The Adventure Club Afloat Part 29

They found the other members of the expedition in various states of coma induced by a hearty dinner and lack of sleep, but they were all wide awake when Steve announced the result of the visit to the lawyer.

"Gee!" exclaimed "Brownie." "A thousand dollars! He's fooling, isn't he?

Why, I thought we'd get maybe three hundred!"

"A thousand isn't a cent too much," said Perry. "Come to think of it, fellows, I earned that much myself!"

"Just a minute, fellows," said Steve, interrupting the jeers that greeted Perry's statement. "What are we going to do with the money when we get it?"

There was a moment of silence. Then Tom Corwin inquired: "Do with it?

How do you mean, do with it, Steve? I thought it would be divided up pro rata."

"Of course," agreed Cas and Ossie in unison.

"Wait a minute," said Phil. "Steve's got something on his mind. Let's hear it."

Steve swung himself to the porch rail and faced the half-circle of boys.

"It's just an idea," he began, "and if you don't like it you've only got to say so. As I look at it, fellows, this club has been a good deal of a success. If we haven't had any whopping big adventures, we've had some mild ones--"

"Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!" muttered Han. "What do you call adventures?"

Steve smiled and went on, "At any rate, we've had a whole lot of fun. At least, I have." He looked about him inquiringly.

"You bet we have!" answered Joe heartily, and the rest echoed him.

"Of course, we got the club up just for this Summer, I suppose, but I don't see any reason why we shouldn't make it a--a permanent affair."

"Bully!" exclaimed Perry. "Second the motion!"

"Sit down!" growled Wink.

"There's next Summer coming, fellows. We could do something like this again if we wanted to. We needn't make a trip in motor-boats, but we could do something just as good. Well, now, why not take this money when we get it and stow it away in the Club treasury instead of spending it? Then we'd have enough to do almost anything we liked next year. If we each got our seventy-seven dollars, or whatever the shares might be, we'd have it spent in a month and never know where it got to. But if we put it in the bank at interest we'd--we'd have something. If you don't like the scheme, just say so. I'm willing to do whatever the rest of you say, only I thought--"

"It's a corking idea," declared Harry Corwin enthusiastically. "You're dead right, Steve, too. Seventy-seven dollars would last about two weeks with me. Why hang it, I've had it spent ten times already, and each time for some fool thing I didn't really want! I say, let's keep the Club going, fellows, and put the money in the treasury. And let Phil deposit it in a bank. At four per cent, or whatever it is banks pay you, it would come to nearly--nearly thirty dollars by next Summer. And thirty dollars would buy us gasoline for a month!"

"Right you are," agreed Wink. "We'll make a real club of it."

"How about the rest of you?" asked Steve.

The others were all in favour, although Perry couldn't quite smother a sigh of regret for the cash in hand he had dreamed of, and there followed an enthusiastic discussion of plans for next Summer, and Bert Alley echoed the sentiment of all when he remarked regretfully that next Summer was an awfully long way off! Ossie made the suggestion that it might be a good plan to reimburse the members from the salvage money for what sums they had expended on the present cruise, explaining, however, that he wasn't particular on his own account. The question was argued and finally decided in the negative. As Phil put it, what they had spent would have been spent in any case, whether they had gone on the cruise or stayed at home, and they had all received full value for their contributions. Still planning, they went back to the boats and spent the rest of the afternoon in cleaning them up inside and out, for both the _Adventurer_ and the _Follow Me_ had been sadly neglected for the past forty-eight hours.

Being persons of wealth, they supped ash.o.r.e and went to a moving picture show, and afterwards, since no one had had his full allowance of sleep for the past two nights, "hit the hay," in Perry's phraseology, in short order and slept like so many logs until sun-up.

"I wish," remarked Han at breakfast the next morning, "that we were just starting out instead of going home."

"Me too," agreed Perry. "It'll be all over in two or three days, and I'll have to go back to school again. I suppose," he added sadly, "I shan't see any of you fellows again until next Summer; no one but Ossie, that is."

"You don't have to look at me if you don't want to," said Ossie, reaching backward into the galley for the coffee-pot. "I'm not particular."

"You'll see us before Summer," replied Steve. "I've been thinking."

"So that's it," murmured Joe. "I thought maybe you just--um--hadn't slept well."

"If we're going to keep the Club together," continued Steve, treating the interruption disdainfully, "we've got to keep in touch with each other. Suppose now we have a meeting about Christmas time, during vacation."

"Good scheme!" applauded Phil.

"I think so. My idea is to keep out about thirty dollars of that money, or take it out later, I suppose, and have a feed somewhere, a sort of Annual Banquet of the Adventure Club of America, not Incorporated. We could hold a business meeting first and then feed our faces and talk over this Summer's fun and have a jolly old time. What do you say! Pa.s.s the sugar, Han."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "They offer you--" Mr. Hyatt leaned forward in the protesting chair]

They said many things, but they were all in praise of the idea, and later the _Follow Me's_ contingent was quite as enthusiastic, and Steve, in his official capacity of Number One, finally found a calendar and solemnly announced that Sat.u.r.day, the twenty-third day of December, was the date, that the hour was six o'clock, post meredian, and that the place would be decided on later. After which they all went ash.o.r.e and pa.s.sed the time until dinner in various ways. And at a little before two Steve, Joe and Wink once more climbed the narrow stairway to Lawyer Hyatt's office.

"I have here," said Mr. Hyatt, when they had seated themselves and greetings had been exchanged and the weather duly and thoroughly disposed of, "a telegram from Barrows and Leland, of Norfolk, Virginia, agents for the owners of the schooner _Catspaw_. In it they make an offer of settlement of your claim, subject, of course, to the facts and conditions being as stated in my telegram to them."

He paused impressively and the boys shuffled their feet in silent expectancy.

"Hm. Now I'm not going to advise you to accept their offer and I'm not going to advise you not to," he rumbled. "Only, I do say this, gentlemen. If you take your case to the Admiralty Court it will cost you a good deal of money and you won't get a final judgment for a long time.

Of course, you might, in the end, get a better figure. I'd almost be willing to guarantee that you would. But you want to remember that the costs of a trial aren't small and that they might eat a big hole in the difference between the present offer and the court's award."

"What--what do they offer us?" asked Steve as the lawyer paused to clear his throat.

"There's no doubt that the value of the _Catspaw_ and her cargo is a sight more than these fellows offer us," resumed Mr. Hyatt, quite as though he had not heard the question. "But there's the old adage about a bird on toast being worth more than a bird on the telegraph wire." He chuckled deeply. "And, of course, no owner ever thinks of paying the full value of salvaged property. Nor does the court expect him to.

Something like an equable division is what they try to award."

"Yes, sir," murmured Steve nervously. "Yes, sir. Would you mind--"

"You said something yesterday about a thousand dollars, and I told you you might expect that much, didn't I?"

Steve nodded silently.

"Well--" The lawyer took up a sheet of creased yellow paper from the desk and ran his eyes along the message thereon. "Well, I've got to tell you they don't offer you a thousand, boys."

"Oh!" murmured Steve.

"Don't they?" gasped Joe weakly.

"Then what--" began Wink dejectedly.

"They offer you--" Mr. Hyatt leaned forward in the protesting chair and held the telegram toward Steve--"they offer you four thousand, seven hundred and sixty-one dollars, young gentlemen."

Isn't this a good place to end our story? I might tell how they wired the good news to Neil, and how they set forth that afternoon for New York, and how, after a jolly but uneventful trip, the two boats parted company off Bay Sh.o.r.e, and how the _Adventurer_, having done her best to deserve the name she bore, at last sidled up to a slip in the yacht basin and discharged her crew. And I might depict the awed delight with which, two days later, Steve, Joe and Phil gazed upon a narrow strip of green paper bearing the wonderful legend "Four Thousand Seven Hundred Sixty-one Dollars." But we set out in search of adventures, and we have reached the last of them, and so the chronicle should end. And since it began with a remark from Perry let us end it so. Perry's closing remark was made from the platform of the train for Philadelphia.

"Good-bye, you fellows," said Perry, smiling widely to show that he didn't mind leaving the others the least bit in the world. "We had a corking good time, didn't we? But just let me tell you something. It isn't a patch on the fun we're going to have on the next trip of the Adventure Club!"