Kitabı oku: «The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove: or, The Missing Chest of Gold», sayfa 6

CHAPTER XIV
A FEROCIOUS ENEMY

When the boys woke the morning after their adventure, their first thought was of the weather. They had set their hearts on taking the trip over to Milton to call on Mark Taylor and they would have been sorely disappointed at any indication of a storm.

But they could have spared their worry. There was not a cloud in the sky, the sun was rising brilliantly in the east, and the waves fell in a soft monotonous murmur at the foot of the lighthouse.

“It’s going to be a dandy day,” reported Teddy gleefully, as he came back from the window. “Get up there, you sleepy heads,” he commanded, with the conscious virtue of the one who rises first.

Three rumpled heads turned on the pillows of the various cots in the big room where the boys slept. A well-aimed pillow caught one of them plump and full, and caused a hasty withdrawal beneath the sheet.

“Cut out the rough house, or I’ll get up there and fan you,” came the drowsy voice of Bill, who happened to be the victim.

“No danger,” jeered Teddy. “You haven’t ambition enough to make a move.”

“I haven’t had half sleep enough,” yawned Fred. “Why don’t you get up in the middle of the night and be done with it?”

“‘’Tis the voice of the sluggard, I hear him complain,’” quoted his brother. “I’d hate to be as lazy as this bunch of hoboes. If you don’t hurry, I’ll go out and find that chest of gold all by my lonesome.”

The mention of the gold had a magical effect. It acted like a dousing of cold water. In a moment the boys were on their feet and hurrying into their clothes.

“By ginger! I hadn’t had time to think of that,” remarked Bill, as he poured the water in his basin, “or you wouldn’t have needed a pillow to rout us out.”

“Dad has the coffee pot on already,” said Lester as a savory aroma came up the stairs. “Let’s get a wiggle on.”

The boys trooped down the stairs to find breakfast ready for them.

“We want to eat a plenty, fellows,” observed Lester, setting them the example. “We’ve got a long sail before us.”

The lads needed no urging and the way the food disappeared was almost miraculous.

“Now,” said Lester when the breakfast had been finished, “you fellows go out and get the boat ready to start, while I get enough grub together to last a couple of days. We may not always have clams and bluefish just when we want them, and I’m not going to take any risks.”

“Do you think we’ll be away over night?” asked Bill.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” answered Lester. “Maybe we’ll be gone for more than one. It’s a pretty stiff sail up there, and we may have to do a good deal of tacking on the way back. Then, too, Mark may not be in when we get there, and we may have to wait till he gets back.”

“What kind of a fellow is this Taylor, anyhow?” asked Fred. “Has he any family?”

“No, he lives all alone in a little cabin down near the beach. Spends his time fishing and doing odd jobs. He’s a little wizened-up fellow. He’s fond of talking, and all we’ll have to do is to get him started and he’ll do the rest. I only hope we’ll find him in condition to talk.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Teddy.

“Mark is a little too fond of a black bottle that he keeps in his cabin,” explained Lester. “But he’s usually sober in the daytime, and if we get to him before night, he’ll be all right.”

The boys went down to the little dock where the Ariel was riding. They had all grown more or less expert in handling her since their arrival at the Shoals, and in a very short time they had her ready for the trip.

“I wonder if Uncle Aaron has got my letter yet,” remarked Teddy, as he helped Bill pull up the anchor.

“Not yet,” replied his brother, “but he’s sure to get it before the day is over.”

“I’d like to see his face when he reads it,” chuckled Teddy.

“You aren’t usually so anxious to see his face,” laughed Fred. “That time, for instance, when he came up on the bank after his ducking in the river.”

“No,” admitted Teddy. “But this time things are different.”

Lester had made several trips to the boat, each time loaded with provisions, and by the time everything else was ready the little larder was well stocked.

“No danger of starving on this trip,” smiled Mr. Lee, who had come down to see them off.

“Not much,” laughed Lester. “Now, Dad, don’t worry if we’re gone longer than we expect to be. We’ll be back when we get here.”

“I’ll not worry,” promised his father. “Any one who can take a boat through Sentinel Rocks in such a blow as we had the other day, can get out of any kind of scrape.”

He waved his hand genially in farewell as the Ariel fell away and set her course for Milton.

“We’ve a following wind,” remarked Lester, as he settled himself at the tiller, “and if it holds out, we ought to make Milton in three hours.”

“We want to keep a sharp lookout for Mark on the way,” suggested Teddy.

“That’s right,” agreed Lester. “He’s more than likely to be out fishing somewhere in our course. And this time we won’t have to rely on Bill’s eyes alone, for I’ve brought a pair of dad’s binoculars along.”

“You’ve brought something else along,” said Teddy, as his eyes fell on a big hook at the end of an iron chain. “I never saw this thing before. What are you going to do with it?”

“Hook a shark if I can,” was the answer.

“What!” came in an excited exclamation from the other three.

“That’s what I said,” repeated Lester, enjoying the sensation that his words had caused.

“Have you ever caught any before?”

“How do you do it?”

“Do you think we’ll catch sight of one?”

The questions poured in upon him and Lester laughed, as he raised his hand in protest.

“One thing at a time,” he answered. “Anybody’d think this was a political meeting where every one’s trying to heckle the speaker at once.

“I’ve caught them before,” he went on, replying to the first question that had been hurled at him. “Not often, of course, because they’re not as common as other fish. But there are altogether too many on this part of the coast. They scare off the fish and break the nets of the fishermen. Then, too, they’re dangerous if any one falls overboard, and no one can be comfortable when he knows those pirates are cruising around, ready to gobble him up.”

“It isn’t exactly a pleasant sensation,” agreed Fred, with a little shiver as he thought of the time he had gone over the side for Ross.

“All the people along the coast hate them like poison,” continued Lester, “and it is looked on as a public duty to put them out of business whenever they are come across.”

“Just the way we feel out West about rattlesnakes,” put in Bill.

“I suppose so,” agreed Lester.

“Perhaps we’ll run across the very fellow we saw in the storm,” suggested Teddy.

“Perhaps,” assented Bill, “although there won’t be any strawberry mark by which we can identify him.”

“If he doesn’t turn up, his brother or his cousin will do just as well,” laughed Fred.

“What kind of bait do you use?” asked Bill.

“I’ve got a few chunks of pork stored away in the locker,” returned Lester. “If we catch sight of one swimming around, we’ll throw over some small pieces. Their sense of smell is wonderful, and they’ll get on the job right away. The shark will follow us for more, and just when he thinks he’s found a regular meal, we’ll heave over the big piece attached to the hook. He’ll nab it in a hurry, and then his guileless and unsuspicious nature will receive a sudden shock.”

“But how will you get him on board?” asked Bill.

“If he’s a big fellow, we’ll not,” was the answer, “unless we can get him near enough to stun him with a hatchet. Even on board a big ship the men often have to attach the rope to a windlass to draw the big fellows in while they’re still full of fight. Even if he were stunned, I don’t think that all of us pulling together could lift his dead weight on board the Ariel.”

“Then what would we do with him?” asked Teddy.

“We’d have to tow him astern until we could run in somewhere and pull him ashore,” answered Lester. “That’s what the fishermen round here usually do when they hook one. Once get him on the beach, and the rest is easy.”

“Perhaps we’ll have a shark steak for supper,” said Teddy.

“Perhaps, but I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Lester, with a grimace. “I’ve tasted it and I must admit that it’s pretty rank. I wouldn’t care to have it as a steady diet, unless I were starving and couldn’t get anything else. The Chinese make soup of its fins though, and they say that it’s dandy.”

“You say you’d try to stun him with a hatchet,” said Bill, the skeptic. “But suppose you couldn’t get him near enough for that?”

“Then we’d try something else,” replied Lester. “Here, Teddy, take the tiller for a minute.”

Teddy did as requested, and Lester, reaching down into the cabin, drew out and displayed to the astonished eyes of the boys a long harpoon.

CHAPTER XV
CAPTURING THE SHARK

“Where on earth did you get that harpoon?” asked Fred.

“It belongs to father,” was Lester’s answer. “He shipped on board a whaler once and made a three-year cruise. He was the head harpooner of the first mate’s boat and many’s the time this old harpoon has struck a ninety barrel whale. Dad has any number of yarns to spin about it, and some day I’ll set him going and you’ll hear them all.”

“That’ll be dandy!” exclaimed Teddy. “There’s nothing stirs me up so much as a whaling story. I’ve often thought I’d like to make a voyage on a whaler when I am old enough.”

“There’s a good deal of romance and excitement about it,” admitted Lester, “but it’s very hard and dangerous work. A man takes his life in his hands when he ships for such a cruise.”

“This certainly looks as though it meant business,” commented Bill, as he examined curiously the broad, flat, triangular head. “The edge is like a razor, and nothing could pull this barb loose after it once entered.”

The shank was about two feet long and served as a socket to the shaft which gave a total length to the harpoon of more than six feet.

“My, but it’s heavy,” said Fred, as he lifted it. “It must take some muscle to handle a thing like that.”

“It takes a good deal of experience to master it,” said Lester.

“Do you know how to throw it?” asked Teddy.

“Father has shown me how, and I’ve practised a good deal on and off just for fun,” was the reply. “I might be able to hit a shark with it, if he wasn’t very far off, and I might not. I’d have a chance though, and if I missed I could try again. This rope attached to it prevents its being lost, and I could draw it in again and make another attempt at it.

“Of course this is rather old fashioned these days,” Lester went on. “Now, in most of the whaling boats, they put the harpoon in a gun, just as you might thrust a ramrod down the muzzle of a rifle. The harpoon has an explosive shell attached to its head like the torpedo of a submarine. The harpoon is shot from the gun, and after it leaves the muzzle, a rocket charge attached to it carries it still further. When it hits the whale, the bomb explodes and it’s all over. Of course, it’s safer and surer than the old way, but it’s too much like business. It does away with the exciting, desperate struggle between man and whale.”

“What stories this old weapon could tell, if it could only talk,” mused Fred.

“Yes, and they’d be more exciting than anything you read in fiction,” added Bill.

“We may have a chance to use it before the day is over,” said Teddy hopefully, as he looked over the waves on every side.

“It’s a bare possibility,” assented Lester. “I thought it wouldn’t do any harm to bring it along anyhow just on the chance.

“You fellows want to keep a keen lookout for anything that looks like a fin,” he continued. “It would be too bad to let any guilty shark escape.”

As Lester had charge of the tiller and Fred was looking after the sail, the work of watching devolved on Teddy and Bill. They took opposite sides of the craft, Teddy handling Mr. Lee’s binoculars while Bill depended upon the remarkably keen eyes with which nature had gifted him.

An hour went by, during which the little boat made rapid progress. But nothing rewarded the vigil of the two, and Teddy began to grow disgusted.

“Nothing doing to-day, I guess,” he grumbled. “Somebody’s sent a wireless to the sharks telling them to keep out of sight.”

“And after Lester has taken all that trouble in getting a warm welcome ready for them,” mourned Fred.

“It’s certainly very ungrateful on their part,” grinned Bill.

“The shark who hides and runs away

May live to bite another day.”

Teddy was the perpetrator of the lines.

Fred groaned and, as he made a pass at his brother with his unoccupied hand, asked: “What have we done that such awful stuff should be pulled off on us?”

“Hi, there!” shouted Bill suddenly. “I saw something just then.”

“Hang out the flags,” drawled Fred unbelievingly. “Bill saw something.”

“He saw the sea, he saw the sky,

He saw the drifting clouds go by,”

chanted Teddy, the irrepressible.

“I’d see a couple of boobs, if I looked over your way,” retorted Bill. “Cut out the chatter and hand me those glasses.”

The binoculars were passed over to him, and he turned them on an object far out to starboard.

“I thought so,” he said exultingly a moment later. “I can see the dorsal fin of a shark out there.”

Disbelief vanished before his confident tone, and all looked eagerly in the direction he indicated.

“Perhaps it’s only a floating bit of wood,” said Teddy doubtfully, after a long gaze through the glasses.

“Let Lester look,” suggested Bill. “He knows a shark when he sees one.”

Lester relinquished the tiller to Bill and took a long, steady look through the binoculars.

“Bill is right,” he announced at last. “It’s a shark and a big one too. I guess we’re going to have some sport, after all.”

“But how are we going to get a trial at him?” cried Teddy. “He seems to be going in the opposite direction.”

“I guess he won’t go far,” replied Lester with easy confidence. “This is probably his feeding ground, and he’ll keep going round and round in lazy circles. We’ll get a little nearer to him before we do anything else.”

He retook the tiller and changed the Ariel’s course toward the spot where they had seen the shark.

“Lower the sail, now,” he commanded, when they had gone half a mile. “Just keep up enough to give us steerage way. A shark thinks a boat’s disabled when it isn’t moving much, and his instinct teaches him that the occupants are probably in trouble and his chance of finally getting them will be better.”

“Do you think that will bring him around?” asked Bill.

“It’ll help, anyway,” replied Lester. “But to make it surer, we’ll cut up the pork into small pieces and scatter it on the water. He’ll smell it as sure as guns, and I’ll wager you that before ten minutes are over you’ll see the old rascal swimming toward us.”

The boys got their clasp knives out at once and slashed the pork into bits, taking care however not to touch the big piece.

“He’s coming,” cried Teddy, after perhaps five minutes had passed. “I saw his fin just then, not fifty feet away.”

The pieces of pork were now bobbing up and down on the water at the stern of the Ariel, which had almost stopped moving.

There was a twitch and one of the pieces disappeared. For an instant the boys saw a long black body, the wet skin glistening in the rays of the sun like so much velvet.

“By jinks!” whispered Bill in awe. “What an old sockdolager!”

“He’s one of the biggest I’ve ever seen,” returned Lester. “Fellows of his size don’t get up this way very often.”

“I’d hate to fall overboard just now,” said Teddy.

“You’d make just about one mouthful for him,” was Fred’s comforting rejoinder.

Lester was making feverish haste in the task of preparing the hook. He sank it deep into the yielding pork, so that the point was at least six inches from any surface.

“Suppose he nibbles it off,” suggested Bill.

“Sharks don’t eat that way,” grinned Lester. “They’re gluttons, and if they bite at all they take everything down–hook, line and sinker.”

“I’m afraid we couldn’t hold him if we did hook him,” said Teddy. “He’d yank us overboard in a minute.”

“I’ll take care of that,” replied Lester, at the same time taking several turns around the mast with the slack of the rope. “He’ll have to pull the mast out of the Ariel to get away.”

By this time all the floating bits of pork had been snapped up by this cormorant of the sea.

“He seems to like our lunch counter,” laughed Teddy.

“We’ve made him a steady customer, I guess,” returned Bill.

“Well, if he likes the samples, we’ll show him some of the real goods,” chimed in Lester, as he prepared to throw the baited hook overboard.

Just then the shark appeared, swimming lazily under the counter of the boat. He was just under the surface, and his glassy, wicked eyes looked full in the faces of the boys as they crowded to the side.

“My, he’s a terror!” exclaimed Teddy, as the pirate of the seas slowly moved past. “Is he going away do you think?” he asked in alarm, as their intended prey vanished in the direction of the bow.

“No fear,” responded Lester cheerily. “The pickings round here are too good for him to think of going away just yet.”

“Why don’t you wait till he comes around again and then make a throw at him with the harpoon?” asked Bill. “I should think you might hit him.”

“Wouldn’t have a chance on earth,” was the answer. “He’d dodge it like a flash of lightning. Then he’d take alarm and make a quick sneak away from here. After we get him hooked, we can hold him steady and I’ll have a chance to take aim.”

With a mighty heave, Lester threw the hook as far as he could over the stern. The iron chain attached to it hung several inches under the water, but its buoyancy kept the huge chunk of pork floating on the surface.

For several minutes the boys waited, their hearts beating so hard that it almost seemed that they could be heard.

“Do you think he’s really cleared out and left us?” asked Teddy, with disappointment in his tone.

“Don’t worry,” was Lester’s encouraging reply. “He thinks he has too soft a snap here to dream of giving it up.”

Just then Teddy’s question was answered by the shark himself. There was a swish in the water on the other side of the boat, and the boys saw that ominous fin sweep past.

The shark made straight for the hook with its tempting bait. But he sniffed at it a moment and then commenced to swim slowly around it in wide circles.

“He’s a little bit suspicious,” whispered Lester. “This is so much bigger than the others that it seems too good to be true.”

For several minutes the great fish kept up his circular movement, but the onlookers noticed that the circles were steadily growing smaller.

“He can’t resist it!” exulted Fred. “His judgment tells him he’d better not, but his appetite urges him on.”

“From what I know of sharks, I’ll wager that his appetite will win,” chuckled Lester.

Suddenly the shark seemed to reach a decision. Like a flash he darted toward the bait and it disappeared in his rapacious maw.

“Hurrah!” yelled Teddy in uncontrollable excitement. “He’s hooked at last!”

CHAPTER XVI
A DESPERATE STRUGGLE

For a second after swallowing the bait the shark remained perfectly still. Then he darted away, only to be brought up with a round turn as he reached the end of the rope.

It half stunned him and wholly bewildered him. He did not know what had happened. He tried again, but with the same result.

Then, as he realized that he was hooked, the fury of the shark became frightful. He sprang out of the water, lashing the waves into foam. The mast creaked and strained, and the counter of the Ariel was pulled down until the water rushed over the side.

“Get up the sail,” shouted Lester, rushing to the tiller. “He’ll capsize us if we don’t.”

Teddy and Bill sprang to help Fred, and the sail was quickly hoisted. The wind caught it at once, and as the breeze was a stiff one, it swelled out the sail to the fullest extent, and with this added resistance against the struggles of the shark, the Ariel was soon on an even keel.

“There!” exclaimed Lester, with a sigh of relief, “now we can hold our own. I thought for a minute that we were going over. And just now I wouldn’t want to get too close to that pirate. Something seems to have ruffled his temper.”

The rage of the shark was beyond belief. At first he tried to disgorge the hook. But it had a secure grip and his efforts only served to exhaust him. Then he snapped furiously at the chain with his mighty jaws.

“Do you think he can break it?” asked Bill anxiously.

“Not on your life,” answered Lester serenely. “If it were rope, he’d snap it as though it were thread. But even the jaws of a shark can’t bite through a three-inch iron chain.”

The shark darted here and there, trying by sudden jerks to break the chain. But it held fast despite his tremendous efforts. Then he changed his tactics and hurled himself against the Ariel with a force that made the timbers shiver.

“Do you think he can start a leak?” asked Fred, as the deck shook under him.

“I hope not,” answered Lester, “but he might. The Ariel is a mighty stout boat, but she wasn’t built to stand the rushes of a crazy shark.”

“What about giving him a clip with the hatchet the next time he comes close enough?” suggested Fred.

“Suppose you try it,” was the answer. “Get a tight grip on the rail and bend away over. Then the next time he hits the boat, hit him on the nose. If you catch him right it will stun him, and then I can finish him with the harpoon.”

Fred grasped the hatchet and disposed himself to take advantage of the next rush. He gripped the rail with his left hand, while Bill and Teddy held his legs tightly.

“If you go over, we go over with you,” Teddy assured him.

“The shark would have a square meal then for fair,” laughed Fred.

But the shark seemed to understand the trap laid for him and refused to fall in with their plans. He resorted again to fierce lunging and diving, but did not again approach the boat.

“He’s laughing at you,” jibed Teddy.

“I don’t think he feels like laughing at anything just now,” replied Fred, as he rose to his feet. “But he’s evidently given up the idea of dashing his brains out against the boat.”

“He’ll be tired out before long,” judged Lester, “and then I’ll give you a chance to see what an expert I am at throwing a harpoon.”

It was clear that the sea pirate was exhausting his strength in his futile struggles. His long career of cruelty and rapine was rapidly coming to an end.

“I think I have a chance now,” said Lester, after a few minutes more had passed. “You take the tiller, Teddy, while Bill and Fred haul him in.”

But this was not an easy task. Fred and Bill strained until they felt as though their arms were being pulled out of their sockets. But the shark still had enough strength left to make them pay dearly for every inch they gained.

But they were gaining, nevertheless. They wound the slack around a cleat as they pulled it in, so as not to lose what they had once won. Lester joined them after he had got the harpoon ready to throw, and with this reinforcement they soon had the shark within three feet of the stern of the boat.

“That’s near enough,” said Lester, rising to his feet and grasping the harpoon. “Now hold fast while I throw.”

He took careful aim, poised himself so as to get his full force into the cast and let his weapon go. It hissed through the air straight at its quarry. But the shark lunged aside, and the harpoon clove the water three inches to the right.

“Good shot, old scout!” cried Fred, as Lester, a little chagrined at the miss, drew the dripping harpoon in over the side. “It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t get him. It was going at him straight as an arrow when he dodged.”

“I’ll get him yet,” muttered Lester to himself, as he straightened up for another effort.

He took his time in aiming and summoned up all his strength. Then he threw.

The sharp point caught the shark a little behind the head and went clear through his body. It must have struck a vital point for the monster gave one convulsive leap and fell back in its death flurry, lashing the water into yeast. Then it turned part way over and remained motionless, the leverage of the shaft preventing it from turning wholly on its back.

A yell of triumph went up from the delighted boys.

“Glory, hallelujah!” shouted Teddy.

“That was a dandy throw, old scout!” cried Bill, clapping Lester on the back.

“This is our lucky day,” yelled Fred in great exultation.

Lester flushed with pleasure. He had vindicated his throwing ability, and had proved himself a worthy son of his sea-going forebears.

“Father will be tickled to death when he hears of it,” he remarked, trying to speak coolly, as though harpooning a shark was a daily occurrence with him. “He hates the brutes with all his soul. He was nearly nipped by one while in the water off the Bahamas, and his mates just hauled him on board in time.”

“Well, now that we’ve got him, what are we going to do with him?” asked practical Bill.

“Could we pull him on board, do you think?” inquired Teddy.

“Not in a hundred years,” replied Lester. “If we had a pulley big enough and rope strong enough, we might hoist him up, but in no other way. I guess the best way to do is to crowd on sail and tow him in to Milton.”

“How much further do we have to go?” asked Fred.

“Oh, it’s a matter of ten or twelve miles yet,” was the answer. “If we were free, we could make it in a little over an hour the way this wind is holding up. But the shark will be a big drag against us, and it will take us at least twice as long. The harpoon sticking out at that angle helps to keep us back.”

“What do we care how long it takes us to get there!” gloated Teddy. “We have all the time there is and I don’t care whether it takes us two hours or ten. We’ll have something to show the natives when we do get there.”

“Oh, they’ve seen plenty of sharks,” said Lester. “But I don’t think they’ve often clapped eyes on one as big as this.”

“After we reach Milton, how are we going to get the shark ashore?” persisted Bill.

“Oh, that will be no trick at all,” was the answer. “The beach shelves out gradually there and I can take the Ariel pretty close in. Then you fellows can tumble overboard and wade in, dragging the shark with you. We couldn’t lift him, but it will be easy enough to drag him up on the sand.”

“I’m anxious to get close to him so that I can study him,” said Fred.

“You might have been nearer to one than you liked the day you went over after Ross,” laughed Bill.

“Yes,” admitted Fred, “he’d have had the laugh on me then. But they laugh best who laugh last.”

“And we’re laughing last, all right,” declared Lester.

“Thanks to your good arm and the old harpoon,” added Bill.

“We have with us to-day, gentlemen,” said Teddy, assuming the air and tone of a professional introducer, “two renowned throwers. Indeed, I may say three.

“This gentleman at the tiller, Mr. Lester Lee, throws the harpoon. This other at the sheet, Mr. Frederic Rushton, throws the baseball. This idler at my right, Mr. William Garwood, throws the lasso. I admit, gentlemen, with deep regret, that of all this illustrious company I am the only one who doesn’t throw something.”

“Oh yes you do,” put in Bill quickly.

“What?”

“You throw the bull,” said Bill.