The Rival Campers Afloat: or, The Prize Yacht Viking

“We are in luck at the finish, at any rate,” said Henry Burns, presently, picking up the boat-hook. “Jack, there’s a vacant buoy to make fast to.”

The buoy, a circular object painted white, showed a little way off the windward bow, and Jack Harvey luffed up to it. Henry Burns caught the mooring; Tom and Bob had the mainsail on the run in a twinkling; and a moment more they were lying safe and snug at their voyage’s end.

Fifteen minutes later, the sound of heavy sweeps, labouring and grinding in rowlocks, told them that another boat was coming into the harbour from outside with the aid of an “ash breeze,” the wind having died wholly away. The boat came in close to where they were lying. From their cabin, as they sat eating supper, they could hear a man’s voice, rough and heavy, complaining apparently of the bad luck he had had in getting caught outside, deserted by the breeze.

The next moment the young yachtsmen got a rude surprise. The dishes they had set out on the upturned leaves of the centreboard table rattled, and the yacht shook with the shock caused by the other boat clumsily bumping into them astern. Then the rough voice sounded in their ears:

“Git away from that mooring! Don’t yer know I have the right ter that? What are yer lyin’ here for?”

The yachtsmen rushed out on deck. The boat they saw just astern was a dingy, odd-shaped little sailboat, about twenty-five feet long, sharp at both ends, with the stern queerly perked up into a point like the tail of a duck. A thickly bearded, swarthy man stood at her tiller, where he had been directing, roughly, the efforts of two youths, who had worked the boat in with the sweeps.

“What’s the matter with you?” cried Harvey, angrily. “What do you mean by bumping into us? We’ve got our lights up.”

“You git off from that mooring, I tell you!” cried the man, fiercely. “Ain’t I had it all summer? What right have you got interfering?”

The man’s manner was so threatening and his voice so full of the fury that told of a temper easily aroused, that a less aggressive youth than Harvey might have been daunted. But Harvey had got his bearings and knew where he was.

“No, you don’t!” he replied, sharply. “You can’t bully us, so it won’t do you any good to try. This is a government buoy, and the first boat up to it has the right to use it unless the revenue men complain. You can push your old tub out of the way.”

“Better tell him we will give him a line astern if he wants it,” suggested Henry Burns. “That won’t do any harm.”

“I won’t,” exclaimed Harvey. “He’s taken enough paint off the Viking already, I dare say. But” – he added – “you can if you want to. I don’t care.”

So Henry Burns made the offer.

The answer the man made was to order the two youths to work the “pinkey,” as the fishermen call his style of craft, up to the buoy, where he could cut the yachtsmen adrift.

Harvey sprang to the bow of the Viking, drew her up close to the buoy by taking in on the slack of the rope, and held her there by a few turns. Then he snatched up the boat hook. Henry Burns and Tom and Bob likewise armed themselves with the sweeps of the Viking and a piece of spar. They stood ready to repel an attack.

It looked serious. But at this point the two youths aboard the strange boat failed to obey orders. There arose, thereupon, a furious dispute aboard the other craft, the youths remonstrating in what seemed to be a broken English, and the man railing at them fiercely in English that was plain, but still had not just the Yankee accent; in the course of which the man at the tiller rushed upon one of them, and would have struck him had not the other youth interfered.

It ended in the wrathful stranger taking his craft ahead, quite a distance up the harbour, ignoring Henry Burns’s offer to moor astern of the Viking.

“Just as well he didn’t stay,” commented Henry Burns. “I don’t think he would improve on longer acquaintance, do you, Jack?”

“Well, hardly,” said Harvey. “I guess he must be one of those chaps Captain Sam spoke of.”

“I wonder if he will make us any more trouble to-night,” remarked Bob.

“No, he’ll have to fight it out with his own crew first,” said Harvey. “But I’ll just keep an eye out for a little while. You fellows can turn in.”

And Harvey kept vigil till eleven o’clock, muffled in a greatcoat, outside, until he nearly fell over asleep in the cockpit. Then he rolled in below, and was sound asleep before he could get his boots off.

The Viking was not molested through the night, though so wearied were the yachtsmen with their day’s sailing that a man might have come aboard blowing a fog-horn and not have aroused them from their deep slumber.

CHAPTER VII.

NEAR THE REEFS

The sound of voices calling cheerily over the water and the creaking of blocks awoke the boys a little after four o’clock the next morning. Henry Burns dragged himself drowsily to one of the cabin ports and looked out. It was a picturesque sight, for a small fleet of fishing-craft, of all sorts and shapes and sizes, was passing out of the thoroughfare, on its way to the fishing-grounds, with a light morning breeze that just filled the sails.

Back of the harbour the land went up gradually for a way, dotted here and there with the snug, tidy homes of the fishermen, until it rose in the centre of the island, forming hills of some considerable height – the first landfall for ships coming in from sea at that point. Now the tops of the hills glinted with the rays of the morning sun, which soon streamed down the slopes and made the whole island glow with warmth and brightness.

The pleasing landscape had at that moment, however, no particular attraction for Henry Burns. He gave a groan of self-commiseration, tumbled back into his warm blanket, and remarked:

“Oh, but these fishermen do begin the day early! Say, we don’t have to, do we, Jack? I vote for another hour’s sleep.”

“Make it four,” said Bob, who had been eying Henry Burns with apprehension.

Harvey and Tom muttered an assent that was not distinguishable.

By five o’clock, however, the sounds of men and boats had them awake again; and by another half-hour they were breakfasting on their way out of the harbour, beating against a light southerly.

“Do you know the fishing-grounds, Jack?” inquired Henry Burns.

“Only in a general way,” replied Harvey. “But we’ll follow the others, and get in somewhere near them.”

They stood out of the harbour and headed down the coast of the island, which extended seaward thus for some four miles. Harvey, at the wheel, was studying carefully a chart of the waters; Henry Burns and Tom and Bob, arrayed in oilskins, were busily engaged in “shucking” clams into some wooden buckets.

Presently an unexpected hail came across the water to them from a sailboat they had overhauled.

“Why, hello,” called Harvey, and added to his companions, “Here’s luck. It’s Will Hackett, Jeff’s brother. You know Jeff, who carries the mails in his packet.”

“What are you chaps doing way down here? Aren’t you lost?” asked the other, a stalwart, red-faced youth, who, with a crew composed of one small boy, was navigating a rough-looking sloop that looked as though it had seen a score of hard summers.

Harvey explained.

“Well, you won’t get rich,” said Will Hackett, bringing his craft in to head along with them. “But I’ll show you where to fish. The depth of water makes all the difference around here. They call me lucky, but there’s something in knowing where to drop a line. I’m down only for the day, but you follow me around and you’ll know where to go next time.”

When they had told him of the adventure of the night before, Will Hackett slapped a heavy fist down upon his knee.

“Good for you!” he cried. “So you’ve run foul of old Jim Martel, have you? Why, I offered to thrash him and his two boys only three weeks ago, for hanging around after dark where I had a trawl set. They come from over eastward, and quarrel with everybody; and I wouldn’t trust one of them with a rotten rope. You’d better keep away from them, though. He’s got a hot temper, has Jim Martel.”

They were in the swell from the open sea now, and the Viking and its companion, the Gracie, were lifting and dipping amid the long, rolling waves. About them, and ahead here and there, clouds of spray, cast like chaff into the air, told of reefs; sometimes marked with a spindle, or a cask set on the top of a pole, if it lay near the course; sometimes with a thin point of the ledge rising a few feet above water.

Some three miles down the coast of Loon Island a reef of several rods in length broke the force of the waves from seaward; and as these dashed in upon it they crashed into a thousand particles, which gleamed transiently with the colours of the rainbow as the sun shone upon the drops. Close under the lee of this reef went Will Hackett, and cast anchor a few rods away, not far from another boat, already at anchor. The Viking followed, and likewise anchored at a little distance, and sails were furled.

Quickly the heavy cod-lines, equipped with two hooks each, and bulky sinker, were dropped overboard; and the boys waited expectantly, their baits close to bottom.

“A prize to the one that gets the first cod,” said Harvey.

“What’s the prize?” asked Bob.

“Why, he can keep the cod’s head,” said Henry Burns. “Hello!” he exclaimed a moment later. “I’ve hooked on bottom, I guess. No, it must be seaweed.”

Henry Burns began hauling in with considerable effort.

“Why, it’s a fish!” he exclaimed the next moment. “There’s something moving on the end of the line. But he doesn’t fight any. Comes up like so much lead.”

“That’s the way they act,” said Harvey. “They don’t make any fuss. But you’ve got a big one.”

Henry Burns, hauling with all his might, hand over hand, presently brought to the surface an enormous cod.

“There’s a whole dinner for a hotel in that fellow,” said he. And, indeed, the fish would weigh fully twenty pounds.

“Not quite so lively sport as catching mackerel, is it?” he remarked, looking at his hands, which were reddened with the chafing of the hard line.

“No, this is more like work,” said Harvey. “But they won’t all run anywhere near as big as that. You’ve caught one of the old settlers.”

The fish were biting in earnest now, and the boys were bringing them in over the rail almost as fast as they could bait and cast overboard. By noon they had two great baskets full, stowed away in the cabin out of the sun, and were glad enough to take a long hour for rest, feasting on one of the smallest of their catch, rolled in meal and fried to a tempting crispness.

Then near sundown they were among the first to weigh anchor and run for harbour, tired but elated over their first day’s rough work.

Will Hackett had advised them how to dispose of their catch. A trader at the head of the harbour bought for salting down all that the fishermen did not sell alive to the schooners that carried them in huge wells, deep in their holds, to the Portland or Boston markets.

So they ran in with the other craft, and took their catch in to his dock in their dory.

The trader, a small, wiry, bright-eyed Yankee, scrutinized Henry Burns and Jack Harvey sharply, as they entered the little den which bore the imposing word “Office” over its door.

“So you’re fishermen, eh?” he remarked. “Rather a fine craft you’ve brought down for the work. Guess you might manage to keep alive somehow if you didn’t fish for a living.”

He was interested, though, when they told him their circumstances.

“Good!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m paying a dollar a hundredweight for cod caught on hand-lines, and less for trawl-caught. But you don’t calculate to do trawl-fishing, I reckon.”

“Not just yet,” answered Harvey.

They hitched the tackle at the end of the pier on to the baskets of fish, and the cod were hoisted up to the scales.

“Three hundred and sixty pounds, I make it,” said the trader. “That’s three dollars and sixty cents.”

The boys went away, clinking three big silver dollars, a fifty-cent piece, and a dime, and passing the money from hand to hand, admiringly.

“That never seemed like very much money to me before,” said Harvey, thoughtfully. “It makes a difference whether you earn it or not – and how, doesn’t it?”

“It’s all right for the first day,” said Henry Burns. “We’ll do better as we get the hang of it. And then later, if we get a catch of mackerel on the first run of the fish, why, we’ve got the boat to make a fast trip over to Stoneland, and sell them to the hotel. There’ll be money in that.”

The next morning, beating out of the harbour early, they had an unpleasant experience.

They had anchored off the dock at the head of the harbour, and had just begun to work their way out through the channel, which was there quite narrow, against a light southwest breeze. Henry Burns had the wheel, with Harvey tending sheet, and Tom and Bob working the single jib that they had set. A little way ahead of them a boat was coming in, running free.

“There’s our friend,” remarked Henry Burns, noting the pinkey’s sharp, queer stern. “It’s old Martel coming in from under-running his hake-trawls. We’ll try to keep clear of him.”

But it seemed this was not wholly possible.

The Viking was standing up to clear a buoy a short distance ahead, which marked the channel, and would just barely fetch by it if she was not headed off any. It became apparent soon, however, that the skipper of the pinkey was heading so that, if one or the other did not give way, there would be a collision.

“Better give him the horn,” suggested Tom, as the boys watched the oncoming boat.

“No, I don’t think we need to,” said Henry Burns. “They see us. Look, there they are pointing. Old Martel knows what he is doing. It’s just a case of bullying. We’ve got the right of way over a boat running free, and he knows it.”

“That’s right, Henry,” exclaimed Harvey. “We might as well show him we know our rights. Keep her on her course, and don’t give way an inch.”

There was plenty of water on the pinkey’s starboard hand, and the course was free there; but for the Viking to head off the wind meant failure to clear the buoy, and another tack, with loss of time. It was all a mere trifle, of course, but they knew the skipper of the pinkey was trying to crowd them; and they were bound to stand on their rights.

The pinkey came up perilously close; then, just barely in time, sheered off so that its boom almost came aboard the Viking. Henry Burns, unmoved, had held the Viking close into the wind, without giving way an inch even when it had looked as though the two boats must come together.

“We might as well fight it out right now with old Martel,” he said, quietly. “Perhaps he will let us alone if he finds we’re not afraid of him.”

Captain Jim Martel’s anger at being outmanœuvred was not lessened by the figure of Jack Harvey standing up astern and grinning at him derisively. He glared back angrily at the young yachtsmen.

But Harvey’s blood was up, too.

“Why don’t you learn to sail that old tub of yours?” he called out, sneeringly.

Martel’s answer was to put his helm hard down, bring his boat about, and stand up on the track of the Viking.

“Come on, we’ll give you a tow out to sea again,” cried Harvey.

“Go easy, Jack,” said Henry Burns. “He’s the pepperiest skipper I’ve seen in all Samoset Bay. Better let him alone. He’s angry enough already.”

“Yes, but he’s to blame,” said Harvey. “When anybody hits me, I hit back.” And forthwith he made gestures toward the other boat, as of urging it to hurry, by beckoning; and he coiled a bit of the free end of the main-sheet and threw it back over the stern, indicating that it was for the other craft to pick up, so as to be towed by the Viking.

The effect on Skipper Martel was, indeed, amusing. He sprang up from his seat, handed the tiller to one of his boys and rushed forward, where he stood, shaking a fist at the crew of the Viking and calling out angrily.

He made a comical figure, with his black, shaggy head wagging, and with his angry sputtering and his pretence of pursuit, whereas the Viking was leaving the pinkey rapidly astern. Henry Burns joined in the laughter, but he repeated his warning: “Better let him alone, Jack.”

Which warning, now that the skipper of the pinkey strode aft again, Jack Harvey finally heeded.

“Funny how that fellow gets furious over nothing,” he said. “We’ll have to have some fun with him.”

“You like an exciting sort of fun, don’t you, Jack?” said Henry Burns, smiling. But it was plain he took it more seriously.

They fished for four days more with varying success, and with a Sunday intervening. They were getting toughened to the work; their hands growing calloused with the hard cod-lines; their knowledge of working their boat in rough water and heavy weather increasing daily; their muscles strengthened with the exercise; and their appetites so keen that young Joe might have envied them.

One day it rained, but they went out just the same, equipped for it in oilskins, rubber boots, and tarpaulins, and made a good haul.

“Well, here’s our last day for a week or so,” said Henry Burns, as they stood out one morning for the fishing-grounds. “It’s back to Southport to-morrow. We mustn’t get too rich all at once.”

It was a day of uncertain flaws of wind, puffy and squally, after a day of heavy clouds. They were sailing under reefed mainsail, for at one moment the squalls would descend sharp and treacherous, though there would succeed intervals when there was hardly wind enough to fill the sails. They worked down to the fishing-grounds and tried several places, but with no great success. Some of the boats put back to harbour early in the afternoon, dissatisfied with the conditions, as it was evidently an off day for cod. Others, including the Viking, held on, hoping for better luck.

Then, of a sudden, the wind fell away completely two hours before sunset, and the sea was calm, save for the ground-swell, which heaved up into waves that did not break, but in which the Viking rolled and pitched and tugged at anchor.

“Perhaps we will get a sunset breeze and be able to run back,” said Harvey.

But evidently the fishermen, more weather-wise, knew better; for some of the lighter, open boats furled their sails snug, got out their sweeps, and prepared to row laboriously back the three long miles. Others of the big boats made ready to lie out for the night.

“Well, we’ve got a good anchor and a new line,” said Harvey. “There’s nothing rotten about the Viking’s gear. We’ll lie as snug out here as in the harbour.”

They tripped the anchor just off bottom, got out the sweeps, and worked the Viking back a dozen rods or so from the shallow water about the reef. Then they dropped anchor again, with plenty of slack to the rope, to let the yacht ride easy with less strain on the anchorage. There were a half-dozen boats within hailing distance, similarly anchored, including Skipper Martel and his pinkey.

“We’re in good company,” said Henry Burns, laughing. “But I’m glad Jack isn’t near enough to stir him up.”

Evening came on, and the little fleet resembled a village afloat, with the tiny wreaths of smoke curling up from the cabin-funnels. The night was clear overhead and the hills of Loon Island shone purple in the waning sunlight, streaked here and there with broad patches of black shadow. The ground-swell broke upon the reef heavily, sending up a shower of spray high in air, weird and grimly beautiful in the twilight.

“That’s good music to sleep by,” said Bob, as the booming from the reef came to their ears while they sat at supper.

“Yes, it’s all right on a night like this,” assented Harvey. “You’ll sleep as sound as in the tent.”

It grew dark, and the little fleet set its lanterns, though it was mere conformance to custom in this case, since no craft ever made a thoroughfare where they lay.

“What do you think?” asked Henry Burns two hours later, as he and Harvey stood outside, taking a survey of the sea and sky, and making sure once more that their anchor-rope was clear and well hitched – “What do you think, Jack, do we need to keep watch?”

He had quite a bump of caution for a youth who did not hesitate at times to do things that others considered reckless.

“Oh, it’s still as a mill-pond,” replied Harvey. “We’ve had the clearing-off blow, and there are the clouds banking up off to southward, where the breeze will come from in the morning. See, there isn’t a man out on any of the other boats. No, we’ll just turn in and sleep like kittens in a basket.”

So they went below.

The roaring of the reef was, in truth, a not all unpleasant sound to those who felt safe and snug in its lee, securely anchored. To be sure, there was a grim suggestion in the crashing of the swell against its hollows and angles at first, but the steady repetition of this became in time almost monotonous. There was the heavy, roaring, thudding sound, as the swell surged in against its firm base. Then this blended into a crisp rushing, as the waters raced along its sides; and then a crash as of shattered glass as the mass thrown up broke in mid-air and fell back in countless fragments of white, frothing water upon the cold rocks.

The boys went off to sleep with this ceaseless play of the waters in their ears.

The hours of the night passed one by one. And if any boy aboard the Viking roused up through their passing and heard the surf-play upon the reef, there was no more menace in it than before. Just the same steady hammering of water upon rock.

Yet Harvey’s prophecy of sound sleep was not wholly borne out – at least, in the case of Henry Burns. He was a good sleeper under ordinary conditions, but he roused up several times and listened to the wash of the seas.

“It may be grand music,” he muttered once, drowsily, “but I can’t say I like it quite so near.”

Something awoke him again an hour later. His perception of it as he half-sat up was that it sounded like something grating against the side of the Viking.

He sat still for a moment and listened. The sound was not repeated.

“I thought I heard something alongside,” he said aloud, but talking to himself. “Did you hear anything, Jack?” he inquired in a louder tone, as Harvey stirred uneasily.

There was no reply. Harvey had not wakened.

“Hm! guess I’ve got what my aunt calls the fidgets,” muttered Henry Burns, rolling up in his blanket once more. “It’s that confounded reef. No, it’s no use. I don’t like the sound of it at night. Pshaw! I’ll go to sleep, though, and forget it.”

Something just alongside the Viking that looked surprisingly like a dory, with some sort of a figure crouched down in it, – and which may or may not have caused the sound that had awakened Henry Burns, – lay quiet there for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, – a good half-hour in all. Then it moved away from the side of the boat, passed on ahead for a moment, and stole softly away over the waves.

The booming of the seas upon the reefs! How the hollow roar of it sounded far over the waters. How the thin wisps of spray, like so much smoke, shot up through the darkness, white and ghostlike!

A strange phenomenon! But if by chance there had been some shipwrecked man clinging to that reef, he might have fancied that the rocks to which he clung were drifting in the sea – strangely shifting ground and drawing up closer to a yacht at anchor.

Or was it something different? Was the yacht really no longer lying anchor-bound? And was it drifting, drifting slowly down upon the rocks, soon to be lifted high upon a crest of the ground-swell – and then to be dropped down heavily upon one of the streaming, foam-covered points of ledge?

Crash and crash again! Was it louder and heavier than before?

Henry Burns’s eyes opened wearily.

The sound of the sea seemed stunning. What was it about the noise that seemed more fearful, more terrifying, more dreadful than before?

He sprang up now. Yes, there could be no doubt. Something was wrong. The sea rising, perhaps. The wind blowing up. There it came, again and again. It was louder – and louder still. A mind works slowly brought quickly from sleep; but Henry Burns was wide awake now.