A RESCUE UNREWARDED
Harvey, having landed on the deck of the sailboat, steadied himself by
grasping the starboard stay, and took a quick, comprehensive glance over
the situation. A foot and a half or so of the boom had split off from the
end, and the mainsail was badly torn. The main-sheet had been snapped by
the jibing of the boom, but the break in the boom was beyond the point
where the sheet was fastened. The broken end of the sheet was trailing in
the water. The boat could be got in hand if that were regained.
Seizing the end of the main-sheet that remained in the boat, and casting
it loose from the cleat, Harvey found he had still the use of a rope of
considerable length. Coiling this up, and hanging it over one arm, he
regained the deck, over the small cabin, and took up his position on the
port side of the boat. The stay on that side had been saved from carrying
away only because the quarter of the _Viking_ had arrested the force of
the boom. Having this stay, then, to hold fast to, Harvey leaned over the
side, as far as he was able, passed an end of the rope about the boom,
took a turn, and made it fast.
Carrying the other end aft, Harvey handed it to the youth, who stood
gazing at his efforts stupidly, evidently knowing not in the least what
to do.
“Now you hold on to that,” said Harvey, “and when I tell you to, you haul
as hard as ever you can.”
The youth took the rope silently and sullenly.
Harvey sprang again upon the deck, caught the flying ends of the halyards
and ran the mainsail up. It was slow work, for the sail was soaked with
water, and the tear in it began to rip more when the strain was brought
to bear. When Harvey had hoisted the sail sufficiently so that the
topping-lift would have lifted the boom, he started for that; but it had
parted, and was of no use.
“Well,” said Harvey, “we’ll get the boom up a little more, with the sail,
no matter if it does tear. We can’t help it.”
So he took another pull at the peak-halyard. The boom lifted a little.
“That’s enough,” said Harvey. “Now haul in on that sheet lively, before
the sail tears any more. Get that boom in quick!”
The youth, with no great spirit nor heartiness in his movements, did as
directed, and the boom came inboard. Then Harvey once more dropped the
sail.
He was brim full of life, was Jack Harvey, and now that there was
something here worth doing, and necessary to be done quickly, he was
eager with the spirit of it.
“Have you got anything aboard here to bail with?” he asked, hurriedly;
and, without waiting for the more sluggish movements of the other, he
darted forward, through the water in the cockpit, to where he had espied
a pail half-submerged under the seat. With this he began bailing
furiously, dipping up the pailfuls and dashing them out over the side, as
though the boat were sinking and he had but one chance for life in a
hundred.
Harvey was working in this way, with never a thought of his companion,
when presently there came a hail from the _Viking_. He paused and looked
across the water to where Henry Burns was standing at the wheel of the
larger craft, with a look of amusement on his face.
“I say, Jack,” called Henry Burns, drawling very slightly, as was his
habit at times when other youths of more excitable temperament would
speak quickly, “that other chap aboard there is just dying to help bail
the boat. Why don’t you let him do his share of it?”
Harvey glanced back astern at his companion of the sailboat. What he saw
caused an angry flush to spread over his face. But the next moment the
cool effrontery of it made him laugh.
The youth whom Harvey’s surprised gaze rested upon was a rather tall,
thin, sallow chap, with an expression on his face that looked like a
perpetual sneer. He wore no yachting costume nor clothing of any sort fit
for roughing it. Instead, he was rather flashily dressed, in clothes more
often affected by men of sporting propensities than youths of any age. In
a scarf of brilliant and gaudy tint he wore a large pin in the form of a
horseshoe, with imitation brilliants in it. In fact, his dress and whole
demeanour were of one who had a far more intimate knowledge of certain
phases of life than he should. A telltale smear upon the fingers of his
right hand told of the smoking habit, which accounted for his thin and
sallow appearance—and which habit was now in evidence.
It was this latter that particularly angered Harvey, as he paused,
perspiring, from his work.
The youth had seated himself calmly on the edge of the after-rail, with
an elbow rested on one knee. In this comfortable attitude, and smoking a
cigarette, he was aimlessly watching Harvey work.
Harvey glared for a moment in amazement. Then his face relaxed.
“I say!” he exclaimed, throwing down the pail, wiping his brow, and
advancing aft toward the other youth, “this seems to be a sort of
afternoon tea, or reception, with cigarettes provided by the host.”
“No, thanks,” he added, shortly, as the other reached a hand into his
pocket and proffered a box of them. “You’re just too kind and generous
for anything. But I don’t smoke them. Some of my crew used to. But I tell
little Tim Reardon that that’s what keeps him from growing any. He’s at
them all the time. Guess you are, too, by the looks of you.”
Harvey glanced rather contemptuously at the lean, attenuated arm that the
other displayed, where he had rolled his cuffs back.
“Well, you don’t have to smoke them if you don’t want to,” said the
other, surlily. “But don’t preach. I’m as old as you are. My smoking is
my business.”
“Of course it is,” said Harvey. “I don’t care whether you smoke or not.
But what I object to is your doing the smoking and letting me do the
work. Your smoking is your business, and so is bailing out your own boat
your business—that is, your share of it is. Now, if you want any more
help from me, you just break up this smoking party and take that pail and
go to bailing. I’ve got enough to keep me busy while you are doing that.”
The youth glanced angrily at Harvey, but made no reply. Harvey’s stalwart
figure forbade any unpleasant retort. Sullenly, he tossed away the
half-finished cigarette, slumped down once more into the cockpit, took up
the pail that Harvey had dropped, and went to work.
“He looks like a real man now,” called out Henry Burns.
The youth, with eyes flashing, shot one glance at the smiling face of
Henry Burns, but deigned no reply.
Harvey, without further notice of his companion, proceeded to hoist the
sail a little so that he could take two reefs in it. This brought the
sail down so small as to include the torn part in that tied in. The sail
would, therefore, answer for the continuation of the trip.
“Say,” asked Harvey finally, “why didn’t you reef before, when it began
to blow up fresh and the sea got a bit nasty? You might have saved all
this.”
The youth hesitated, glanced at Harvey sheepishly, and mumbled something
that sounded like he didn’t know why he hadn’t.
“Hm!” said Harvey, under his breath. “He didn’t know enough.
“Well,” he continued, after a little time, “you’re all right to start off
again, if you think you can get along. That sail is down so small it
won’t give you any more trouble, and there is plenty of it to keep
headway on the boat; that is, if you are going on up the bay. Where are
you bound for, anyway?”
“Up to Springton,” replied the other. “Straight ahead.”
“All right,” said Harvey, “you can get there if you will only be a little
more careful. Don’t try to run straight for the town. Keep off either
way—do you see?” And Harvey designated how the other could run in safety.
“Run on one course a way,” he said, continuing, “and then put her about
and run on the other. But look out and don’t jibe her. Let her come about
into the wind. Now do you think you can get along?”
“Yes,” answered the youth, shortly. He had by this time finished his
bailing, and the cockpit floor was fairly free of water.
“Well, then, I’ll bid you an affectionate farewell,” said Harvey, who had
taken mental note of the fact that the youth had not offered to thank him
for all his trouble. “Sorry to leave you, but the best of friends must
part, you know. Good day.”
“Good day,” answered the youth, without offering even to shake hands.
Harvey lost little time in regaining the deck of the _Viking_. Henry
Burns was still smiling as Harvey took the wheel from him.
“We seem to have made a very pleasant acquaintance,” he said.
“Haven’t we though!” exclaimed Harvey. “If we were only in some nice,
quiet harbour, where the water wasn’t very deep, I’d just see whether
that young chap can swim or not. He’d get one ducking—”
“Oh, by the way,” called Henry Burns, as the two boats were separating,
“you’re entirely welcome to our assistance, you know. You needn’t write
us a letter thanking us. We know your feelings are just too deep for
thanks.”
“Little thanks I owe you,” snarled the other boy. “’Twas all your fault,
anyway. If you had kept off, my boat wouldn’t have gone over.”
Jack Harvey sprang from his seat and shook his fist in the direction of
the disappearing boat.
“Hold on there, Jack,” said Henry Burns, catching him by the arm. “Don’t
get excited. Do you know the answer to what he just said? Well, there
isn’t any. Just smile and wave your hand to him, as I do. He’s really
funnier than Squire Brackett.”
“Oh, yes, it is funny,” answered Jack Harvey, scowling off astern. “It’s
so funny it makes me sick. But perhaps you’d think it was funnier still,
if you had gone at that bailing the way I did, and had looked up all of a
sudden and seen that chap sitting back there at his ease, smoking. I’ll
just laugh about it for the rest of the week. That’s what I will.”
Jack Harvey certainly did not appear to be laughing.
“Above all things,” he said at length, “what do you suppose he meant by
saying it was our fault? That’s the last straw for me. We didn’t jibe his
boat for him.”
“No,” said Henry Burns, “but he probably owns the bay, and was mad to see
us sailing on it. He acted that way.”
“Well, it has cost us about an hour and a half good time,” exclaimed
Harvey—“though I should not begrudge it if he hadn’t acted the way he
did. We won’t win that race in to Southport, by a long shot. It’s about
half-past six o’clock, and we cannot make it in less than two hours and a
half, even if the wind holds.”
This latter condition expressed by Harvey was, indeed, to prove most
annoying. With the dropping of the sun behind the far-distant hills, the
wind perceptibly and rapidly diminished. They set their club-topsail to
catch the upper airs, but the last hour was sluggish sailing. It was a
few minutes to ten o’clock when the _Viking_ rounded the bluff that
guards the northeastern entrance to the snug harbour of Southport.
“There’s no show for that warm supper to-night, I’m afraid,” said Harvey,
as they turned the bluff and stood slowly into the harbour.
The immediate answer to this remark was an “Ahoy, there, on board the
_Viking_!” from across the water. The next moment, the familiar canoe
shot into sight and Tom Harris and Bob White were quickly on deck.
“We beat you fellows by a few minutes,” said Tom Harris, laughing at
Harvey.
“Look out for Jack,” said Henry Burns, with a wink at the other two. “He
has been having so much fun that he doesn’t want any more. And, besides,
he’s starving—and so am I; and we might eat little boys up if they plague
us.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked Tom, observing that Harvey was
half-scowling as he smiled at Henry Burns’s sally.
“Oh, we have been entertaining a friend up the bay,” answered Henry
Burns, “and he didn’t appreciate what Jack did for him. Seriously now, I
don’t blame Jack for being furious.” And Henry Burns gave a graphic
account of the adventure.
When he had finished, both Tom Harris and Bob White gave vent to whistles
of surprise.
“Say,” exclaimed Bob White, “you couldn’t guess who that young chap is,
if you tried a hundred years.”
“Why, do you know him, then?” cried Jack Harvey.
“Yes, and you will know him, too, before the summer is over,” replied Bob
White. “That’s Harry Brackett, Squire Brackett’s son.”
“Didn’t know he had any,” exclaimed Harvey.
“Neither did we till this summer,” said Bob White. “He dropped in on us
one day, early, and wanted to borrow some money. That was up in Benton.
He said he must have it, to get right back to Southport; and Tom’s father
let him have a little. But we saw him several days after that driving
about the streets with a hired rig. So that’s where the money went, and I
think Mr. Harris will never see the money again. He’s been off to school
for two years, so he says; but if he has learned anything except how to
smoke, he doesn’t show it.
“But, never mind that now,” added Bob. “Let’s get the _Viking_ in to
anchorage and made snug, for you know there’s something waiting for you
over to the camp.”
“What! You don’t mean you have kept supper waiting for us all this time?”
cried Henry Burns, joyfully.
“Oh, but you are a pair of bricks!” exclaimed Harvey, as Bob White nodded
an affirmative. “I can smell that fish chowder that Bob makes clear out
here.”
A few minutes later, the four boys, weighting the canoe down almost to
the gunwales, were gliding in it across the water to a point of land
fronting the harbour, where, through the darkness, the vague outlines of
a tent were to be discerned. Soon the canoe grazed along a shelf of
ledge, upon which they stepped. Tom Harris sprang up the bank and
vanished inside the tent. Then the light of a lantern shone out,
illuminating the canvas, and Tom Harris, as host, stood in the doorway,
holding aside the flap for them to enter.
Inside the tent, which had a floor of matched boards, freighted down from
up the river for the purpose, it was comfortable and cosy. Along either
side, a bunk was set up, made of spruce poles, with boards nailed across,
and hay mattresses spread over these. There were two roughly made chairs,
which, with the bunks, provided sufficient seats for all. At the farther
end of the tent, on a box, beside another big wooden box that served for
a locker, was an oil-stove, which was now lighted and upon which there
rested an enormous stew-pan.
The cover being removed from this, there issued forth an aroma of fish
chowder that brought a broad grin even to the face of Jack Harvey.
“Hooray!” he yelled, grasping Bob White about the waist, giving him a
bearlike embrace, and releasing him only to bestow an appreciative blow
upon his broad back. “It’s the real thing. It’s one of Bob’s best. It is
a year since I had one, but I remember it like an old friend.”
“You get the first helping, for the compliment,” said Bob White, ladle in
hand.
“And only to think,” said Henry Burns, some moments later, as he leaned
back comfortably, spoon in hand, “that that was Squire Brackett’s son we
helped out of the scrape. He certainly has the squire’s pleasing manner,
hasn’t he, Jack?”
“Henry,” replied Jack Harvey, solemnly, “don’t you mention that young
Brackett again to me to-night. If you do, I’ll put sail on the _Viking_
and go out after him.”
“Then I won’t say another word,” exclaimed Henry Burns. “For my part, I
hope never to set eyes on him again.”
Unfortunately, that wish was not to be gratified.