Jack Harvey's Adventures: or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates

Jack Harvey, eager to be avenged for his wrongs, was for standing over boldly and attacking the bug-eye then and there; but Will Adams and Edward Warren, older and wiser, were for waiting.

“We’ll never let him sail away,” said Will Adams, reassuringly; “depend on that. But every minute we wait, saves a blow. They may be suspicious for a while, but they’ll not watch all night.”

“But how can we reach them without giving warning?” asked Tom Edwards. “They’ll hear us if we try to make sail, and one small skiff won’t hold us all.”

Will Adams pulled out his watch and noted the time. “In two hours it will be easy,” he answered. “In two hours the tide will begin to ebb out of the river. We’re above the Brandt. When the tide turns, we’ll just start the anchor off bottom and drop back on her. Get out the guns and make ready – but be quiet.”

They worked silently, and watched the hands of Will Adams’s watch move slowly around the dial. It seemed as though an hour would never go. Sixty more long minutes, and, as Will Adams had foretold, the vessels were swinging. Now their bows were no longer pointing out of the cove, but up-river.

Will Adams, in stocking feet, crept cautiously out on deck and extinguished the harbour light in the shrouds.

“We’ll see if they take notice of that,” he whispered, as he crept back again.

There was no sound of life aboard the Brandt, which swung idly at its mooring.

Gathering his force now, Will Adams instructed them in the parts each should play. He sent Jack Harvey astern to the wheel.

“You know how to steer her when she’s going astern?” he asked – “Just the reverse of the usual way.”

“Sure, I know,” replied Harvey, and crept to his post.

Edward Warren, armed with a rifle, and the others, carrying the equipment of shot-guns, took up their positions on the companion stairs, ready to rush out at the word. At the top, a dangerous post, crouched George Warren, holding a coil of rope, one end of which had been made fast to the foremast. Will Adams stole forward and slowly hauled in on the anchor-rode. The Mollie went ahead, leaving a greater distance between herself and the Brandt.

All at once, however, she began to drift slowly back again. Will Adams had the anchor off bottom. Harvey turned the wheel slightly, this way and that. The Mollie was dropping down upon the Brandt.

Gently the stern of the sloop grazed along the side of the bug-eye. George Warren leaped upon the deck of the Brandt and made fast the line about its foremast. Will Adams, running aft, snatched up a boat-hook, and, with that in his right hand and holding a revolver in his left, stepped aboard the Brandt. The boys, under orders, ranged themselves quickly on the deck of the sloop, crouching low, holding the shot-guns.

Almost at the moment, there came darting from the cabin of the Brandt a lithe, powerful figure, while the voice of Jim Adams called to Haley to follow him. But he was a moment too late. Will Adams, swinging the boat-hook, felled the negro with a single blow, stunning him.

Capt. Hamilton Haley, tumbling up from the cabin, half dressed, found himself staring into the muzzle of Edward Warren’s rifle. He dropped the weapon he carried, at the sharp command, seeing himself covered.

The crew of the Brandt, not over-loyal to Haley at best, showed no inclination to fight, under the range of fire from a battery of shot-guns. They called out, in fear, that they would give up.

They came forward, one by one, and submitted to being bound by Jack Harvey, who performed that function in good sailor fashion.

But when it came to Hamilton Haley, Harvey found himself pushed aside. Tom Edwards stood before him.

“Jack, old fellow,” said Tom Edwards, blithely, “let me have the satisfaction of tying up that brute that made me slave at the dredges.”

“But you don’t know how,” protested Harvey.

“Don’t I, though!” exclaimed Tom Edwards, smiling. “Why, I used to tie up a hundred bundles a day when I worked in a dry-goods store in Boston. Put out your wrist, captain, I’ll show you what a counter-jumper can do.”

And Tom Edwards, with vast satisfaction, did up Hamilton Haley like a package for the express.

They had not fired a shot – and the bug-eye was theirs. The cruise of the Brandt was at an end.

Next day, with Henry Burns recovered sufficiently to be about and on deck, the two craft started northward, keeping close in touch with each other. The skipper of the Z. B. Brandt was Jack Harvey; and he had a mixed crew, made up of one or two of the Brandt’s men that could be trusted, and Edward and George Warren. The Mollie still obeyed her helm directed by stalwart Will Adams. Back they went over the waters they had travelled, running by daylight only, until they reached the upper waters of Tangier Sound. There a welcome police-boat relieved them alike of the Brandt and her former skipper and mate and crew.

A week later, there filed into a court-room in Baltimore a sun-burned, weather-beaten looking party, conspicuous among which were Jack Harvey and Henry Burns and Tom Edwards, and consisting otherwise of the Warrens and Will Adams. They confronted two men there, long notorious for wrong-doing among the dredging fleet. It was the beginning of the end for Captain Haley and for Jim Adams, mate. They were held for trial. That trial, months later, had its natural conclusion. The doors of the state prison closed upon the pair for a long term of years.

And, in the meantime, two days following the preliminary hearing in court, a train rolled into Benton, bearing a party of youths at once joyous and serious. One of these, Jack Harvey, had parted for the time being from a friend whom he had met in adversity and whom he had come to love as an elder brother. That friend was Tom Edwards, no longer clad in oil-skins and weary of life, but well dressed and well fed, and eager to be back to the world of business from which he had been so rudely spirited away. And it may be truly said that there were tears in the eyes of Tom Edwards, as Jack Harvey, grasping his hand to say good-bye, gave it a grip as though he were turning the handle of Haley’s winch.

There was someone at the train to meet Henry Burns, as well as the parents of the Warrens. It was a slender spinster, Miss Matilda Burns, who had the care of the youth. She wiped her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief, as she tried to look sternly at her nephew.

“Henry Burns,” she said, “where on earth have you been all this time? You haven’t written me those two letters a week that you promised. I believe you’ve been off somewhere, away from that farmhouse of Mr. Warren’s, where you were going.”

“Yes’m, I have,” responded Henry Burns.

THE END