Jack was whistling cheerfully as he cleaned out his boat. As the sloop’s regular berth was occupied by one of Garnett and Sayer’s schooners, which was taking in ice for a trip, Jack had tied up across the slip to one of Simon Barker’s boats. He looked round with a start when a gruff voice hailed him from the wharf, and saw Simon Barker himself glaring down from the string-piece.
“Get out of that!” Mr. Barker ordered gruffly.
The boy, puzzled for a moment, as he was doing no harm, looked back in frank astonishment.
“D’ye hear me? Get out of that!” the ship-owner repeated, more truculently. “What d’ye mean by rubbing the paint off my boat?”
Silently Jack cast off, and let the Sea-Lark swing back across the slip.
“Don’t let me catch you over here again!” bellowed Mr. Barker, as he made his way back toward his office at the head of the wharf.
“Don’t you worry about that,” muttered Jack, smarting, as he fended the sloop from a spile and tossed her line over it. “You wouldn’t have found me there then if I’d realized where I was.” He looked disgustedly after the ship-owner, whose back was disappearing through a doorway. “I wouldn’t tie up to one of your old tubs if it were the only thing afloat, you old skinflint!”
But in that Jack was mistaken, as events soon proved.
Two days later there came a blustery, rainy day—the sort of weather known to the down-east fishermen as a “smoky so’easter.” For a brief spell summer was in a grumpy mood. Drizzle fell constantly, and sharp gusts of wind swept at intervals across the harbor. Jack, having made one profitless run across to the Point, was wondering whether or not there was any chance of the sun taking another peep at Greenport that day. He hoped that for once Cap’n Crumbie was wrong in his assertion that it was going to last till nightfall. George was not on board that morning, as it was one of the days when his father needed assistance, but Rodney had joined the sloop, in no wise discouraged by the weather. Both boys were enveloped in oilskins.
While the Sea-Lark was lying at her berth Cap’n Crumbie strolled to the edge of the wharf, casting a glance far out to sea for some sign of a break.
“There’s a schooner in trouble down near Four Fathom Shoal,” he announced. “They’ve just telephoned from the Light about her.”
“A Greenport schooner?” Jack asked.
“Don’t know,” replied the watchman. “The light-keeper said he could only just make her out in the haze.”
“Is she ashore on the shoal?”
“Don’t seem to be. As far as he can see, she’s a bit to the south o’ the shoal, but she’s had her sticks blown out of her, or something.”
“I haven’t seen the tug go off,” observed Jack.
“She ain’t here, but Barker’s on the job, all right. He’s scared stiff lest the schooner is one o’ his boats. Shouldn’t wonder if she is. The Grace and Ella ought to ha’ got in last night, but she didn’t.”
“The Grace and Ella!” repeated Jack. The name had a peculiar significance for him. That was the schooner which his own father had owned in partnership with Simon Barker when the robbery had led to the severing of their business relations.
“I hope it isn’t the Grace and Ella,” said the boy anxiously. “Somehow—I don’t know—well, she isn’t in the family now, of course, but all the same I hate the idea of anything happening to her.”
“So does Barker!” grinned the watchman, whose sympathies lay more with the men on the schooner than with the owner’s pocket. “His tug went up to Rockmore this morning with a tow, and he’s hanging on to the telephone and nearly having a fit, trying to get hold o’ Burke, the cap’n.”
“Rockmore is a tidy distance off,” commented Jack. “Anything might happen to the schooner by the time the tug reaches her from there. But the schooner isn’t ashore, you say?”
“Not as far as the light-keeper could make out. And the tide is making the other way, so she’ll be all right for a while, so long as she ain’t leaking bad.”
Jack looked up sideways at the gloomy sky. Though the wind was coming in puffs, it by no means had the force of a gale.
“What do you say to a run out there, Rod?” he asked suddenly, turning to his friend.
“Out where? To Four Fathom Shoal?” His face lighted up at the prospect of such an adventure. “I’m game, if you are.”
“Why not?” said Jack. “I don’t know that we could do much when we got there, but the sloop can make it easily enough, and you never know! They might be jolly glad to let us bring them ashore.”
“Well, I ain’t saying you wouldn’t get there safe,” observed Cap’n Crumbie, “though you’d have to tack all the way against this so’easter. But the tug may get there afore you can.”
“According to you, though, the tug hasn’t started from Rockmore yet,” protested Jack. “There isn’t a soul wants to go across the ferry at present, so why shouldn’t we make the run?”
“Go to it!” said the watchman. “Nobody’s stopping you.”
“Come on, Rod,” said Jack, suiting the action to the word and a few moments later the sloop was standing straight down the harbor, past Gull Island, past the end of the breakwater, out into the open. Jack found the sea was rougher than he had anticipated when they came abreast of Greenport Light, but the wind was nothing to cause alarm. The Sea-Lark danced and cavorted, heeling well over as she raced up one side of a green sea and dived down the other. The water boiled in her wake, for Jack was carrying every stitch of canvas he could spread to the breeze.
Thump-thumpety-thump! went the curling crests of waves as they slapped her bow. Always she rose before the onrushing swirl like a bird in fact as well as in name, but sometimes the crest curled a little higher, swished up at her prow, and shot over the deck, drenching everything on board. Several times her cockpit was awash, and some of the water went down the companionway into the cabin, but the rest gushed back through the scuppers into the sea.
“This rain must have got worse since the light-keeper telephoned,” Jack said when they had run a mile south of the breakwater and he was thinking of swinging over on to the other tack. “The shoal is four miles away from the Point, and you can’t make anything out more than half a mile away now. It may let up again soon, though. Keep your eyes skinned, Rod.”
Jack came about as soon as he had room to run clear of the Point’s eastern shore. The loom of the shore was hazy, and as soon as he went about once more and bore away almost due south the mist swallowed up the coast-line entirely. The wind sang shrilly in the rigging and the boys’ faces smarted with the salt spume which whipped their cheeks and at times half blinded them.
“Want to go back?” Jack shouted to his chum, jokingly, when the Sea-Lark in a particularly playful moment had kicked up her heels and dived with somewhat alarming suddenness down a steep green mountain-side, fetching up at the bottom with a splash and burying her nose.
“Not likely,” replied Rod, reveling in the spice of danger which flavored the adventure. “It’s just beginning to be interesting.”
“She’ll fairly skate home straight before this wind,” replied Jack, laughingly. “Here comes a whopper! Look out! Isn’t she a daisy? See the way she rose to it? We must be about half-way out to the Four Fathom bell-buoy now. I thought I heard it ringing just then. Listen!”
Ding-ding-ading! The sound was faintly audible.
“It’s safe enough to keep on till we work our way to that buoy,” said Rod. “Dad and I have been as far as that several times in the motor-boat, but of course only in fine weather.”
“I know the shallow water is all to the north of that buoy,” replied Jack. “What I’m worrying about now is, where is the schooner? There doesn’t seem to be any sign of her. Maybe she’s close up to the shoal.”
For another twenty minutes the sloop ran on, tacking occasionally, and ever approaching nearer the sound of the bell-buoy, the melancholy note of which now came clearly enough across the water.
“Hark!” cried Rod, suddenly.
Swish! came the waves against the prow of the sloop. Overhead there was the constant song of the wind in the halyards. The only other thing Jack could hear for a while was the bell-buoy.
“What was it?” he asked after a while.
Just then a gust of wind brought across the water the squawk of a boat’s fog-horn.
Conch-conch!
“There she goes! That’s the schooner, all right,” cried Jack, swinging the wheel over and heading in the direction of the sound.
Conch-conch! It was more distinct now, the wind bringing it directly toward them.
“The tug hasn’t arrived, evidently,” Jack shouted to his companion. “Didn’t I see something away across there just now?” he added, pointing over to the starboard bow and peering into the haze.
“Yes, there she is!” he cried a few moments later, as a vague blur became visible through the rain. “And she’s the Grace and Ella, too. But what’s happened to her? There isn’t a spar standing!”
Another five-minutes’ manœuvering brought the Sea-Lark within hail of the distressed vessel, and soon she was under her lee.
“Ahoy, Captain Jordan!” Jack called. “The tug is coming off for you.”
“Hello, youngster! Where is she?”
“Don’t know. They telephoned up to Rockmore for her. She’d gone up there with a tow.”
“Well, if she ain’t quick she won’t be a powerful lot o’ use to us,” replied Captain Jordan. “We could drift home in another month or two, with this wind. What are you doing out here? This ain’t your beat with the ferry.”
“Why, I didn’t know how bad a fix you might be in,” replied Jack. “We could have carried you ashore if the schooner had been sinking. What happened to your masts?”
Only a few yards separated the two craft. The little boat was rising and falling on each wave, Jack keeping her clear, headed up into the wind.
“A squall struck us about four o’clock this morning and made a clean sweep. The dories went, and everything, and afore we knew it the schooner was bumping her bottom out on the shoal. If the tide hadn’t turned just then we’d ha’ been all broken up by now.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you, is there?” asked Jack. Apart from the natural desire to serve those on another craft in trouble, the boy would have been pleased to be of service to Captain Jordan, for he had been on particularly friendly terms with that stalwart fisherman ever since he himself first began to potter about the harbor. Indeed, many a time he had paddled about in one of the Grace and Ella’s dories, and despite Mr. Barker’s enmity, the lad had received more than one invitation from Captain Jordan to make a trip in the schooner to the fishing-grounds, though he had declined to do so, at the desire of his father.
“You say the tug ain’t coming straight out o’ Greenport?” the skipper asked.
“No telling when she will be here,” replied Jack. “I don’t think she can be long, though.”
“Well, I’ll have to drop my anchor soon as the tide turns again,” replied the fisherman, “unless you like to give us a tow. We can’t do a thing now, except wait. We’ve got a big trip o’ fish aboard, too, and she sprang a leak when she hit the sand. We’ve had to keep on pumping.”
“I can tow you, all right,” replied Jack, “if you’ll pass me a hawser. You won’t move so very fast, but I can get you there.”
“Well, that’ll be a salvage job, won’t it?” said Captain Jordan. “You’d better put a price on it before we start.”
Jack, who had not thought of turning his adventure into a business affair up to that moment, hardly knew what to reply.
“What’s a fair price, Captain?” he asked.
“You’d better settle that with the owners, after we get ashore.”
Jack laughed outright.
“No, thank you,” he replied. “Mr. Barker and I are not what you’d call particularly good friends. What’s it worth to you to be taken into the harbor?”
“If the tug comes along,” replied the captain, “it won’t cost the owner anything, but there’s no sign of her yet and if we keep on drifting the way we’re headed we’re due to land up on the Big Popple Beach before long. I’ll take the first tow I can find and I guess I wouldn’t kick at five hundred dollars for the job.”
There was a gasp from Rodney. Jack blinked once or twice, and the smile vanished from his face. Then:
“Let me have that hawser,” he said in a businesslike tone. “Only, Captain, if I start towing you, I want to finish the job.”
“Glad to have you,” replied Captain Jordan, who, though he did not say so, was by no means heartbroken at the idea of running up a bill against his employer, in the circumstances. For, like everybody else with whom Simon Barker had had any dealings, the captain of the Grace and Ella had been a victim of Barker’s meanness. Most of the gear on the schooner was little better than junk. To wring a new set of sails out of her owner was one of the hardest tasks in the world. It was just the same with halyards, spars, and everything else aboard that needed to be renewed from time to time after hard wear and tear. Captain Jordan was convinced that the loss of the two masts was due to Barker’s stinginess. Twelve months previously the skipper had pointed out a defect in the mainmast and suggested that it would be safer to have the spar replaced, but Barker would not hear of it. It was that mast which gave way first when the squall hit them, and the foremast, unable to bear the additional strain, followed suit. Barker, therefore, was only paying for his own niggardliness.