Tom Slade at Temple Camp Part 10

He went to the door with them and as they turned at the foot of the stairs and called back another "Thank you," Roy noticed something in his face which had not been there before.

"I bet he's thinking of his son," said he.

"Wonder how he died," said Tom.

CHAPTER VIII

BON VOYAGE!

"Now, you see," said Pee-wee, "how a good turn can evolute."

"Can what?" said Tom.

"Evolute."

"It could neverlute with me," observed Roy. "Gee, but we've fallen in soft! You could have knocked me down with a toothpick. I wonder what our sleuth friend, the sheriff, will say."

The sheriff said very little; he was too astonished to say much. So were most of the people of the town. When they heard that "Old Man Stanton"

had given Harry Stanton's boat to some strange boys from out of town, they said that the loss of his son must have affected his mind. The boys of the neighborhood, incredulous, went out on the marsh the next day when the rain held up, and stood about watching the three strangers at work and marvelling at "Old Man Stanton's" extraordinary generosity.

"Aw, he handed 'em a lemon!" commented the wiseacre. "That boat'll never run--it won't even float!"

But Harry Stanton's cruising launch was no lemon. It proved to be staunch and solid. There wasn't a rotten plank in her. Her sorry appearance was merely the superficial shabbiness which comes from disuse and this the boys had neither the time nor the money to remedy; but the hull and the engine were good.

To the latter Roy devoted himself, for he knew something of gas engines by reason of the two automobiles at his own house. They made a list of the things they needed, took another hike into Nyack and came back laden with material and provisions. Roy poured a half-gallon or so of kerosene into each of the two cylinders and left it over night. The next morning when he drained it off the wheel turned over easily enough. A set of eight dry cells, some new wiring, a couple of new plugs, a little session with a pitted coil, a little more gas, a little less air, a little more gas, and finally the welcome first explosion, so dear to the heart of the motor-boatist, rewarded Roy's efforts of half a day.

"Stop it! Stop it!" shrieked Pee-wee from outside. "I hung the paint can on the propeller! I'm getting a green shower bath!"

He poked his head over the combing, his face, arms and clothing bespattered with copper paint.

"Never mind, kiddo," laughed Roy, "It's all in the game. She runs like a dream. Step a little closer, ladies and gentlemen, and view the leopard boy. Pee-wee, you're a sight! For goodness' sakes, get some sandpaper!"

The two days of working on the _Good Turn_ were two days of fun. It was not necessary to caulk her lower seams for the dampness of the marsh had kept them tight, and the seams above were easy. They did not bother about following the water-line and painting her free-board white; a coat of copper paint over the whole hull sufficed. They painted the sheathing of the c.o.c.kpit a common-sense brown, "neat but not gaudy," as Roy said.

The deck received a coat of an unknown color which their friend, the sheriff, brought them saying he had used it on his chicken-coop. The engine they did in aluminum paint, the fly-wheel in a gaudy red, and then they mixed what was left of all the paints.

"I bet we get a kind of blackish white," said Pee-wee.

"I bet it's green," said Tom.

But it turned out to be a weak silvery gray and with this they painted the cabin, or rather half the cabin, for their paint gave out.

They sat until long after midnight in the little cabin after their first day's work, but were up and at it again bright and early in the morning, for Mr. Stanton's men were coming with the block and falls at high tide in the evening to haul the _Good Turn_ back into her watery home.

Pee-wee spent a good part of the day throwing out superfluous junk and tidying up the little cabin, while Tom and Roy repaired the rubbing-rail where it had broken loose and attended to other slight repairs on the outside.

The dying sunlight was beginning to flicker on the river and the three were finishing their supper in the cabin when Tom, looking through the porthole, called, "Oh, here comes the truck and an automobile just in front of it!"

Sure enough, there on the road was the truck with its great coil of hempen rope and its big pulleys, accompanied by two men in overalls.

Pee-wee could not repress his exuberance as the trio clambered up on the cabin roof and waved to the little cavalcade.

"In an hour more she'll be in the water," he shouted, "and we'll----"

"We'll anchor till daylight," concluded Roy.

In another moment a young girl, laden with bundles, had left the automobile and was picking her way across the marsh. It proved to be the owner of the fugitive bird.

"I've brought you all the things that belong to the boat," she said, "and I'm going to stay and see it launched. My father was coming too but he had a meeting or something or other. Isn't it perfectly glorious how you chopped up the stanchions----"

"Great," said Roy. "It shows the good that comes out of breaking the law. If we hadn't chopped up the stanchions----"

"Oh, crink.u.ms, look at this!" interrupted Pee-wee. He was handling the colored bow lamp.

"And here's the compa.s.s, and here's the whistle, and here's the fog-bell," said the girl, unloading her burden with a sigh of relief.

"And here's the flag for the stern and here--look--I made this all by myself and sat up till eleven o'clock to do it--see!"

She unfolded a cheese-cloth pennant with the name _Good Turn_ sewed upon it. "You have to fly this at the bow in memory of your getting my bird for me," she said.

"We'll fly it at the bow in memory of what you and your father have done for _us_," said Tom.

"And here's some fruit, and here's some salmon, and here's some pickled something or other--I got them all out of the pantry and they weigh a ton!"

There was no time for talking if the boat was to be got to the river before dark, and the boys fell to with the men while the girl looked about the cabin with exclamations of surprise.

"Isn't it perfectly lovely," she called to Tom, who was outside encircling the hull with a double line of heavy rope, under the men's direction. "I never saw anything so cute and wasn't it a fine idea giving it to you!"

"Bully," said Tom.

"It was just going to ruin here," she said, "and it was a shame."

It was a busy scene that followed and the boys had a glimpse of the wonderful power of the block and falls. To an enormous tree on the roadside a gigantic three-wheel pulley was fastened by means of a metal band around the lower part of the trunk. Several other pulleys between this and the boat multiplied the hauling power to such a degree that one person pulling on the loose end which was left after the rope had been pa.s.sed back and forth many times through the several pulleys, could actually move the boat. The hull was completely encircled, the rope running along the sides and around the stern with another rope below near the keel so that the least amount of strain would be put upon her.

They hitched the horses to the rope's end and as the beasts plunged through the yielding marsh the boat came reeling and lurching toward the road. Here they laid planks and rollers and jacked her across. This was not so much a matter of brute strength as of skill. The two men with the aid of the Stanton chauffeur were able, with props of the right length, to keep the _Good Turn_ on an even keel, while the boys removed and replaced the rollers. It was interesting to see how the bulky hull could be moved several hundred feet, guided and urged across a road and r.e.t.a.r.ded upon the down grade to the river by two or three men who knew just how to do it.

Cautiously the rollers were r.e.t.a.r.ded with obstructing sticks, as the men, balancing the hull upright, let her slowly down the slope into the water. Pee-wee stood upon the road holding the rope's end and a thrill went through him when he felt the rocking and bobbing of the boat as it regained its wonted home, and at last floated freely in the water.

"Hang on to that, youngster," called one of the men. "She's where she can do as she likes now."

As the _Good Turn_, free at last from prosaic rollers and plank tracks, rolled easily in the swell, pulling gently upon the rope which the excited Pee-wee held, it seemed that she must be as pleased as her new owners were, at finding herself once more in her natural home. How graceful and beautiful she looked now, in the dying light! There is nothing so clumsy looking as a boat on sh.o.r.e. To one who has seen a craft "laid up," it is hardly recognizable when launched.

"Well, there ye are," said one of the men, "an' 'tain't dark yet neither. You can move 'er by pullin' one finger now, hey? She looks mighty nat'ral, don't she, Bill? Remember when we trucked her up from the freight station and dumped her in three year ago? She was the _Nymph_ then. Gol, how happy that kid was--you remember, Bill? I'll tell _you_ kids now what I told him then--told him right in front of his father; I says, 'Harry, you remember she's human and treat her as such,'

that's what I says ter him. _You_ remember, Bill."

Roy noticed that the girl had strolled away and was standing in the gathering darkness a few yards distant, gazing at the boat. The clumsy looking hull, in which the boys had taken refuge, seemed trim and graceful now, and Roy was reminded of the fairy story of the ugly duckling, who was really a swan, but whose wondrous beauty was unappreciated until it found itself among its own kindred.

"Yes, sir, that's wot I told him, 'cause I've lived on the river here all my life, ain't I, Bill, an' I know. Yer don't give an automobile no name, an' yer don't give an airyplane no name, an' yer don't give a motorcycle nor a bicycle no name, but yer give a boat a name 'cause she's human. She'll be cranky and stubborn an' then she'll be soft and amiable as pie--that's 'cause she's human. An' that's why a man'll let a old boat stan' an' rot ruther'n sell it. 'Cause it's human and it kinder gets him. You treat her as such, you boys."