CHAPTER VI.--HARRY MEETS AN OLD FRIEND.
All at once, while he was still gazing at the column of smoke shoreward,Harry became aware of a figure coming out of the woods toward the beach.He shouted with all his might, and the man who had appeared from theundergrowth waved a reply.
Then his voice came over the water.
"What's up?"
The tone somehow was strangely familiar to Harry, and, for that matter,when he had first seen the figure of the newcomer it had struck him withan odd sense of familiarity. Suddenly he realized why this was.
"Ben Stubbs!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Ahoy, mate!" came back after a pause; "who are you?"
"Harry Chester!"
"By the great horn spoon! What the dickens are you doing out there?"
Cupping his hands to make his voice carry the better, Harry hailed backonce more.
"I drifted here on this hulk. Can you take me off?"
"Can I? Wait a jiffy."
Ben Stubbs--for it was actually the "maroon" whom the boys had rescuedfrom a miserable fate in the Nicaraguan treasure valley--began runningalong the shore as fast as his short legs would carry him. Presently hevanished around a wooded promontory, leaving Harry in a strange jumbleof feelings. What could the good-hearted old companion of several oftheir adventures be doing on this desolate island off the Maine coast?When they had last heard from him he had been running a tug boat line inNew York harbor, having purchased the business with the profits made outof the discovery of the treasure trove in the Sargasso Sea.
Before a great while the man who had so opportunely appeared came intoview once more This time he was in a skiff, rowing with strong strokestoward the stranded hulk of the _Betsy Jane_. Harry watched him witheager eyes. Fast as Ben Stubbs rowed, it seemed an eternity to theanxious boy before his strangely rediscovered friend reached the side ofthe grounded schooner.
When he did so he hastily made fast, and was up the gangway ladder threesteps at a time. Fortunately for his haste, the sea had diminished inroughness considerably, and the _Betsy Jane_ lay almost motionless onthe reef. Otherwise he would have stood a strong chance of being thrownfrom his footing. Harry was at the gangway as Ben Stubbs' weather-beatencountenance came into view at the top of the steps.
Ben seized the boy's hand in a grip that made Harry flinch, but hereturned it with as strong a clench as he could. For a moment both ofthem were too much overcome with emotion at the strange meeting to uttera word. It was Ben who spoke first.
"Waal, what under the revolving universe are you doing here?" hedemanded.
"I was about to ask the same question of you."
"It's a long story, boy, and you look just about played out. What hashappened? I never dreamed that you were even in this neighborhood."
"I guess the same thing applies to me, so far as you are concerned,Ben," rejoined Harry, between a laugh and a sob. "As for myself, I'vebeen adrift all night on this old hulk. Some rascals cut her loose fromher moorings at Brig Island."
"Wow! you've drifted all the way from there. Why, it's fifty miles ormore away."
"I know it. It seemed a million to me. What worries me is what theothers must be thinking. They won't know if I'm dead or alive."
"We'll find a way to let 'em know, never fear," struck in Ben in hisdeep, rumbling voice; "but I reckon you're hungry and thirsty?"
"Am I? Why, I could eat a horse without sauce or salt, as you used tosay."
"Then get in the skiff and come ashore. I've got a sort of a hut there.It ain't much of a place, but I've got enough to eat and a good springof clear water, and I can give you a suit of slops."
"But the schooner?" demanded Harry.
"She'll be all right, I reckon. She's lying on a sort of sandy ridgethat runs out here. The sea's gone down so that she won't do herself anyharm, and we can't do her any good right now. You see, the tide isfalling. When it rises we'll try to get her off and anchor her in asnugger berth."
Harry might have argued the point, but the prospect of food and drinkmade so strong an appeal to him that he did not stop to waste words.Five minutes later they were rowing ashore, and, while Ben bent to theoars with a will, Harry told him in detail all that happened since theycame to Brig Island, and the reason of their presence there. He knewthat he was safe in confiding in old Ben.
The relation of his story occupied the entire trip to the shore, andwhen Ben had beached his skiff he seized Harry by the arm and beganhurrying him up the beach toward a small hut, half canvas, half lumber,which stood back under the shelter of a low bluff. The boy wasdesperately anxious to learn the reason of Ben's presence on the island,for he knew it could have no ordinary cause. But the weather-beaten oldadventurer would not allow the boy to say another word till he hadclothed himself and eaten all he could put away of a rabbit stew washeddown with strong coffee.
"Now, then," remarked Ben, as soon as Harry had finished, "I supposeyou're a-dyin' to hear what I'm doin' on Barren Island, which is thename of this bit of land?"
"I am, indeed," declared Harry, shoving back the cracker box which hadserved him as a chair; "the last person in the world I would haveexpected to see when the _Betsy Jane_ grounded was Ben Stubbs."
Ben chuckled.
"Allers turnin' up, like a bad penny, ain't I?" he said, shoving somevery black tobacco into his old pipe. "'Member ther time I dropped outof the sky in thet dirigible balloon?"
"Well, I should say I did," laughed Harry; "but how you got here is pastmy comprehension. What became of the tug boat line?"
Ben snapped his fingers.
"All gone, my lad! Gone just like that! I reckon I'm not a good hand atbusiness, or the crooked tricks that answers for that same. Anyhow, tomake a long yarn a short one, I went on a friend's note and he dug out.That was blow number one. To meet that note I had to mortgage some of myboats, and in some way--blow me if I rightly understand it yet--I gotmyself in a hole whar' the lawyer fellers bled me till I was mighty neardry. I tried to struggle along, but it wasn't no go. Then came a strikeof tug boat hands and that finished me. I couldn't stand the long layoff without anything to do, so I sold out for what I could get, and--andhere I am."
"I'm mighty sorry to hear that you failed, Ben," said Harry with realsympathy in his tones, "but you haven't said yet what you are doing hereon Barren Island, as you call it."
"I'm a-gettin' to that, lad," said Ben, emitting a cloud of blue smoke;"give me time. As I told you, that feller on whose note I went,skedaddled. You see, I'd trusted him as my own brother, bein' as I knewhis father when I was a miner. He--that's this chap's father, I mean--wasa Frenchman, Raoul Duval was his name, and his son's name the same. Oldman Duval made his pile in Lower Californy and was makin' fer his homein New Orleans when ther steamer he was travelin' on blew up, and he andall his gold dust--a whalin' big lot of it--went to the bottom.
"I never calculated to hear anything more of Duval arter this, but oneday this young feller I've been tellin' you about shows up in New Yorkand hunts me up. He tells me that he's old Raoul's son, and that he'dhad a run of hard luck and so on, and wants to go into business, and if,for his father's sake, I'll help him out. I asks him how he found meout, and he says that in his father's letters home I had often beenmentioned, and that when he heard of the Stubbs Towing Line he madeinquiries and found that I was in all probability the same man.
"As I told you, I let him have the money. It don't matter just how much,but it was quite a bit. You see, I did it for the old man's sake. I wassorry afterward. Young Duval wasn't a chip of the old block at all. Hewas idle and dissipated. His business went under and he skipped out."
"Did you lend him this money without security of any sort?" asked Harryincredulously.
"In a way, yes. In another way, no. The young chap, when he came to me,had a wild story about knowing where the steamer on which his dad losthis life had sunk. He said that from letters written home before he leftLower Californy, he knew the old man was carrying with him, besides thedus
t, a fortune in black pearls. Of course, all these went down when thesteamer blew up. He had tried, he said, to get a lot of folks interestedin a scheme to get at the wreck and recover the dust and the pearls, butthey had all laughed at him. He said if I'd give him the money he wantedhe'd give me, in return, the plan of the location whar' the steamer wentdown."
"And did he?"
"Yes; but since he acted as he did I guess there's no more truth in hisyarn than there was in anything else he told me. Anyhow, I've neverbothered my head about the matter since."
"Have you got the plan?"
"Sure enough," Ben fumbled in his pocket, "here it is; it's a roughlydrawn thing, as you see, but I reckon if the ship was really there itwould be an easy matter to locate her bones."
Harry nodded. He was looking over the map with deep attention. It was,as Ben had said, a crudely drawn affair, and purported to have beensketched by one of the survivors of the wreck, who, of course, did notknow that in the returning miner's cabin there was so much wealth.
"How did young Duval get hold of this?" he asked at last.
"He said that by chance he met a man who was the lone survivor of thedisaster. This feller didn't know who Duval was, and began talking tohim about the wreck. Duval, recollecting that his father had carried asum that amounted to more than $75,000, was naturally interested. Heasked the man if he could draw him a sketch of the scene where thesteamer sank. The feller said he could, and that thar sketch is what hedrawed. At least that's Duval's story, and I'm frank to tell you I don'tbelieve a word of it."
"But still you haven't told me what you are doing on this island," saidHarry after an interval.
"That's so, too, lad. I got so interested in tellin' my troubles I cleanforgot about Barren Island. Well, it's this way. Arter the crash I feltashamed to show my face. Oh, all the creditors were paid up--every lastone of 'em. But I felt like I was an old failure, and good fer nuthin',so I remembered all of a sudden about this island that I'd been strandedon a good many years ago. I made inquiries and found that I could livehere rent free as long as I liked, with none to interfere, and so I camehere. It's quiet and might be lonesome to some folks, but it suits mewell enough, and I was calculatin' to spend the rest of my days here,till you came along. But I feel different now."
"How's that?" asked Harry, not knowing well just what to say to the oldman who took his business failure so much to heart.
"Why, I was watching you studyin' that map. I could see by yer face thatyou put some stock in Duval's yarn. Ain't that so?"
Harry could not but confess that it was. The old man's story, and themap, had aroused in him the strong desire for adventure that both BoyAviators possessed to a marked degree. Of course, from what Ben hadsaid, Duval did not appear to be a person on whom much reliance could beplaced, but then, again, there was the map, and it at least, even ifcrude, appeared to have been a genuine effort to mark the spot where thewreck lay. It showed a bayou marked "Black Bayou," running back from themain stream of the Mississippi. A black dot some distance up this bayouwas lettered "Belle of New Orleans," presumably the name of the steameron which Duval met his end.
The boy was still pondering over the map when, from seaward, there camea sound that made both Harry Chester and Ben Stubbs spring to theirfeet.
"It's a gun!" shouted the old man, as the booming echoes died away; "maybe a ship in distress."
"Hardly, in this weather," rejoined Harry, in a perplexed tone.
But Ben Stubbs had darted from the shanty and was running for thebeached skiff. A minute later Harry was close on his heels, andpresently they were pulling around the point, about to run into thesurprise of their lives.