The Rival Campers Afloat: or, The Prize Yacht Viking

The light went out. Hence neither Henry Burns nor any one else could by any possibility have seen the look of anger and disappointment on the face of Mr. Carleton as he turned in and lay down to sleep – this time in earnest.

While thus living his boyhood over again with his new youthful acquaintances, Mr. Carleton did not neglect to establish friendly relations with older persons. Squire Brackett admired him greatly. As matter of fact, to a designing person, the squire was the easiest man in the world to win admiration from.

He had an inordinate vanity and love of flattery, which, united with a pompous manner, made him unbearable to those of discrimination; and this entrance to his good graces was quickly espied by Mr. Carleton. The squire liked that quiet, but perceptible, deference that came to him from a person of such apparent means.

There was, however, another reason that appealed even more strongly to the squire why he should cultivate Mr. Carleton, and that was a hint the squire had gained that his new acquaintance might prove profitable to him.

“Squire Brackett,” said Mr. Carleton, seated for the evening on the squire’s front porch, “that’s a pretty little island just below here, close to shore, between here and where those four boys are camping. Do you know, I’d like to own that. I have an idea a man could throw out a neat, rustic bridge from shore, just big enough to take a horse and carriage across, build a cottage out there, and have the most beautiful place about here.”

“Well, why don’t you buy it?” replied the squire. “It would, indeed, be a rare cottage site – prettiest spot around here, I say.”

“I think perhaps I will,” said Mr. Carleton; “that is, if it is for sale. Do you know anything about that?”

“Why,” answered the squire, “I guess I come about as near as anybody to owning it. You see, I hold a mortgage on it.”

“How much do you value it at?” asked Mr. Carleton.

“Why, let me see,” said the squire; “about twenty-five hundred dollars, I should say.”

“Cheap enough!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton. “I’ll just write up to my lawyers and see how some investments I have are turning-out. I think we can make a trade later on.”

He said it as though it was a trifling matter, and the squire, who had named an exorbitant figure, was sorry he had not put it higher. He also had neglected to explain that his hold on the land was of the slightest, consisting, as it did, of a mortgage of eight hundred dollars against Billy Cook, the owner, who had paid off all but two hundred dollars of the incumbrance. However, he had no doubt he could easily buy it of Billy Cook – indeed, he had had it offered to him for only four hundred dollars above the entire mortgage the year before.

“You ought to have a good boat to cruise around here with,” said the squire. “You’re fond of sailing, I see. Reckon you know how to handle a boat pretty well yourself.”

The squire knew he hadn’t any boat to sell that would suit Mr. Carleton, calling to mind his son’s letter from him about the Viking; but he had a purpose in suggesting the buying of one. He considered that if Mr. Carleton should make such a purchase, and become fascinated with the sailing about Southport, he would be more likely to want the land to build a cottage on.

“Yes, I am very fond of sailing,” responded Mr. Carleton, “but I haven’t got so far as to think about buying a boat just yet.”

“Oh, ho! you haven’t, eh?” said the squire to himself. “Reckon I know something about that.”

The squire was vastly tickled. Here was a position that just suited his crafty nature. It didn’t signify anything, to be sure, Mr. Carleton’s dissembling, – probably that he might get a better bargain by keeping quiet and not seeming anxious to buy, – but it pleased the squire to have this little advantage in the situation.

“I think you might buy the Viking,” he suggested.

Mr. Carleton had his own doubts about this, having been informed by Harry Brackett of the failure of his attempt, but he merely said, “That so? Well, she might do. Ever hear of anything queer about her – any outs about her?”

“No,” replied the squire, “nothing queer about her, except the way they got her. I don’t know of any faults that she has.”

“Well, I might buy her if they didn’t hold her too high,” said Mr. Carleton, meditatively. “I suppose she’s worth fifteen hundred dollars easy enough.”

“Yes, and more if you had her up Boston way,” answered the squire. “You haven’t had any idea of buying her, then?”

“No,” responded Mr. Carleton. “Still, I might like to. But please don’t say anything about it.”

“Oh, no,” replied the squire, chuckling to himself. Mr. Carleton, bidding him good night and taking his departure, was more than ever an object of interest to the squire. Here was a man that spoke in the most casual and nonchalant way of investing twenty-five hundred dollars in a piece of land that he liked, and of buying a fifteen-hundred-dollar boat. The squire’s curiosity, always keen in other persons’ affairs, was aroused. He wondered – in the usual trend of such personal curiosity – how the other man had made his money.

This curiosity was not abated, to say the least, by a comparatively trifling incident that occurred a day or two following. The squire had, in the cupola of his house, which he used as a vantage-point for surveying the bay far out to sea, and the surrounding country up and down the island, a large telescope. It was a powerful glass, with which he could “pick up” a vessel away down among the islands, and read the name on the stern of one a mile away. The squire had some interests in several small schooners plying between the coast cities and Benton, and was in the habit of going up to his lookout two or three times each day.

On this particular occasion, the squire, after sweeping the bay with the glass, turned it inland and took a look down the island. He could distinguish several familiar wagons passing along the main road, but nothing unusual. But, when he happened to turn the glass almost directly back inland from the direction of the town, he caught an object in its sweep that arrested his attention. It was the figure of his new acquaintance, Mr. Carleton, leaning against some pasture bars about a quarter of a mile away, intently reading a letter.

There was surely nothing unusual nor exciting about this, and yet the squire was interested. Perhaps it was due just to the novelty of observing a man a quarter of a mile away, reading a letter, when he could by no possibility be aware that he was being observed.

But if the squire’s attention was drawn to Mr. Carleton in the act of reading the letter, it was certainly doubled and trebled when the latter, having finished his perusal of it, waved the letter in a seemingly triumphant manner about his head and then tore it into many little pieces and dropped the pieces at his feet. Squire Brackett, through the spy-glass, watched Mr. Carleton come down through the fields toward the village.

He knew the exact spot to the inch where Mr. Carleton had stood. It was at the bars that divided a pasture belonging to the postmaster and a piece of town property. The squire shut the sliding glass windows that protected his lookout, hurried out-of-doors, walked briskly up through the fields, making a detour to avoid meeting Mr. Carleton, and arrived, somewhat short of breath, at the bars. He gathered up the pieces of the letter carefully. He put them into his coat-pocket, and walked briskly back to his house.

He hadn’t got them all, for the wind had carried some away. But the letter had evidently been a brief one. When the squire took the pieces out that afternoon at his desk in a little room that he called his office, there were only eleven scraps that he could assemble. Mr. Carleton had torn the letter into small bits.

The squire was disappointed. He had hoped to gratify his curiosity and be able to pry into Mr. Carleton’s private affairs a little. And withal, there were two words that interested him greatly and made his disappointment all the more keen. These were two words that followed, one the other, in the sequence in which they had been written. They were the words, “aboard yacht.” All the others had been so separated in the destruction of the letter that the squire despaired of ever being able to make anything out of them, or to restore them to anything like their original consecutive form.

However, he arranged the words and scraps of words by pasting them on a sheet of paper, as follows:

lock

ey

must be

sound

mbers

aboard yacht

starboa

still

under

ays

third

“Well, there’s a puzzle for you!” he exclaimed, dubiously. “How in the world shall I ever be able to make anything out of that?” But the next moment he gave a chuckle of exultation. “I’ve got part of it already!” he cried. “Lucky I happened to set them down just this way. Those letters, ‘mbers’ must have been part of the word ‘timbers.’ So that, after the first three scraps that I have put down, it reads, ‘sound timbers aboard yacht.’ I’ll get something out of this yet. There’s ‘starboa,’ too. That’s ‘starboard,’ of course. And ‘ays’ below may be ‘stays.’ That might make ‘starboard stays.’”

A look of perplexity came over the squire’s face the next moment.

“The queer thing about this,” he said, reflectively, “is that somebody away from here is writing him about this yacht. Perhaps they don’t mean the Viking. However, I believe that is the boat referred to. Well, he may be only getting advice from some one as to how to examine the yacht – how to look her over. The remark about ‘sound timbers’ sounds like that, anyway. So ho! he isn’t thinking about buying a yacht, eh?”

The squire chuckled.

“I’ll study this over at my leisure,” he said, as he placed the paper with the letters pasted on it carefully away in a drawer. “I’ll figure it out.”

CHAPTER XII.

THE SURPRISE SETS SAIL AGAIN

The work on the Surprise had gone on famously, though it had been a hard task. The labour of cleaning her, inside and out, had been well begun down in the Thoroughfare, but there remained still much to be done after she had been floated up into the harbour of Southport.

First, the boys had brought her in on the beach, at a point a little way up the cove from the Warren cottage, where there was a break in the rocky shore, and a clean strip of sand extended back from the water’s edge. There they had raised her on blocks and shored her up so they could work to advantage.

They swarmed over and in and out of her then like ants in an ant-hill, every boy lending a hand, from the Warren brothers to the campers down below. They scrubbed and scraped her, inside and out, and washed her insides with soap and hot water.

Then, following Captain Sam’s advice, they built a fire on the shore and melted a kettle full of pitch and tar. When they had gone over the entire planking of the boat, setting up the nails that had slackened with the straining it had undergone, and had driven many new ones in between, Harvey, equipped with an enormous brush, and having taken up the cabin flooring, smeared the inner part of the boat’s planking with the tar and pitch, filling all the seams with it.

Then they went over the entire hull on the exterior, tightening it up, scraping, sandpapering, and rubbing until their hands were blistered and their arms ached. Then came the painting of the cabin and outer hull, and the scraping and varnishing of the decks. The mast and ballast they had brought up from the Thoroughfare. The latter, cleansed of its rust and given a coating of hot coal-tar, was ready to be stowed aboard. The mast, scraped and varnished till it glistened once more, had been carefully stepped and fastened above and below. The yacht Surprise, with clean, shining spars, with polished, glistening decks, and with hull spotless white, was ready once more for the water. Long before they had tested their work with innumerable buckets of water thrown aboard, and had found her tight and not a leak remaining.

Jack Harvey eyed the yacht admiringly, as he paused, half-way up the bank from where she stood. His companions in the day’s work had gone on ahead.

“She’s a fine old boat,” he said, “and she’s just as good as new. I’ve had a lot of fun in her, too. I’ll never have any more fun in the Viking than I’ve had in her, though the Viking is bigger and handsomer. I’d be satisfied with the Surprise if I hadn’t got the other one.”

The moment seemed almost opportune for the offer that followed.

“That’s a fine craft there,” cried a voice so close in Harvey’s ear that it made him jump, for he had been so lost in the admiration of the Surprise that he had not heard the sound of any one approaching. He turned quickly, and there was Mr. Carleton.

“Doesn’t look much as though she had been under water all winter, does she?” asked Harvey.

“I should say not,” replied Mr. Carleton. “Looks as though she was just out of the shipyard. I don’t see what you need of the Viking when you’ve got such a boat as this. You’d better let me hire the Viking from you for the rest of the summer.”

“Sorry,” replied Harvey, “but I can’t do it. You see, I’ve promised to let the crew have this boat, and they have set their hearts on it. I wouldn’t disappoint them now for a hundred dollars.”

“How about two hundred dollars?” suggested Mr. Carleton.

Harvey hesitated for a moment.

“No!” he cried, determinedly, “not for a thousand dollars. There! I’ve said it, and I mean it. I want the money bad enough, too. But the crew are going to have this boat. We’ve made all the arrangements, and we are using the Viking for fishing, and we’ve got to be off for another trip, too, for we have been about here, earning nothing, for quite awhile now.”

“I’ll give you eighteen hundred dollars if you will sell the Viking,” said Mr. Carleton.

Harvey shook his head stubbornly.

“No use,” he said. “But,” he added, “you can arrange with the crew to take you sailing easy enough when we aren’t around here. They’ll be glad to have you go.”

“Hm!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton. “Well, all right; but if you change your mind, let me know.

“When are you going to launch this one?” he added.

“Why, I think we’ll put her into the water this evening,” replied Harvey. “That is, if we don’t get a shower. The moon will be up and the tide right. That’s why we are coming away so early now. We’re going up to the Warren cottage to get out some Japanese lanterns, and get the cannon ready. When we launch her, we are going to run a line from the masthead to the stern, and hang a chain of the lanterns, light them, and tow the Surprise around to the wharf in style, and fire a salute. Then she’ll be ready for Captain Sam to fit the sails in the morning. Better come around and see the fun.”

“Will you all be over here?” inquired Mr. Carleton.

“The whole crowd,” answered Harvey.

“Then I’ll be on hand sure,” said Mr. Carleton – but added to himself, “if I don’t have something else to do.”

There seemed to be no prospect of anybody taking part in a launching on this particular evening, however, for the dark clouds that had warned Harvey spread over the sky, and a quickly gathering summer shower was soon upon them. Harvey hurried up to the Warren cottage for shelter, and Mr. Carleton started back on the run toward Captain Sam’s.

A rowboat or two out in the harbour put hurriedly in to shore. The occupant of one of these latter craft, scurrying in and dashing homeward, had, it seems, been noticed by Squire Brackett through his glass from his observation-tower.

“Harry,” he said, as that young man came into the house, somewhat red in the face and out of breath, “what were you doing just now out around the Viking? I saw you row out behind her, and it took you at least three minutes or more to come in sight again. You didn’t go aboard her, did you?”

“No, I didn’t go aboard,” replied Harry Brackett, sulkily.

“Well, see that you don’t,” said Squire Brackett, emphatically. “You might not mean any harm by it, but you’ve had some trouble with those boys already this summer, and they wouldn’t like having you aboard unless they invited you.”

“Hm! well, if I wait for that I’ll never step aboard that boat,” exclaimed Harry Brackett. “And what’s more, I don’t want to go aboard. I wouldn’t go if they asked me.”

Having thus declared himself, Harry Brackett bolted his supper and vanished.

The shower, of rapid approach, was of equally brief duration. It had begun raining big, splashing drops about half-past four o’clock. Now, an hour later, it was brightening again, the sun darting its rays forth from the breaking cloud-banks, and the rain-drops dripping only from eaves and tree-branches.

Henry Burns and Harvey were vastly elated. The launching need not be put off, for the evening would be fair. They left the Warren cottage and hurried down alongshore to where they had left their tender, rowed out to the Viking, and began their preparations for supper.

“Henry,” said Harvey, “there’s some sunlight left yet, and just enough breeze to dry the sails nicely before we leave. The sooner they are dried the less likely they are to mildew. Shall we run them up?”

“Yes, let’s be quick about it,” replied Henry Burns. “The fire’s ready for the biscuit.”

They seized the halyards, one the throat and the other the peak, and began hauling. The sail went up smartly – when, all at once, there was an ominous, ripping sound.

“Hold on!” cried Harvey, “something is caught.”

“Well, I should say there was!” exclaimed Henry Burns, when he had made his halyard fast, and started to examine. “Cracky! but there are two big tears in the sail.”

“I don’t see how that can be,” said Harvey, joining him. “It’s a stout, new mainsail.”

“Why, I see what did the mischief,” he exclaimed, the next moment. “The reefing-points are caught in two places. That’s funny. We shook all the reefs out the last time we brought her in.”

“Look and see if it’s funny,” said Henry Burns, quietly. “I suppose somebody thought it was funny. Those knots didn’t tie themselves.”

Harvey examined them, while his face reddened with anger.

“I’ll bet I could guess who did that!” he cried.

“We’ll attend to his case if you guess right,” responded Henry Burns.

The knots certainly could not have caught themselves. There had been design in the act. In two places along the sail, one of the points for the fourth reef had been tied with one of the first. The consequence of this was, that when the united strength of the boys had come to bear directly on these two places, instead of being exerted evenly along the entire sail, the canvas had given away.

Harvey clinched his fist for a moment, opened his lips, as though about to give vent to his anger, and then suddenly subsided, with an expression on his face that half-amused Henry Burns.

“Say, Henry,” he said, “I’ve played the same kind of a joke myself before this, so I guess I might as well grin and bear it. But,” he continued, doubling up his fist once more, “perhaps I won’t take it out of that young Harry Brackett just the same, if I find out he did it.”

Henry Burns smiled assent.

“Never mind,” he said. “We can mend the tears so they won’t show much.”

They untied the knots, raised the sail, and let it dry while they ate their supper.

“Say, Tim,” said Harvey, an hour later, as they stood on shore by Tom and Bob’s tent, where the campers from down below had also assembled, “will you do something for me?”

“Sure,” replied Little Tim. “What is it?”

“Well, we want you to stay out aboard the Viking while we go up the cove and get the Surprise off and float her around,” said Harvey. “You see, Henry and I have decided not to leave the Viking deserted at night after this – that is, unless we have to. But what we want to-night particularly is for you to stay aboard and keep watch, and see if you notice Harry Brackett around the shore or the wharf, looking off toward the Viking. He’s played us a fine trick, and made us tear our mainsail – that is, we think he did it. But whoever it was will probably be around to see if the trick worked. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No-o-o,” answered Tim; “but don’t fire the cannon till you get around the point.”

“We won’t,” said Harvey. “Here’s the key to the cabin.”

Little Tim rowed out aboard.

It seemed, however, as though his vigil was to be a fruitless one. Certainly, Harry Brackett failed to put in an appearance. Little Tim stretched himself out on the seat and waited impatiently.

“I don’t see what Jack wanted to make me stay here for,” he remarked, when eight o’clock had come and gone and it was close upon nine, and the moon was rising.

Presently, however, he sat up and listened. Yes, there was somebody rowing out from shore. Tim strained his eyes eagerly. Then shortly he made out a somewhat familiar figure.

“Hello, Mr. Carleton,” he called; “I thought they said you were going up to the launching.”

The man in the boat stopped rowing abruptly, and turned in his seat. But if he was surprised to find anybody aboard the Viking he did not show it.

“So I am,” he replied. “Don’t you want to go up with me?”

“Can’t do it,” replied Little Tim. “I’m on watch. You’d better hurry, though. The tide is about up. She’ll be afloat soon now.”

Mr. Carleton rowed away. But he was not over-impatient, it would seem, for he rowed leisurely. In fact, he did not get up to the place of the launching at all, but paused off the wharf and sat idly in the stern of his boat, smoking and enjoying the beauty of the rising moon.

The yacht Surprise was at last afloat in all its glory of new paint and shining spars. She came around the point presently, towed by two boats filled with the boys, the string of lanterns, with candles lighted, swaying almost dangerously in the night breeze. The rowers halted abreast the Viking, the report of the cannon rang out over the waters and up through the quiet town, and the Surprise, now at anchor, lay waiting for the morrow, when Captain Sam should stretch the sails.

“Great success, wasn’t it?” cried Tom Harris to the occupant of a rowboat that had drifted up to them.

“Great!” replied Mr. Carleton. “Great! Sorry I didn’t get over in time to see her go into the water.”

Mr. Carleton made up for his delinquency the next day, however, for he was on hand early, and was much interested in the work of Captain Sam. He knew something of reeving rigging, too, it seemed, and lent a hand now and then. Joe Hinman and the crew liked him better than ever for it.

He was down again after dinner, too, and ready as ever to be of assistance.

“Hello,” he said, looking over toward the Viking, “are the other chaps going to play truant this afternoon, and leave us to rig the Surprise? I see they’ve got sail up.”

“Oh, they’re off for a week’s fishing down among the islands,” said Joe. “Jack said for us to go ahead and run the Surprise as soon as Captain Sam gets her ready. There they start now. They’ve cast off.”

The Viking was, indeed, under way, with Henry Burns and Harvey and Tom and Bob waving farewell.

“Where are you bound?” called Mr. Carleton, springing to the rail and hailing the Viking.

“Down the bay, fishing,” answered Harvey.

“Great!” cried Mr. Carleton. “Bring her up a minute, and I’ll come aboard and make the trip with you.”

Harvey looked at Henry Burns inquiringly.

Henry Burns glanced back at Mr. Carleton, but without altering the course of the yacht.

“Good-bye,” he called, pleasantly. “Sorry, but we’ve got a full crew. Couldn’t pay you high enough wages, anyway. Next trip, perhaps. Good-bye, fellows.”

Mr. Carleton watched the yacht, footing it fleetly southward; and there was a look of genuine disappointment on his face.

“Never mind,” said Joe Hinman, “come along with us. We’re off for a little cruise ourselves, in the morning. We’d like to have you go.”

“No, thanks,” replied Mr. Carleton. “I think I will wait ashore this trip – yes, I will go, too,” he said in the next breath. “I tell you where we will go. We’ll sail down to Stoneland. I haven’t been down that far yet. I’m with you.”