The Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island Part 27

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SKIES BEGIN TO BRIGHTEN

It was not very light inside the cabin, so that the first thing Thad did in his customary energetic way was to take a lantern from a hook, and put a match to the wick. After that they could see better.

"Don't seem, to be much of anything around here now that we can see half-way decent," remarked Giraffe.

"Oh I ain't there?" said b.u.mpus, who was, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger, "now, it strikes me there's a whole lot, when you come to think."

"However those men could sleep in here beats me?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Step Hen, who was not looking very happy himself, as he sniffed around.

"Oh! mebbe you'll kinder get a little used to it after awhile," b.u.mpus a.s.sured him, in a tone meant to be comforting.

"I don't believe they did sleep in here at all," Thad remarked, after he had been spying around a little longer. "You can't see a sign of a bed, or a blanket, or even leaves in a corner to tell where anybody laid down."

"And outside of these few old oilskin rags that they use to wear in their business," added Giraffe, "and hung up on nails along this wall, there ain't anything to tell that they stayed here. Say, Thad, whatever do you think this shack could a been used for?"

"Where's your nose?" demanded b.u.mpus at that juncture.

"Yes," Thad went on to say, "that's about the only thing you need to tell you, Giraffe. Seems like they must store their catch here until they get enough on hand to pay to stop work, and pack and ship the same out. Let's look around. What d'ye call this but a kind of trap in the floor?"

"It sure is, Thad," admitted the tall scout, promptly.

"Looks like it had been used a heap, in the bargain," advanced Step Hen.

"Why, of course, because there must be some sort of well underneath the house, where they keep ice all the while, and drop the fish in as they net them. Perhaps one reason why they hate to leave here in a rush is that they've got illegal nets out in different places right now, which cost a heap of money, and they hate to let them go. Hand me that strip of iron, please, Davy. Looks to me as if they use this to pry up the trap. There, what did I tell you?"

As the scout-master said this he managed to skillfully raise the square that was cut in the floor of the cabin. Underneath the old building there must have been a natural well in among the rocks; for as Thad held the lantern over so that all of the boys could see, they discovered what looked like a cellar of solid stone, some fifteen feet deep, and with a ladder at one side that was doubtless used as a means of pa.s.sing up and down.

"Well! I declare! look at the piles of fine fish, will you?" exclaimed Step Hen.

"All sorts too--trout, white fish, and even black ba.s.s, whoppers at that!" added Davy, staring at such a remarkable sight.

"They must take these in some way that's against the law!" Thad declared. "Their suspicious actions prove that, plain enough."

"That's the greatest lot of game fish I ever saw together!" Giraffe ventured, "and if such things keep going on, chances are even the Great Lakes'll be drained of decent sport before many years. It's a shame, that's what it is."

b.u.mpus was the only one who had made no remark; but all the same he seemed to be busy. They saw him dive into a pocket, and what should he fetch out brut a stout fish line wound around a bobbin, and with a hook attached. This he immediately began unrolling so that the end carrying hook and sinker fell down toward the bottom of the pit.

"Look at b.u.mpus, would you?" exclaimed Step Hen; "he's gone clean dippy, that's what? Thinks he's out on the lake, and these fish are swimming down there waitin' to bite at his bait! Poor old b.u.mpus, that knock on the head was too much for him!"

"Was, hey?" snapped the object of this commiseration, as he went on unreeling his line; "you just wait and see whether I've lost my mind, or if I ain't as bright as a b.u.t.ton. See that buster of a trout alying there on top? Well, that beats the record so far; and if I can only tip my hook under his gill I'm meaning to yank him up here the quickest you ever saw. Guess the rules and regulations of our watch only said a fellow had to catch his fish with hook and line; it never told that they had to be alive, and swimming, not a word of it. You watch me win that championship right here!"

"There's a fish pile down in the cellar," spoke up the rival of b.u.mpus, indignantly, "and what d'ye think, b.u.mpus here means to fetch up a lot of 'em with his hook and line, and count the same against me. Hey!

guess two can play at that sort of game, if there's going to be anything in it; so look out; because I'm after that same big trout myself."

Twice b.u.mpus managed to get his hook where it seemed to catch upon the monster trout's exposed gill, and with a cry of triumph he started to pull in; but on one occasion the slender hold his hook had taken broke away; and the second time it chanced that Giraffe had managed to fasten his barb somewhere about the dorsal fin of the fish, so that there was an immediate struggle for supremacy, with the usual result in such cases that the antic.i.p.ated prize fell back, and was lost to both contestants.

"Tell them to let up on that silly business, and let's get out of here, Thad," said Step Hen, when this thing had gone on for some time, with no result save a weariness to the two rivals.

"But seems to me," Dave put in just then, "that couple of them same trout and white fish would be mighty tasty dish for a bunch of scouts I know of who always carry their appet.i.tes with them."

When Giraffe heard him say that, he suddenly seemed to lose all his fierceness as a contestant for honors.

"Here, let's stop this business, b.u.mpus, because I ain't agoing to let you grab up any fish that easy like; and I reckon you feel the same way about me. Anyhow, I leave it to Thad here if it's a sportsmanlike way of scoring in our game? If he says no, why I'm willing to let you hook up some of the beauties for our dinner; or to make things more lively I agree to climb down that greasy old ladder and put 'em on the hook for you. How about it, Mr. Scout-master; is it fair?"

"Perhaps the letter of the law might favor such a course," he said, solemnly; "but we pretend to be sportsmen, all of us, and as such we go farther than that. And b.u.mpus, you know very well that nothing of this kind was thought of when you made your wager with Giraffe. As I was counted on to be the umpire I say now and here that the fish taken have to be alive at the time they are hooked, and swimming in the lake."

"Then that settles it, Thad," chuckled b.u.mpus, with a grin; "anyhow, I was only fooling, and wouldn't want to count honors won so cheap as this. But drop down there, Giraffe, since you were so kind as to promise, and hook me on that gay fellow I nearly had two different times. Let me feel how heavy he is? I'd go myself, but chances are I'd sure collapse down there, because already I'm feeling weak again, and that's the truth."

Giraffe evidently did not mean to go back on his word; and accordingly he carefully climbed over the edge of the opening, found a resting place for his feet on the top round of the ladder, and then began to slowly descend.

First of all he hooked on the big trout, and gaily b.u.mpus pulled the prize up, remarking at the time that it felt as though he were lifting a grindstone. When he lowered his line again Giraffe had a splendid fresh looking white fish ready, and this he sent up, after the trout.

"I just can't stand this any longer," the boy below called up; "and I'm acomin' right along with the next one, which ought to be a white fish, I reckon. Oh! my! hope I don't keel over before I get to the top. If I do, please, please don't run away and leave me to my fate, boys!"

Perhaps Giraffe was only joking, but it was noticed that when he hastily clambered out of the fish pit he made a streak for outdoors, still hanging on to his latest capture.

In fact, as they had had enough of that thing, all of them hastened to follow the example set by the tall and lanky scout. Outside they found Allan examining the prize with considerable interest, while Giraffe was fanning himself, and making all sorts of grimaces as he raised first one hand and then the other to his nose.

"I'll step in and take a look now, while we're here," mentioned Allan; "because I may never get another chance to see what a fish poacher's storage place is like."

"Queer where they've gone and hidden themselves," Step Hen remarked, as he looked all around as though half expecting to see a bearded face thrust out of the bushes, or above a pile of rocks near by.

"Well, just now they're in a sort of panic, and hardly know what to try next," Thad told them. "Of course they must see that we're only boys, after all; but from the fact that we wear uniforms they suppose we are connected in some way with the militia, and that perhaps a boatload of soldiers is even now on the way here, obeying some sort of wireless signal we've managed to transmit. They thought to seize b.u.mpus, and perhaps get us all, one by one; but when they found that he had rendered their boat helpless they just threw up the sponge and quit."

"Well, I kinder feel a mite sorry for the rascals," Step Hen observed; whereupon the usually gentle b.u.mpus, who could be depended on to forgive the first one of all, fired up, and burst out with:

"Then I ain't, not one whit; and I guess you wouldn't either, Step Hen Bingham, if you had a lump as big as a hickory nut on top of your head, that felt as sore as a boil, and knew one of that crowd did it to you.

Ain't they breaking the law of the land; and every fish they take in their illegal nets or seines means one less for the fellow that fishes for sport, or the man that does business according to the rules and regulations. Sorry, well I guess not! And when we move away with their old boat we'll send somebody with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons over to Sturgeon Island to take off the marooners."

"Whew! listen to the savage monster, would you?" purred Step Hen; but b.u.mpus had suffered too much to be in a forgiving humor, and he continued to shake his head ominously while he kept on breathing out threatenings, like Saul of old.

"Now let's head for our camp," Thad gave the order, when Allan had joined them, and declared he had seen all he wanted of the fish poachers' storehouse.

"I only hope they haven't stolen a march on us, and got away with our traps," Davy happened to remark, as they stepped out at a lively rate.

"What a job we'd have cookin' these fine fish, if we didn't have any frying-pan," was the first lament of Giraffe.

"And my blanket that I think so much of, I wouldn't like to lose that,"

b.u.mpus told them; but Thad gave it as his opinion that after the men had fled, upon hearing the voices of the boys near by, they must have fallen into such a panic that no doubt they were now in hiding away off at the other end of the island.

"Now don't forget to show us where you bid that crank belonging to the boat engine, b.u.mpus," Step, Hen cautioned, as they strode along.

"Good thing you spoke of it when you did, Step Hen," the fat scout declared, "because here's the old stump right now. Feel down, and see if it ain't there, somebody. Here, let me do it myself, because I know just where it lies."

In proof of his words b.u.mpus speedily drew out the crooked bit of steel in question.