CHAPTER XI. AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY
Two weeks had passed by. Craigie and French were in jail awaiting trial,and the sensational arrest had run its course in the papers. Messages hadsped here and there, and the police of many cities and towns werewatching day and night for the missing Chambers. But watchers' effortswere futile. If the sea had opened and swallowed him up, the man couldnot have disappeared more completely. Not one of the harbours along thecoast sighted him, nor did he run to any for shelter. It had come onstormy the morning he sailed away, and something like a gale had set inthe next night. So that there were some who believed it more than likelythat the yacht _Eagle_ had foundered, with only one man to handle her.
Be this as it may, yacht and man had utterly disappeared. Several timesit was thought she was sighted by some pursuer, but it always turned outto be some other craft. Chambers had made good his escape. And he aloneknew to what use he intended to put that freedom.
The bright August sun glared in through the canvas tent on a hotafternoon. It fell warm upon Tom, who, divested of his jersey and baredto the waist, stood in the centre of the tent, performing a series ofmovements with a pair of light wooden dumb-bells. A fine specimen ofsturdy young manhood was Tom, lithe and quick in action. A skin clear andsoft, bright eyes, muscles that knotted into relief when flexed androunded into nice proportion when relaxed, quick, decisive movements, alltold of athletics and an abstinence from pipes and tobacco.
"It's your turn," he said, presently, to Bob, after he had counted offseveral hundred numbers. Tossing his chum the dumb-bells, he slipped onhis jersey again, and, reclining at ease on one of the bunks, watched Bobgo through the same drill.
"Bob, I'm envious of you," he said. "You are blacker by several shadesthan I am. I'll have to take it out of you with the gloves."
"It's pretty hot," said Bob, "but come on."
"Heat doesn't bother a man when he is in training," said Tom. "It's theflabby fellows that get sun-strokes. Sun does one good when he's hardenedto it."
He fished out a pair of old boxing-gloves, that looked as though they hadseen hard service, from the chest, and then he and Bob went at it, asthough they had been the most bitter enemies, instead of the mostinseparable of friends. They led and countered and pummelled each othertill the perspiration poured down their faces and they had begun tobreathe hard.
"Time!" cried Tom. "That's enough for to-day. I think you had just ashade the better of it, old chap. Now let's cool off in the canoe. Youknow what's on the programme this afternoon."
"I should say I did," answered Bob; "and I'll be hungry enough for it bythe time things are ready."
They carried their canoe down to the shore, and in a moment were paddlingdown the island toward the narrows. But they were not destined to goalone. Turning a point of ledge some little distance below Harvey's camp,they came all at once upon Arthur and Joe Warren, walking along thebeach.
"Take us in there, Tom," cried Joe.
"I can take one of you," answered Tom, pointing the canoe inshore with aturn of his paddle.
Arthur caught the end of the canoe as it came up alongside a ledge onwhich the boys stood, and steadied the frail craft.
"Might as well let us both in," he said. "The more the merrier."
"The more the riskier, too," said Tom; "but if you fellows will take thechance of a ducking, I'm willing. Water won't spoil anything I've got on.Climb in easy, now, and sit cross-legged, so if we tip over you'll slideout head-first, clear of the thwarts."
The canoe was brought to within nearly an inch of the water's edge by theaddition of the two to its burden. Tom gave a strong push with hispaddle, and the heavily laden craft glided away from the shore.
There was an extra paddle, which Arthur wielded after a fashion, and itdid not take long to come within sight of the narrows. There upon theshore were gathered some fifty or sixty persons. Over against a ledge afire of driftwood blazed. When they had gotten in nearer they could see asmaller fire at a little distance from the other. Over this was hung amonster iron kettle, and bending over it and superintending the cookingof its contents was a familiar figure. It was Colonel Witham, and he wasmaking one of his famous chowders.
At the same time that the occupants of the canoe discerned the colonel,he in turn espied them, and also noted a circumstance which they did not.A half-mile or more distant from them a big, ocean-going tugboat waspassing down the bay, without a tow and under full steam.
"There come those mischief-makers," said the colonel, muttering tohimself. "I'm blessed if the canoe isn't filled with them. If there's aninch of that canoe out of water, there's no more." Then, as he noted thetug steaming past, an idea came to him that made him chuckle.
"Kicks up a big sea, that craft does,--as much as a steamboat," he said."Perhaps they'll see it and perhaps not. If they don't just let one ofthose waves catch them unawares. There'll be a spill." The colonel,chuckling with great satisfaction, went on stirring the chowder.
The possibility of a wave from a chance steamer had, indeed, not beenthought of by Tom or any of the others. The water was motionless allabout them, but rolling in rapidly toward them were a series of waves bigenough to cause trouble, if they did but know it.
The colonel watched the unequal race between the waves and theheavily-laden canoe with interest. He looked out at them every otherminute from the corner of his eye. He was afraid lest others on shoreshould see their danger and warn them.
"Let them spill over," he said. "They can all swim like fish, and aducking will do them good." So he stirred vigorously, watching them allthe while.
"That stuff won't need any pepper if he cooks it," remarked young Joe,looking ahead at the colonel.
"Lucky for us it's not his own private picnic," said Tom, "or weshouldn't get much of it. Even as it is, it sort of takes my appetiteaway to see him stirring that chowder."
"I'll risk your appetite--" The words were hardly out of Arthur's mouthwhen precisely what Colonel Witham had been hoping for came to pass. Allat once Tom, seated in the stern, saw the water suddenly appear to dropdown and away from the canoe. The canoe was for an instant drawn back,then lifted high on the ridge of a wave and thrown forward, with a sharptwist to one side. Tom gave one frantic sweep with his paddle, in aneffort to swing the canoe straight before the wave, but it was too late.The canoe was overloaded, and as the weight of the four boys was thrownsuddenly to one side the sensitive thing lost its equilibrium andcapsized.
In a moment the four boys were struggling in the water. Thanks to Tom'sprecaution, they all went out headforemost, and came to the surface clearof the canoe, blowing and sputtering. A cry went up from the shore, andfor a moment Colonel Witham was seized with a sudden fear. What if any ofthem should be drowned, and he, to vent a petty spite, had given nowarning? In his excitement he failed to notice that he had spilled somepepper into the ladle which he held in one hand.
Two rowboats were hastily started out from the beach, and, impelled bystrong arms, surged toward the canoe.
Tom was prompt to act. He and Bob had had many a drill at this sort ofthing. Each of the boys was a good swimmer, and soon they were allclinging to the canoe, which had completely overturned. The boys were inabout the same positions as they had occupied in the canoe, Tom at oneend, Bob at the other, and the other two clinging each to one side.
"Quick, boys, let's right her before the boats get here," cried Tom.
Under his directions the two Warren boys now took their positions both onthe same side of the canoe, with himself and Bob at the ends. Then allfour took long breaths, treaded water vigorously, and lifted. The canoerose a little and rolled over sluggishly, two-thirds full of water.
While the others supported it, Tom bailed the canoe nearly dry with abailing-dish, which he always kept tied to a thwart for just such anemergency. Then he climbed in over one end, and Bob followed over theother. The Warren boys clung to the gunwales until one of the boats fromthe shore pi
cked them up. The paddles were recovered for Tom and Bob, andthe three craft proceeded to shore.
There, stretching themselves out on the hot sands before the blaze, theywaited for their clothing to dry on them. They were much liked by theboys and girls of the village, and were at once a part of a jolly group,each of which party had a separate detail to recount in the capsizing ofthe canoe as they had seen it.
All at once the picnickers were startled by a howl of rage from ColonelWitham. All eyes were turned upon him. He was executing the mostextraordinary contortions and dance-steps that could be imagined. AnIndian chief, excelling all his tribe at a war-dance, could not haveoutdone the grotesque movements of the colonel.
"What ails the man?" cried Captain Sam. "He must have gone clean crazy."And he started for the colonel on the run.
But before he could reach him another accident happened. In his dancingabout, the colonel trod most unexpectedly on a small log of wood, hisheels flew out from under him, and down he came with a mighty splash in alittle pool of sea-water that had been left in a hollow of rock by thelast receding tide.
There the colonel lay, like an enormous turtle, helpless for a momentwith rage and astonishment, and all the while sputtering fiercely andcrying out.
"What on earth ails you, colonel?" asked Captain Sam, hurrying to hisassistance. "You haven't gone crazy, have you?" And he helped the colonelto his feet with a great effort.
"Pepper!" roared the purple-faced colonel. "Pepper!"
"Pepper!" cried Captain Sam. "What about pepper?"
"Everything about it!" sputtered the colonel. "It's in the chowder! Tasteit and see."
"What's that?" cried Captain Sam. "If those young scamps have pepperedthe chowder I'll thrash every one of them myself. Here, let me see," and,picking up the ladle which the colonel had dropped, he cautiously tastedthe chowder.
"Why, there's no pepper in it," he said. "It's just right. I don't tasteany pepper."
As, indeed, he did not, the colonel having got it all.
"You must have a strong imagination, colonel," he said.
"Imagination!" bellowed the colonel. "Imagination! I just wish yourtongue was stuck full of a million red-hot needles and your mouth wasfilled with hornets, that's all I wish. Where's the boy that put thatpepper into that spoon? Where is he? Show him to me and I'll make anexample of him right here. I'll put him head first into the chowder bythe heels."
As no one had put the pepper into the ladle, no culprit could be found toshow to the colonel; and as the colonel could not select a victim out ofa score or more of boys who were present, he could only vent his rage tono purpose, while the villagers, who had laughed themselves nearly sickover the colonel's antics, gave him what sympathy they could feign.
It ended in the colonel's taking himself off in a great fury, declaringthat any one who pleased could make the chowder, and he hoped it wouldchoke them all, and that fish-bones innumerable would stick in thethroats of whoever ate it.
The colonel's departure, however, far from putting any damper on theoccasion, seemed rather to afford the party a relief; and his mishap madeno small part of their amusement, as they went on with the preparationsfor the feasting.
Captain Sam, who could turn his hand to anything, took the position leftvacant by the colonel, and declared he could bring the chowder tocompletion in a way vastly superior to the colonel's. And indeed it was adecided improvement in the appearance of things to see the good-naturedcaptain standing over the steaming kettle and cracking jokes with everypretty girl that went by.
The preparations for the clambake went merrily on. A huge pile ofdriftwood was brought up from the shore and heaped on the fire by theledge. There were pieces of the spars of vessels, great junks ofshapeless timber that had once been ship-knees and pieces of keels,timbers that had drifted down from the mills away up the river, nowthrown up on shore after miles and miles of aimless tossings, and cratesand boxes that had gone adrift from passing steamers and come in withweeks of tides. The flames consumed them all with a fine roaring andcrackling, and, dying down at length after an hour or two, left at awhite heat beneath the ashes a bed of large flat rocks that had beencarefully arranged.
Several of the boys, with brooms made of tree branches, swept the hotstones clean of ashes; clean as an oven they made it. Then they broughtbarrels of clams, big fat fellows, with the blue yet unfaded from theirshells, and poured them out on the hot stones, whence there arose atremendous steaming and sizzling.
Quickly they pitched damp seaweed over the clams, from a stack heapednear, covering them completely to the depth of nearly a foot. Then onthis, wherever they saw the steam escaping, they shovelled the cleancoarse gravel of the beach, so that the great broad seaweed oven wasnearly air-tight.
Then they heaped the hot ashes in a mound and buried therein potatoes andcorn with the thick green husks left on it.
The women, meantime, had not been idle, for in a grove that skirted thebeach they had spread table-cloths on the long tables that always stoodthere, winter and summer, fastened into the ground with stakes drivenfirm. If all that great steaming bed of clams and the chowder in themammoth kettle had suddenly vanished or burned up, or had some othercatastrophe destroyed it, there would still have been left a feast for anarmy in what was spread on the snowy tables from no end of fat-lookingbaskets.
There were roast chickens and ducks, sliced cold meats, and countrysausages. There were pies enough to make a boy's head swim,--apple,mince, pumpkin, squash, berry, custard, and lemon,--in and out of season;chocolate cakes and raisin cakes and cakes of all sizes and forms. Therewere preserves and pickles and a dozen and one other messes from countrycupboards, for the good housewives of Grand Island were generous souls,and used to providing for a hearty lot of seafaring husbands and sons andbrothers, and, moreover, this picnic at the Narrows was a yearly event,for which they made preparation long ahead, and looked forward to almostas much as they did to Christmas and New Year.
Never were tables more temptingly spread, and when, late in theafternoon, the benches around these tables were filled with expectant andhungry picnickers, it was a sight worth going miles to see.
Captain Sam pronounced the chowder done, and the great kettle, hung froma stout pole, was borne in triumph by him and Arthur Warren to the grovenear the tables. Somebody else pronounced the clams done, and the gravelwas carefully scraped off from the seaweed, and the seaweed lifted fromthe clams, and the great stone oven with its steaming contents laid bare.The very fragrance from it was a tonic.
Bowls of the chowder and big plates of the clams were carried to thetables. There were dishes of the hot corn piled high; potatoes that cameto table black as coals, and which, being opened, revealed themselveswhite as newly popped corn. There was a mingled odour of foods, pipinghot, and over all the grateful aroma from half a dozen coffee-pots.
"Cracky! do they expect us to eat all this?" exclaimed young Joe, as hesurveyed the prospect. "I wonder where it is best to begin--and what toleave out."
"Don't try to eat it all, Joe," said Arthur. "Give somebody else achance, too. You know the night you went to Henry Burns's party you ateso many nuts and raisins you woke up dreaming that somebody was trying totie you into a square knot, and when you got fully awake you wishedsomebody would, and I had to get up and pour Jamaica ginger into you.Don't try to eat more than enough for three ordinary persons this time,Joe, and you'll be all right."
Young Joe tried to smile, with a slice of chicken in one hand and aspoonful of preserves in the other, and a mouthful of both. Hisreputation at the table had been made long before that day, and had goneabroad, and here was the opportunity of a lifetime, for everygood-hearted motherly-looking housewife within reaching distance waspassing him food.
"I hope there's a seat for me," said Henry Burns, who came hurrying up.He and George Warren had made the run down the island on bicycles.
"Come on, both of you," cried the crowd. "There's always room for you,"and made places for them at once.
"It seems too bad not to invite those other campers up on the shore,"said one of the women. "I'm sure they haven't had anything as good asthis for all summer."
"What! Harvey's crew?" queried a chorus of voices, in astonishment."Well, you don't live near enough to where they are camping to bebothered by them. If you did, you wouldn't want them."
"We don't mind some kind of jokes so much," continued one of thevillagers, at which Tom and Bob and Henry Burns and the Warren boys triedto look unconscious, "but when it comes to taking things that don'tbelong to them and continually creating a disturbance, we think it isgoing a little too far. Perhaps it might do them good to get them overhere and repay them with kindness, but some of us are not just in themood for trying it."
"Besides," said another, "it's too late now, if we wanted to, for I sawthem starting out about half an hour ago in their yacht, and wonderedwhere they could be trying to go, with wind enough to barely stir them.Some mischief, like as not, they're up to. No good errand, I'll bebound."
Which was quite true.
However, in most surprising contradiction to the speaker's assertion,there suddenly appeared along the shore Harvey and all his crew, walkingclose to the water's edge, but plainly to be seen.
"Well, those boys must have changed their minds quickly," said the manwho had spoken before. "It is not more than half an hour, surely, since Isaw them all starting out in the yacht. I guess they found there was notenough wind."
Perhaps, however, there had been wind enough for the purpose of Harveyand his crew. There was enough, at all events, to carry them up past thevillage and back again to their mooring-place. If they had had any objectin doing that, there had been wind enough to satisfy them. They seemed,moreover, in high spirits when they returned from this brief voyage, andlaughed heartily as they made the yacht snug for the night.
Now they went whistling past the picnic party, all of them in line, andwent down along the shore till they were lost to view in the woods.
"Hope they're not going down my way," said some one. "They're up toaltogether too much mischief around here; that is, I know well enoughit's them, but I can't ever succeed in catching them at it. I'd make ithot for them if I could."
But Harvey and his crew had surely no designs on the property of any onedown the island, for they had not gone far in the grove of woods beforeHarvey called a halt, and they all sat down and waited. It was rapidlygrowing dusk, and they waited until it had grown quite dark. Then theyarose, cut across through the grove toward the Narrows again, but keepingout of sight all the while, both of chance villagers who might be passingalong the road, and of the crowd about the picnic fire.
When they had come to the Narrows, Harvey again called a halt, and stoleahead to see if the coast was clear. The island was a narrow strip ofland here, with the bay on either hand coming in close to the roadway,but by keeping close to the water's edge, and dodging behind some lowcedars, provided the campers were all about the fire, they might passunobserved. This they managed successfully, for, the driftwood firehaving been renewed, the picnic party were seated about it, singing andtelling stories.
Harvey and his crew went on up through the woods to their own camp, wheretwo of them remained, while Harvey and George Baker and Allan Hardingtook their yacht's tender and rowed rapidly on up toward the town. Afterthey had started, Joe Hinman and Tim Reardon stole down through the woodsagain, and kept watch for a long time on the group about the fire. Theydid not return to their camp till the sound of a horn, some hour and ahalf later, signified to them that Harvey and the others had returnedfrom their mission, whatever it was.
The driftwood fire began to blaze low as the evening wore on, and by nineo'clock the greater number of the picnickers had said "Good night" andstarted on their journey home. Some of them had come from away down atthe foot of the island, and still others from the little settlement atthe head. These now harnessed in their horses, which had been allowed tofeed near the grove, and drove away, their flimsy old wagons rattlingalong the road like so many wrecks of vehicles.
Around the fire, however, there still lingered a group of fishermen andvillage folk, telling stories and gossiping over their pipes.
"I wonder whatever became of that fellow Chambers," said one. "He was theslickest one of the lot, so that Detective Burton said. Do you recall howhe sailed away that morning, as cool as you please, with the pistolspopping all around his head?"
The subject had never ceased to be the one great topic of interest in thevillage of Southport.
"I reckon he'll never be seen around these parts again," remarkedanother. "Like as not he's up in Long Island Sound long before this. Ormaybe the yacht's hauled up somewhere, and he's got clear out of thecountry. There's no telling where those fellows will travel to, ifthey're put to it, according to what I read in the papers."
"It's mighty mysterious," said Captain Sam. "For my part, I think it'squeer nobody's sighted him somewhere along the coast. A man don't sailfor days without somebody seeing him. He ought to be heard from alongPortland way, that is, if he ever left this bay, which I ain't so sureof, after all."
This remark seemed to amuse most of the group.
"Seems as though you expected you might see him and that crack yacht somenight sailing around here like the _Flying Dutchman_," said one, at whichthe others took their pipes out and chuckled. "You'll have to get outyour old _Nancy Jane_ and go scouring the bay after him, Cap'n Sam. If heever saw her coming after him, he'd haul down his sail pretty quick andinvite you to come aboard."
"Well," replied Captain Sam, good-naturedly, "there's no accounting forthe strange things of the sea, as you ought to know, Bill Lewis, with thedeep-water voyages you've been on. Still, I'm free to say I don't see howthat 'ere craft can have got out of here and gone clear up Boston way orNew York, without so much as a sail being sighted by all them as has beenwatching for her. I don't try to explain where he may be, but I stick tomy idea that there's something mighty queer about it."
"He may be at the bottom of this 'ere bay," said the man addressed asBill Lewis. "Stranger things than that have happened, and he was but oneman in a big boat on a coast he couldn't have known but little of.There's many a reef for him to hit in the night, and the day he escapedwas stormy. For that matter, I give it up, too. He was a slick one,that's all I can say."
And so they rolled this strange and mysterious bit of gossip over, whilethe fire burned to coals and the coals died away to ashes.
"Tom," said Bob, as they launched the canoe from the shelving beach sometime after ten o'clock, "it's too glorious a night to go right home tobed. What do you say to a short paddle, just a mile or so out in the bay,to settle that terrible mixture of pie and clams that we've eaten? We'llsleep all the sounder for it."
"Perhaps 'twill save our lives," replied Tom. "I ate more than I've eatenin the last week. Let's take it easy, though. I don't feel like hardwork."
So they paddled leisurely out for about a mile, enjoying the brilliantstarlight and watching the dark waters of the bay flash into gleams ofphosphoric fire at every stroke of the paddle. It was like an enchantedjourney, gliding along through the still night, amid pools of sparklinggems.
It was nearing eleven when they drove the bow of their canoe in gentlyupon the sand at their landing-place and stepped out upon the shore.
"One, two, three--pick her up," said Tom, as each grasped a thwart of thecanoe, ready to swing it up on to their shoulders. Up it came, fairly onto the shoulders of Bob, who had the bow end, but Tom, who never fumbledat things, seemed somehow to have made a bad mess of it. His end of thecanoe dropped clumsily to the ground, twisting Bob's head uncomfortablyand surprising that young gentleman decidedly.
"What's the matter, Tom?" he asked, laughing good-naturedly, as he turnedto his companion. But Tom for a moment answered never a word. He stoodstaring ahead like one in a dream. Bob, amazed, looked in the samedirection.
"Bob," whispered Tom, huskily, "do you see--it's gone--it isn't there. Doyou see--the camp--
the old tent--it's gone, as sure as we're standinghere."
They rushed forward to where the tent had been but a few hours beforethat afternoon, and stood there dismayed. There in the open air weretheir bunks, their camp-stools, their camp-kit, and the great chest; butthe tent that had sheltered them had disappeared. Around about the spotwere holes where the stakes that had held it had been hastily wrenchedout, but not a scrap of canvas nor a piece of rope that had guyed it wereto be seen. Only the poles that had been its frame lay upon the ground.Their tent had utterly vanished.