The Rival Campers Part 23

So they travelled up to the Warren cottage, greatly to the surprise of the Warren boys, who had gone to bed and were sound asleep when they got there, and greatly to the concern of good Mrs. Warren, whose indignation did more to comfort them than anything else in the world could have.

There was always room for more in the s.p.a.cious old cottage, and they were soon stowed away in bed, quickly forgetting their troubles in sleep.

"You'll stay right here for the rest of the summer," said Mrs. Warren the next morning at breakfast. "You can bring your camp stuff up and store it in the shed, and I guess it will be safe there from Jack Harvey or anybody else. It's a crying shame, but you're welcome here, so don't feel too bad about it. I don't think the boys will be sorry to have you here."

"I guess we won't," cried the Warren boys, in chorus. "But we'll get that tent yet, I think," said George Warren. "I don't believe Jack Harvey would dare destroy it. He's got it hidden somewhere, depend upon it. And we must find out where that place is."

"I wish I could believe it," said Tom, "but I'm afraid his experience with our box taught him a lesson. It is my belief that he has taken the tent and sunk it out in the bay, weighted with stones, so it will never come to light. However, we will start out after breakfast to see if any one in the village saw him or his crew anywhere near the tent while we were away."

The search through the village for a clue proved, unfortunately, as fruitless as Tom had feared. Not a soul had seen Harvey or any one of his crew about the camp during the evening, nor, for that matter, anybody else. The disappearance remained as mysterious as though the wind had borne the tent away out to sea.

"Say the word," said Captain Sam, when he heard of it, "and I'll go over to Mayville and get warrants for the whole crew. We'll have them up and examine every one of them. We can't have things of that sort going on around this village."

"I don't want to do it," said Tom. "At least, not yet awhile. I don't like to suspect Harvey or any of his crew of actually stealing the tent.

It may be they have taken it just to annoy us for a night or two, and we shall get it back again. I'd rather take it as a practical joke for a few days, at any rate, than to have any boy arrested. I can't believe they would steal it for good, intending to keep it. Let's wait and see."

"You'll never see your tent, then, I'm thinking," said Captain Sam, "for I don't believe Harvey has the least idea of bringing it back. And the longer we wait the harder it will be catching him. However, do as you think best. I'll go down to-morrow and look their camp over, anyway, on my own hook. I have the right to do that. I'm a constable, and I'll look their camp over on general principles."

"You'll not find anything, I fear," said Tom.

"Fellows," said George Warren, as they all sat around the open fire that evening, "we haven't been on a cruise for a long time. What do you say to starting out in the _Spray_ to-morrow for a trip around the island? It will take one, two, or three days, according to the wind, and Henry Burns says he can go. We'll take along a fly-tent and some blankets, and part of us can sleep on sh.o.r.e, so we won't be crowded."

"Great!" cried Bob. "It comes in a good time for us, when we're without a home-oh, I didn't mean that," he added, hastily, as Mrs. Warren looked reproachfully at him. "This is a better home than our camp was, to be sure. I mean, while our affairs are so upset, while we don't know whether we shall be camping to-morrow or living here. It may help to straighten matters out, and, if by chance Harvey and his crew feel like putting the tent back, this will give them the opportunity."

"Then we'll get the lines ready," said George. "There's lots of small cod at the foot of the island,-and we might take a run across to the islands below, where there's lots of bigger ones. We'll plan to be gone two days or a week, just as it happens, and put in plenty of flour and biscuit and some canned stuff, in case we can't get fish."

"How happens it that Henry Burns can get off so easily?" asked Tom.

"Oh, they've let up on him a good deal since the capture of Craigie,"

answered George. "Now that the papers have said so much about him and the rest of us, and the people at the hotel have made so much of him, Mrs.

Carlin has come to the conclusion that he isn't so much of a helpless child as she thought he was. She lets him do pretty much as he likes now, and so Colonel Witham don't bother him, either. He will be over by and by, and we'll make sure he can go."

Henry Burns put in an appearance soon after, and the subject of the voyage was duly discussed in all its phases, and settled. The next forenoon found them all aboard the little yacht _Spray_, getting everything shipshape and storing away some provisions and water.

"Looks as though we were going on a long voyage," said young Joe, as his eyes rested fondly on several cans of lunch-tongue and two large mince pies which Mrs. Warren had generously provided, besides several tins of beef and a small keg of water.

"Well, Joe," said Arthur, "you know, having you with us to help eat up stuff is equivalent to going on a long voyage. And then, one never knows on a trip of this kind when he is going to get back."

Which was certainly true, if anything ever was.

They made a great point aboard the _Spray_, these Warren boys, of having every rope and sail and cleat in perfect condition; no snarled ropes, no torn canvas, and no loose bolts nor cleats to give way in a strain; and they began now, as usual, to see that everything was in shipshape condition before they cast off from their moorings and headed out of the harbour.

The little yacht was, therefore, as trim as any craft could be when they set sail on their voyage, with Mrs. Warren waving good-bye to them from the front piazza.

"I never feel as free anywhere in the world as I do out aboard the _Spray_ on a trip like this," said George Warren, stretching himself out comfortably on the house of the cabin, while Arthur held the tiller.

"It's the best fun there is down here, after all."

"Well, I don't know, a canoe isn't so bad," said Bob. "You can't take so many, to be sure, but when Tom and I get off on that and go down among the islands for a day or two, sleeping underneath it on the beaches at night and cooking on the sh.o.r.e as we go along, we feel pretty much like Crusoes ourselves, eh, Tom?"

"Indeed we do," answered Tom. "It's the next best thing, surely, to sailing a boat."

"By the way, Tom," asked Arthur, "where did you leave the canoe? Not where any one could get that, I hope."

"No, that's safe and snug," replied Tom. "It's locked up in your shed, and your mother has the key. That's one thing we shall find all right when we get back."

The wind was blowing lightly from the northwest, and, as they were starting out to make the circuit of the island by way of the northern end first, they had to beat their way up along the coast against a head wind.

"This little boat isn't such a bad sailer," said George Warren, admiringly, gazing aloft at a snug setting topsail. "For a boat of its size, I guess she goes to windward as well as any. There's only one thing the matter with her. She's small, and when she's reefed down under three reefs, with the choppy seas we have in this bay, she don't work well to windward, and that's a fault that might be dangerous, if there were not so many harbours around this coast to run to in a storm."

"I suppose some day we'll have a bigger one, don't you?" queried Joe.

"Yes, when we can earn it, father says," replied George. "That don't look so easy, though. A fellow can't earn much when he's studying."

"What's that up there on the ledges?" interrupted young Joe, pointing ahead to some long reefs that barely projected above the surface of the water.

"They are seals-can't you see?" replied Arthur. "The wind is right, and we'll sail close up on to them before they know it. We can't shoot, because we haven't any gun aboard, but we'll just take them by surprise."

The little _Spray_, running its nose quietly past the point of the first ledge and sailing through a channel sown with the rocks on either hand, came as a surprise to a colony of the sleek creatures, sunning themselves on the dry part of the ledges. They floundered clumsily off the rocks and splashed into the water, like a lot of schoolboys caught playing hookey, and only when the whole pack had slipped off into the sea did they utter a sound, a series of short, sharp barks, as here and there a curious head bobbed up for a moment, and then dived quickly below again.

"They have as much curiosity as a human being," said George Warren. "Just watch them steal those quick glances at us, and then bob under water again. The fishermen around here shoot them whenever they get a chance, because they eat the salmon out of the nets, but I never could bear to take a shot at one. They seem so intelligent, like a lot of tame dogs. I don't believe in shooting creatures much, anyway, unless you want them for food, or unless they are wild, savage animals."

"That don't apply to ducks, I hope," said Tom. "We want to take you up into the woods with us some fall, and have you do some shooting of that kind,-ducks and partridges and perhaps a deer or two."

"No, I'd like that first rate," answered George. "It's this senseless shooting of creatures that you don't want after they are shot that I don't believe in. I don't believe in shooting things just for the sake of killing them. Actual hunting in the woods for game that you live on is another thing. It's a healthful, vigorous sport that takes one into clean surroundings and does one good."

They chatted on, discussing this and that, till the yacht at length turned the head of the island and ran along past Bryant's Cove.

"We won't forget that harbour in a hurry," they said, as they sailed by.

The wind was gradually dying down with the sun, and would not carry them much farther that night, though they were soon running before it, as they rounded the uppermost point and headed away for the foot of the island, some thirteen miles away.

"We'll have just about wind enough to run along to Dave Benson's place,"

said George. "It's two miles down, but the wind and tide are both in our favour,-what there is of them. We can buy some green corn of Dave, and he will let us pull his lobster-pots and charge us only five cents for each lobster. Things are cheap down here, if you buy them of the fishermen. A little money means a good deal to them. A little flour and tea and sugar at the village store, and they live mighty comfortably on what they catch and what they raise on their farms. They don't know what it means to be poor, as the poor in our city do."

"Yes, and they live a happy life, for the most part," said Henry Burns.

"They get a good share of their living out of the sea, and I've always noticed that seafaring people are generally very well contented with their lot. You never hear them grumbling, as men do that work hard on farms. The sea seems to inspire them more; at least, it seems so to me."

"What does 'inspire' mean, please, Henry?" queried young Joe, winking at Bob. "It sounds like a very nice word."

"Inspiration means a strong desire and ambition to do something, and a conviction that one cannot fail," answered Henry Burns. "For instance, I might feel myself inspired to knock an idea into your head, just like this." And Henry Burns administered a sound cuff on that young gentleman's head. "That's a very crude example," added Henry Burns.

"Perhaps I can give you a better one, if you would like."

"No, I thank you," said young Joe. "That will do very well for the present. I think I understand."

Dave Benson's place was a weather-beaten old house set in the midst of a corn and bean patch, close by a little creek that ran in from the western bay. It had an air of dilapidation, but, withal, of comfort about it.

There was a little garden, some hake were drying on flakes beyond the house, a rowboat and a dory were pulled up on the beach a little way up the creek, and the indispensable sailboat, built by Dave himself in the winter months, was lying a little offsh.o.r.e in the shelter of a projecting hook of land.

"Hulloa, Dave," shouted George Warren, as a tall, sunburned figure, gaunt but powerful, emerged from the door of the house and peered out across the water at them.