Jack Harvey's Adventures: or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates

Artie Jenkins shivered at the winders, even as the perspiration was wrung from him with the unusual exertion. He suffered so that Henry Burns and the crew pitied him; but Haley and the mate showed no mercy. They had seen men suffer before – men that they had paid ten dollars apiece to Artie Jenkins for. He gave out by afternoon, however, and the mate had fairly to drag him below. He moaned that he was sick, but they did not believe him.

That night he ran out of the forecastle on deck, delirious, and wakened Haley out of sleep. Haley saw that he was really ill, and gave him something to take, from a chest of patent stuff he had aboard. Artie Jenkins fell in a heap on the cabin floor, and Haley let him lie there the rest of the night.

The next morning, Haley and the mate, standing over Artie Jenkins, looked troubled. The sufferer lay moaning and feverish. Jim Adams bent over and examined him.

“He’s bad – downright bad, boss,” he said, looking up at Haley. The other scowled, but with some anxiety in his face. “He’ll come around all right, won’t he?” he asked. “Specs he may,” replied the mate; “but I’ve seen ’em like that, feverish, before, and it’s a bad sign down here.”

“Hang him!” exclaimed Haley. “What’ll we do with him?”

“Well,” replied Jim Adams, “if he was mine, I’d let him go, seeing as he didn’t cost any money. Tom’s going across to t’other shore to-day. Why not let him have him and leave him? We don’t want to land him down here.”

Haley grumbled, but acquiesced.

“Take him out,” he said. “He’s no good, anyway. I’ve got square. That’s what I wanted.”

Jim Adams lifted Artie Jenkins bodily and carried him out of the cabin.

A bug-eye that ran across from the eastern shore that afternoon carried the unfortunate Artie Jenkins as a passenger. He lay asleep in the cabin. Toward dusk the bug-eye reached the other shore, and anchored near land. A skiff left the side, with Artie Jenkins in the bottom of it. It landed, and two men carried the youth up to an old deserted shanty by the shore of a small creek in St. Mary County, some five or six miles above Otter Point. They left him there, alone, threw some mouldy blankets over him, and departed.

Artie Jenkins’s dredging experience was over.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BATTLE OF NANTICOKE RIVER

The morning after Artie Jenkins was shipped away across the Chesapeake, Haley’s bug-eye lay in Hooper strait, discharging her cargo of oysters into another craft alongside. Four other craft waited near by; and, when the Brandt had finished, they, likewise, unloaded the oysters they had, aboard the carrying vessel.

“What’s Haley unloading now for?” asked Wallace Brooks of the sailor, Jeff, as they were swinging a basket of the oysters outboard. “He’s got only half a cargo, anyway.”

“How do I know?” was the somewhat gruff reply. “Reckon we’ll see when the time comes. There’s something up, though, like as not,” he added; “I heard Haley ask Jim Adams how he thought the Brandt sailed best – with a quarter of a cargo in her, or a little more. That’s just so much more ballast, you know. So I guess that when Haley wants to sail his best, he expects someone to follow; and if someone follows, I reckon he’ll want to get away as slick as he can. Do you see?”

Wallace Brooks nodded.

“Going to dredge some more at night, eh?” he said.

“Well, you know as much as I do about it,” replied the sailor. “All I wish is, that I was bullet-proof,” and he shrugged his shoulders.

The surmise of the seaman was perhaps correct; for, as soon as the last bug-eye had cast loose from the carrying vessel, the four swung in together, drifted along, and the four captains gathered in Haley’s cabin. There were, besides Haley, Tom Noyes, Captain Bill and another whom Haley addressed as Captain Shute. The latter bore in one hand a chart which he spread out on the cabin table before them. It was a large sheet, covering a wide area of that part of the bay, much worn, and marked by many lines where cross-bearings had been taken and partly erased.

“There’s Nanticoke,” he said, laying a thick, stubby finger on the chart. “It’s buoyed out for some ten miles, and there’s good water clear to Vienna; that’s twenty odd miles up.”

“Stow the chart, Shute,” said Haley, impatiently. “I tell you Jim Adams knows the river better than any figuring can cover it. He ran it for three years, canoeing and tonging in the fog” – Haley winked significantly. “He’ll put us up there. The question is, will you go?”

“I’ve said as how I would go, once, and I sticks by my word,” answered Captain Bill forcibly. “The others will go, too. I’d follow Jim Adams’s wake and be sure of good water, anywhere.”

“And we stick it out, steamer or no steamer,” said Haley, looking at the others, earnestly. The captains nodded. Haley leered, as though gratified at the decision. “There’s no police tub can hurt us, if we stick together and fight,” he exclaimed; “and like as not we’ll get clear without it.”

There was some further conference, following which the three visiting captains returned to their vessels and the lines that held them together were cast off.

The day passed easily for the crews. There was but little dredging, though Haley and the others would not have them wholly idle. They worked in desultory fashion along the foot of Hooper island throughout the day, and toward evening sailed in slowly through the strait.

There had been no definite orders given to anybody aboard the Brandt, yet it was known to all that there was something on foot for the night. The let-up in the work of the day indicated that; furthermore, there was an air of mystery, of something impending, throughout the craft, that was felt and understood.

With the coming of night there rose up a mist from the surface of the water that dimmed the vision, though the stars showed clear in the sky. A thin fog gave an indefiniteness to the shore lines and made distant lights here and there twinkle vaguely.

The four vessels, the Brandt leading, sailed eastward as night fell, passing through the strait across the head of Tangier Sound. Jim Adams held the wheel and Haley gave orders to the crew, trimming the sails or easing off as the course varied.

Jim Adams, evidently glorying in the adventure, which defied the law that he despised, noted the points along the course with a series of chuckles.

“There’s old Sharkfin,” he called jubilantly, as the gleam from the lighthouse on the shoal of that name showed ahead. “We just goes east-no’th-east, sah, after we leave old Sharkfin Shoal a half mile to the eastward, and then we goes up between Nanticoke Point Spit and Clay Island Shoal like walkin’ up a meetin’ house aisle.”

Haley gazed ahead through the light mist.

“I’ve only been up the Nanticoke twice,” he said. “There’s buoys, I know, for some ten miles up, and then it takes a native born to find the rest of the way.”

Jim Adams chuckled. “I don’ need ’em,” he said, “not ’round this river. I can feel my way up; an’ they can paint the spars all black and it wouldn’t fool me, not a bit.”

Passing the lighthouse and leaving it astern some miles, the four bug-eyes took a more northerly course, entering the river. They carried no lights, and the cabin and forecastle lamps had been put out, so that no gleam showed from the ports. A fresh breeze from the west, blowing almost directly across the river, carried them up at a fair clip.

“There’s land close aboard, off the starboard,” said Haley, after they had gone some three miles up.

“Yessah,” responded the mate; “that’s Roaring Point, for shuah. You look sharp, Mister Haley, and you’ll see the buoy, a red spar when the sun shines, but I reckon it’s pretty black to-night. Couple of miles above that, and I specs there’s some pow’ful nice oysters a-sittin’ up and waitin’ for us to call.”

Jim Adams pointed, as he spoke, to where there showed the low sand spit of Roaring Point on the right as they sailed, with some trees growing, back from the shore. A landing made out from the south bank of the point, and a thin sprinkling of houses was scattered here and there in the vicinity. The vessels sailed noiselessly and darkly past these, and went up the river, turning the point.

Not long after, the order given by Haley for all hands to make ready told that the business of the night was about to be begun in earnest. On the eastern bank of the river were extensive oyster beds, private property, carefully planted and nursed, and rich in their yield.

Hamilton Haley, engaged in his favourite pursuit of poaching, was in rare good humour. Moreover, he had cause for self congratulation in that he had regained his man, Sam Black, from Captain Bill’s bug-eye, and yet another man, Captain Bill having taken on two men from Hooper island.

Soon the cry of the winch and the clank of the dredging chain broke the stillness of the night, as the Brandt, with sheets started, drifted slowly in a zig-zag course along the river bank. The other vessels worked likewise. There was no rest for anyone then. They worked like galley slaves under the whip. The dredge was hardly down before the command came to wind. It came up heavy with the ill-gotten spoil from the beds. Henry Burns found no favour in the eyes of Haley this night. He toiled with the others, now turning wearily at the winch, now helping to drag aboard the dredge, now sweating in the foul hold, stowing away the plunder.

Some time in the night, as he turned, with back and arms aching, at the handle of the winder, a strange humming, singing sound filled his ears. It was like an angry wasp darting about his head. Then a sharp report came from the neighbouring bank. It was followed by others. The sound as of wasps filled the air as a dozen bullets passed harmlessly over the heads of the crew of the Brandt.

Haley gave a cry of surprise and anger.

“They’ve found us,” he said, and ran for the cabin. He reappeared quickly, carrying a rifle in either hand.

“Here, you, Sam Black,” he called, “take this wheel, smart now. Let those sheets run way off there – no skulking into the forecastle, you men, or you’ll get a shot from me. Jim, here’s a gun; you’re a good shot. Give ’em an answer. Let her go along easy, Sam. We’ll show ’em we can play at shooting as well as they.”

Haley, issuing his commands in short, angry sentences, and seeing the vessel running as he wished, called to the crew to lie flat on the deck, but to be ready to jump at his word. Then he and the mate, reinforced by the cook, likewise armed with a rifle, proceeded to return the fire from the shore from the shelter of the after-house.

The other craft had swung into line of battle, similarly, and one of them, Captain Bill’s bug-eye, had already opened fire on the party ashore.

A running fight now ensued. The dredgers, emboldened by their numerical strength, had no thought of quitting the reefs. The attacking party, on the other hand, seemed to be constantly recruited in numbers, and the fire from the river bank grew in volume. The dredgers, with booms far out, kept barely under steerage way, following one another closely.

Coming up under the lee of a promontory of the river bank called Ragged Point, the leading vessel headed into the wind; the sheets were hauled aft and the craft came about, heading down stream once more, to return into better range of the enemy. The others followed, in turn.

An unexpected thing happened, however, just as the Brandt was swinging into the wind, with Haley hauling on the main sheet. A chance bullet, whistling across the stern, clipped the sheet fairly in two; Haley, straining at the rope as it parted, was sent sprawling on the deck, rolling over and over.