CHAPTER IX
WHAT SCOUT HOPKINS DID
When young Hopkins came to himself, he was dimly conscious that the driving motion of the sloop had ceased. Instead, lying there in the pitchy darkness of the hold, he could feel the vessel being struck with what appeared to be mighty blows from a Titanic hammer. Tubby guessed instantly, from the sensations, that they were aground, and that what he felt was the terrific bombardment of enormous breakers.
A swift “overhauling” of himself soon showed the lad that he was not hurt, although the blow on his head, when he had been hurled from the ladder, had stunned him. Of how long he had been unconscious, he had, of course, no knowledge. Worse still, he could not form any idea of how to get out of his dark prison, and he realized that he had no time to lose if he wanted to save Hiram and himself.
Risking the chance that their enemies were prowling about, waiting for the lad to declare himself, Tubby set up a shout.
“Hiram! Oh, Hiram!”
In the intervals of the crashing blows that shook the frail sloop from stem to stern, Tubby listened intently. But for some time no answering cry came to greet him. Then all at once he thought he caught a feeble shout. He responded, and the cry came more distinctly. Guided by it, he made his way aft with considerable difficulty. Presently a dim, gray light, filtering through the blackness, apprised him that he was nearing the door in the bulkhead through which he had blundered into the hold. A moment more and he had passed through the engine-room and was in the cabin. Hiram, looking pale and wild, was clinging to a stanchion. Water had come into the cabin through a broken port, and was washing about the floor.
“Oh, Tubby, I’m so glad you’ve come. Where have you been?” breathed the unfortunate Hiram, weak and shaky from his bout with seasickness. “What is happening?”
“I guess we’re aground somewhere,” rejoined Tubby. “I’m going to see.”
He made for the companionway and rattled the door at the top. As he had dreaded, it was locked. They were prisoners on board a doomed vessel. For an instant even young Hopkins’ resourcefulness came to a standstill. His heart seemed to stop beating. His head swam madly. Was this to be the end of them, to be drowned miserably, like two captive rats?
But the next instant the thought of their plight acted as a stimulus. “A true Scout should never say die,” thought the boy, and then, retracing his steps, he joined Hiram.
“What’s become of Hunt and his outfit?” he asked.
“Why, Stonington Hunt and Freeman passed through the cabin a few minutes ago,” replied Hiram, “right after that terrible bump – ”
“When the sloop struck,” thought Tubby. Aloud he said:
“Well?”
“I heard them say that you were done for, and that I could be left to drown.”
“Yes, yes, Hiram; but did they say anything about escaping themselves?”
“Yes. I heard them shouting on deck to cut loose the boat. Then I heard a lot of noise. I guess they launched her. That’s all, till I heard you shouting back in there.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Tubby; “so they left us to perish on this old sloop, eh? Well, Hiram, we’ll fool ’em. We’ll get away yet in spite of them.” In talking thus, young Hopkins assumed a confidence he was far from feeling, but he deemed it best to stimulate Hiram with hope.
“Got any matches?” was his next question.
Hiram nodded, and presently handed out a box.
“Good. Now follow me. By the way, how’s the seasickness?”
“Oh, better, but I feel shaky yet. I can manage, though.”
“That’s the stuff – wough!”
A heavier blow than usual had been dealt the sloop. The two lads could feel her quiver and quake under the concussion like a live thing.
“Come on, we’ve got to move quick,” said Tubby. Striking a match, he set off into the hold. Hiram followed. Before long they stood at the foot of the ladder from which Tubby had been so violently flung a short time before.
The stout youth darted up it with an agility one would not have expected in a boy of his girth. With the strongest shove of which he was capable, he pushed up the scuttle above.
To his great joy, it gave, swinging back on hinges. But, as he opened it fully, Tubby came nearly being hurled from the ladder for the second time. A great mass of green water swept across the deck at that instant, and the full force of the torrent descended into the hole through the open hatch. Luckily, Tubby had seen it coming in time to warn Hiram, and the downeast lad clung on tightly enough to avoid being carried from his foothold.
In a jiffy young Hopkins clambered through, shouting to Hiram to follow him. It was a wild scene that met both boys’ eyes when they emerged on the deck of the stranded sloop. She lay in a small inlet which, though partially sheltered, in hard storms was swept by the seas from outside. The sloop was heeled over to one side at so steep an angle that standing on her wet decks was impossible without clinging to something.
About three hundred yards away lay the shore, a wild, uninhabited expanse of wind-swept sand dunes, overgrown with dull, green and prickly beach-grass. No sign of a human habitation could be discerned. Outside on the beach the big seas thundered, flinging masses of white foam skyward. It seemed almost impossible that she could have been navigated through the narrow inlet leading into the small bay where she had stranded. As a matter of fact, it had been more by luck than by design that she had accomplished the passage.
All at once, as the two castaways stood looking about them, a figure bobbed up from behind one of the sand hills. It was instantly recognized by Tubby as Stonington Hunt. The lad now saw that a boat lay on the beach; evidently then, that was how they had reached the shore, as Hiram had surmised. Hunt had apparently been seeking shelter from the storm behind the dune, with the rest of his band. As his eyes fell on the figures of the two Boy Scouts standing on the deck of the stranded sloop, he beckoned toward the dune. Instantly there appeared the rest of the lads’ enemies.
They stood staring for a few minutes, as if amazed to see the Boy Scouts. But before they had time to take any action, an astonishing thing happened.
The sloop began to move.
The incoming tide, which had been steadily rising, had floated her, and she gradually reeled off the sand bank, on which she had struck, into open water. As she did so, Tubby suddenly ducked low, and something whistled by his head. Above the wind came the crack of a firearm’s report. Gazing toward Stonington Hunt, Tubby saw that the man held a revolver in his hand. It was from this weapon, evidently, that the projectile had been discharged.
“Get out of the way, Hiram, quick!” exclaimed the stout lad, for he now saw that the others were preparing to discharge pistols at them. It was apparent that they did not mean the boys to escape if they could avoid it.
But Tubby had suddenly thought of a plan. It had been born in his mind when the sloop rolled off the shoal into deep water. He knew something of gasoline engines from his experiences on board the Flying Fish. Why would it not be possible to get out of the little and dangerous bay under motor power? The shots hastened his decision. Clearly if they remained where they were, destruction swift and certain threatened. Stonington Hunt did not mean to let them land, so much was only too apparent.
Before the men left the sloop they had hauled down the canvas, probably in an effort to keep her from grounding. It was the work of an instant for Tubby to dash below and give a turn to the rear starting device on the engine. It worked perfectly. Then he turned on the gasolene, easily finding the connection, and threw on the switch. A blue spark showed that the current was on. Then, with a beating heart he turned the starting device once more.
Bang!
The engine moved. To the lad’s delight it worked steadily. This done, he darted back on deck and took the wheel. He was not a moment too soon, for, with no one at the helm, the craft was heading once more for the sand bank. Crouching beneath the stern bulwarks, and ordering Hiram to do the same, young Hopkins navigated the sloop skilfully ahead, steering straight for the open sea. Tempestuous as it was, the sloop seemed still staunch, and he felt they were safer there than in such close proximity to Hunt. Especially since they were followed by an unceasing fire from the pistols of the gang. But although some of the shots splintered the bulwarks, sending showers of slivers about the two crouching lads, neither were hit.
At last, after a dozen hair-raising escapes on the choppy bar, the sloop gained the outside, and throwing showers of spray high over her bluff bows, began to breast the sweep of the seas.
“Go below and take a look at the glass oil cups,” ordered Tubby as soon as they were safe from the firing, “if any of them are empty fill them. There is an oil can on a shelf beside the motor.”
Glad to do anything to help out, Hiram hastened on this errand. He was below about ten minutes. When he returned on deck his face was white, and he was breathing quickly. Tubby’s quick eye noted, too, that the lad was wet to the waist.
“What’s up below?” he demanded.
“The cabin’s half full of water, and it seems to be rising every minute;” was the disquieting reply.
At the same instant the sloop’s motion stopped and she began rolling in a sickening fashion in the troughs of the mighty seas.
“Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed Scout Hopkins, “we’re in for it now. The water’s reached the engine and it’s stopped!”
As he spoke a gigantic mountain of green water suddenly towered right above the helpless sloop. Its crest seemed to overtop the mast tip. Automatically Tubby crouched low and reached out a hand for Hiram.
The next instant the wave swept down on them enveloping the lads in a turmoil of salt water. The two boys were swept away in the liquid avalanche like feathers before a gale.
When the wave had passed, the wreck of the sloop could be seen staggering and wallowing like a stricken thing. But of her two recent occupants there was no trace upon the wilderness of heaving waters.
CHAPTER X
A RESCUE AND A BIVOUAC
From the bow of the Algonquin Rob kept his eyes riveted on the spot at which he had seen the sloop vanish. But for some time he could see nothing but the billowing crests of the waves. Suddenly, to his astonishment, from the midst of the combing summits, there was revealed the swaying mast of the sloop, cutting great arcs dizzily across the lowering sky.
As the Algonquin climbed to a wave top the entire length of the sloop was disclosed to the lad’s gaze. On her deck he could now plainly see two figures.
“Got a glass?” he inquired of Ike.
“Sure,” responded that individual, floundering forward with a pair of binoculars.
Rob clapped them to his eyes. The figures of Hiram and Tubby Hopkins swam into the field of vision. At the same instant, or so it seemed, Rob made out the wall of green water rushing downward upon the sloop.
While a cry of alarm still quivered upon his lips, the sloop rallied an instant, and then – was wiped out!
The others had pressed forward too, and the Algonquin had, by that time, gotten close enough for them all to witness the marine tragedy.
“Steady, Rob,” exclaimed the major, his hand on Rob’s shoulder, “they may be all right yet.”
Rob’s face was white and set, but he nodded bravely. It seemed impossible that anything living could have escaped from the overwhelming avalanche of water.
Merritt seized the glasses as Rob set them down to take the wheel again. He peered through them with straining eyes.
“Hullo, what’s that off in the water there?” he shouted suddenly, pointing.
The next instant the object he had descried had vanished in the trough of a sea.
“Could you make out anybody?” asked the major anxiously.
“It looked like a spar with – Yes, there are two figures clinging to it.”
“Here, let me look!” Rob snatched the glasses out of his comrade’s hand.
“Hooray!” he cried the next instant, “it’s Tubby and Hiram!”
“Are you sure?” asked the major, “perhaps it’s some members of Hunt’s crew.”
“No, it’s Tubby and Hiram. I can make out their uniforms,” cried Rob. As he spoke he swung the wheel over, and the Algonquin’s head was turned in the direction of the spot where a spar with two objects clinging to it had last been seen.
“Wonder what can have become of Hunt and his crowd?” said Merritt presently.
“Maybe they’ve met with a watery grave,” conjectured one of the detectives, “and from what you’ve told me it would be a good end for them.”
“If they hain’t taken that pocket-book with them,” put in his companion, “the kidnapping of those boys was as desperate a bit of work as I’ve ever heard tell of.”
In a brief time the two lads, none the worse apparently for their immersion, had been hauled on board the Algonquin, and were being plied with eager questions.
“I guess I caught on to that boom more by instinct than anything else,” explained Tubby, “when I got the water out of my lungs I looked about me and saw that Hiram had grabbed it too.”
“That’s what I call luck,” said one of the detectives in a wondering tone.
“It surely was,” agreed Hiram, “but I guess there’s a bigger bit coming.”
“What do you mean?” asked the major, struck by something odd in the lad’s tone.
For answer Tubby thrust a hand into an inside pocket of his coat and drew forth something that, dripping with water as it was, could be easily recognized as – the missing pocket-book!
“I guess they forgot to search me for it in the excitement following the collapse of the roof. I’m sorry it got wet, major,” he added.
But the major and the others could only regard the fat boy with wondering eyes. Suddenly the major, the first to recover his senses, spoke:
“I don’t know how I’m ever to thank you for this, Hopkins – ,” he began.
“Tell you how you can,” spoke the irrepressible Tubby swiftly.
“How, my boy?”
“By taking us some place where we can get something to eat,” quoth Tubby, “I’m so hungry I could demolish the left hind leg of a brass monkey without winking.”
* * * * * * * *
From the tumbling waves of an angry sea to the cool shadows of a magnificent forest of chestnut and oak may be a long distance to travel, but such is the jump over time and space that we must make if we wish to accompany our Boy Scouts to their Mountain Camp. The evening sun, already almost touching the peaks of the nearest range, was striking level shafts of light through the forest as our party came to a halt, and Major Dangerfield ordered the canoes, by which they had traversed the smooth stretches of Echo Lake, hauled ashore.
It was more than three days since the party had left the shores of Lake Champlain. The passage of the lake from its lower end had been made by canoes. The same craft they were now using had transported them. There were three of the frail, delicate little vessels. One was blue, another a rich Indian red, and the third a dark green.
The canoes had been purchased by Major Dangerfield at Lakehead, a small town at which they left the railroad. They had been stocked with provisions and equipment for their long dash into the solitudes of the Adirondacks. Reaching Dangerfield, the canoes had been transported overland till the first of a chain of lakes, leading into the interior, had been reached. Here, to the boys’ huge delight, they once more took to the water.
In the party were Rob, Merritt, young Hopkins, Hiram and little Andy Bowles, the bugler of the Eagles. Andy had been brought along because, as Rob had said, he was so little he would tuck in anywhere. Of course there had been keen regret on the part of the lads who were, of necessity, left behind. But they had borne it with true scout spirit and wished their lucky comrades all the good fortune in the world, when they embarked from Hampton.
Travel had bronzed the lads and stained and crumpled their smart uniforms. But they looked very fit and scout-like as they bustled about, making the various preparations for the evening’s camp. Two members of the party have not yet been mentioned. One of these was a tall, lanky man with a pair of big horn-rimmed spectacles set athwart his nose, and arrayed in a queer combination of woodsman’s clothes and a pedant’s immaculate dress. He had retained a white lawn tie and long black coat, but his nether limbs were encased in corduroys and gaiters, with a pair of big, square-toed shoes protruding beneath. On his head was an odd-looking round, black hat, which was always getting knocked into the water or caught on branches and swept off. This queer figure was Professor Jeremiah Jorum.
The second addition to the party was the major’s factotum, Christopher Columbus Julius Pompey Snaggs. But for purposes of identification he answered to the name of Jumbo. Jumbo was a big-framed negro, intensely black and with a sunny, child-like disposition. He had a propensity for coining words to suit his convenience, deeming the King’s English insufficient in scope to express his emotions.
Standing on the sandy strip of beach as he emerged from the red canoe, with a load of “duffle,” Jumbo gazed about him in an interested way.
“Dis sutt’in’ly am a glumpferiferous spot to locate a camp,” he remarked, letting his big eyes roll from the tranquil expanse of lake, fringed with feathery balsams and firs, to the slope above him clothed in its growth of fine timber, some of it hundreds of years old.
“Here you, Jumbo, hurry up with that bedding and then clean those fish!”
The voice was the major’s. It hailed from a level spot a short distance above the sandy beach. On this small plateau, the canvas “tepees” the Boy Scouts carried were already erected, and a good fire was burning between two green logs.
“Yas, sah, yas, sah! I’se a comin’,” hailed the negro, lumbering up among the loose rock, and almost spilling his load in his haste, “I’se a coming so quintopulous dat you all kain’t see muh fer de dus’ I’se raisin’.”
Before long the fish, caught by trolling as they came along, were frizzling in the pan, and spreading an appetizing odor abroad. The aroma of coffee and camp biscuit mingled with the other appetizing smells.
“Race anybody down to the lake for a wash!” shouted Rob suddenly.
In a flash he was off, followed by Merritt, Hiram and Tubby. Little Andy Bowles, with his bugle suspended from his shoulders by a cord of the Eagle colors, hurried along behind on his stumpy little legs.
“I win!” shouted Rob as he, with difficulty, paused on the brink of the lake. But hardly were the words out of his mouth before Merritt flashed up beside him.
“Almost a dead heat,” laughed Rob, “I – But hullo, what’s all this?”
Above them came a roar of sliding gravel and stones that sounded like an avalanche. In the midst of it was Tubby, his rotund form dashing forward at a great rate. His legs were flashing like the pistons of a racing locomotive as he plunged down the hillside.
“Here, stop! stop!” shouted Rob, “you’ll be in the lake in a minute!”
But the warning came too late. Tubby’s heavy weight could not be checked so easily. Faster he went, and faster, striving in vain to stop himself.
“He’s gone!” yelled Merritt the next instant, as a splash announced that Tubby had plunged into the lake water.
In a flash the fat boy was on the surface. But he was “dead game,” and while his comrades shouted with laughter he swam about, puffing like a big porpoise.
“Come on in, the water’s fine,” he exclaimed.
“Even with your uniform on?” jeered Hiram.
“Sure! Oh-ouch! what’s that?”
The fat boy had perceived a queer-looking head suddenly obtrude from the water close to him. It was evident that he was not the only one to enjoy an evening swim that day. A big water snake was sharing his involuntary bath with him.
Tubby struck out with might and main for shore, and presently reached it, dripping profusely. The major, when he heard of the occurrence, ordered a change of clothes. When this had been made, Andy’s bugle sounded the quick lively notes of the mess call, and the Boy Scouts and their elders gathered round the table which the boys’ deft hands had composed of flat slabs of birch bark supported on trestles of green wood. They sat on camp stools which they carried with them. How heartily they ate! They had the appetites that are born of woods and open places.
“Mah goodness, dose boys mus’ have stumicks lak der olyphogenius mammaothstikuscudsses!” exclaimed Jumbo as he hurried to and from his cooking fire in response to constant demands for “more.”