The Rival Campers Part 30

"Here, you, where are you going?" sang out Harvey.

The man looked up, surprised, but did not answer.

"I say, there, where are you going? Can't you hear?" cried Harvey, roughly.

The man stopped rowing. "What's that to you?" he answered.

Harvey laughed. "You've got me there," he said. "I didn't mean to be rude-but I've been disappointed. I didn't know but you might be going to row across to the island, and I thought perhaps you might like to earn a dollar. I'll help row, too, if you like. I want to go, the worst way."

The man hesitated for a moment, started as though he were going to row away, and then paused again.

"Where do you belong?" he asked.

"Over on the island," said Harvey. "I'm camping there."

"What's that?" said the man, putting his hand to his ear. "Say it again."

"I'm camping out over on the island," repeated Harvey.

The man looked stealthily in at him from under his eyebrows. "Camping there!" he muttered to himself, and began backing water slowly with his oars.

"I'll take you across for-for a dollar," he said.

"Good!" cried Harvey. "Come on, lively, then. It's a good five miles, and I'm in a hurry to get across."

The man, however, was in no hurry. He came in slowly, as though perhaps he might still be considering the matter, whether he should take this pa.s.senger aboard or not. He worked the boat insh.o.r.e, finally, and Harvey sprang aboard.

"You are going to help row," said the man.

"Yes," answered Harvey. "Didn't I say I would?" He took his seat toward the stern of the boat, where there were rowlocks for an extra pair of oars.

The man at the bow oars was a thick, heavy-set, middle-aged man, burned dark by sun and wind. He was roughly dressed in ill-fitting clothes, that looked as though they might have come from the dunnage-bag of a fisherman who had been long at sea. They were patched in one or two places with cloth that did not match the original garments. He wore a red, cheap-looking handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, and a rough beard of several weeks' growth heightened the effect of his swarthy complexion.

They rowed for some time in silence, making good headway, for the wind had gone down with the sun, and the man in the bow pulled a powerful stroke, making even the st.u.r.dy efforts of Jack Harvey seem like child's play.

The sun sank behind the hills and the shadows deepened across the water, fading out at length into the darkness that settled over all the bay. A few lights glimmered out from the sh.o.r.e of the island, some three miles distant, and the stars appeared in the sky.

"Lucky I fell in with you, just as I did," said Harvey, as he slowed up his stroke. "Lucky for both of us, I take it. I should have been stuck there all night if I hadn't met you; and I don't suppose you mind picking up a dollar, as long as you were going this way."

"No," said the man, though there was a queer expression on his face. "I don't mind,-and the fishing isn't any too good these days."

"Got a smack, have you?" inquired Harvey.

"No," answered the other. "I don't own any boat myself. But I sail with a man as owns his own boat, and I come in for a fair share of the fish."

"Where does she lie?" asked Harvey.

The man waited a moment before answering. "She's down among the islands somewhere," he said, finally. "She'll be in for me to-night or to-morrow.

I've been visiting some relations of mine back of Bellport a few miles.

So you're a summer visitor at the island, are you?"

"Yes," replied Harvey, "I spend my summers there."

"Pretty quiet place, isn't it?" said the man.

"Mostly," returned Harvey, "but not so quiet this year. We've had some exciting times there."

"Yes?" said the man. "How's that?"

He had slowed up, himself, in his rowing now. And if by chance the conversation had turned whither he had intended it should, there was no way that Harvey should know of that, for his back was toward the man and he could not see his face.

"Why," continued Harvey, "they caught the men that stole the Curtis diamonds over there; that is, they got two of them. A third one escaped.

He was the worst of the three, they say."

The man in the bow had paused in his rowing.

"The worst one got away, did he?" said he.

"He did," said Harvey. "It seemed one of them had the diamonds hidden in a house that every one thought was haunted. He was stopping at the hotel as a regular guest. And no one suspected him but Henry Burns. Then, when his confederates came, the detectives were lying in wait for them in the cellar. They nearly beat the detectives, though, at that. For they smashed the lanterns out-that is, one of them did, and made a run for it.

The other one was hurt."

"Did he die?" asked the man, quickly.

"No," replied Harvey. "He's all right, waiting trial along with the other one. We got him, too, just as he was nearly down to sh.o.r.e, where the other man was waiting to take him off in a boat. The third man escaped in his yacht. We only captured two."

The man in the bow had drawn his oars in, now, so that they rested along the side of the boat. His hands worked nervously together, and he half-rose in his seat.

"Who's 'we'?" he asked, huskily. "Who did it-did you have a hand in it?"

If, by chance, this moment was a crisis in the life of Jack Harvey, and if, by chance, he was in greater danger at this moment than he had ever been before in all his life, there was no shadow of it across his mind.

He answered with a laugh:

"No, not I. No such luck. If there's anything like that going on, I'm sure to miss it. No, 'twas the other camp and a crowd I have no liking for that did it all, that got all the glory and all the fun and the money, too. The reward, I mean. I'd rather have been there at the capture, though, than get the money for it. And I don't know why, but I felt rather sorry for the two chaps that got caught, bad as they were."

A good speech for you, Jack Harvey, if you did but know it!

"So you missed all the fun, did you?" said the man, quietly. "That was too bad; too bad."

He had put his oars into the water once more now, and resumed his rowing.

He did not pause to rest again, but pulled long and steadily. Evidently he did not care to row and talk too, for he lapsed into silence now, and Harvey could not draw him into conversation again. At the end of another hour they had come close to the Grand Island sh.o.r.e, and shortly they had pulled alongside a ledge, where Harvey could jump out. The man started to row away.

"Here, hold on, there," cried Harvey. "Don't you want your dollar? You've earned it, fair enough."

The man came slowly back to sh.o.r.e.

"Indeed," he said, as he stretched out his hand, "I ought not to forget that, with the fishing as bad as it is." And then he added, quietly, as he started to row away again, "And it's worth a dollar to you to get here, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is," replied Harvey.