“I heard that there were tramps got into Warren’s barn, over yonder, last night,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “We don’t have much of that around here. Neighbour Darrell says Warren would give a dollar, and perhaps more, to catch them. But I says, ‘Probably the poor fellows didn’t have nowheres else to go, and I wouldn’t tell on ’em, if I knew where they were.’”
Again the man stole a stealthy glance at his guests.
“I wouldn’t take money for that,” he added, “though I reckon it would be worth a dollar to the chaps, themselves, to keep out of the lock-up.”
Harvey, and Tom Edwards exchanged significant glances. It was only too clear what their host was driving at. But Harvey waited for some time before he yielded. It was half an hour later, when they had finished dinner and were sitting by the fire, that he met the sly demand.
“Look here,” he said, suddenly, as though the thought had just struck him, “you’re giving us the best you can, and we haven’t paid you enough. Here’s another dollar. I’d give more than that, if we could afford it.”
He held out the dollar. The man took it, eyed it avariciously and stuffed it into a pocket.
“I wouldn’t take it if I wasn’t as poor as poverty,” he said.
Late that afternoon, he took down his hat and said he would go “up the road” again, and be back shortly. They watched him till he was out of sight. Then Tom Edwards turned to Harvey, his face clouded with anger.
“Jack,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of here, and now’s our chance. I wouldn’t trust that old rascal another minute. He may be lying about the lock-up he spoke of—I don’t believe there’s one for miles around. But he’d sell us to the first captain that came along. What do you think?”
Jack Harvey nodded, wearily.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s a beastly shame, though. I want a night’s sleep. But we can’t get away from here any too soon, I’m thinking. Come on. Let’s bolt.”
They started off, running along the wheel track, and thence down the road they had come before. It was already growing dark, and their hearts sank, as they hurried on, wondering anxiously where they should spend the night.
They followed the road down to the landing, because they knew not where else to go. They came finally to the wharf, with its warehouse at the farther end. This was shut fast, and no sign of life about it. They sat down for a moment, to rest.
“Well?” queried Harvey, “what do you think?”
“Try another farmhouse?” suggested Tom Edwards.
“I’m scared to do it,” replied Harvey. “There’s an old barn, or factory of some sort over yonder, however, that looks deserted. Anything will do for a night. Let’s go and see.”
They made their way over to the eastward of the wharf, for a distance of several rods, and came up to an old canning factory, which had been some time out of use and was closed. They forced the shutter of a window and entered, finding themselves almost in darkness.
What sort of a place they were in, what it consisted of, and whatever accommodations it might afford them for a night’s lodging, they had no means of finding out. They had only a few matches, and these would serve them but little. They feared to wander about, lest some rotten timbers should let them through to the cellar, or whatever might be beneath. The single match they lighted sufficed to show them all they needed.
The little patch of light fell upon a litter of old straw, as though from packing boxes of some sort. Tired and sleepy, they crept into this, devoured the remaining biscuits they had in their pockets from the Brandt’s cabin, and fell sound asleep.
Both awoke shivering, the following morning, for there had been scant covering to their bed, and the building was cold. They hastened out into the sunshine, going around to the southern exposure of the cannery, where the warmth was greatest. Again, Harvey took the precaution of dividing the money in his small and very private bank, drawing on the account pinned to his undershirt, for three dollars, leaving fourteen thus secured.
He had hardly accomplished this transfer when they heard voices, and three men came past the corner of the old cannery, going off to the right in the direction of a great creek. Harvey halted them, with a call, and they turned in surprise. They were negroes, and evidently oystermen of some sort.
“Hello, what be you two doing here?” inquired one of them, who seemed by his manner to be the leader of the three.
“We want to get to Baltimore,” replied Harvey.
The man shook his head.
“Boat don’t go to-day,” he said.
“We want something to eat,” said Tom Edwards. “You fellows got anything to sell?”
“Mebbe a little bread, and sure enough some oysters,” answered the man. “They’s down ’board the boat, though. You’ll have to come and get ’em.”
The three negroes started on again, Tom Edwards and Harvey following. The three apparently paid no more attention to Harvey and his companion—at least, they did not arouse the suspicion of the two. Nevertheless, one by one, as they walked along, the three turned and looked the strangers over. Then they conversed together, softly, but with more than ordinary interest.
Arrived at the creek, there appeared a great canoe drawn up to shore, with perhaps a bushel of oysters lying in a heap in the bottom. It was a canoe of unusual size, at least twenty-four feet long, and broad of beam. The man who had spoken handed over to Tom Edwards half a loaf of bread, while another of the men began shucking some of the oysters. He passed these to them, and they devoured them hungrily.
“You want to go to Baltimore right away?” asked the negro, suddenly, turning to Tom Edwards.
“Quick as we can get there.”
“Jim,” said the man, addressing one of his companions, “what time this afternoon does that Potomac river steamer get ’round to Otter Point?”
“About five o’clock,” answered the man promptly.
“You know Otter Point?” asked the first man, of Tom Edwards.
The latter shook his head.
“I know,” said Harvey. “It’s a long way down.”
“’Bout eighteen miles,” said the negro. “Good offshore wind this fo’noon; take you down in ’bout three hours, you catch the afternoon steamer, get you into Baltimore to-morrow mo’ning.”
“How much will you charge?”
“Guess it’s worth ’bout a dollar.”
“What do you say, Tom?” asked Harvey.
“I say, let’s go,” answered Tom Edwards.
“All right,” said Harvey. “When will you start?”
“Jes’ as soon as you get aboard,” replied the negro.
Harvey handed a dollar to the man, and they stepped into the canoe. The men shoved off, the sails were set and the canoe glided out of the creek, through a narrow opening, into the bay. There was a smart breeze coming up, off the land; and the canoe, with the wind about abeam, headed down along shore. It was fast, and they made good time. Some three hours later, at about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, they ran between two points of land, into a creek that spread out broadly for over a mile in width, and extended northward for some three miles.
They ran for something like a mile northwesterly, and turned into one of the numberless coves, to where a small cabin stood, a little way back from shore. The country round about was desolate. There was not another sign of habitation in sight.
They went up to the cabin, with the three negroes, and entered. It was a mere fisherman’s shack, with some bunks on two sides, filled with hay for bedding. A cook stove warmed it. There was a table in the middle of the floor, with some empty boxes to serve as seats.
Despite the barrenness of it, however, Harvey and Tom Edwards made a good dinner, about two hours later, of fried fish and bread and hot coffee.
They were in good spirits, when they stood, at a quarter to five that afternoon, at Otter Point, awaiting the steamer.
But there was no wharf there—nothing but a rude framework of poles, at which a small boat might moor.
Harvey turned to their one companion, in surprise.
“A steamer can’t land here,” he exclaimed.
The leader of the three negroes, who had accompanied them from the cabin, answered, with assurance.
“The landing was over yonder,” he said. “It was carried away, and they just puts folks ashore and takes them on here. We has to send a boat off.” He took out a pipe and began smoking stolidly.
Five o’clock came—and six—and there was no steamer. Night had settled down. The negro answered their questions by asserting that “something mus’ have hap’nd; that boat was always on time befo’.”
They waited a little while longer, with fast dying hopes. It was all guesswork to them. They could not know that, at six o’clock in the evening, by its schedule, the Potomac river steamer bound for Baltimore was twenty miles back on its course, coming out of St. Mary River, into the Potomac; that it never did stop at the creek where they were anxiously waiting, and that it would go by sometime in the night. At half-past six o’clock they gave it up and rowed back with the negro, in a skiff, to the cabin.
“Jack,” said Tom Edwards, as they turned in for the night, in bunks, one above the other, “I’m afraid they’ve played a trick on us, though I don’t know what for. I don’t like the looks of this place.”
“Nor I,” said Harvey. “I’m going to keep awake for an hour or two, and watch. I’ve got Haley’s revolver.” He took it from his pocket and hid it in the straw under his head. “We’ll be ready for them, anyway,” he muttered.
But they had reckoned without their weariness. In less than an hour, they were both fast asleep.
Nothing evil befell throughout the night, however. The morning found them undisturbed. The negroes were stirring, and the odour of cooking brought them to their feet, hungry and refreshed.
That day seemed endless. There would be no boat up river until to-morrow, they were now assured. They could only wait. They were suspicious—alarmed. The place was so out of the way, and so dreary. But they decided to wait the one more day, and then, if no boat came, to strike off across country for themselves.
Harvey slept soundly that next night, for several hours. Then something—he knew not what—roused him. He stirred sleepily, half awoke and turned in his bunk. A figure stole away from him, in the darkness, toward the door. It is probable that Harvey would have relapsed into sound slumber once more had he not felt cold. He awoke, shivering, and felt a draft of cold night air blowing in on him. Then he saw a patch of moonlight streaming in through the half-opened door.
Harvey, fully dressed, as he had turned in, rolled out of the bunk and stepped to the door. Some distance away, two men were going down to the shore. The next thing he saw sent the blood leaping through his veins. Out in the creek, the moonlight was reflected on the sail of a bug-eye. It was rounding to, coming up into the wind. Harvey darted back into the cabin and awoke Tom Edwards, shaking him vigorously.
“Tom, get up, quick!” he said; and dragged him from where he lay.
“There’s a vessel coming in, Tom,” he cried, “and the men from here are going down to meet it. They’re after us—that’s what. Tom, we’ll be sold again to a dredger if we don’t get out of here. That’s what they got us down for.”
They had, fortunately, no clothing to put on, for they had turned in dressed, even to their shoes. They waited only for a moment, snatching up some pieces of dry bread that remained on the table from the supper. Then they hurried out of the door.
They were not a moment too soon. Perhaps the third man had been about the cabin somewhere and had given the alarm. As they stepped outside, the three negroes came plainly into sight, in the moonlight, armed with short poles which they brandished as clubs, running back toward them and crying out for them to halt.
There was a sharp surprise for the three, however. Tom Edwards, made desperate by the crisis, had drawn a fish knife that he had taken from the cabin of the Brandt; Jack Harvey stood coolly in his tracks, holding Haley’s revolver.
“Stand back there, or I’ll shoot,” he cried.
“‘STAND BACK THERE, OR I’ll SHOOT,’ HE CRIED.”
The negroes stopped short and stood, holding their clubs in hand. They were clearly taken all by surprise. The leader, balked of his prize money for two able-bodied men for the dredger, was not to be beaten, off-hand, however. His eyes flashed with anger, as he advanced a step.
“That thing isn’t loaded,” he asserted. “You can’t fool us. It won’t shoot.”
“Won’t it?” said Harvey. “Let’s see.” He raised the weapon, aiming it over the man’s head, and pulled the trigger. The report of the weapon sounded afar in the still night air, ringing out across the water. The man sprang back, in terror, and, the next moment, the three started running for the shore toward the vessel.
“Tom,” cried Jack Harvey, “get your wind for a run now. We’ve got to get out of here before they bring the captain and mate and his men after us. We’ll have to run and trust to luck.”
They started off across country, away from the shore, as hard as they could run. The moonlight, fortunately, showed them the ground over which they ran—though they knew not whither they were travelling.
All that night they proceeded, coming to a road, after a time, that went northward. They followed along that. Not until daybreak did they pause to rest.
Poor Tom Edwards was groaning, and gasping like a fish out of water.
“The luck’s against us, Jack, old boy,” he murmured. “Here we are, twenty miles worse off than we were before—and, only to think, that other boat goes up to-morrow from Millstone, and we won’t be there in time.”
“Never mind,” said Jack Harvey, stout-heartedly, “we’ll get out of it some way. We’ll follow the road, and we won’t starve. I’ve got the money to pay for food along the way.”
He thrust his hand under his waistcoat, as he spoke—and uttered a cry as he did so.
“Tom,” he shouted, “I haven’t got the money. I’ve been robbed! It’s gone!”
He felt through his clothing, feverishly. He drew forth from one pocket a single dollar bill and a small amount of change. It was all he had left. The money that had been pinned to his clothing had been taken, pin and all, while he slept. The dollar left to him had been in the trousers pocket, protected by his body.
They were too poor now to pay their fare up the river. They were worse off than before against the cold or any storm that might arise; for they had left their oil-skins back in the cabin, in their flight.
Will Adams, stirring the coals in the fireplace of his cheery dining-room, added two sticks of oak to the blaze, resumed his seat and addressed his guests.
“I’ve been wishing for years,” he said, “that I could have a chance to catch one of these dredging pirates that misuse their men so. Why, I’ve lain in bed on summer nights and heard those poor fellows out aboard begging for mercy—and I couldn’t do anything to help them. It’s hard to catch a captain in the act of beating a man, and they have all kinds of tricks to escape; the worst ones stand together and help one another out. But we’ll get this man, Haley, because he comes into the river, you say. I don’t remember him, at all, but I think I know the boat, as you describe it.”
“We’ll get a warrant for him, the first thing,” said Edward Warren.
“Well, that’s what we’ll have to depend on,” replied Will Adams; “but that’s a slow process, and we may be able to do better, in the meantime, ourselves. We want to get young Harvey, right off, before he has any more of Haley’s rough handling.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Ed. You take the boat, day after to-morrow, for Baltimore, swear out the warrant, and get back here as quick as ever you can. That will start the authorities after the fellow. But I warn you, they’re rather slow. They’ll have to put a steamer on Haley’s trail, to make sure.
“You see, news has a way of leaking out up in Baltimore. I don’t know how they do it—politics, I suppose. But as soon as a warrant is out, somebody gets word of it on the water-front and then the news travels down the bay like wildfire. One captain passes it along to another. Why, the chances are, Haley might have young Harvey out of the way aboard some other craft, or set ashore down in the Eastern shore swamps, before any police captain came up with him.
“That’s why I say I hope we can get the boy off, ourselves, in the meantime. Now I’ve got a sloop up in the creek back of Solomon’s Island, that I can fit out and have ready by to-morrow afternoon. She’s a good one, too, is the old Mollie. She’s fast, and she can go across the bay in anything that ever blew; thirty-seven feet long; a good, roomy cabin that will sleep six of us easy, and seven on a pinch, by making up some beds on the cabin floor. She’ll carry sail, too, and if it comes to a brush between us and Haley’s craft, why the Mollie will show up surprisingly. He’d have hard work to give us the slip, altogether, unless night came on.
“Yes, sir,” exclaimed Will Adams, arising and squaring his broad shoulders, “we’ll fit out the Mollie like a regular sloop-of-war. I’ve got three shot-guns and any number of revolvers, and you’ve got a good rifle, Ed. Why, we could show enough force to capture a Malay pirate, let alone Haley. We may get him easier than that, right here in the river—and then again we may not. We’ll be ready for anything. What do you say?”
“Well,” said Edward Warren, “I’m for capturing the man wherever he shows himself, if we can; but I’m not so sure that I ought to let these youngsters run the risk of getting into a fight like that.”
Will Adams smiled.
“Perhaps I put it a little bit strong,” he said. “I don’t really think there would be very much fight about it. Haley is a coward, I’ll venture to say, if it comes to a pinch. Most bull-dozing men like that are. We won’t give him a chance to fight, if we can help it; just take him of a sudden, and he’ll give up.”
“Don’t you worry about us, Cousin Ed,” said George Warren. “We are old enough to take care of ourselves. We don’t mind running some risk, if we can only get Jack out of his scrape.”
“Well,” replied Edward Warren, “you fit up the Mollie, Will, and wait till I get back from Baltimore before you start off anywhere. Then we’ll see.”
“I wish we could start to-night,” said Henry Burns.
It was surprising, the change that had come over this usually coolest and most deliberate of the boys. He and Jack Harvey had not always been friends; but now that circumstances had brought them together, and they had cemented their friendship by a summer together and a partnership in a fishing enterprise, they were loyal comrades. Henry Burns would have set out on the moment, for Solomon’s Island and the sloop Mollie, and have worked all night to get her ready, if Will Adams had only said the word.
But there was, plainly, nothing to be done until morning; and so, with a hearty handshake all round, the boys and Edward Warren left the big house on Drum Point and headed homeward across the river in the canoe.
There was no time lost, on the following morning, however. They were up and across the river at an early hour; and, taking Will Adams into the canoe, they all went along by the shore into the creek where the Mollie lay at her mooring. She was stripped of her sails and some of her rigging, out of commission for the winter season.
The young yachtsmen recognized her for what she was, a smart sea boat; and they went to work with a will to assist in getting her ready for cruising. From a loft on Solomon’s Island they carried down the big main-sail and the jibs and a single topsail. They lugged the big anchor-rode and two anchors, including a spare one, carried for emergency, down to the shore, and rowed the stuff out aboard. They assisted in bending on the sails; lacing them to boom and gaff; in reeving rigging; splicing a rope here and there; trying the pump and putting on a fresh leather to the sucker rod; greasing the foot of the mast, where the hoops chafed; putting aboard water jugs and spare rigging—in short, the score and more things that went to make the craft fit and safe for winter cruising.
By early afternoon, the sloop, Mollie, was spick and clean and ship-shape, with a brand new main-sheet and topping-lift, that would stand a winter’s squall; her ballast stowed in, as some of it had been taken ashore. Everything was in readiness for the cruise, even to the starboard and port lights, for use at night, and some charts of the bay provided by Will Adams. They locked the cabin, and went back in the canoe, first to Will Adams’s landing and then across to the other shore. George Warren held the tiller, in the absence of Edward Warren, who had remained at home, preparing for his trip to Baltimore the following morning.
Through all that afternoon and until darkness settled over the river, there was not a half hour that did not find Henry Burns either at a window or out in the dooryard, gazing off through Edward Warren’s spy-glass. He looked longingly for the sight of a craft, the image of which, with its exact lines and the cut of its sails, was clear and distinct in his mind.
George Warren pointed out at him, once, and called Edward Warren to look.
“He’s all cut up about poor Jack,” he said. “I never saw him so worked up about anything. You’d better hurry back from Baltimore, Cousin Ed, or he’ll be sailing off alone in the Mollie after Haley’s bug-eye.”
Edward Warren laughed.
“I’ll risk that,” he said. “Don’t you boys worry; we’ll get Haley, all right. We’ll have young Harvey ashore here before many days, or I miss my guess.”
That very afternoon, the bug-eye, Z. B. Brandt, was coming slowly up the coast, heading for Cedar Point, the lighthouse on which marked the turning-point for vessels bound into the Patuxent. Hamilton Haley, sitting gloomily at the wheel, turned a sour face upon the mate, as the latter stepped near.
“I never did see such all-fired mean luck since I took to dredging!” he burst out, glowering at the mate, as though Jim Adams were in some way at fault. “First it’s that sneaking foreigner, that we took to help Bill out, that gets away. Who’d have thought he’d ever swum for it, a night like that, and all that way from shore? I hope he drowned! I hope he drowned and the dog-fish ate him. That’s what.”
“He’d make pow’ful bad eatin’, I reckon,” suggested Jim Adams.
“Yes, but he could have turned a handle of the winch like a soldier,” said Haley. “And he’s a dead loss, being as I’m bound by the law as we make ourselves, and swear to, to leave Sam Black aboard Bill’s boat, so long as I’ve gone and lost Bill’s man.”
“I didn’t think that youngster, Harvey, and that business chap, Edwards, had the nerve to do what they did,” said Jim Adams.
Hamilton Haley snorted. The subject was like a match to gun-powder.
“’Twas that young rascal, Harvey, that did it!” he cried. “I didn’t beat him up enough. I wish as how I had him lashed up for’ard there now. ’Tother chap wouldn’t have gone and done it. ’Twas the youngster’s work. And p’raps it didn’t cost me a penny!”
Haley pointed, with high indignation, to a new hatch which replaced the one on which Harvey and Tom Edwards had floated to shore.
“Seven dollars for that!” he exclaimed, “to say nothing of the time it took to make it. And ten dollars apiece to Artie Jenkins for the two of ’em that’s gone. And Sam Black worth as much more. I tell you it ain’t right for a poor dredger, as earns his money by hard work and tends to business, to get such luck as that dealt out to him.”
Haley was half whining. From his view-point, the fates had, indeed, been unkind.
“There’s someone coming down,” remarked the mate.
Haley took a long look ahead, at a craft visible nearly a mile away.
“It’s Tom Noyes’s boat,” he said, finally. “I’d know his masts anywhere.”
The other craft, a bug-eye somewhat smaller than the Brandt, came dead on toward them. The distance between them rapidly diminished, and they came presently within hailing distance. The other craft did not merely hail, however. It came up into the wind and lowered a boat. Haley brought the Brandt into the wind, also, and the small boat came alongside. A man stepped aboard and said something to Haley. The latter jumped as though a shot had been fired at him. A grin of satisfaction overspread his dull face.
“You don’t mean it, Tom!” he cried. “Hooray! I’d rather get him than ten bushels of oysters in one heap. Come below. Jim, you take the wheel.”
The two captains descended into the cabin, leaving Jim Adams to hold the bug-eye into the wind. They remained below some minutes, conversing earnestly; and when they reappeared Haley was in a good humour that made Jim Adams stare.
“Jim,” he said, slapping the mate on the shoulder with a jocularity all unusual to him, “you’re a right good mate. We’re going up the river to-night—away up. We’re going to ship a good man—a right good man, Jim. You never saw such a rare fellow at a winder as he’ll be. Ho! Ho! I reckon the rest of ’em won’t have to work at all with him aboard. Good-bye, Cap’n Tom. I’ll see you down on the Eastern shore. We’re going to quit around here. The reefs seem all played out. Good luck!”
Haley, seeing his guest off, turned to Jim Adams and proceeded to impart to him a piece of information that brought a broad smile to his features, also. The two had emerged thus suddenly from the depths of gloom and discouragement into a feeling almost of hilarity. The bug-eye was brought by the wind once more, and they went on up the bay.
The night falling, Henry Burns, up at the old farmhouse, gave over looking for any sail and went in to supper. It was a serious looking party at table that night. The next few days might mean much to them, or little, according as fortune favoured. The boys urged upon Edward Warren to lose no time in returning to them.
“And you look out for yourselves, while I’m away,” he cautioned. “If you see anything of Haley, just take the canoe and scoot for Drum Point. Then let Will Adams handle the thing. He’s careful and he knows everybody around here, and just what to do.”
“We will,” replied George Warren. “We’ll be all right. Don’t you worry.”
They were off to bed in good season, though Henry Burns would have sat up and gone down to the shore from time to time. He was persuaded by Edward Warren that it were better to turn out at daybreak and look for the vessel, before she should get under weigh, if she should happen to come in during the night.
Henry Burns was usually the soundest of sleepers. He had a way of dismissing care for a night, when he knew there could be nothing affected by lying awake. He could have slept at sea in the hardest of storms, once satisfied that the vessel was staunch and weathering the gale. But to-night it was different. He had at first suggested that they watch through the night, by turns; but Edward Warren had not approved. His mind was set on the warrant and the action by the authorities.
Therefore, Henry Burns was restless. Once he arose and sat for a time by the window, Young Joe slumbering peacefully in the bed. The moon was beginning to show above the horizon, and it made a fine sight. But Henry Burns thought of Jack Harvey out aboard Haley’s bug-eye, and the night had little of beauty in it for him. He turned in and slept, lightly, for an hour or two. Then the impulse to arise again was too strong. He crept out of bed, wrapped a blanket about him, and seated himself in a big armchair by the window.
Sleep overtook him as he sat there, with the picture of the moonlight, lying across the river in a great flooding pathway, before his eyes as they closed.
Again he awoke. The picture was still there. The moon had risen higher, however, and the pathway of silver light across the river was more diffused. The river rippled and danced beneath the mellow flood. But the picture was not just the same, either. There was something in it which he had not seen before—the masts and rigging of a vessel, clearly outlined in the moonlight. Henry Burns gave one look, rubbed his eyes to convince himself that he was really awake, then sprang to his feet.
“It’s the Brandt,” he said, softly. “I can’t be mistaken. I’ll just slip down and make sure.”
It was, indeed, Haley’s bug-eye, anchored for an hour, for Haley to pick up some stuff he had left up on the bank—a bit of rigging and a small anchor he had bought—for he would not stop on his way down the river, but would make all sail for the Eastern shore.
Henry Burns dressed himself hurriedly, but quietly, without waking Young Joe. He would make sure, before arousing the household. If he should get them up and then prove to be mistaken, he knew what Edward Warren would think. He was warmly clad, but he found a short reefer, which was a thick, warm overcoat, on the rack in the hall below, and he put that on, for the night was sharp.
Cautiously, he slipped the bolt of the front door and stole out of the house, closing the door gently after him. Then he set off for the shore at a rapid pace.
He came to the bank overlooking the river, shortly, and crouched down by some bushes, looking off at the vessel carefully. He was sure he could not be mistaken in her. She lay not over quarter of a mile off shore, and he could see her lines and rig sharply defined.
“I’d stake my half of the Viking on its being the Brandt,” he murmured. “I’d like just one glimpse of her name, though, to make sure.”
As he spoke the words, there flashed into his mind the idea of going out to see. It was easy. There was the skiff that went with the canoe, on long trips. It lay at a stake, just a few feet from the canoe. He knew where the sculling oar was hidden, under a log at the foot of the bank. Henry Burns arose and stole quickly down to the shore, a short distance up river from where he had been hiding. In a moment more, he was seated in the skiff.
He was no novice in small boat handling. It was the work of but a few minutes for him to be close upon the bug-eye. He waited a moment, a few rods away, listening intently. There was no sound aboard. There was no light showing. He drew nearer, and drifted alongside. There was no mistaking the craft now. There, in dull and worn lettering, but plainly to be read, was the name on the bow, “Z. B. Brandt.”
It was an exciting moment for Henry Burns. Two ideas met in conflict in his brain. One was, to hasten ashore and alarm the Warren household; the other, to slip aboard the vessel and see if he could not arouse Harvey in the forecastle, and carry him off triumphantly then and there. The second idea overmastered him. It was too tempting to be resisted. Think of appearing in one brief half-hour at the old house, presenting Jack Harvey to their astonished gaze and saying, proudly, “Here he is—and without a warrant.”
Henry Burns, cool enough at a crisis, made his skiff fast forward, and climbed aboard. Another moment, and he had stepped to the companion-way and slipped below.
At the same moment, two figures on the shore, who had been watching his manoeuvres, in astonishment and wrath, stepped into another skiff and one of them sculled harder than he had ever sculled before, for the bug-eye.
Henry Burns, groping down into the forecastle, called softly, “Jack, Jack Harvey. Jack, old boy, where are you?” There was no response, only a stir in one of the bunks and a murmur from some drowsy sleeper. The sailors of the Brandt, worn out with work, were seizing the short stop on the way up the river for a snatch of sleep, and were slumbering as only tired sailors can.
Henry Burns felt through his pockets and produced a match, which he lighted and held to the faces of three of the sleepers in turn. No Jack Harvey! The match burned out, and he lighted another, and yet one more. When he had seen the last match flicker out on the face of the one remaining man in the forecastle, and that one was not Jack Harvey, Henry Burns felt his heart drop clear down till it seemed to leave his body. A sense of disappointment and alarm overpowered him. His legs were weak. There was no Jack Harvey in the forecastle! What had become of him?
Henry Burns, his brain in a whirl, climbed the companion steps weakly. He put his hand on the side of the hatch at the top and took one step on deck. As he did so, a rough hand grasped his wrist; another seized upon his throat so he could utter no sound, while the hoarse voice of Hamilton Haley sounded in his ears, “You little thief! Stealing, eh? I know you young shore-rats, always looking for a chance to run off with stuff. You won’t get away so easy this time. You’ll get a bit of dredging for this. Hang you! You can cull oysters, if you give out at the winders. Take that, and stay below till you’re called for.”
The heavy fist of Hamilton Haley shot out. Henry Burns, sent spinning down the companion way by the blow, landed in a heap on the forecastle floor, stunned, senseless. A moment more, and he was tossed into a bunk like a sack of dunnage. There was a call for the crew to turn out.
The bug-eye, Brandt, was going on up the river—not secretly this time, under cover of fog, but boldly in the full moonlight, in the middle of the river, getting the benefit of the flood tide, coming in with the rising moon.
Captain Hamilton Haley had nothing to hide—not now. He was merely going after another recruit. And he had gained still another, all unexpectedly. Luck seemed to be turning.
Early in the afternoon, on the day of the events just related, a bug-eye had turned in at a little cove at a place some ten miles up the Patuxent river called Sotterly. The sails were dropped and a boat was lowered. A tall, sharp featured, keen-eyed man, who had been giving orders, called out to one of the sailors. “Get into this skiff, Sam Black,” he said; “I want you to row me ashore.”
“Aye, aye, Cap’n Bill,” responded the man. He shuffled to the side of the vessel, stepped into the boat alongside, and took his seat at the oars.
When the skiff had reached shore and had been drawn up on land, “Cap’n Bill” tossed an empty gunny sack to the sailor.
“Going back up to Hollywood,” he remarked. “I reckon you won’t cut and run on me, eh?”
“I reckon not, with the season’s wages coming to me from Haley,” responded the sailor, and added, gruffly, “It’s the third winter I’ve been oystering with Haley. He and I get along. He don’t bother me none. When he growls at me, I give it back to him, I do. That’s the way to get along with him. There ain’t many as dares do it, though.”
Captain Bill gave a chuckle.
“You’re shrewder than you look,” he said. “But you’re all right. Ham Haley says you’re the best man he’s got aboard. When you get sick of the Brandt, you come and sign with me. Good men are sure enough scarce.”
“I reckon we’d get along, too,” assented Sam Black.
With this somewhat unusual exchange of cordiality, captain and sailor went on together up the road leading back inland from the shore. After walking about a mile, they turned off on a cross-road that led more to the southward, and proceeded along that for a distance of some three miles. They passed a score of houses on either side of the road, and came at length to a settlement comprising about twenty houses at the junction of cross-roads.
Fetching up at a building which, by its display of dusty boxes seen through still more dusty windows, proclaimed itself to be a country store, Captain Bill entered, followed by Sam Black. The latter, seating himself on an up-ended cracker box at the farther end of the store, proceeded to solace himself with a black, short-stemmed pipe, while Captain Bill entered into conversation with the proprietor.
Their negotiations were interrupted presently by the entrance of a young man, who sauntered in, with an air of importance as befitting one who was evidently from the city and impressed with his own superior worldliness. His dress, though of a flashy character and glazed by wear at elbows and knees, was yet distinctly of a city cut, and he displayed certain tawdry jewelry to the most advantage. He nodded patronizingly to the keeper of the store.
“How’d do, Artie,” said the storekeeper. “When are you going back?”
“About as soon as I can get there now, Ben,” replied the youth, yawning. “I like to come up and see the folks, all right, but it’s deadly dull here. I want a little bit more of the electric lights and something going on at night. Not much like Baltimore down here.”
“No, I guess not,” admitted the other. “I hear you’re doing pretty well up there—let’s see, what is it you’re in?”
The youth paused a moment, then replied, “Oh, I’m running things for a contractor. Expect I’ll go in with him some day, when I get a couple of thousand more put away.”
Captain Bill, turning to observe the youth who was speaking, gave a start of astonishment. He turned away again, but cast several sharp glances at the young man from the corners of his eyes.
“Well, I’m blest if it isn’t Artie Jenkins,” he muttered. “The measly little crimp!”
Which term, be it known, is that applied to those engaged in that peculiar calling in which young Artie Jenkins was a bright and shining light—the trapping of unfortunate victims and selling them to the dredgers and such other craft as could make use of them.
Some time later, Captain Bill followed the youth outside the store and hailed him, as the latter was walking away.
“Hello,” he said, “wait a minute.”
The young man turned and stared at the stranger in surprise.
“You don’t know me, I reckon,” ventured Captain Bill, extending a hand, which the other took carelessly.
“Can’t say I do,” was the reply.
“Well, I know you, just the same,” continued Captain Bill. “You’re name’s Jenkins, if I’m not mistaken. The fact is, Jenkins, you may not remember it, but you did a little business for me once in your line up in Baltimore, and I may say, I never did see such good fellows as you shipped down to me—every one of them good for dredging and willing enough to work, when they got used to the business.”
Artie Jenkins’s manner became more friendly. It was not his fortune to meet, usually, with a captain who had a good word of this kind to say to him. He smiled affably.
“Well, I try to suit my clients, the captains, as best I can, and be fair and square with them,” he said. “But I can’t say as I remember you.”
“It was some time ago that we did business,” explained Captain Bill. He made an inward comment, also, that it was a bargain he had never forgotten, in which three men already ill had been shipped down to him by the clever Mr. Jenkins, causing him a total loss of thirty dollars, besides the trouble of getting rid of the men again, before they all died aboard.
“See here, Jenkins,” he went on, “I’m right glad I fell in with you. Here’s a chance for you to turn a dollar down here. I need a man. Can you get him for me?”
Artie Jenkins’s eyes lighted up with cunning; then an expression of doubt overcast his face.
“I sort of hate to do it down here,” he said. “They all know me, and most of ’em know what the dredgers are like. I might do something if a stranger happened along, but that isn’t very likely this time of year. Still, I’ll be on the lookout; something might turn up. You’re down at Sotterly, eh? Be there till to-morrow noon? All right, I’ll look around, anyway. If I do anything I’ll be down. Will fix you, anyway, soon as I get back to Baltimore. Good day.”
“Good day,” responded Captain Bill.
Watching until he saw Artie Jenkins turn off on the road and disappear, Captain Bill returned to the store, and beckoned to Sam Black. The sailor came forward.
“Did you see that young chap I was talking to?” inquired Captain Bill.
Sam Black nodded. “The little dude,” he said, contemptuously.
“Did he get a look at you, think?” asked Captain Bill.
“Why, no, he didn’t see me, I reckon,” said the sailor, with surprise.
“Good!” exclaimed Captain Black. “Pick up that sack and come on. I’ll tell you what I want, on the way.”
Sam Black shouldered the sack, and they started back in the direction of the shore.
“That little rascal, Artie Jenkins, is the meanest crimp in Baltimore!” exclaimed Captain Bill. “Fools us, right along,” he added, with virtuous indignation. “What’s the use of crimping a man as won’t be any good when he’s down the bay? That’s what I want to know. He does it right along. I say as how it’s a shame to knock a man out and use him like they do, unless he’s going to be some good to us, when we get him. That’s why Ham Haley and I have got it in for Artie Jenkins.”