The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea Part 33

"I'll do it myself, darlin'."

Jane asked Hazel to a.s.sist her, and together they slaved until it seemed as if their backs surely would break.

The storm, while not abating any, did not appear to increase in fury.

It was severe enough as it was. The seas loomed above the broken craft like huge, black mountains, yet somehow they seemed to break just a few seconds before engulfing her and to divide, pa.s.sing on either side, but the "Sister Sue" wallowed in a smother of foam, creaking and groaning, giving in every joint, and threatening to fall to pieces with each new twist and turn forced upon her by the writhing seas.

Miss Elting, after having in a measure quieted the girls in the cabin, came out clinging to a rope. She and Harriet held a shouted conversation, after which the guardian returned to the cabin, where there was less danger of being beaten down by huge seas, although one could get fully as wet inside the cabin as on deck.

The hours of the night wore slowly away. The intense impenetrable blackness, the roar and thunder of the sea, the terrible jerking, jolting and hurling beneath them, shook the nerves of the girls, keeping them constantly in a half-dazed condition that perhaps lessened the keenness of their suffering. Harriet and Jane, however, never for a single second relaxed their vigilance, or left a single thing undone that would tend to ease the boat or to contribute to its safety. The binnacle light long since had been extinguished by the water, making it impossible to see the compa.s.s to tell which way they were headed. Little good it would have done them to know, either, they being powerless to change their course, or to make any headway at all, save as they drifted with the seas. Harriet hoped they might be drifting toward sh.o.r.e. Instead, they were being slowly carried down the coast and parallel with it.

At last the gray of the early dawn appeared in the east, but it was a "high dawn," with the light first appearing high in the sky, meaning to sailors wind or storm. Harriet did not know the meaning of it, however, though she thought it a most peculiar looking sky. And now, as the light came slowly, they were able to get an idea what the sea in which they had been wallowing all night looked like. It was a fearsome sight. As they gazed their hearts sank within them. Mountains of leaden water rose into the air, then sank out of sight again, and when the "Sue" went into one of those troughs of the sea it was like sinking into a great black pit from which there was no escape. Yet the buoyant hull of the sloop rose every time, shaking the water from her glistening white sides and bending to the oncoming seas preparatory to taking another dizzy dive.

The lower half of the mast was still standing, a ragged stump, the deck itself swept clean of every vestige of wreckage and movable equipment. What troubled Harriet most was the loss of the water cask.

The small water tank in the cabin had been hurled to the floor by the pitching of the sloop and its contents spilled. The Meadow-Brook Girl saw that they were going to be without water to drink, a most serious thing, provided they were not drowned before needing something to drink. As she studied the boat, an idea was gradually formed in her mind, a plan outlined that she determined to try to adopt were the wind to go down sufficiently to make the attempt prudent. Harriet called the others to her, and the girls talked it over in all its details for the better part of an hour.

There was nothing to eat on board now, nor did many of the party feel like eating. Tommy, however, found her appet.i.te shortly after daybreak and raised quite a disturbance because there was nothing to be had.

She suggested breaking open the doors that led to the chain locker, but of this Harriet would not hear. She did not wish water to get in there, for that appeared to be the one part of the boat that was now free from it, and that really had saved them from going to the bottom.

In the meantime the wind did not appear to be abating in the slightest. All that wretched forenoon the majority of the girls, half-dead from fright and exposure, clung desperately to the cushions of the locker seats, wild-eyed and despairing. All that forenoon Harriet Burrell, Jane McCarthy, Tommy, Hazel and Miss Elting stuck to their posts and worked without once pausing to rest. About noon the wind suddenly died out, then began veering in puffs from various quarters of the compa.s.s.

"Now, Jane, is our chance," cried Harriet. "The storm is broken, but the seas will be high all the rest of the day. If we can fix up some sort of a sail, we may be able to reach land before long."

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

When the "Sister Sue" failed to return the previous afternoon, and the storm came on, Mrs. Livingston, greatly alarmed, sent a party of girls with a guardian to the nearest telephone to send word to Portsmouth that the sloop and its pa.s.sengers were missing. A revenue cutter was sent out to look for them, first, however, having been in communication with the ocean liner the girls had pa.s.sed by wireless, learning from the captain of the ship of their having sighted the "Sister Sue" and giving the latter's position at the time. This served as a guide for the revenue boat, which steamed through the great seas until daylight.

There were no signs of the missing sloop; but, reasoning that, if the boat was still afloat, it must have been blown down the coast, the revenue boat headed in that direction. It was not until three o'clock in the afternoon, however, that the lookout reported seeing something floating in the far distance, off the starboard bow. A study of this object through the gla.s.ses led the captain to turn his cutter in that direction. An hour later he was close enough to see that it was a dismantled boat, and that there were people aboard it.

Full speed ahead was ordered and the revenue boat rapidly drew up. A strange spectacle was revealed to the officers and men of the revenue cutter as she approached close enough to make out details. The dismantled sloop was lying very low in the water, showing that she was in a bad way. To the top of the stump of the mast a staple had been driven and through this a rope run. This rope held a jib, the greater part of which was on the deck because there was not height enough to spread it all. But what there was of the jib was pulling well in the fresh breeze and the sloop was wallowing through the seas, making fair headway toward land, which now was not more than fifteen miles away.

Harriet Burrell, still at the wheel, was giving her full attention to handling the boat, leaving to her companions the task of attracting the attention of the cutter, which, however, had seen the sloop long before the pa.s.sengers on her had discovered the revenue boat.

The captain of the cutter lay to as close to the sloop as he dared go, then held a megaphone conversation with the survivors. Harriet replied that she thought she would be able to get the boat to sh.o.r.e, but suggested that they take off the other girls. The captain would not listen to Harriet's first proposition. After a perilous pa.s.sage he finally succeeded in getting a boat's crew aboard the sloop, the skipper himself accompanying the rescue party.

"And you brought this tub through the gale?" he questioned, turning to Harriet after hearing a brief account of the loss of Captain Billy and the consequent experiences of the "Sister Sue's" pa.s.sengers.

"It was purely good luck, sir," answered Harriet modestly.

"It was something a great deal stronger than luck," answered the captain. "The sea is going down. As soon as it is down enough to be safe I will put you all aboard the cutter."

"Are you going to leave the sloop?" asked Miss Elting.

"No. We want that boat for reasons of our own. We wish to look it over at our leisure. Your sea anchor saved you, that and good seamanship.

Miss Burrell, it is a pity you are not a man. You would be commanding a ship in a few years. I think we had better transfer you now. I'm afraid of the sloop."

The transfer was a thrilling experience for the Camp Girls. Several times they narrowly missed being upset and thrown into the sea, but after more than two hours' work everyone had been safely landed on the deck of the revenue boat. Three men were put aboard the sloop, a lifeboat being left with them in case the "Sue" foundered. The revenue cutter then started towing her toward home. It was late in the evening when finally they came to anchor off Camp Wau-Wau. The surf was running so high that it was decided not to put the girls ash.o.r.e until the following morning, though the "Sue" was cast off from her tow and allowed to drift into the bay. From here her crew rowed ash.o.r.e and informed the anxious Camp Girls that everyone of their companions was safe.

But the morning brought with it a further surprise. The cabin in which the Meadow-Brook Girls had made their home had wholly disappeared.

With it had gone the bar, swept out by the storm, the cabin lying a hopeless, tangled wreck on the sh.o.r.e of the bay. With it, too, had gone ash.o.r.e a variety of stuff which the officers of the revenue boat examined early that morning. They p.r.o.nounced the ruined stuff ammunition.

Harriet told of the mysterious box that she had seen carried into the woods. Later in the day this was located and dug up. It was found to be a zinc-lined case, packed with military rifles of old pattern.

On board the "Sister Sue," in the chain locker, was found a complete wireless equipment, together with quite a cargo of rifles and ammunition.

"These guns were meant for _business_!" remarked the captain of the revenue cutter, as he and another officer stood by superintending the work of four sailors.

"Why, I thought the days of piracy had gone by," remarked Harriet.

"_Pi_--" gasped Tommy, and turned pale.

"Pirates!" echoed Margery Brown in consternation. "Why, we might have been killed and no one would have known what became of us!"

"Who said anything about pirates!" retorted the revenue captain, smiling.

"Why, you thaid--" began Tommy wonderingly.

"I spoke of 'business,'" came the answer of the man in uniform, "and that was what I meant to say. In these days, in Latin-American countries, revolution appears to be one of the leading forms of business."

"_Revolution?_" echoed Margery, quickly reviving, while Tommy listened in amazement. "Why, revolutions are romantic; there's nothing awful about 'em."

"Nothing awful," laughed Captain Rupert. "In the countries to the south of us most of the revolutions are very tame affairs, so far as actual fighting goes. The crowd that makes the most noise, whether government or insurgent, usually wins the day. For that matter, I never could understand why blank cartridges wouldn't do as well as the real ammunition in these Latin-American revolutions."

"Yet if these rifles and cartridges were intended for use in a revolution," Harriet broke in, "doesn't it seem odd to land them on this short strip of New Hampshire coast?"

"Not at all odd when you understand the reason," Captain Rupert went on. "These rifles are intended to be used in another projected uprising of the blacks in Cuba. The blacks there are always ready to fight, provided some selfseeking white man offers them the weapons, and a prosperous time, without work, in the event of victory. Such another uprising of the blacks in Cuba has been planned. The secret service men of the Cuban government got wind of the affair and trailed some of the plotters to this country.

"Now, the United States is the place where nearly all of the supplies for these revolutions are bought. So our government, watching, discovered that the arms were being slyly shipped to Portsmouth, instead of being directly shipped from New York to Cuba. It was, of course, quite plain that Portsmouth was the port from which the arms and ammunition were to be shipped. So the cutter that I command was ordered to Portsmouth. As soon as the plotters there found the 'Terrapin' cruising off that port they knew they must find some other way of getting the goods out of the country, for it is against the law to ship arms from this country for use against any other established government.

"So the plotters. .h.i.t upon a new plan. They engaged the skipper of a regular fishing smack to carry small lots of arms out to sea, there to transfer them to a sloop. Captain Billy was the man selected to receive the arms and ammunition at sea. He brought them in here, hiding them, with the intention of putting out some dark night, making several short trips, and transferring all the rifles and cartridges--eight thousand rifles and three million cartridges, to a small steamer that would be waiting in the offing. The steam vessel would then carry the cargo to Cuba, landing the goods at some secret, appointed place. Captain Billy, as our government learned, was to receive one thousand dollars for his share in the work. It was a bit risky, as he faced prison if caught--as he surely would have been imprisoned had he lived."

"Poor man!" sighed Harriet sympathetically.

"I agree with you," nodded Captain Rupert gravely. "Captain Billy was a good fellow, as men go; but he had pa.s.sed his fiftieth year with fortune as far away as ever, and he caught at the bait of a thousand dollars, though he knew he was breaking the laws of his country. But he's dead," added the revenue officer, uncovering his head for a moment; "therefore we won't discuss his fault further."

When the "hidden treasure" in the woods was unearthed it proved to be a large consignment of rifles and cartridges. These had been hidden in a cleverly concealed artificial, sod-covered cave in the woods. Its existence had been so well hidden that Camp Wau-Wau girls had scores of times pa.s.sed over the cave without suspecting its existence.

Before the revenue cutter sailed away the six officers aboard came ash.o.r.e one evening, taking dinner with the girls, in company with a number of young men, invited from the neighborhood. Afterward until half-past ten o'clock there was a pleasant dance.

All too soon Harriet Burrell and her friends found this vacation trip at an end. Proud of the honors they had won, delighted beyond words with the good times they had had, they left for home the day before the hulk of the "Sister Sue" was taken away, at Mr. McCarthy's order, and sold.

"We are leaving behind us the best time we have ever had," sighed Hazel on the morning of their departure.

"I am sure there are plenty of good times ahead of all of us yet,"

declared Harriet brightly.