Reube Dare's Shad Boat

Will sat up and surveyed the situation, thoughtfully clearing the mud from his eyes with little bunches of grass.

“It was just as well we anchored them,” he assented. “And now that I’ve got my wind, I think I had better swim out to the Dido and bring her in for you. I feel as if I wanted a bath anyway; don’t you?”

“I’ll be with you in half a minute,” said Reube. “But first I want to explore the cave a little more. It seems to me we came away in something of a hurry!”

He let himself cautiously down in the hole, feet first.

Will stopped his undressing and stared at him in amazement.

“Are you crazy?” he cried. “Do come out of that beastly hole! The idea of it makes me quite ill!”

“O, I’m not going far,” said Reube, “and I won’t be gone long, either. Don’t be alarmed.”

As his head disappeared Will ran to the hole and looked down, anxiously and curiously. He saw Reube groping in a crevice filled with soft earth, about three feet below the surface.

“What in the world are you after, Reube?” he inquired.

“That!” replied Reube the next instant, holding aloft triumphantly a small blue jar of earthenware. “Take it, and give me a lift out of this!”

Will deposited the old jar reverentially on the turf, and turned to help Reube up. He half expected that the jar would vanish while his back was toward it; but no, there it was, plain and palpable enough. It had a cover set into the rim, and sealed around the edges with melted rosin; and it was heavy.

Thrilling with suppressed excitement, Reube and Will sat down with the jar between them, and Reube proceeded to chip away the rosin with his knife. Will gazed at the operation intently.

“Probably some good old Evangeline’s pet jar of apple sauce!” said he.

Reube ignored this levity, and chipped away with irritating deliberation. At last off came the cover. As it did so there was a most thrilling jingling within, and the boys leaned forward with such eagerness that their heads bumped violently together. They saw stars, but heeded them not, for in the mouth of the jar they saw the yellow glint of a number of gold coins.

“Well, dreams do sometimes come true!” remarked Will. And Reube, spreading out Will’s coat, which lay close at hand, emptied upon it the whole contents of the jar.

It was coin – all coin! There were a few golden Louis, a number of Spanish pieces, with silver crowns and livres Tourtnois, amounting, according to such hasty estimate as the boys could make, to some five or six hundred dollars.

“That’ll be three hundred dollars apiece,” said Reube, with eyes sparkling; “and I’ll be able to take mother to Boston and go to college too!”

“Three hundred dollars apiece!” said Will. “Indeed, I don’t see what I had to do with it. You found it. You had nerve enough to take notice of it when you were more than three quarters dead. And you went back and got it. I’ve no earthly claim upon it, old man.”

Reube set his jaw obstinately.

“Will,” said he, “we were exploring the cave in partnership. If you had found the stuff, I’d have expected my share. Now, you’ve got to go shares with me in this, or I give you my word our friendship ends!”

“O, don’t get on your dignity that way, Reube,” said Will. “If I must, why, I suppose I must! And if I can’t take a present from you, I don’t see whom I could take one from. But I won’t take half, because I didn’t do half toward getting it, and because you need it enough sight more than I do. A couple of years ago I’d have spoken differently. But I’ll divide with you, and as to the proportions, we’ll settle that on the way home. Now I’m off for the Dido!” And having thrown off his clothes as he talked, he ran down the bank and plunged into the sea.

“I’ll let you off with one third,” shouted Reube after him, as he sat on the bank and watched. “Not one penny less!”

“All right,” spluttered Will, breasting a white-crested, yellow wave. In a few minutes he was on board the Dido. Pulling up the anchor and hoisting the sail, he brought her in beside a jutting plaster rock which formed a natural quay. Then he resumed his clothes, while Reube took his place at the helm.

The wind being still down the bay and the tide on the turn, they decided not to attempt the all-night task of beating up against it. It took them, indeed, two tacks to reach the pinkie. Will went aboard the latter craft, leaving Reube in his darling Dido. The two boats tacked patiently back and forth, in and out of the wide cove, till they gained the shelter of a little creek under the lea of Wood Point. Here they were secured with anxious care. Then Will and Reube started for home by the road, pricked on to haste by the thought of how their mothers would be worrying, by the sharp demands of their empty stomachs, and by the elating clink of the coins that filled their pockets. When they reached Mrs. Dare’s cottage Reube rushed in to relieve his mother’s fears, for she had indeed begun to be anxious. Will hurried on toward Frosty Hollow, munching a piece of Mrs. Dare’s gingerbread by the way.

As he trudged forward cheerfully, he was overtaken by an express wagon bound for “the Corners.” The driver offered him a “lift,” as the phrase goes about Tantramar. It was none other than Jerry Barnes, the master of the red bull, and the owner of the pinkie which Will and Reube had so boldly appropriated. Will told him the whole story, omitting only the discovery of the jar of coin. He and Reube had agreed to keep their counsel on this point, lest some should envy their good luck and others doubt their story.

“I hope,” said Will, “you are not put out at our taking the pinkie?”

“I hope,” grinned Barnes, “you’re not put out at old Ramses for bein’ so oncivil in the pastur’! But as for the pinkie, of course you did quite right. Only I’ll want you chaps to get her back to the creek by to-morrow mornin’s tide, as I’m goin’ to drift for shad to-morrow night!”

“Of course,” said Will; “we’ll go after her the first thing in the morning. That’s just what we planned on.”

“That there’s a smart boat Reube Dare’s built. And he’s a right smart lad, is Reube,” remarked Jerry Barnes.

“There’s where your head’s level,” agreed Will, warmly.

“And do you know when he’s goin’ to drift?” asked Barnes.

“He won’t be quite ready for to-morrow night,” said Will. “But we count on getting out the night following.”

“Well, now, a word in your ear!” went on Barnes, leaning over confidentially. “I’ve no manner of doubt Mart Gandy cut the Dido loose. And now Reube had better keep his eye on his nets after the boats get away to-morrow night. I shouldn’t wonder a mite if Gandy’d try slashing ’em, so as to give Reube an unpleasant surprise when he starts out for the Dido’s first fishing.”

“I say,” said Will, “I never thought of that! We’ll ‘lay’ for him, so to speak, and give him a lesson if he tries it on.”

“A nod’s as good as a wink,” remarked Jerry Barnes, mysteriously, as he set Will down at Mrs. Carter’s door.

Mrs. Carter had not been at all anxious. Ever since Will’s reclamation of the new marsh she had had an implicit faith in his ability and judgment. She had imagined that he was spending the day with Reube. She rather lost her dignified self-control over Will’s story of the adventure in the cave, and she was filled with girlish excitement over the finding of the old blue jar.

“Of course, dearest boy,” said Mrs. Carter, “you did quite right to want Reuben to take all the treasure, since he alone found it. But where would he have been but for you? Reuben is a fine boy, if his grandfather didn’t amount to much. He takes after his mother’s family the most. I’m glad he made you take a share of these lovely old coins.”

“We’ll be able to have some sort of a jolly lark on the strength of it when Ted comes home,” said Will.

“We might take a run to Boston!” suggested his mother. “I want you boys to see the city; I want to see it myself. And I might – Mrs. Dare, you know, might want a friend near her if the operation proves at all serious, which I hope it won’t.”

“You dear, that’s just like your thoughtfulness!” cried Will, jumping up and kissing her. And so it was agreed upon, subject, in a measure, to Ted’s assent.

CHAPTER VII.

Mart Gandy Hacks the Shad Net

DURING the next forenoon the Dido and the pinkie were sailed up to their old berths in the creek. That night all the boats went out except the Dido, fading like ghosts into the misty, half-moonlit dusk. Reube was very indignant at the thought that Gandy might attack his shad net, and vowed, if he caught him at it, to clap him in jail. Mrs. Dare had made the boys take a pair of heavy blankets with them, and, stretched on these, they lay along the seat in the Dido’s stern, just under the shelter of the gunwale. The reel, with its dark burden of net, rose a few feet away, and stood out black but vague against the paler sky. Close at hand lay the wharf, like a crouching antediluvian monster, with its fore paws plunged into the tide.

From where they lay our watchers commanded a view of the surrounding levels by merely lifting their heads. In low but eager tones they discussed the Boston trip planned for the coming autumn, and Reube squeezed his comrade’s hand gratefully when he heard what company he and his mother would have.

“I can never tell your mother my gratitude,” said he. “With her there my anxiety will be more than half gone.”

“I’m so glad muzz thought of it!” said Will. “I’m sure it would never have entered my heedless head. And yet it is just the thing for us to do.”

Another subject of their excited colloquy was the disposal of those old coins. If deposited at the Barchester Bank they would certainly arouse comment and set all sorts of romantic stories going. But presently Will thought of his friend Mr. Hand, to whom all things in the way of financial management seemed possible. It was decided that on the very next day Will should take the whole store to him and get him to send it away for conversion into modern currency.

“And he’ll be able to see that we don’t get cheated,” added Will. “I fancy some of those coins will be wanted by collectors, and so be worth a lot more than their face value.”

“I tell you, Will,” exclaimed Reube, “I can’t even yet quite get over my astonishment at the way you swear by old Hand; or, perhaps I should rather say, at the way the old fellow seems to be developing qualities of which he was never suspected until you begun to thaw him out.”

“Indeed,” said Will, warmly, “Mr. Hand is fine stuff. He was like a piece of gold hidden in a mass of very refractory ore. But Toddles melted him down all right.”