickly, sharply, over the boat. Through a
cloud of cigar smoke, he was scrutinizing it from one end to the other.
“You handle her well,” he said. “Had her long?”
“Why, no,” replied Harvey. “The fact is, though we have had other
boats—that is, I have—and we have handled others, this is our first sail
in this one. You see, we got her in an odd way, last season—just at the
close of the season, in fact; and she was not in shape for sailing then.
So we had to lay her up for the winter. This is really the first trying
out we have given her.”
“Indeed, most interesting,” replied the stranger, arising from his seat
and advancing toward the cabin bulkhead, where he stood, apparently
gazing off across the river. Then, as he returned to his seat again, he
added, “That’s rather an elaborate ornamenting of brass around the
companionway.”
“Isn’t it, though!” exclaimed Harvey, proudly. “You don’t see them much
handsomer than that often, eh?”
“Why, no, now you speak of it,” replied the man. “You don’t, and that’s a
fact.
“In fact,” he added, stealing a sidelong glance at the two boys, “it’s
the only one just like it that I ever saw.
“Pretty shore along here, isn’t it?” he remarked a few moments later, as
they stood in near to where the spruces came down close to the water’s
edge, with the ledges showing below. “What’s that you were saying about
coming by the boat oddly? She looks to me as though your folks must have
paid a good price for her.”
“Why, that’s the odd part of it,” answered Harvey. “The fact is, our
folks didn’t pay for her at all. An old lady bought her for us. Made us a
present of her. Perhaps you’d like to hear about it.”
“Indeed I should,” replied the stranger. “It will while away the time to
the Landing.”
“You tell it, Henry,” said Harvey.
So Henry Burns began, while the stranger stretched his legs out
comfortably and listened.
“Well,” said Henry Burns, “this yacht, the _Viking_, was named the
_Eagle_ when we first saw her.”
The stranger’s cigar was almost blazing with the vigour of his smoking.
“She came into the harbour of Southport—that’s on Grand Island, below
here, where we are bound—one day last summer, to pick up a guest at the
hotel. There were two men aboard her, and it turned out that these two
men, and the man they were after at the hotel, had committed a robbery at
Benton. That’s way up the river.
“Well, it’s a long story how they were discovered; but they were, and
some jewels they had hidden were recovered. I said they were captured—but
one, a man named Chambers, got away in this very yacht. But he came back,
later, and set fire to the hotel for revenge.
“That was along toward the end of the summer. Then it happened that Jack,
here,—Jack Harvey,—captured the man, Chambers, in this yacht, down in a
thoroughfare below Grand Island. Jack’s boat, the _Surprise_, was sunk
there, when the two yachts crashed together, bow on.”
“Poor old _Surprise_!” interrupted Jack Harvey.
“Well, then,” continued Henry Burns, “there is a man over at Southport,
Squire Brackett, that hates all us boys, just because he is mean. He told
Witham, the hotel proprietor, that he had seen us boys in the hotel
basement, shortly before the fire; and he and Witham had us accused of
setting it, although everybody in Southport was indignant about it. And
all this time, Jack was on the right track, because he had seen the man
running from the fire and had followed him over to the other shore of the
island, and recognized the boat he sailed away in.
“So Jack sailed down the other side of the island, and captured the man,
Chambers, in the thoroughfare; that is, Jack and his crew did. And they
brought Chambers back just at the right time—and Squire Brackett and
Witham were so ashamed they wanted to go and hide away somewhere.”
The man they had taken aboard looked smilingly at Henry Burns.
“That is certainly a remarkable story,” he said, knocking the ashes
carelessly from the end of his cigar.
“Yes, but the rest of it is the oddest part of it,” responded Henry
Burns. “There was an old lady named Mrs. Newcome, whose life we saved at
the fire. She was furious at the squire and Witham for blaming us, and
thankful enough when Jack got us out of it.
“Now, when Chambers was tried, he was so bitter against the other two who
had got him into trouble, he confessed the yacht did not belong to any
one of them. So the yacht was taken over by the sheriff, and
advertisements were sent out all around to try to find the rightful
owner. But they never did find him, and finally the yacht was condemned
and put up for sale. There is where old Mrs. Newcome came in. She has no
end of money, and no one to spend it on except herself and a cat. The
yacht went cheap, and what did she do but buy it in and give it to us.”
Henry Burns paused, and there was silence for a few moments aboard the
_Viking_. The stranger smoked without speaking, apparently lost in his
own thoughts.
“That’s all of the yarn,” said Henry Burns, at length.
The man started to his feet, tossed his cigar away, and walked forward,
with his hands in his pockets.
“That’s one of the oddest stories I ever heard,” he said. “You’re lucky
chaps, aren’t you? Sounds like some novels I’ve read. By the way, isn’t
that Burton’s Landing just ahead there?”
He seemed eager to get ashore.
“Yes, that is the Landing,” answered Harvey.
A few moments more and they were up to it, and the stranger was stepping
ashore upon the pier.
“Well,” he said, shaking hands with them again, “I’m much obliged to both
of you—really more than I can begin to tell you. Perhaps I can return the
favour some day. My name is Charles Carleton. Live around at hotels
pretty much, but spend most of my time in Boston. Hope I meet you again
some day. Perhaps I may be down this way later, down the bay somewhere,
if I like the looks of it, and the hotels. Good day.”
“Good day; you’re very welcome,” called out Henry Burns and Jack Harvey.
Again the yacht swung out into the river, gathering headway quickly and
skimming along, heeling very gently.
The strange man stood watching her from the pier.
“No,” he said, softly, to himself, “I never saw but one boat just like
her before. But who would have thought I should run across them the first
thing? That was a stroke of luck.”