Kitabı oku: «Jack Harvey's Adventures: or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates», sayfa 7
“Queer!” repeated Tom Edwards. “Of course I haven’t. You’ve been just the same as ever. Why, what’s the matter, Jack? Are you sick?”
“I guess perhaps I am,” replied Harvey, dully. “I’ve heard about sailors seeing mirages and things that didn’t exist. I saw something on a steamer, as we came in, that couldn’t have been true. I thought I saw some friends of mine that live way up in Benton in the state of Maine. They can’t be down here in winter – hold on, though. They might be, after all. Yes, sir, perhaps they’ve come to look for me. I’ll bet that’s it!”
“But,” he added, ruefully, “I don’t see how that can be, either. They’d have come long before this, if they were looking for me. But I saw them. I saw them, Tom Edwards, just as clear as I see you now.”
“Well, you don’t see me very clear in this dark forecastle, Jack, old chap,” replied Tom Edwards. “Turn in and go to sleep, and see what you can make out of it to-morrow.”
CHAPTER X
FLIGHT AND DISASTER
When Jack Harvey awoke, the next morning, it was in a confused state of mind that he turned out of his bunk. The reason for this was at once apparent. A heavy south-easter was on, and a rough sea was tumbling in between the two projections of land that marked the entrance to the river from the bay – Drum Point and Hog Point. Lines of white breakers were foaming and crashing about the light-house.
The bug-eye, Brandt, lying well out in the river, and exposed to the sea, had been tossing about violently, although Haley had given the anchor-rode good scope, in order to ease the strain. The unconscious sleepers in the forecastle had been thrown about against the hard wooden sides of the bunks in which they lay; and Harvey found himself bruised and lame. He put his head out of the companion-way just as a sea sprayed over the vessel, wetting him. He rubbed the salt water from his eyes and hair, and looked out into the bay beyond.
It was certainly rough, outside. As far as he could see, the broad expanse of water was rioting in high frolic. Seas leaped and tumbled in wild confusion. The sharp flaws of the south-easter whipped the white caps from the curling breakers and sent the scud and spindrift flying.
Far out, a few stray vessels, close reefed and rolling heavily as they ran, were making for the harbour; the ends of their lean booms, with sails tied in, looked like bare poles. Jack Harvey noted one thing, with especial satisfaction. Not a single craft in all the harbour fleet was going out, or making any preparation therefor. Harvey gave a sigh of relief, as he went below again.
“Tom,” he said, as he stepped to his comrade’s bunk and roused him, “Tom, we’re in luck. It’s blowing a gale outside. No dredging to-day. Hooray!”
Tom Edwards sat up, and groaned.
“Oh, but I’m lame,” he said. “What with that tough day’s work, yesterday, and this confounded slatting about, I’m just about done for. Haley’ll kill us yet, if we don’t get away.”
Tom Edwards, erstwhile travelling man and frequenter of good hotels, stepped stiffly out on to the floor and proceeded to rub his arms and joints, to limber them up.
“Jack,” he said, “I’m sorry now that you didn’t take the chance up the river, that night, and swim for it. You’d have got away, and they’d be after us all by this time. Jack, I tell you, we’ve got to get out of here pretty soon, or there’ll be no Tom Edwards left to go anywhere. I can’t stand this much longer.”
Harvey stepped to the side of his friend, and whispered softly.
“Neither can I, Tom,” he answered, “and what’s more, I don’t intend to. We’ll get away. We’ll escape.”
To their surprise, the conversation was interrupted by the sharp call of the mate for them to hustle out and help get the bug-eye under weigh. They looked at each other in astonishment, for one moment. Then Harvey reassured his friend.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We can’t be going out. Haley wants a snugger berth. We’re getting too much of the sweep here.”
Harvey’s conjecture proved correct. They were lying at a bad anchorage for a south-easter, and Haley, to his chagrin, had observed the signs of wind and sky and knew the weather was growing heavier instead of clearing.
The anchor was hove short and brought up to the bow, while a jib and the main-sail, both reefed, were set. The Brandt, with Haley at the wheel, stood in nearer to the southern shore of the river, within a quarter of a mile of the bank. The anchor went down again, and sails were once more made snug.
They lay more comfortably here, in the bight of the southern river bank. But it was a tantalizing sight to the prisoners on the Brandt– the near and friendly looking shore, with an occasional house in the distance, the smoke of hearths blown from the chimney tops, and now and then a traveller going on up a country road.
And to what mad act Jack Harvey might have been wrought, could he have seen, in his mind’s eye, the interior of one of these same houses, and a certain one of these hearths, encircled by a certain group of boys, is beyond all conjecture. But he only gazed longingly in ashore, and wished he were there.
There was more definiteness to his thoughts when, an hour or two later, following the wretched breakfast served – all the meaner and more wretched because there was no work to be gotten out of the crew for the day – he saw Haley and the mate launch the small skiff, bring it alongside and get in and row away.
Not that there was any immediate purpose of escape in his mind. For, just before his departure, Haley had designated where he was going – a small shed just back from shore was his object, where a man kept some trifling supplies that he wanted.
“And I’ll be in sight of this vessel from start to finish,” Haley had added, and winked significantly at Jim Adams.
But the small boat and its possibilities was imprinted on Harvey’s brain as he watched it toss flimsily about, while the captain and mate sculled ashore. He had thought of it before, but no good opportunity had offered.
There had been chances, to be sure, down along the marshy intricacies of the eastern shore. Once, when they had lain in Honga river over night, inside Middle Hooper island, he had thought strongly of rousing Tom Edwards and attempting flight to shore. But the country around had been too forbidding. Wild salt marshes bordered the eastern coast of Hooper’s, and across on the land to the east it was so shelterless, with salt marshes on shore and a great fresh water marsh inland, that he had given over the project for the time.
Occasionally, on a Saturday night, when the bug-eye lay in the Patuxent, it was the habit of Haley and Jim Adams to take the skiff and go ashore. Sometimes they spent the night, and were back again Sunday morning. Sometimes they passed the greater part of Sunday back inland. There lay Harvey’s hope. Yet he hardly knew how to work out a plan of escape. To attempt to make sail on the bug-eye and run her either to shore or up the bay, would, he discovered, be useless. It would involve making a prisoner of the cook and the man, Jeff, and, possibly, Sam Black, also; though Harvey looked for no great interference from him.
The cook and the sailor, Jeff, he found, had a certain dogged loyalty to Haley. The former surely would stand by the vessel under all circumstances; the latter, it was certain, would not compromise himself with the authorities of the state by any attempt to take possession of the craft in Haley’s absence.
But, with the mate and Haley away, there must be some means, surely, of gaining one of the shores of the river. In milder weather, Harvey would have thought nothing of swimming the distance, even of a mile, from the middle of the wide part of the river; but the weather and the icy cold water precluded that way of flight now. At least, Harvey did not care to venture it, especially as, once on land, he would know not where to seek shelter; for he knew that, bound by many mutual ties of interest, the dredgers and the settlers along shore – unless the latter had oyster beds to be robbed – worked for each other’s interests.
“Tom,” said Harvey, quietly, indicating the skiff with a glance, “that’s the way you and I are going ashore one of these nights, and take our chances when we get there. And,” he added, eagerly, “isn’t it lucky you warned me to hide that money? That will help us out, when we do escape.”
Tom Edwards glanced at the bobbing skiff, that looked to his eyes about as substantial as a child’s toy boat, and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll try it, if we get the chance,” he said, somewhat dubiously; “but I don’t like the looks of it.”
Harvey laughed. “You’re a landsmen, sure enough,” he said. “Why, that’s an able little boat as a man might want, in a river like this. Look how nicely it rides the waves.”
“Oh, I’d go on a bunch of shingles, if it would only take me out of this,” exclaimed Tom Edwards – “that is, I think I would now. But you’ll have to run the thing. I’ll confess, I don’t know one end of a boat from another, except what that brute, Jim Adams, has ground into me.”
Harvey’s hopes, which had been raised by the shifting of the anchorage of the vessel nearer land, were dashed late that afternoon, with the return of Haley and the mate. Rain mixed with sleet poured down in torrents, and drove laterally across the vessel. It was as much as one could do to keep his footing on the slippery deck, even with one hand clutching a rope. The sleet stung as it struck Harvey’s face, and made it smart as though from a volley of small pebbles. He was only glad to seek shelter below, even in the dreary forecastle. He learned, that night, how all circumstances are relatively good or harsh. From the boisterous night outside, the forecastle of the Brandt was a refuge that seemed almost cheery.
The next morning, it was apparent that the strength of the storm was wearing away. Moreover, there was a sudden peculiar change in the weather. The wind had swung around more to the southward; and, with that, there had come a decided moderation of the temperature. But the change was of no immediate advantage to Haley, for there rolled in a heavy fog, and a dense mist also rose up from the surface of the river.
Again Haley gave the order to make sail and raise the anchor. Once more the bug-eye got under weigh, stood out toward the middle of the river and cast anchor again, just beyond the path of any passing steamer. Captain Haley, ever watchful, ever suspicious, was taking no chances. His rule was invariable, in any kind of smooth water – to lie for the night beyond swimming distance from shore. At least, to offer little chance for that. He had known desperate, venturesome men to attempt it, even then.
He was in a bad humour, was Haley, that day. There was nothing to eat, for the crew, but the bread, or dough, fried, and a few scraps of pork mixed with it. It was Saturday, and, about the middle of the afternoon, he and Jim Adams took the skiff again and went ashore. They were out of sight in the fog before they had gone two rods, but the wind sufficed to give them their direction for the distance they had to go.
“Tom,” said Jack Harvey that night, as they turned in, “keep your shoes on, and don’t go to sleep.”
Tom Edwards looked at his young companion, in surprise.
“We’ve got a chance,” explained Harvey, “as good as we’ll ever get, perhaps. We’ve got to break away from here some time. The sooner the better.”
“In this beastly fog?” interrupted Tom Edwards.
“Of course,” replied Harvey. “It’s just what we want. The wind’s southerly and will take us across to the Drum Point shore. We can’t help hitting that, or Solomon’s Island. We’ll have the chance, too. I heard Jim Adams say we’d put out of here early to-morrow morning, if the fog lifts. Haley’s lost so much time, he won’t stay ashore Sunday. They’ll be back with the skiff late to-night, or toward morning. We’ll give them just time to go off to sleep and then make a try for it.”
The crisis thus suddenly facing Tom Edwards, he pulled himself together.
“Good for you!” he said. “I’ll go, if we have to row across the Chesapeake. Anybody with us?”
“Not a soul,” said Harvey. “The skiff will hold only us two. And we can do it better alone. Now you sit up first, will you, and let me get two hours sleep, and then you wake me and I’ll keep watch, because – because – ”
Tom Edwards laughed good-naturedly.
“I know,” he said. “You’re afraid that I’d fall asleep later on, and we’d miss the chance.”
“Well, – well,” stammered Harvey, “you are an awful sound sleeper when you get a-going, you know. I didn’t mean anything – ”
“You’re all right,” exclaimed Tom Edwards, softly, but with heartiness. “You turn in. Let me have your watch. I’ll wake you, say, at eleven.”
Jack Harvey’s nerves were good, and he was not one to worry over coming events. He turned in, and, in ten minutes, was sound asleep. Tom Edwards, sitting uncomfortably in his bunk, counted the minutes as they dragged away, drearily. It was a lonesome vigil, with only the sleeping crew for company. He started up now and again, as some sound in the night outside seemed to his active fancy a warning of the returning skiff.
Ten o’clock came, and then eleven; he arose and awakened Harvey.
“Too bad, old chap,” he said, “but it’s your turn.”
Harvey roused and turned out, sleepily.
“Tom,” he said, “I had the queerest dream. I dreamed we were chasing that fellow, Jenkins, through miles of swamps, and every time we’d get near him, he’d turn into Henry Burns and laugh at us. Then we’d see him again a little way ahead.”
“You’re thinking of that chap you thought you saw through the telescope, eh,” suggested Tom Edwards.
“He’s on my mind sure enough,” replied Harvey. “I can’t quite make it out, though, whether I saw him or not.”
Tom Edwards rolled into his bunk, and Harvey, stretching and yawning, began his watch. He didn’t dare tell Tom Edwards till long afterward; but he went off soundly to sleep once, some time later, and woke with a fearful start. What if he had been the one, after all, to upset their plans by his carelessness!
He stole cautiously out on deck, and tip-toed aft. He breathed a sigh of relief when there was no sign of the skiff. He hurried back to the forecastle and struck a match, to read the face of his watch. It was half-past twelve o’clock. He dared not trust himself, then, to return to his bunk, but crouched down at the foot of the companion ladder, with the sting of the night air in his face.
Suddenly a steady, creaking sound came to his ears. He started up and crawled to the top of the ladder. It was the sound of an oar. Then his heart gave a bound, as he heard voices through the fog.
“There she lies,” came the words in the voice of the mate. “I tells you, Mister Haley, I’s pretty extra good on findin’ my way ’bout this river. We’re goin’ to get a good day, all right, too. This wind be shiftin’ right; swingin’ round with the sun to the west by mornin’, sure’s you born.”
They came indistinctly into view of the boy, as he crouched in the companion-way, just peering over so he could see across the deck. The skiff scraped alongside. The two men sprang out, shaking the fog and wet from their coats. Harvey, still as though frozen to the spot, noted with joy that they did not fetch the skiff aboard, but made the painter fast near the stern. They hurried below, and a light gleamed in the cabin. It burned a few minutes, only. Then the vessel was in darkness again, save for the lantern in the foremast shroud, to warn any chance craft where they lay.
Harvey waited. The minutes seemed like hours. Fifteen minutes were ticked off by his silver time-piece; then fifteen more. It was a quarter past one o’clock when he stole back, shivering, and awoke Tom Edwards.
“Sh-h-h!” he warned. “Don’t speak. They’re here; turned in half an hour ago. Come on.”
They had no belongings to gather up; only their coats to button about them. They crept out on deck and stood for a moment, waiting and listening. There was no sound aboard the bug-eye. They darted quickly aft. Tom Edwards stepped nervously into the little skiff, Harvey following. Harvey cast off, took his seat astern, pushed away and began sculling.
Two rods off from the bug-eye, they could discern the thin lines of its masts and a dull blur that was its hull. Harvey gave a little murmur of exultation, and paused in his sculling. But the next moment he uttered a cry of surprise and alarm. He rose from his seat, and peered anxiously through the fog.
“What’s the matter? What is it, Jack?” asked Tom Edwards, almost breathless.
“Something’s coming!” exclaimed Harvey. “Don’t you hear that rushing sound? Oh, hang this fog! If it would only lift a little.”
Suddenly Harvey dropped to his seat and began plying the single oar in the scull-hole, with desperation. Then he sprang up again and gave a warning call as loud as he dared.
It was too late. Out of the fog and mist there rushed a craft – so swiftly that it was upon them before they had half seen it. It was a long, narrow canoe, with full sail set, the wind on its quarter, flying for the mouth of the river. Harvey had one fleeting glimpse of a man in the stern of the craft, springing up and uttering an exclamation of rage and fright. Then Harvey jumped from his own seat, literally tumbling over Tom Edwards.
The man at the stern of the fleeing canoe had jammed the helm hard down, at his first sight of the little skiff. But he could not clear it wholly. There was a crash and a splintering of wood; the skiff half upset, and took in nearly half a barrel of water. The main boom of the canoe swept across the skiff, knocking both its occupants into a heap.
The next thing they knew, the man at the stern of the canoe and another by the foremast were standing up, uttering maledictions upon the unfortunate victims of the collision.
“Help us! Don’t leave us! We’re sinking!” called Harvey, in desperation, as the canoe kept on its course. The only answer was a wrathful shake of his fist from the skipper of the canoe. Another moment, and it was gone.
Harvey and his companion, ankle-deep in water, scrambled up, and Harvey turned anxiously to the stern of the skiff. There was a hole there, and the boat seemed to be sinking under them. They stripped off their outer jackets, prepared to swim for their lives. But Harvey quickly reassured his comrade.
“It isn’t coming in very fast,” he said. “We can get back to the bug-eye, if we work lively. You take your hat and bail. I’ll jump her all I can.”
He gave a cry of dismay as he seized the oar, which was floating in the bottom of the skiff. The blow from the canoe had broken half the blade away. It was still of some use, but he could not make fast time with it.
Heartbroken and fearful of what awaited them, they turned the skiff in the direction whence the wind was blowing, and toiled with desperate energy. The water leaked steadily into the little craft, but Tom Edwards dashed it out by hat-fulls, as he had never worked in all his life – not even at the dredges under the eye of Jim Adams.
The bug-eye came more plainly into view. They neared it with quaking hearts. Already they could seem to hear the torrent of imprecation that awaited them from Haley and the mate, and could feel the hurt and pain of “dredging fleet law.”
To their amazement, silence reigned aboard the vessel. That silence was unbroken as they struggled up alongside. With not a sound aboard, they grasped the foot of a shroud and Harvey sprang noiselessly to the deck. Tom Edwards followed. Harvey took a quick turn with the painter. The half submerged skiff was made fast, where it had been before.
They fled along the deck, and down into the forecastle, on the wings of fear. Wet and exhausted, they tumbled into their bunks. It was some moments before either of them could find breath to speak.
“Oh, the brutes!” murmured Tom Edwards, after a time. “How could any human being do a thing like that? They left us to drown, Jack, and didn’t care.”
“Of course they did,” answered Harvey, “and good reason. I know why. Don’t you? Did you see the load they had aboard? They’d been lifting an oyster dump. Some fellow’ll find his week’s tonging of oysters gone, when he looks for them. They were poachers. They’d have killed us in a minute if we’d stood between them and getting away. Cheer up, old Tom. We’re in the greatest luck we’ve ever been in all our lives. Is your back cold? Well, how would it feel, think, if Haley had caught us? Did you ever hear Sam Black tell how he’s seen men rope’s-ended for trying to run away? Wait till Haley sees that skiff in the morning. You’ll be glad you’re alive. Never mind. We’ll escape yet. I’m going to sleep when I get these boots off.”
Captain Hamilton Haley, standing by the wheel, some hours later, when the sun had risen and the fog was lifting over the river, was not a pleasing object to behold. What he had to say about poachers and their ways and habits and carelessness would have warmed the water under the bug-eye, if it hadn’t been in the dead of winter. To have heard his outburst of indignation, over the evils of poaching and night sailing, would almost have convinced a listener that he was the most averse to that habit of any man in Chesapeake Bay. Also he berated Jim Adams, as much as he thought that gentleman would stand, for not bringing the skiff aboard.
Haley bargained for a new skiff that day, and gave Jim Adams another dressing down, – and Jim Adams took it out of the crew, for which Harvey and Tom Edwards were sorry – although they got their share. And so their night adventure passed into the history of the cruise; and there even came a time, long afterward, when the two laughed at it – that is, when they thought of Haley. The remembrance of their own fright remained, to dream of, for many a night.
Two days afterward, there happened one of those sudden, mysterious changes that told of the comradeship of a certain clique of the dredging captains, and of their facility for dodging trouble.
Down along the western shore a strange craft sailed up, and Haley took a man aboard from it; though not without some warm words with the strange captain. He seemed not to welcome the recruit. But he took him, and exchanged one of his own crew, the sailor, Sam Black, for the man. This latter recruit was a swarthy man, tall and muscular. His face was discoloured, as though by blows; and a long scar, freshly made, showed on the back of one hand and wrist. He obeyed Haley’s and the mate’s orders sullenly. Why he was aboard, none knew except the mate and captain. But it was plain enough, the captain of the other craft had wanted him out of the way.
