Rick Dale, A Story of the Northwest Coast Part 13

"Go up on that point, you foremast hand--I can't remember your thundering name--and watch the cutter while me and the mate eats. After that one of us 'll relieve ye. Ef she moves, or even shows black smoke, you let me know, d'ye hear?"

Wishing to rebel, but not daring to, and feeling that he should surely starve if kept from his breakfast many minutes longer, Alaric obeyed this order. He managed to secure a couple of hard biscuit with which to comfort his lonely watch, and then Bonny set him ash.o.r.e.

Picking up his bag and carrying it with him, the boy clambered to the point, and, selecting a place from which he could plainly see the cutter, began his watch, at the same time munching his dry biscuit with infinite relish. Much of the water intervening between him and the cutter was hidden from view by near-by undergrowth, and the necessity for scanning it never occurred to him.

After a while Bonny came to relieve him and allow him to go to breakfast.

"Have you really made up your mind to desert the ship?" asked the young mate, noticing that Alaric had his bag with him.

"Yes, I really have," answered the other; "and you will come with me, won't you, Bonny?"

"I don't know," replied the latter, undecidedly. "Somehow I can't make it seem right to desert Captain Duff and leave him in a fix. Seems to me we ought to stay with him until he gets back to Victoria, anyway.

Besides, I'd lose my wages, and there must be nearly thirty dollars due me by this time. But you go along to your breakfast, and after that we'll talk it all over. Haven't seen anything, have you?"

"No, not a sign, but--h.e.l.lo! What's that?"

"Caught, as sure as you're born!" cried Bonny, in a tone of suppressed excitement.

Then, the two lads, peering through the bushes, watched a boat, flying the flag of the United States Revenue Marine and filled with st.u.r.dy bluejackets, enter the cove and dash alongside the smuggler _Fancy_.

CHAPTER XV

CAPTURED BY A REVENUE-CUTTER

The sight of that armed boat making fast to the sloop, and its agile occupants springing on board, was so startling to the two lads taking in its every detail from their point of vantage on sh.o.r.e, that if excitement could have affected Alaric Todd's heart it would certainly have done so at that moment. As it was, he did not even realize that his heart was beating unusually fast. His mind was too full of other thoughts just then for him to remember that he had a heart. He only realized that the vessel of which he had formed the crew had fallen into the clutches of outraged law, and that for the present at least her career as a smuggler was at an end. Now that she was really captured, he was conscious of a regret that after successfully eluding her enemies so long she should, after all, fall into their hands. He even felt sorry for Captain Duff, surly old bear that he was.

At the same time he was thankful not to be on board the captured craft, and rejoiced in the thought that this sudden change of affairs would sweep away all Bonny's scruples, and leave him free to seek some occupation other than that of being a smuggler.

As for that young sailor himself, his feelings were equally contradictory with those of his companion, though his sympathies leaned more decidedly towards the side of the law-breaker.

"Poor Cap'n Duff!" he exclaimed, in a low tone. "This is tough luck for him; and I must say, Rick Dale, that the whole thing is pretty much your fault, too. If you'd kept a half-way decent lookout you'd have seen that yawl when she was two miles off. Then we could have got under way, and given her the slip as easy as you please. Now you and I have lost our job, while Cap'n Duff will lose his and his boat besides. I'll never see my wages, either; and, worst of all, in spite of my invention working so smooth, these revenue fellows have got the laugh on us. I say it's too bad, though to be sure it does let us out of the smuggling business. I expect it will be a long time, though, before I get another job as first mate, or any other kind of a job that will be worth having."

"But, Bonny," interposed Alaric, anxious to defend his own reputation, "I wasn't told to look out for boats, but only to watch the cutter, and I hardly took my eyes off of her until you came."

"That's all right; only by the time you've knocked round the world as much as I have you'll find out that any fellow who expects to get promoted has got to do a heap of things besides those he's told to do.

What he is told to do is generally only a hint of what he is expected to do. But just listen to the old man. Isn't he laying down the law to those chaps, though?"

The voices of those on the sloop came plainly to the ears of the hidden lads, and above them all roared and bellowed that of Captain Duff, as though he expected to overwhelm his enemies by sheer force of bl.u.s.ter.

"Chinamen!" he shouted--"Chinamen! No, sir, you won't find no Chinamen about this craft, nor nothing else onlawful.

"Smell 'em, do ye? Smell 'em! So do I now, and hev ever sence you revenooers come aboard. Seems like ye can't get the parfume out of your clothing.

"Going to seize the sloop anyway, be ye? Wal, ye kin do it, seeing as I'm all alone and a cripple. There'll come a day of reckoning, though--a day of reckoning, d'ye hear? I'm a free-born American citizen, and I'll protest agin this outrage till they hear me clear to Washington."

"He's heard over a good part of Washington this minute," whispered Bonny. "But what are they talking about now?"

"Phil Ryder!" the captain was shouting. "Philip Ryder! No, sir, there ain't no one of that name aboard this craft, nor hain't ever been as I know of. I did know a Phil Ryder once, but--What's that ye say? That'll do? Wa'l, it won't do, ye gold-mounted swab, not so long as I choose to keep on talking. Look out there, or I'll brain ye sure as guns! Look out, I--"

This last exclamation was directed to a couple of st.u.r.dy bluejackets, who, obeying a significant nod from their officer, seized the irate captain by either arm, hustled him down into his own cabin, and drew the slide. Then leaving these two aboard the _Fancy_, the others re-entered their boat and began to pull towards sh.o.r.e, with the evident intention of making a search for the missing members of the sloop's crew as well as for her recent pa.s.sengers.

"h.e.l.lo!" cried Bonny, softly, "this thing is beginning to get rather too interesting for us, and the sooner we light out the better."

So the lads started on a run, and had gone but a few rods when Alaric, catching his toe on a projecting root, was tripped up and fell heavily.

With such force was he flung to the ground that for several minutes he was too sick and dizzy to rise. When he finally regained his feet, and expressed a belief that he could again run, it was too late. The boat's crew were already scattering through the woods, and one man detailed to search the point was coming directly towards the place where the boys were concealed.

It seemed inevitable that they should be discovered, and Alaric, already giving himself up for lost, was beginning to see visions of the government prison on MacNeil's Island, when Bonny spied one avenue of escape that was still open to them.

"Scrooch low!" he whispered, "and follow me as softly as you can."

Alaric obeyed, and the young sailor began to move as rapidly as possible towards the beach. With inexcusable carelessness the lieutenant had left his boat hauled up on the sh.o.r.e without a man to guard her. Bonny noticed this, and also that the sloop's dinghy still lay where he had left it. If they could only reach the dinghy un.o.bserved they would stand a much better chance of making an escape by water than by land.

So the boys crept cautiously through the undergrowth without attracting the attention of their only near-by pursuer, until they reached the beach, where a cleared s.p.a.ce of about one hundred feet intervened between them and their coveted goal, and this they must cross, exposed to the full view of any who might be looking that way. They paused for an instant, drew long breaths, and then made a dash into the open.

Almost with the first sound of rattling pebbles beneath their feet came a yell from behind. The bluejacket had discovered them, and was leaping down the steep slope in hot pursuit.

"Run, Rick! You've got to run!" panted Bonny. "Give me the bag."

s.n.a.t.c.hing the canvas bag from Alaric's hand as he spoke, the active young fellow darted ahead and flung it into the dinghy. "Now shove!" he cried. "Shove, with all your might!"

It was all they could do to move the boat, for the tide had fallen sufficiently to leave it hard aground, and with their first straining shove they only gained a couple of feet; the next put half her length in the water, and with a third effort she floated free.

"Tumble in!" shouted Bonny, and Alaric obeyed literally, pitching head foremost across the thwarts with such violence that but for his comrade's hold on the opposite side the boat would surely have been capsized.

With the water above his knees, Bonny gave a final shove that sent the boat a full rod from sh.o.r.e, and in turn tumbled aboard.

He was none too soon; for at that moment the sailor reached the spot they had just left, and, rushing into the water, began to swim after them with splendid overhand strokes. Bonny s.n.a.t.c.hed up the dinghy's single oar, and, seeing that they would be overtaken before he could get the boat under way, brandished it like a club, threatening to bring it down on the man's head if he came within reach.

A single glance at the lad's resolute face convinced the swimmer that he was in dead earnest, and realizing his own helplessness, he wisely turned back. Then with a shout of derision Bonny began to scull the dinghy towards open water, while the sailor strove with unavailing efforts to launch the heavy yawl.

Without troubling themselves any further about him, the lads turned their attention to the sloop, which they were now approaching. The two men left in charge had watched with great interest the scene just enacted so close to them, but in which, having no boat at their disposal, they were unable to partic.i.p.ate. Now one of them shouted: "Come aboard here, you young villains! What do you mean by running off with government property?"

"What do you mean by eating my breakfast?" replied Alaric, hungrily, as he noticed the men making a hearty meal off the food they had discovered in the sloop's galley.

"Your breakfast, is it, son? So you belong to this craft, do you? Come aboard and get it, then."

"Don't you wish we would?" retorted Bonny, jeeringly, as he stopped sculling and allowed the dinghy to drift just beyond reach from the sloop. "I say, though, you might toss us a couple of hardtack."

"What? Feed you young pirates with rations that's just been seized by the government? Not much. I'm in the service, I am."

Just then a bright object flashed from one of the little round cabin windows and fell in the dinghy. It was a box of sardines. Tins of potted meat, mushrooms, and other delicacies followed in quick succession. One or two fell in the water and were lost; but most of them reached their destination, and were deftly caught by Alaric, whose baseball experience was thus put to practical use. So before the bewildered guards fully realized what was taking place the dinghy was fairly well provisioned.

At length one of them seemed to comprehend the situation, and sprang in front of the open port just in time to stop with his legs a flying tumbler of raspberry jam. As it broke and streamed down over his white duck trousers the boys in the dinghy shouted with laughter, and nearly rolled overboard in their irrepressible mirth.

All at once there came a hoa.r.s.e shout from the same cabin port. "Look astarn, ye lubbers! Look astarn!"

So occupied had the lads been with the sloop that they had given no thought to what might be taking place on sh.o.r.e, but at this warning a startled glance in that direction filled them with dismay.