HARVEY GETS BAD NEWS
Harvey and Henry Burns left the store together in high spirits,
surrounded by their companions, loudly jubilant over the turn affairs had
taken. It was growing dusk, and Rob Dakin was preparing for the usual
illumination of his store with one oil-lamp. Harvey and Henry Burns
started for the shore, but were stopped by a hail from George Warren.
“Come on over to the post-office with me,” he said. “You’re in no hurry
for supper. It’s my turn to go for the mail, and we are expecting a
letter from father up in Benton.”
So the two boys retraced their steps, and the three friends went along up
the road together.
“We haven’t a very extensive correspondence to look after, eh, Jack?”
remarked Henry Burns; “but we’ll go along for company’s sake. My aunt
never writes to me, and I think I never received but two letters in my
life. They were from old Mrs. Newcome.”
“I never got any,” declared Harvey. “My dad says to me at the beginning
of the summer, ‘Where are you going?’ and I say, ‘Oh, down in the bay,’
or wherever it is I am going. Then he says, ‘Well, take care of
yourself,’ and forgets all about me, except he sends money down to me
regularly—and more when I ask him.”
The boy’s remark was, in fact, an unconscious criticism of the elder
Harvey, and accounted, perhaps, for some of Harvey’s past adventures
which were not altogether commendable. Harvey’s father was of the rough
and ready sort. He had made money in the Western gold-fields, where he
had started out as a miner and prospector. Now he was enjoying it in
generous fashion, and denied his family nothing. He had a theory that a
boy that had the “right stuff in him,” as he put it, would make his way
without any particular care taken of him; and he was content to allow his
son, Jack, to do whatever he pleased. A convenient arrangement, by the
way, which also left Mr. Harvey free to do whatever he pleased, without
the worry of family affairs.
The boys walked through the fields, up a gentle incline of the land,
which led to the general higher level of the island, overlooking the bay
and the islands in the distance. They gazed back presently upon a
pleasing prospect.
There was the cove, sweeping in to the left, along the bluff opposite,
which was high and rock-ribbed. At the head of the cove the shores were
of clean, fine sand, broken here and there at intervals by a few patches
of clam-flats, bared at low water. Out from where the boys stood,
straight ahead rolled the bay, with an unbroken view away across to the
cape, some five miles off. A thoroughfare, or reach, extended south and
eastward from the cape, formed by the mainland and a chain of islands.
Then, to the south, the bay extended far, broken only by some islands a
few miles away.
At anchor in the cove lay the Warren boys’ sailboat, the _Spray_, and the
larger yacht, the _Viking_.
“Well, George,” said Henry Burns, with his right arm over the other’s
shoulder, “it looks like some fun, now that the trouble with Squire
Brackett is cleared away.”
“Great!” exclaimed George Warren.
The post-office, called such by courtesy, the office consisting of the
spare room of whatsoever fisherman or farmer happened to be honoured with
Uncle Sam’s appointment, was about a mile from the harbour of Southport.
It was, in this case, in the house of one Jerry Bryant, and was about a
quarter of a mile, or less, from the western shore of the island, where a
small cove made in from that bay.
“Good evening, Mr. Bryant,” said George Warren, as they arrived at the
post-office door. “Mail in yet?”
“Be here right away,” replied the postmaster. “I saw Jeff’s packet coming
in a moment ago. There he comes now up the lane.”
Jeff Hackett, whose commission it was to fetch the mail across from the
mainland in a small sloop daily, now appeared with a mail-sack over his
shoulder.
The formality of receiving the attenuated mail-sack and sorting its
somewhat meagre contents, being duly observed, Postmaster Bryant threw
open a small sliding door, poked his head out, and was ready for
inquiries.
“Anything for the Warren cottage?”
“Not a thing.”
“Anything for the neighbours, a few doors below?”
“Nothing for them, either.”
“Looks as though we had come over for nothing,” said George Warren. “Too
bad, but you fellows don’t mind the walk, do you?”
“Not a bit,” answered Henry Burns.
They were departing, when the postmaster hailed them.
“Say,” he called out, “who is Jack Harvey? He is the chap that caught
Chambers, isn’t he? Doesn’t he stop over near you, somewhere?”
“Here I am,” said Harvey, taken by surprise. “What do you want?”
“Why, I’ve got a letter for you,” said the postmaster. “It has been here
three days. I couldn’t find out where you were.”
“Well, that’s odd,” exclaimed Harvey, stepping back and receiving the
envelope. “I never got one before. Say, we came over for something, after
all.”
He tore open the envelope and read the letter enclosed.
“Whew!” he exclaimed as he finished. “That’s tough.” And he gave a
disconsolate whistle.
“What’s the matter? Nothing bad, I hope,” asked Henry Burns.
In reply, Harvey handed him the letter. It was dated from Boston, and
read as follows:
“My dear Jack:—Sorry to have to write you bad news, but you are big
enough to stand it, I had to work hard when I was a boy, and perhaps
you may now, but you’ll come out all right in the end. I don’t know
just where I stand, myself. Investments have gone wrong, and Saunders
has brought suit in court, claiming title to the land where the mine
is. May beat him out. Don’t know. He is a rascal, but may win.
“Now I haven’t got a dollar to send you, and don’t see where I’ll get
any all summer for you, as I shall need every cent to pay bills. I have
got to go out to borrow money to pay lawyers, too, to fight the case.
“Too bad, but you will have to come home, or shift for yourself for the
summer. Let me know, and I’ll send money for your fare, if you are
coming.
“Affectionately, your dad,
“William Harvey.”
An hour later, Jack Harvey and Henry Burns sat in the comfortable cabin
of the _Viking_, talking matters over. The yacht swung lazily at anchor
in the still cove. A fire burned in the little stove, and the smoke
wreathed out of a funnel on the starboard side. The boys were
superintending the baking of a pan of muffins in a sheet-iron oven, while
two swinging-lanterns gave them light.
“I declare I don’t know what to do about it,” said Harvey. “You see, I
never thought about getting along without money before. All I have had to
do is just ask for it. Now, you see, I’m behind on my allowance. We paid
Reed thirty-five dollars, you know, for wintering and painting the boat,
and something more for some new pieces of rigging. That, and what I’ve
spent for clothes, has cleaned me out.”
“Yes, but I owe you twelve dollars on the boat account, which I’m going
to pay as soon as I receive my own allowance from my aunt,” said Henry
Burns.
“Well, that won’t go very far,” responded Harvey, gloomily. “We owe—or
shall owe—for the freight on that box of provisions that’s coming from
Benton; we have got to hire a tender to take the place of the old one I
sold last fall. We can’t keep on borrowing this one all summer—”
“Never mind,” interrupted Henry Burns. “You know it costs us scarcely
anything to live down here. We can catch all the fish and lobsters we
want, dig clams, and all that sort of thing. All we need to buy is a
little meal and flour and coffee and sugar from time to time, and we’ll
do that all right on my allowance.”
“That’s kind in you, Henry,” said Harvey, warmly, “but I don’t quite like
the idea of living all summer on you.”
“Why not?” demanded Henry Burns, and added, quickly, “You used to provide
everything for all your crew last summer, didn’t you?”
“Why, yes, I did,” replied Harvey. “Ha! ha! catch one of them buying
anything. But of course they couldn’t buy much of anything, anyway. They
hadn’t any money. But somehow this is different. You see,—well—the fact
is, I’m not quite used to being hard up. And I don’t exactly like to take
it. Of course, I know just how you mean it, too.”
“Yes, but think how small our expenses need be if we are careful,” urged
Henry Burns. “We live right aboard here all the time, you know.”
“Yes,” answered Harvey, “but it all counts up more than you think,
especially when one is short of money. You can’t run a big boat like this
all summer without expense. It’s a rope here and a block there, and a
spare anchor we need, and a lot of little things all the time. I know how
it was on the _Surprise_.”
Their conversation was interrupted at this point by a voice close
alongside. The canoe had glided quietly up, and the next moment Tom and
Bob were descending into the cabin.
“My, but you chaps have elegant quarters down here,” exclaimed Tom. “We
envy you your summer aboard here, don’t we, Bob?”
Henry Burns and Harvey, somewhat taken aback, made no reply, and looked
embarrassed.
“Why, what’s up?” asked Tom, observing something was wrong. “No more
trouble, I hope.”
Harvey explained the situation.
“That need not be so bad,” said Tom. “It doesn’t cost but little to live
here. We spend scarcely anything, do we, Bob? We can lend you something
to help you through. You don’t want to think of giving up the summer.”
“I dare say I could stick it out all right,” said Harvey, “if I was just
camping once more. That doesn’t cost much. It is this boat that bothers
me. We can’t run it for nothing.”
“Well, then,” exclaimed Henry Burns, vigorously, with more
demonstrativeness than was usual with him, “I’ll tell you what we will
do. We’ll make the boat work. We will make it pay its own way, and pay us
something besides. We’ll fit out and go down among the islands fishing,
and take our fish over to Stoneland and sell them, the same as the
fishermen do. There won’t be a fortune in it, with a boat no bigger than
this, but it will support us, and more too, after paying all expenses.”
“Henry,” cried Harvey, gratefully, “you’re a brick! I thought of that
once, and I’d have proposed it if this had been the old _Surprise_; but I
didn’t know as you would be willing to do it with this boat. It dirties a
craft up so.”
“That doesn’t hurt a boat any,” said Henry Burns. “The fishermen down
around Wilton’s Harbour take out sailing parties all summer, and their
boats are always handsome and clean, and they don’t smell fishy. And the
men always use them for fishing in the fall and spring, when the fishing
is at its best. It simply means that we have got to take out all the nice
fittings from the cabin, stow them away somewhere on shore, fit out with
some tackle, and go ahead. At the end of the summer we will overhaul the
_Viking_ from deck to keelson, take out every piece of ballast in her,
clean it and dry it and put it back, and paint the yacht over after we
wash everything inside and out. She will be just as fine as she was
before.”
“That’s great!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “You can do it all right, too. I
wish we had a boat. We’d go along with you, wouldn’t we, Bob?”
“I’d like nothing better,” answered Bob.
“Then come along with us,” said Harvey. “We really need two more to
handle this boat properly. You can fit yourselves out with
fishing-tackle, and we’ll all share in the catch.”
“Hooray! we’ll do it,” cried Bob. “But we don’t want a share of the
catch. We will be glad enough to go for the fun of it.”
“Yes, but this is part business,” said Henry Burns. “You must have some
share in every trip you make with us. How will two-thirds for us and a
third for you do, as we own the boat?”
“That is more than fair,” replied Tom.
“Then it’s a bargain, eh, Jack?” said Henry; and, as the other gave
hearty assent, he added, “We’ll go about it right away to-morrow, if the
weather is good.”
When George Warren heard of the plan the next day, however, he was not
equally elated. “It’s the thing to do, I guess,” he said, but added,
“It’s going to keep you away from Southport; that is the only drawback.”
“No, only part of the time,” said Henry Burns. “We are not going to try
to get rich, only to support ourselves. We shall be back and forth all
summer. We’ll have some fun here, too.”
Then the boys went and hunted up Captain Sam Curtis.
“Yes, you can do it all right,” said Captain Sam, when he had heard of
the plan. “But it’s rough work. You can count on that. You want to get
right out to big Loon Island—you know, with the little one, Duck Island,
alongside. There’s where the cod are, out along them reefs; and you can
set a couple of short trawls for hake. May get some runs of mackerel,
too, later. I’ll get you a couple of second-hand pieces of trawl cheap.
They’ll do all right for one season. But it ain’t just like bay-sailing
all the time, you know, though you may not get caught. When it’s rough,
it’s rough, though.
“And there’s one thing you’ve got to look out for,” added Captain Sam.
“Of course the men around this coast will be fair to you and won’t
bother. But there’s a rough crowd that comes up from the eastward. They
may not take kindly to a pack of boys coming in on the fishing-grounds.
Just keep your weather eye out; that’s all.”
The boys went about their preparations eagerly. Already they had begun
removing the fine fittings from the cabin of the _Viking_, carrying them
up to the Warren cottage, and putting the yacht in condition for rougher
usage. They worked hard all day. At night, however, an unexpected event
occurred, which delayed their fishing-trip until the next week.
George Warren came down to the shore that evening with another letter for
Jack Harvey, much to the latter’s amazement.
“Hang it!” he exclaimed, as George Warren handed the letter over. “They
say troubles never come singly. I wonder if here’s more. I hope things
are no worse at home—Hello, it isn’t from Boston. It’s from Benton. Who
can have written me from there?”
He tore open the envelope hastily. The letter, badly written in an
uncouth scrawl, read thus:
“Dear Jack:—You remember you told us fellows last year that we could
come down to the island again this year and live in the tent, the same
as we did before you got the boat, and you would see that we got along
all right. Me and George Baker have got the money to pay our fares on
the boat, and Tim and Allan will work part of their passage. Dan Davis,
who’s on the boat, told us you was down there. So we’ll be along pretty
soon if you don’t write and stop us.
“So long,
“Joe Hinman.”
“Well, here’s a mess,” said Harvey, ruefully, and looking sorely puzzled.
“I’d clean forgotten that promise I made to the crew last year, that they
could come down, and I’d take care of them. You see, I thought I was
going to have plenty of money; but I don’t know just what to do now.
Would you write and tell them not to come?”
“No, let them come,” said Henry Burns. “They’ll get along somehow. We
will help them out, and they’ll have your tent to live in.”
“All right,” said Harvey. “I hate to disappoint them. They don’t get much
fun at home. I’ll send them word to come, as long as you are willing.”
So it happened that a few days later there disembarked from the river
steamer a grinning quartette of boys. The youngest, Tim Reardon by name,
was barefoot; and the others, namely, Joe Hinman, George Baker, and Allan
Harding, were not vastly the better off in the matter of dress. This was
Harvey’s “crew,” who had sailed the bay with him for several years, in
the yacht _Surprise_, and had camped with him on a point that formed one
of the boundaries of a little cove, some three-quarters of a mile down
the island from where Tom and Bob were encamped.
The united forces of the boys, including the Warrens, made things
comfortable for the new arrivals in short order. Harvey’s old tent, which
had been stored away in Captain Sam’s loft for the winter, was brought
out and loaded aboard the _Viking_; and the entire party sailed down
alongshore, and unloaded at Harvey’s former camping-ground, where there
was a grove of trees and a good spring close by. The tent was quickly set
up, the bunks fashioned, a share of the _Viking’s_ store of provisions
carried ashore, and everything made shipshape.
“Now,” said Harvey, addressing his crew, after he had confided the news
of his embarrassed circumstances, “I’ll help you out all I can, and
you’ll get along all right, with fishing and clamming. But, see here, no
more shines like we had before. I know I was in for it, too. But no more
hooking salmon out of the nets. And let other people’s lobster-pots
alone, or I won’t look out for you.”
“Oh, we’ll be all right, Jack,” cried the ragged campers, gleefully;
while little Tim Reardon, standing on his head and hands in an ecstasy of
delight, seemed to wave an acquiescence with his bare feet.
“That’s your doing,” said Harvey, thoughtfully, turning to Tom and Bob.
“Since you saved my life the crew really have behaved themselves.”
Two days later, the bare feet of Tim Reardon bore him, breathless, to the
door of the other tent, where Harvey and Henry Burns sat chatting with
Tom and Bob.
“Say, Jack,” he gasped out, “you just want to hurry up quick and get down
into the Thoroughfare. They’re going to raise the _Surprise_. I got a
ride on behind a wagon coming up the island this morning, and two men
were talking about it. One of them said he heard Squire Brackett say that
that yacht down in the Thoroughfare was anybody’s property now, as it had
been abandoned, and he calculated it could be floated again, and he’d
bring it up some day and surprise you fellows. But he hasn’t started to
do it yet, and so it’s still yours, isn’t it? If he can raise it, we can,
can’t we?”
Harvey sprang to his feet.
“Raise it!” he exclaimed. “Why, I’ve thought all along of trying it some
day. Captain Sam said last fall he thought it might be done. But I had
this other boat to attend to, and then I was called home. We’ll go after
it this very afternoon. What do you say, Henry?”
“Yes, and I think I have a scheme to help float her,” replied Henry
Burns.
Acting on Henry Burns’s suggestion then, the boys proceeded to the store,
where, in a spare room, Rob Dakin kept a stock of small empty casks which
he sold to the fishermen now and then for use as buoys. They hired the
whole supply, some twoscore, agreeing to pay for the use of them and
bring them back uninjured. These they loaded hastily aboard the _Viking_,
having sent word in the meantime to the Warren boys. They, joining in
heartily, soon had sail on their own boat, the _Spray_, and went on
ahead, down the coast of the island.
Completing the loading of the _Viking_, and taking aboard an extra supply
of tackle, borrowed for the occasion, Henry Burns and Harvey got up sail
and set out after the _Spray_, stopping off the cove below to pick up the
others of Harvey’s crew. They overhauled the _Spray_ some miles down the
coast, later in the afternoon, and thence led the way toward the
Thoroughfare. They had the wind almost abeam from the westward, and went
along at a good clip in a smooth sea.
That evening at sundown they sailed into the Thoroughfare. This was a
stretch of water affording a somewhat involved and difficult passage
between the Eastern and Western Bays, the two bays being so designated
according to a partial division of these waters by Grand Island. The
island was some thirteen miles long, lying lengthwise with its head
pointing about northeast and the foot southwest.
The waters of the Thoroughfare were winding, flowing amid a small chain
of islands at the foot of Grand Island. The channel was a crooked one,
the deeper water lying along this shore or that, and known only to local
fishermen and to the boys who had cruised there.
Henry Burns, on the lookout forward, presently gave a shout of warning.
“There she is, Jack,” he cried, pointing ahead to where the mast of a
yacht protruded above water some three-fourths of its length. “There’s
the ledge, too. Look out and not get aground.”
“Oh, I know this channel like a book,” said Harvey, and demonstrated his
assertion by bringing the _Viking_ to, close up under the lee of the
submerged yacht, in deep water.
The yacht _Surprise_, sunken where it had been in collision with the very
yacht that had now come to its rescue, lay hung upon a shelving reef,
with its bow nearer to the surface than its stern. The tide was at the
last of its ebb, and it was clear that by another hour there would be
only about two feet of water over the forward part of the boat and about
five feet over the stern.
“We are in luck,” cried Harvey. “She has worked up higher on the reef,
somehow, since last year, either by the tides, or perhaps some ice formed
here in the winter and forced her up. She was deep under water when I
last saw her.”
“But it’s a wonder the mast did not go,” he added. “The bobstay went when
we smashed into the _Viking_; and the mast wasn’t any too firm when we
last saw it. It wouldn’t have stood after we struck if we hadn’t let the
mainsail go on the run.”
Evening was coming on, but the boys lost no time in going to work.
Getting into the dory that they had hired for the season as a tender,
Henry Burns and Harvey stepped out carefully on to the reef, and made
their way down its slippery sides to the bow of the _Surprise_. Then,
with trousers rolled up and divested of jackets and shirts, they
proceeded, as soon as the tide had fallen, to nail some strips of canvas
over the hole smashed in the bow. They fastened it with battens, putting
several layers on, one over another.
“It isn’t a handsome job,” said Henry Burns, finally; “but the water will
not run in there as fast as we can pump it out. It’s a fair start.”
The yacht _Spray_ came in now and brought up alongside the _Viking_.
“What are you going to do?” inquired George Warren.
“Why, everybody has got to go in for a swim,” answered Henry Burns,
setting the example by throwing off his remaining garments. The others,
willing enough at all times for that, followed.
Henry Burns next brought forth several coils of rope, which he had busied
himself with, on the voyage down, knotting it at regular intervals into
loops.
“There,” said he, “the _Surprise_ lies, luckily, on these irregular
rocks. We have got to duck under and pass these ropes underneath the
keel, wherever there is a chance. Then we’ll bring the ends up on either
side and make them fast aboard, wherever there is a thing to hitch to.
Then we’ll attach the kegs to the loops. See?”
“Good for you, Henry!” cried Harvey, enthusiastically. “You always have
some scheme in your head, don’t you?”
“Wait and see if it works,” said Henry Burns, modestly.
“Ouch!” cried young Joe, as the boys splashed overboard. “This water is
like ice.”
“Oh, shut up, Joe!” said Arthur Warren. “Just think of that hot coffee we
are going to have for supper.”
The boys worked eagerly and hurriedly, for the waters of Samoset Bay had
not, indeed, fully recovered from their long winter’s chill, and the sun
had sunk behind the distant hills. The ropes, passed beneath on one side,
were grasped by numbed but skilful hands on the other. In a quarter of an
hour they had some six or eight of these passed under and made fast, and
the empty casks, tightly stopped with cork bungs, tied into the
loopholes. This, in itself, was no easy task. The buoyant casks persisted
in bobbing up to the surface, escaping now and then from their hands. Two
of the boys would seize a cask by the lashings that had been passed about
it and fairly ride it below the surface with their united weight. Then,
holding their breath under water, they would make it fast to a loop.
It was dark when they had finished; and a hungry, shivering crowd of boys
they were, as they danced about the decks and scrambled into their
clothes. But the cabins of the _Viking_ and the _Spray_ were soon made
inviting, with warmth and the odours of hot coffee and cooking food. They
were only too glad to go below and enjoy both.
“Hello, Henry,” called young Joe from the deck of the _Spray_, some time
later, as the boys were hanging their lanterns forward to warn any stray
fisherman that might sail through in the night; “the _Surprise_ doesn’t
seem to come up very fast.”
“Well, wait till to-morrow and see,” answered Henry Burns.
They were soon sleeping soundly, weary with the day’s hard work.