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

Tom Edwards advanced now with the coffee.

“Hold him up, Jack,” he said. “This will warm him.”

Harvey put his hand under the youth’s head, raised him to a sitting position, and Tom Edwards held the tin to his lips. The youth opened his eyes and looked them in the face. As he did so, Harvey fairly gasped and nearly let him fall back.

“Tom,” he exclaimed, “look! See who it is!”

Tom Edwards set the tin down on the floor.

“Why, I’ve seen him before,” he cried. “He’s the chap I met in Baltimore, or his twin brother. How can that be, though? Jack, what do you say? Who is he?”

“Artie Jenkins!” exclaimed Harvey. “I’d know him, no matter where he was. He’s the chap that trapped me – and of all places to find him! Say, you’re Artie Jenkins, aren’t you?”

He looked the youth in the eyes and shook him. The youth nodded, feebly.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Well,” said Tom Edwards, lifting the tin again, “you get the coffee, just the same – but hang me if I ever thought I’d do that much for you. Hold him up, Jack. Here, drink this.”

Artie Jenkins, choking and breathing hard between his efforts, drank the tin-full of hot coffee, and they laid him down again. They rubbed his legs and arms till they were warmed with renewed vitality. Then they rolled him in the blankets and let him lie by the fire.

“He’s all right, I guess,” said Stanton, “but he had a close call. Another hour out there in the cold and he never would have waked up. It’s funny, though, that you know him; how did it happen?”

“Yes, he’s an old friend of ours,” said Tom Edwards, smiling; “we’re sort of old Johns Hopkins chums, he and Harvey and I. We went to school with him – on the Baltimore water front.” And he narrated the story of their acquaintance with Artie Jenkins. “Jack and I had a score to settle with him,” he said in conclusion; “but it looks to me as though someone had settled it for us. Judging by the looks of our friend, I guess he’s had enough, eh, Jack?”

Harvey nodded.

“I guess we’ll call it even,” he replied. “But what puzzles me is, what are we going to do with him?” Harvey looked at Mr. Stanton, inquiringly. The latter did not answer, but started suddenly toward the door.

“There’s a sloop coming to anchor just outside,” he said. “Perhaps they know something about him. Just keep close, now. There’s a skiff coming in, with two in it. I’m a justice of the peace. I reckon this revolver will be a good argument for them to stop. I’ll hold them until that chap, Jenkins, is able to sit up again. If he identifies them as the ones that brought him in here, I’ll put them under arrest. Have you got a weapon?”

Harvey produced Haley’s revolver.

“Good!” exclaimed Mr. Stanton, “keep it handy and stand by. When I step out, you follow.”

Peering through the doorway, they saw the skiff come in to shore and two persons step out – one a large, powerfully built man, the other a youth of about Harvey’s age. The two came up a path leading from the shore, toward the cabin. Their boots crunched the ice just outside the door when Mr. Stanton, motioning to Harvey, stepped quickly outside. Harvey followed.

“Hold up there,” cried Mr. Stanton, “I put you two under arrest till I find out – ”

He stopped abruptly and jumped with surprise when Jack Harvey, uttering a whoop and a yell, darted past him.

“George Warren!” bawled Harvey, rushing up to the astounded youth; “where did you come from? How in the world did you ever get here? Any more of the fellows with you? Is Henry Burns out aboard? I was right. I saw you weeks ago through Haley’s telescope. Tom, come on out. They’ve come for us. Hooray!”

Mr. Stanton, wide-eyed with wonder, lowered his weapon and bowed to the man with George Warren.

“The arrest is off,” he said. “I apologize, sir. Come inside and I’ll explain.”

George Warren, embracing his friend Harvey, was almost too dumfounded to speak. But Harvey continued to ply him with questions.

“How did you happen to come to look for me?” he asked.

“We didn’t,” replied George Warren, while an expression of anxiety overspread his face; “we are looking for Henry Burns.”

“For Henry Burns!” repeated Harvey. “Why, what’s become of him – you don’t mean he’s been carried off, too? Say, it’s making my head swim. Come in and explain.”

The four entered the cabin where Artie Jenkins lay sleeping by the fire. George Warren introduced his companion as Will Adams. Then he turned to Harvey.

“Who’ll explain first, you or I?” he asked.

“Why,” replied Harvey, “you know about us, or you wouldn’t be here – you got the note I sent ashore, I suppose. It’s a long story, all that’s happened. I want to know about Henry Burns. Is he lost?”

George Warren recounted the events leading up to the disappearance of their friend; and then, how they had discovered, on the morning of the 27th of December, that Henry Burns was missing; how they had found the skiff adrift in the Patuxent; how they had learned, by questioning the river men, that Haley’s bug-eye had been seen that night in the Patuxent; and how they had set out in the sloop, Mollie, to hunt for him, after notifying the authorities. There were, out aboard the sloop, the other two Warren boys and Edward Warren, their cousin.

“And you’ll have to make room for two more,” cried Jack Harvey. “Tom Edwards and I can tell Haley’s old bug-eye a mile away. You won’t find him on this shore, though. He’s on the Eastern shore, among the islands.”

“That’s what we thought most likely,” said Will Adams, “but we thought we’d clean up this side first, to make sure. We saw your smoke and ran in to inquire – ”

He stopped abruptly and turned to Tom Edwards.

“Say, was it you two that slept in Warren’s barn?” he asked.

“I guess it was his barn, sure enough,” replied Tom Edwards; “and wasn’t it a piece of hard luck that he didn’t catch us? We’d all be home by this time, – and they wouldn’t have lost the other boy. What a shame!”

“Things do happen queerly, sure enough,” said Will Adams. “But who’s this man asleep here?”

Tom Edwards turned and pointed to Artie Jenkins, shaking his finger at the sleeping figure.

“That chap,” he said, “is the cause of it all. Isn’t it a queer situation, that he should be here too?”

He told the story of their experience with Artie Jenkins.

“And what are you going to do with him?” asked Will Adams.

Tom Edwards knelt by the sleeper and turned down his shirt collar.

“Take a look here,” he said, pointing to the red marks upon the youth’s shoulder. “When I was out aboard Haley’s bug-eye,” he continued, “I used to spend hours thinking what I’d like to do to this fellow, if I ever found him. I had nine hundred and ninety-nine different ways all thought out of making him pay for my troubles. But” – Tom Edwards arose and folded his arms – “I think he’s had his punishment. Somebody put him just where he put us – aboard a dredger; and he must have struck a Tartar as bad as Haley. I think we’ll let him go. That is, if we can. Mr. Stanton, what do you say? We shall not need your help now, to get to Millstone. We’re going with this sloop to the Eastern shore; but we can’t leave this fellow, Jenkins, here, deserted.”

“Leave him to me,” replied Mr. Stanton. “He won’t be the first one we’ve had on our hands. I’ll go back and hitch up the horse and take him to the settlement, and we’ll ship him up the bay the first chance we get. But you ought to prosecute him. Ten to one, if he ever gets his health again, he’ll go back to the business.”

Tom Edwards shook his head vigorously.

“No, he won’t,” he said; “I’d stake my last dollar that he’s had enough of it. He’s been beaten, and he’s had the heart all taken out of him. He hasn’t got the nerve left to try it again.”

And Tom Edwards was right.

They shook hands with Mr. Stanton, took a last look at the unhappy object by the fire, and went down the path to the landing. Soon the sloop Mollie, with her new recruits aboard, was standing away from the creek, tossing the spray as the search for Haley’s bug-eye and for Henry Burns was resumed.

CHAPTER XX