THE COLLISION
“Pleasant sort of a man, wasn’t he?” commented Harvey, as the _Viking_
left the pier astern, and the stranger could be seen walking briskly up
the road toward the town.
“Why, yes, he was, in a way,” responded Henry Burns. “Most persons manage
to make themselves agreeable while one is doing them a favour. Really,
though, he isn’t one of the open, hearty kind, though he did try to be
pleasant. I don’t know why I think so, but he seemed sort of
half-concealed behind that big moustache.”
Harvey laughed.
“That’s a funny notion,” he said.
“Well,” responded Henry Burns, “of course it wasn’t just that. But, at
any rate, he is the kind of a man that has his own way about things. Did
you notice, he didn’t exactly ask us to take him into the boat. He said,
right out at the start, that he was going along with us—of course, if we
were willing. But he was bound to come aboard, just the same, whether we
were willing or not.”
“Hm!” said Harvey. “You do take notice of things, don’t you? I didn’t pay
any attention to what he said; but, now I think of it, he did have that
sort of way. However, we shall probably never set eyes on him again, so
what’s the odds?”
They were getting down near to the mouth of the river now, and already, a
mile ahead, the bay broadened out before their eyes.
The wind was blowing brisk, almost from the south by this time, and the
first of the ebb-tide running down against it caused a meeting between
the two that was not peaceful. At the point where river and bay blended,
and for some distance back up the river, there was a heavy chop-sea
tumbling and breaking in short, foam-capped waves. Farther out in the bay
there was considerable of a sea running.
Harvey, lounging lazily on the seat opposite Henry Burns, suddenly sprang
up and uttered an exclamation of surprise. Then he pointed on far ahead,
over the port bow, to a tiny object that bobbed in the troubled waters of
the river, low lying and indistinct.
“What do you make of that, Henry?” he cried.
“Why, it looks like a log from one of the mills up above,” replied the
other, after he had observed it with some difficulty. “Oh, no, it isn’t,”
he exclaimed the next moment. “There is something alive on it—or in it.
Say, you don’t suppose it can be Tom Harris and Bob White, do you? That
is a canoe, I believe.”
Without waiting to reply, Jack Harvey dodged quickly down the
companionway, and returned, a moment later, from the cabin, holding a
spy-glass in one hand.
“Hooray! clap that to your eye, Henry,” he cried, when he had taken a
hasty survey ahead with it.
“That’s it!” exclaimed Henry Burns, taking a long look through the glass,
while Harvey assumed his place at the wheel. “There they are, two of
them, paddling away for good old Southport as hard as ever they can.
There are two boys, as I make them out. Yes, it’s Tom and Bob, sure as
you live. Won’t it seem like old times, though, to overhaul them? You
keep the wheel, Jack. We can’t catch up with them any too soon to suit
me.”
“Shall we give them a salute?” cried Harvey.
“No, let’s sail up on them and give them a surprise,” suggested the
other. “They know we own the boat, but they haven’t seen her under sail
since we have had her. They may not recognize us.”
While the yacht _Viking_ was parting the still moderate waves with its
clean-cut bows, and laying a course that would bring it up with the canoe
in less than a half-hour, the occupants of the tiny craft were bending
hard to their paddles, pushing head on into the outer edge of the
chop-sea. They were making good time, despite the sea and the head wind.
“There go a couple of them Indians from away up the river yonder,” sang
out a man forward on a stubby, broad-bowed coaster to the man at the
wheel, as the canoe passed a two-master beating across the river. The
boys in the canoe chuckled.
“Guess we must be getting good and black, Bob,” said the boy who wielded
the stern paddle to the other in the bow. “And our first week on the
water, at that, for the season.”
“Yes, we’ve laid the first coat on pretty deep,” responded his companion,
glancing with no little pride and satisfaction at a pair of brown and
muscular arms and a pair of sunburned shoulders, revealed to good
advantage by a blue, sleeveless jersey that looked as though it had seen
more than one summer’s outing.
“What do you think of the bay, Tom?” he added, addressing the other boy.
This youth, similarly clad and similarly bronzed and reddened, was
handling his paddle like a practised steersman and was directing the
canoe’s course straight down the bay, as though aiming fair at some point
far away on an island that showed vaguely fifteen miles distant.
“Oh, it’s all right,” answered Tom. “It’s all right for this evening.
Plenty of rough water from now until seven or eight o’clock to-night, but
it’s just the usual sea that a southerly raises in the bay. We won’t get
into any such scrape as we did last year, when we came down here, not
knowing the bay nor the coast of Grand Island, and let a storm catch us
and throw us out pell-mell on the shore. We’ll not give our friends, the
Warren boys, another such a fright this year. We can get across all
right—that is, if you don’t mind a bit of a splashing over the bows.”
“It won’t be the first time,—nor the last, for that matter, I reckon,”
responded Bob.
“And I always get my share of it, in the end, too,” said the other boy;
“because when it sprays aboard it runs down astern and I have to kneel in
it. Well, on we go, then. It’s fifteen miles of rough water, but think
how we’ll eat when we get there.”
“Won’t we?” agreed Bob. “Say, now you speak of it, I’m hungry already. I
could eat as much as young Joe Warren used to every time he took dinner
at the hotel. He used to try to make old Witham lose money—do you
remember?—and I think he always won.”
“Hello!” he exclaimed, a moment later, as he looked back for an instant
toward the stem. “Just glance around, Tom, and take a look at that yacht
coming down the river. Isn’t she a beauty? I wouldn’t mind a summer’s
cruise in her, myself.”
“Whew!” exclaimed the other, as he held his paddle hard against the
gunwale and glanced back. “She is a pretty one, and no mistake. She’s
about as fine as we often see down this way. I don’t recall seeing
anything handsomer in the shape of a yacht around the bay last summer,
unless it was the one Chambers had—you know, the man that set the hotel
afire.
“I believe it is the very yacht,” he continued. “There isn’t another one
like it around here. You remember the boys wintered her down the river.”
“Yes, but wouldn’t they hail us?” asked Bob.
“Perhaps not,” answered Tom. “Henry Burns likes to surprise people. They
are due down the bay about this time. At any rate, we shall have a chance
to see the yacht close aboard, for she is heading dead up for us.”
The yacht _Viking_ was indeed holding up into the wind on a course that
would bring her directly upon the canoemen, if she did not go about. She
kept on, and presently the boys in the canoe ceased their paddling and
watched her approach.
“She won’t run us down, will she, Tom?”
“No, they see us, all right.”
There was evidence of this the next moment, for a small cannon, somewhere
forward on the deck of the yacht, gave a short, spiteful bark that made
the canoemen jump. There followed immediately the deep bellowing of a big
fog-horn and the clattering of a huge dinner-bell; while, at the same
time, two yachtsmen aboard the strange craft appeared at the rail, waving
and blowing and ringing alternately at the occupants of the canoe. A
moment later, the yacht rounded to a short distance up-wind from the
canoe, and the hail of familiar voices came across the water:
“Ahoy, you chaps in that canoe, there! Come aboard here, lively now, if
you don’t want that cockle-shell blown out of water. Hurry up before we
get the cannon trained on you! We know you, Tom Harris, and you, Bob
White, and you can’t escape.”
“Well, what do you think!” exclaimed Tom Harris, raising himself up from
his knees in the stem of the canoe, with a hand on either gunwale, “if
there isn’t that old Henry Burns and Jack Harvey. Say, where in the world
did you fellows steal that yacht, and where are you running off to with
it? Don’t tell us you own it. You know you don’t.”
“Just hurry up and come alongside here and we’ll show you,” cried Henry
Burns, joyfully. “Our ship’s papers are all right, eh, Jack?”
The boys in the canoe needed no urging. A few sharp thrusts with the
paddles brought them under the lee of the _Viking_; a line thrown aboard
by Bob White was caught by Harvey and made fast; and the next moment, Bob
White and Tom Harris were in the cockpit, mauling Henry Burns with mock
ferocity—a proceeding which was received by that young gentleman
serenely, but with interest well returned—and shaking hands with the
other stalwart young skipper, Jack Harvey.
The bow-line of the canoe was carried astern by Harvey and tied, so that
the canoe would tow behind; and the yacht was put on her course again.
“You don’t mind taking a spin for a way in the good ship _Viking_, do
you?” asked Harvey. “I have hardly seen you since we got this yacht, you
know, as my folks moved up to Boston the last of the summer.”
“We will go along a little way till we strike the worst of the chop,”
replied Tom Harris. “Our canoe will not tow safely through that. That is,
we will, if you allow Indians aboard.”
“Yes, and by the way, before anybody else has the chance to apply,” said
Bob White, “you don’t want to hire a couple of foremast hands, do you,
off and on during the summer? I’d be proud to swab the decks of this
boat, and wages of no account.”
“We’ll engage both of you at eighteen sculpins a week,” answered Henry
Burns. “But of course you know that the laws against flogging seamen
don’t go, aboard here. Harvey there, he is my first mate; and I make it a
rule to beat him with a belaying-pin three or four times a day, regular,
to keep him up to his work. Of course you forecastle chaps will get it
worse.”
Harvey, surveying his more slender companion, saluted with great
deference.
“How do you fellows happen to be up here?” he asked. “Haven’t you gone to
camping yet?”
“Yes,” replied Bob. “The old tent is down there on the point. We have had
it set up for three days. We had an errand that brought us up here.”
“And the Warren boys?” inquired Henry Burns.
“Oh, they are down there in the cottage, sort of camping out, too; that
is, the family hasn’t arrived yet. George and Arthur are working like
slaves trying to keep young Joe fed.”
“_He’s_ a whole famine in himself,” remarked Henry Burns.
“Say, how is old Mrs. Newcome’s cat, Henry, the one you saved from the
fire?” asked Tom Harris.
“Why, the cat hasn’t written me lately,” answered Henry Burns. “But I got
a letter from Mrs. Newcome a few weeks ago; said she hoped we would have
a good summer in the yacht, lots of fun, and all that.”
“My! but you are lucky,” exclaimed Bob. “I have been as polite as mice to
every cat I’ve seen all winter, but I haven’t received any presents for
it.”
Renewing old acquaintanceships in this manner, they were shortly in
rougher water.
“Here!” cried Tom Harris at length, “we must be getting out of this. That
canoe will not stand towing in this chop much longer. We shall have to
leave you.”
“Pull it in aboard,” said Jack Harvey.
“No, it would be in the way,” replied Tom Harris. “Just as much obliged
to you. We’ll meet you at the camp. Say that you will come ashore and eat
supper with us, and Bob will have one of those fine chowders waiting for
you; won’t you, Bob?”
“Ay, ay, sir,” replied Bob.
“You mean that you will cook one while we sit by and watch you, don’t
you?” asked Harvey. “We shall get there before you do.”
“Perhaps not,” returned Bob. “You have got to beat down, while we push
right through. It is four o’clock now, and there’s some fourteen miles to
go. We can do that in about three hours, because when we get across the
bay we can go close alongshore under the lee, in smooth water; while you
will have to stick to the rough part of the bay most of the time.”
“All right,” said Harvey, “we will have a race to see who gets there
first. But we’ll do it in half that time.”
So saying, he luffed the _Viking_ into the wind, while Bob White drew the
dancing canoe alongside. The canoeists and the yachtsmen parted company,
the _Viking’s_ sails filling with the breeze, as she quickly gathered
headway, throwing the spray lightly from her bows; the canoe plunging
stubbornly into the rough water, and forcing its way slowly ahead,
propelled by the energy of strong young arms.
The _Viking_ stood over on the starboard tack, while the canoe made a
direct course for the island; and the two craft were soon far apart. In
the course of a half-hour the canoe appeared from the deck of the
_Viking_ a mere dancing, foam-dashed object. But, in the meantime,
another boat had appeared, some way ahead, that attracted the attention
and interest of the yachtsmen. It was a small sailboat, carrying a
mainsail and single jib. The smaller yacht was coming up to them from the
direction of Grand Island, and was now running almost squarely before the
wind, with its jib flapping to little purpose, save that it now and then
filled for a moment on one side or the other, as the breeze happened to
catch it.
“There’s a boat that is being badly sailed,” exclaimed Harvey, as the two
watched its progress. “Look at it pitch; and look at that boom, how near
it comes to hitting the waves every time it rolls. There’s a chap that
doesn’t know enough, evidently, to top up his boom when running in a
seaway. What does he think topping-lifts are made for, anyway, if not to
lift the boom out of the reach of a sea like this?
“And let me tell you, running square before the wind in a heavy sea, with
a boat rolling like that, is reckless business, anyway. It is much better
to lay a course not quite so direct, and run with the wind not squarely
astern, with the sheet hauled in some. That’s no fisherman sailing that
boat.”
“It may be some one caught out who doesn’t know how to get back,” said
Henry Burns. “See, there he is, waving to us. He is in some trouble or
other. Let’s stand on up close to him and see what the matter is.”
“Well, I’ll take the chance,” replied Harvey. “There, he’s doing better
now. He is pointing up a little bit. We’ll keep on this tack and run
pretty close to him, and hail him. I’ll just sing out to him about that
topping-lift, anyway; and if he doesn’t like our interfering, why he can
come aboard and thrash us.”
As the sailboat drew nearer, there appeared to be a single occupant, a
youth of about Harvey’s age, perhaps a year older, holding the tiller.
His hat was gone and he was standing up, with hair dishevelled, glaring
wildly ahead, in a confused sort of way. The boom of the sailboat was
well out on the starboard side. Harvey kept the _Viking_ on the starboard
tack, and near enough to have passed quite close to the other boat.
A little too close, in fact, considering that the youth at the tiller of
the oncoming boat had, indeed, completely lost his head. Suddenly,
without warning, he put his tiller over so that the sailboat headed away
from the _Viking_ for an instant. Then, as the wind got back of his sail,
and the boat at the same time rolled heavily in the seas, the boom jibed
with terrific force. The sailboat swung in swiftly toward the starboard
beam of the _Viking_, and the wind and sea knocked it down so that the
water poured in over the side, threatening to swamp it. At the instant,
Jack Harvey had thrown the _Viking_ off the wind to avoid a crash with
the other boat. The boom of the sailboat swept around with amazing
swiftness, and then, as the boat careened, threatening to founder, the
end of the boom brought up with a smashing blow against the _Viking’s_
starboard quarter, breaking off several feet of the boom and tearing the
sail badly.
The sailboat, half-filled with water, fell heavily into the trough of the
sea and rolled threateningly; while at every pitch the boom struck the
waves as though it would break again.
The _Viking_, under Jack Harvey’s guidance, stood away a short distance,
then came about and beat up in to the wind a rod or two above the wreck.
“Get that mainsail down as quick as ever you can!” shouted Jack Harvey to
the strange youth, who had dropped the tiller, and who stood now at the
rail, dancing about frantically, as though he intended to jump overboard.
“I can’t,” cried the youth, tremulously. “Oh, come aboard here quick,
won’t you? I’m going to sink and drown. This boat’s going down. I don’t
know how to handle her.”
“We guessed that,” remarked Henry Burns, and added, reassuringly, “Don’t
lose your head now. You know where the halyards are. Go ahead and get
your sail down, and we’ll stand by and help you.”
Henry Burns’s calm manner seemed to instil a spark of courage into the
youth. He splashed his way up to the cabin bulkhead, where the halyards
were belayed on cleats on either side, and let them run. The sail dropped
a little way and then stuck. The youth turned to the other boys
appealingly.
“Pull up on your peak-halyard a little,” said Jack Harvey, “and let the
throat drop first a way. Then the throat won’t stick.”
The youth made another attempt and the sail came nearly down, hanging in
bagging folds.
“Lucky that’s not a heavy sail nor a heavy boom,” exclaimed Jack Harvey,
“or the boat would be over and sunk by this time. I think I could lift
the boom inboard if I could only get aboard there.”
“Here,” cried Harvey, coiling up a light, strong line that he had darted
into the cabin after, “catch this and make it fast up forward—and mind
you tie a knot that will hold.”
He threw the line across, and it was clutched by the boy aboard the
smaller boat. The boy carried it forward and did as Harvey had directed.
“Now,” said Harvey to Henry Burns, as he made fast the line astern, “the
moment we get near enough so that I can jump aboard, you bring the
_Viking_ right on her course, with a good full, so she won’t drift back
on to the wreck completely.”
He, himself, held the wheel of the _Viking_ long enough to allow the
yacht to come into the wind a little. Thus it lost headway sufficiently
so that the seas caused it to drift back, without its coming about or
losing all steerageway. Then, as the _Viking_ drifted within reach of the
smaller boat, he leaped quickly and landed safely on the deck. At the
same time, or an instant later, Henry Burns threw the wheel of the
_Viking_ over so that the yacht gathered headway again and tautened the
rope that connected the two boats.