The Rival Campers Afloat: or, The Prize Yacht Viking

“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.

CHAPTER VI.

OUT TO THE FISHING-GROUNDS

While the boys were thus concerned down in the Thoroughfare, at the foot of Grand Island, certain events were happening away over across the Western Bay that might perhaps affect them later.

If a direct line were drawn across the middle of Grand Island, and extended straight across the Western Bay to the neighbouring mainland, it would touch that shore in about the locality of the town of Bellport. This was a little community, dull in winter, and flourishing in summer with the advent of cottagers and visitors from the little city of Mayville, some miles up along the shore of the bay, and from the towns farther north up the river. It was a favourite resort of yachtsmen in a modest way.

On the afternoon that young Harry Brackett had quietly withdrawn from the crowd of villagers in the store at Southport, coincident with the disclosures of Captain Sam regarding his adventure in the squire’s sailboat, he had not seen fit to return to the shelter of his father’s roof. Instead, he had taken the night boat over to Mayville, and thence, the following morning, made his way to Bellport, where he had some bosom friends after his own heart.

What this meant was that, instead of entering into the healthful sports that made the place of especial attraction, he and they were more often to be found loitering about the office of the principal hotel, the Bellport House, or playing at billiards in a room off the office, or occupying the veranda chairs, with their feet upon the railing.

Young Brackett had been engaged one afternoon, soon following his arrival, in a game of billiards with a companion, when he was accosted by another acquaintance.

“Hello, Brackett,” said the newcomer. “You’re quite a stranger. How are things over at Southport? Going to stay at home now for awhile?”

This salutation, commonplace as it was, had, it seemed, an effect upon a tall, light-complexioned man, who was seated in a corner of the room, where he had been enjoying his cigar and idly watching the game. For he looked up quickly toward the boy addressed, and, during the continuation of the game, certainly paid more attention to Harry Brackett than to the play itself.