Smith Ruel Perley
The Rival Campers Afloat: or, The Prize Yacht Viking

CHAPTER XVI.
SEARCHING THE VIKING

“Where are you fellows going?” asked George Warren, from a comfortable seat on the Warren veranda, of Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, as they were passing the cottage of an afternoon. The two yachtsmen were carrying, between them, a big basket of clams, which they had just dug on the flats at the head of the cove.

“Going fishing, down the shore a way,” replied Henry Burns. “We’ve just got the bait. We have to keep our lobsters fat and contented, you know, so they’ll look pleasant when they get to market.”

“Don’t you think you humour them too much?” asked George Warren, quizzically. “You’ll spoil them with overfeeding, the way Colonel Witham did his boarders.”

“No, we feed them the same way he did,” answered Henry Burns; “give them lots of fish, because they are cheap. And we hope they’ll get tired of fish, by and by, the way Witham’s boarders used to, and not eat so much. Then we’ll take it easy. Come on, though, and help us catch some. We’ve got bait enough for the whole crowd.”

“All right,” responded George. “You go ahead, and we’ll take our boat and come out and join you.”

The three Warren boys, launching their boat in the cove, rowed down to the point and joined the party, consisting of Henry Burns and Harvey and Tom and Bob, who were just putting off in the Viking’s tender. When they had rowed down the shore a way, they were met by Harvey’s crew, and all proceeded in the three boats a short distance farther, a half-mile or more below the crew’s camp. They baited up their hooks and threw out.

“This looks nice and social,” said George Warren, surveying the three boats, with their eleven occupants. “It’s the first time we have all been out here together this year. We ought to make this a prize contest.”

“Good!” exclaimed Harvey. “What do you say to one of those new dollar yachting-caps at the store, for the one that catches the most fish? We’ll each put in nine cents to pay for it. Got any money, fellows?”

“Lots of it,” replied young Tim. “We’re in for it.”

“They’re regular millionaires, nowadays, since they made those lobster-pots,” remarked Henry Burns.

“There’ll be one cent left over,” said young Joe Warren. “What do we do with that?”

“That goes with the hat,” said Henry Burns. “You can buy peanuts with it, if you win, Joe.”

“Well, I’ve got the first fish, anyway,” cried young Joe, who had felt a tremendous yank on his line.

Up came a big flounder, which was skittering about, the next moment, in the bottom of the boat.

“I’ve got a bigger one,” cried Joe Hinman, excitedly; but, when he began to haul in, nothing came of it.

Little Tim Reardon, who had given a sly tug at Joe’s line when the other wasn’t looking, snickered.

“That would have beaten Joe’s, if you’d got him,” he said, grinning.

“I’ll beat you, if you try that trick again,” exclaimed Joe Hinman, eying Tim sharply.

The fish began coming in lively, from little harbour pollock to sculpins with monster heads and attenuated bodies, and cunners, that stole the bait almost as fast as the boys could throw overboard.

“Everything counts,” said Henry Burns, as he drew in a huge skate; and added, as he took the hook out of the fish’s capacious mouth, “Wonder how Old Witham would have liked him for a boarder.”

“Hello!” exclaimed Harvey, “here comes another boat; and it looks like Squire Brackett in the stern.”

“Yes, and it’s young Harry, rowing,” said Arthur Warren. “First time I’ve seen him working, this summer.”

The squire and his son were, indeed, coming out to the fishing-grounds.

“Something new for the squire to be doing his own fishing,” remarked Arthur Warren. “He must be saving money.”

“Well, we ought to salute him, anyway,” said Henry Burns. “Say, fellows, one, two, three, all together, ‘How d’ye do, squire,’ just as he comes abreast.”

The chorus that greeted Squire Brackett made him jump up in his seat.

He didn’t reply to the salutation, but glared at the boys, angrily.

“Always up to their monkey-shines!” he muttered. “I’ll teach ’em to have respect for me, some day yet.”

“Better stop and drop in a line here, squire,” said George Warren, good-naturedly. “We’ve got them tolled around, with so many baits out.”

And he demonstrated his remark by pulling out a big cunner.

“Bah!” ejaculated the squire. “I should think you would scare all the fish between here and the cape, with your confounded racket.”

The squire directed his son, and the latter rowed past the other boats and tied up, at length, at a spar buoy, with red and black horizontal stripes, which marked a ledge in the middle of a channel.

“We’ll get a mess of cunners about these rocks,” the squire remarked, as he and Harry made ready.

Luck in fishing, always capricious, seemed to have deserted the boat in which were Harvey’s crew, although the boys in the other two boats continued to pull in the fish at intervals.

“Let’s give it up,” said Joe Hinman, at length, winding in his line and removing a clam-head. “What do you say to going down now and hauling the lobster-pots? We’ll take down our fish, and some from the other boat, to bait them up with.”

“Guess we might as well,” said George Baker, reluctantly. “We can’t catch up with the other fellows now.”

So they drew up alongside of the Viking’s tender, and the boys threw their catch into the crew’s boat.

“Twenty-six, twenty-seven,” counted Henry Burns, as the last one went over. “Keep that score in mind, George, when we come to reckon up. Tom’s ahead in our boat. He’s caught ten of them. But we want to see which boat wins, too.”

The crew rowed away, down alongshore.

An hour and a half later, the boys in both boats stopped fishing, to reckon up their catch.

“Tom’s got nineteen fish,” called out Henry Burns.

“It’s a tie,” cried young Joe, excitedly. “I’ve got just nineteen.”

“Then we’ll give you each five minutes more,” said Harvey, pulling out a silver watch. “Say when you’re ready to throw overboard, fellows.”

Tom and young Joe baited up for the final effort, and the lines went out together.

They waited expectantly. Two, three, four minutes went by, without a bite.

“Guess they’ll need five minutes more,” said Henry Burns.

But the words were hardly uttered before young Joe gave a whoop, and began hauling in vigorously.

“I’ve won!” he shouted.

“No, you haven’t,” cried Tom, pulling in rapidly, hand over hand.

“You’re just within the time-limit,” said Harvey, as Tom’s fish came in over the gunwale. “It’s another tie; you’ll have to try it over again.”

“All right,” said young Joe. “I got mine first, though – No, hold on here. Hooray! I’ve won, after all.”

Young Joe, who had been in the act of disengaging his bait from the mouth of a sculpin, stopped suddenly, and made a grimace of delight.

“Pull up the anchor, George,” he said to his eldest brother. “Let’s row alongside the other boat, and I’ll prove that I win.”

George Warren looked at Joe’s catch, and laughed.

“I guess you’re right,” he said.

They rowed up to the other boat.

“What did you do – catch two at once, Joe?” asked Tom, as Joe produced his catch.

“That’s what!” exclaimed young Joe.

“I don’t see but one,” said Tom.

“Well, look here,” said young Joe. He reached his fingers cautiously down the throat of the big sculpin, holding the jaws open with a piece of stick. Then, triumphantly, he dragged forth by the tail a smaller fish, that had in fact been swallowed the moment before Joe had caught the larger one.

“The cannibal!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “That’s the meanest trick I ever had played on me by a fish.” But he added, smiling, “I give up, Joe. You’ve won. I wouldn’t catch a fish as mean as that sculpin. And to think that he’d gobble a clam before he had a fish half-swallowed! He’s a regular Squire Brackett.”

Mention of that gentleman called attention to the fact that the squire and his son had ceased fishing also, and were casting off from the buoy, preparatory to rowing in. At the same moment the boys noticed that the crew’s boat was coming in sight from down below, and that the crew were waving for them to wait.

They pulled up anchor, and rowed a little way in the direction of the other boat.

Squire Brackett’s curiosity over the success of the crew was perhaps aroused, for he, too, waited a few moments. Then, when the crew had come up, Harry Brackett rowed near enough for the squire to look into the boat, with the others.

The crew had certainly made a successful haul. There were a score of fine lobsters in the bottom of their boat – a score of good-sized ones, and one other. That one other caught the squire’s watchful eye.

“Want to sell a couple of them?” he asked.

“Yes, certainly,” replied Joe Hinman.

“Well, give me that one,” said Squire Brackett, pointing to one of large size, “and that one, there,” pointing to the small one.

Joe handed them over.

“Those will cost you thirty-five cents, squire,” he said.

“That small one will cost you more than that,” chuckled the squire to himself, as he paid the money.

Then the squire, reaching a hand into his pocket and producing a folding rule, opened it and laid it carefully along the length of the lobster.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, turning in triumph to the boys, “that lobster will cost you just twenty dollars. That’s a short lobster – a half-inch shorter than the law allows. You know the fine for it.”

“Why, you don’t mean that, do you, squire?” asked Joe Hinman, dismayed at seeing the profits of their fishing thus suddenly threatening to vanish. “We haven’t shipped a single short lobster all this summer. But we don’t stop to measure them down here. We wait till we get up to the car. We have a measuring-stick there, and if a lobster is under the law we set him free, near the ledges off the camp. We throw out some old fish around those ledges, to see if we can’t keep them around there, and be able to catch ’em later – perhaps another year, when they’ve got their growth.”

“No, you don’t!” exclaimed the squire. “Can’t fool me that way. There’s the evidence!” And he held up the incriminating lobster, triumphantly.

As matter of fact, the squire well knew that the fishermen around Grand Island, when they wanted a lobster for a dinner, took the first one that came to hand, long or short. They figured out that the law was devised to prevent the indiscriminate and wholesale shipping of lobsters before they had attained a fair growth; and the local custom about the island was to catch and eat a lobster, long or short, whenever anybody wanted one. Nor was the squire an exception to this custom. But the law answered his purpose now.

He and his son rowed up alongshore, the latter grinning derisively back at the chagrined crew.

“Hello, what luck?” bawled a voice, as the crew ruefully pulled in to land and proceeded to stow their catch in the car.

“Mighty bad luck, Captain Sam,” replied Joe Hinman, dolefully, to the figure on shore.

Little Tim, the first to jump from the bow of the boat, narrated their adventure with the squire. Captain Sam snorted.

“Ho, the shrewd old fox!” he exclaimed. “Why, he’s eaten enough short lobsters in the last two years to cost him a thousand dollars. Only trouble is, he’s eaten the proof. We can’t catch him on those. Wait till I see him, though, I’ll give him a piece of my mind about raking up laws that way.”

Perhaps the utterance about law, on Captain Sam’s part, refreshed his memory, however; for, the next moment, he burst into a roar of laughter.

“Oh, yes, it’s funny, I suppose,” said Little Tim; “but you don’t have to pay the fine.”

Captain Sam roared again.

“No, and you won’t, either, I reckon,” he laughed. “See here.”

He whispered something in Little Tim’s ear.

“Don’t let on that I told you, though,” he said. “The squire owes me a grudge already. Ha! ha! I was watching all of you out there fishing. Ho! the old fox!”

Captain Sam walked away, chuckling to himself.

“He will rake up laws just to pay a spite with, eh?” he muttered.

Little Tim was off like a shot.

Twenty minutes later, a barefoot figure, panting and perspiring, accosted Squire Brackett, as the latter, bearing his precious evidence in the shape of the offending lobster, walked up the village street.

“We’ll just show this lobster to the fish-warden, my son,” said the squire. “Then we’ll go home to supper.”

“Squire Brackett, you aren’t really going to complain on us, are you?” piped Little Tim, out of breath. “We didn’t mean to break the law, you know.”

“Get out of here, you little ragamuffin!” exclaimed the squire, reddening and waving Tim out of his path. “Somebody’s got to teach you youngsters a lesson – playing your pranks ’round here, day and night. Somebody’s got to uphold the law. Sooner you boys begin to have some respect for it, the better for honest folks on the island.”

“Well, if a chap breaks the law without thinking, do you want him to ‘catch it’ just the same?” queried young Tim. “P’r’aps you have eaten short lobsters, yourself.”

“Certainly, any person that breaks the law ought to be punished – every time,” replied the squire. “That’ll teach ’em a lesson. I’ll show you boys that when you come down here you’ve got to behave, or suffer for it.”

“Because,” continued young Tim, “you were breaking the law, yourself, this afternoon – you and Harry.”

Little Tim dodged back out of reach, in a hurry; for the squire made a dart at him, turning purple with anger.

“What do you mean, you young scamp!” cried the squire. “Just let me get you by the ear once. Accusing me of breaking the law!”

Little Tim’s nimble bare feet carried him out of the way of the squire’s arm. From a safe distance, he continued:

“Yes, you and Harry were breaking the law, out there in the boat. You were tied up to one of the spar-buoys. They belong to the gov’ment. I’ve heard a fisherman say so; and it’s fifty dollars fine for any one to moor a boat to one of ’em. Didn’t you know that, squire?”

Little Tim asked this question with a provoking innocence that nearly threw the squire into an apoplectic fit.

“Pooh!” he exclaimed. “Pooh!” He turned a shade deeper purple, feigned to bluster for a moment, and then, realizing, with full and overwhelming consciousness, that what Little Tim had said was true, subsided, muttering to himself.

The squire stood irresolutely in the street, holding the lobster in one hand, and glaring in a confused sort of way at Little Tim, who was now grinning provokingly.

“Here, you young scamp,” he said at length, “come here.”

Little Tim approached, discreetly.

“Now,” said the squire, hemming and hawing, and evidently somewhat embarrassed, “on second thought, I – I’m going to let you youngsters off this time. I guess you didn’t intend to do anything wrong, did you?”

“No, sir,” replied Little Tim, looking very sober and serious, but chuckling inwardly.

“Well,” said the squire, “I think I won’t complain of you this time. We’ll just drop the whole affair. Of course a mere nominal fine of fifty dollars wouldn’t be anything to me; but I reckon twenty dollars would be kind of a pinch for you boys, and you have been working pretty industriously. You go along now – but look out, and don’t do anything of the sort again.”

Little Tim bolted for the camp.

The squire stood for a moment, scowling after the vanishing figure, and glancing out of the corner of an eye at his son, Harry, to see if that young man was treating the incident in its proper light – to wit, with respect to his father. Harry Brackett was discreetly serious.

“Harry,” said the squire, finally, handing over the piece of incriminating evidence, “you take those lobsters up to the house and tell your mother to boil them for supper.”

“The short one, too?” asked Harry Brackett.

“Yes, confound you!” roared the squire. “Take them both along. Do you think I buy lobsters to throw away? Clear out! And, look here, if I hear of your saying anything about this affair to any one, you’ll catch it.”

Harry Brackett departed homeward, while the squire, muttering maledictions on Harvey, his crew, and Henry Burns, entered the village store.

“Those boys have altogether too much information,” he said. “I’d like to know if that young Henry Burns put him up to that.”

As for Henry Burns, his mind had been given over for some time to the consideration of a different matter. He, himself, couldn’t have told exactly just when and where he had formed a certain impression; but, once the idea had impressed him, he had turned it over and over, looking at it from all sides, and trying to recall any incident that would shed light on it.

He had a habit of thinking of things in this way, without saying anything to anybody about them until he had made up his mind. And what he had been considering in this way, for a week or more, was nothing less than the yacht Viking, and their departed friend, Mr. Carleton.

“Jack,” he said, as he and Harvey sat cooking their supper on the stove in the cabin, the evening following this same afternoon’s fishing, “do you know I believe there is something queer about the Viking.”

“Not a thing!” exclaimed Harvey. “She’s as straight and clean a boat, without faults, as any one could find in a year.”

“No, that isn’t what I meant,” said Henry Burns, smiling. “I almost think there’s something about her that we haven’t discovered. Did you ever think there might be something hidden aboard the boat that’s valuable?”

“Cracky! no,” replied Harvey. “What in the world put that into your head?”

“Mr. Carleton did,” answered Henry Burns.

“Mr. Carleton!” exclaimed Harvey. “Why, I never heard him say anything like that.”

“Neither did I,” said Henry Burns. “It’s what he did – breaking into our cabin, and that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” asked Harvey, somewhat incredulous, despite his having considerable faith in the ideas of his companion.

“Why, he tried to do it once before,” said Henry Burns.

“He did?” queried Harvey, in amazement. “You never said anything to me about it.”

“No; because I didn’t think so, myself, at the time,” replied Henry Burns. “You see, it was over there that night at Springton. Do you remember the man on the beach next morning?”

“Go ahead,” said Harvey. “Perhaps I’ll see it when you tell it.”

“Well,” continued Henry Burns, “I mean the old fisherman that spoke to Mr. Carleton just as we were pushing off. Don’t you remember, he spoke about Mr. Carleton’s borrowing his skiff to go out to his yacht the night before? Now you just think how Mr. Carleton looks – tall and nicely dressed – and that big blond moustache – and then that heavy, deep voice of his. That fisherman wasn’t mistaken. He remembered him. It was only the night before, too, mind you.

“And, besides, the fisherman asked him if he had found his own boat all right in the morning. Now, don’t you see, whoever it was that borrowed the fisherman’s boat had gone down to the place where we had left our tender, expecting to find a boat at that very spot. You put the two things together, and it looks like Mr. Carleton. I didn’t think of it then, but I’ve been thinking of it since.”

Harry gave a whistle of astonishment.

“And he hadn’t lost that pin at that time, either,” said Henry Burns. “Nor had he lost the pin he told about, the night after, when he was looking about the cabin with a light, while we were asleep. Then, I don’t believe he had lost any pin at all when he broke into our cabin; and if he had, why didn’t he wait till we came up? He knew we would be back in an hour or two. No, sir, he was after something in that cabin.”

“Well, if you don’t think of queer things!” exclaimed Harvey. “Anything else?”

“Nothing of itself,” replied Henry Burns, thoughtfully. “But isn’t it kind of queer that he should have tried to buy the Viking when he had seen her only once? I’m sure Harry Brackett was making an offer for him. He had just come from Bellport, you know; and that’s where Mr. Carleton was staying. Now a man doesn’t usually buy a boat offhand that way.”

“That’s so,” assented Harvey. “Well, what do you make of it all?”

“Why, that’s what puzzles me,” said Henry Burns. “But you know how we came by the boat, in the first place. Supposing the men that owned her, and who committed that robbery up at Benton, had hidden something valuable aboard her, and that Mr. Carleton had heard of it. Naturally, he would try to get hold of it, wouldn’t he?”

“Whew!” ejaculated Harvey. “But how could he hear of it? The men that committed the robbery are in prison.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Henry Burns. “But persons can visit them on certain days, in certain hours. There are ways in which Mr. Carleton could have got the information.”

Jack Harvey was by this time wrought up to a high pitch of excitement.

“We’ll overhaul her this very night,” he cried. “We’ll light the lanterns and go over her from one end to the other. Say, do you know, it might be hidden in the ballast – in a hollow piece of the pig-iron, I mean. Of course the ballast was taken out of her last fall.”

Henry Burns gave a quiet smile.

“It might be,” he said, “but more likely somewhere about the cabin. We better wait till morning, though, and do the job thoroughly. We’ll get Tom and Bob out then, to help – especially if you want to go through the ballast.”

“I’ll turn her upside down, if necessary,” cried Harvey, who was fired with the novelty of the adventure. “Well, perhaps we better wait till morning. But I don’t feel as though I could go to sleep.”

“I can,” said Henry Burns, and he set the example, shortly.

“Well, if he can’t think of weirder things, and go to sleep more peacefully than anybody I ever heard of!” exclaimed Harvey, as he put out the cabin lantern and turned in for the night.

On his promise of secrecy, they let George Warren into the scheme next morning. The other Warren boys had gone up the island. So, at George’s suggestion, they took the Viking up the cove, alongside the Spray, and lashed the two boats together.

“Now you can take the ballast out on to the deck of our yacht, if you want to,” said George Warren.

“Let’s overhaul the cabin, first,” said Henry Burns.

As for Jack Harvey, he wanted to overhaul the whole boat at once, so filled was he with the mystery and the excitement of the thing. He threw open this locker and that, piled their contents out on to the cabin floor, and rummaged eagerly fore and aft, as though he half-expected to come across a hidden fortune in the turning of a hand.

“Look out for Jack,” said George Warren, winking at Henry Burns. “With half a word of encouragement, he’ll take the hatchet and chop into the fine woodwork.”

“I’ll bet I would, too,” declared Harvey, seating himself, red-faced and perspiring, on one of the berths. “Say, Henry, where do you think it is?”

“Probably under where you’re sitting,” replied Henry Burns, slyly, winking back at George Warren.

Harvey jumped up, with a spring that bumped his head against the roof of the cabin; whereupon he sat down again, as abruptly, rubbing his crown, and muttering in a way that made the others double up with laughter.

“That’s a good suggestion, anyway,” he said, making the best of it. And he fell to tossing the blankets out of the cabin door. He searched in vain, however, for any hidden opening in the floor of the berth, and sounded fruitlessly for any suspicious hollow place about its frame.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” suggested Henry Burns; “you and Tom start forward, and George and I will start aft, and we’ll work toward one another, examining everything carefully as we go. We’ll pass the stuff to Bob and he can carry it outside.”

Setting the example, Henry Burns began with the provision locker on the starboard side, next to the bulkhead. He took everything out, scrutinized every board with which the locker was sealed, and tapped on the boards with a little hammer. But there was no unusual fitting of the boards that suggested a hidden chamber, nor any variance in the sound where the hammer fell, to warrant cutting into the sides of the locker. He examined top, sides, and bottom, with equal care and with no favourable result.

Next, on the starboard side, was the stove platform and the stove. There was no use disturbing that, so he passed it by.

A chamber, sealed up and lined with zinc for an ice-box, afforded a likewise unfavourable field for exploration.

Then came a series of lockers, with alcoves and shelves between, which occupied the space above the berths. These, and the drawers beneath the berths, were searched, but yielded no secrets.

George Warren, on the port side, searched likewise, but with equally discouraging results.

Harvey, forward, had the hatch off and the water-casks and some spare rigging thrown out on deck. The cabin deck and cockpit of the Viking looked as though the boat had been in eruption and had heaved up all its contents.

“My!” exclaimed George Warren, “this is hot work. I feel like a pirate sacking a ship for gold.”

“Only there isn’t any gold,” said Harvey; “but I’ll try the ballast before I quit.”

“I’m afraid that’s not much use,” said Henry Burns. “They wouldn’t go so deep as that to hide anything. I’m afraid I’ve raised your hopes for nothing.”

But Harvey was not for giving up so soon; and, seeing his heart was set on it, the others took hold with a will and helped him. They took up the cabin floor and lifted out the sticks of ballast.

“Glad there isn’t very much of this stuff,” said George Warren, as he passed a heavy piece of the iron out to Harvey.

“Well, so am I,” responded Harvey. “There’s lead forward, so we won’t disturb that. But I’ve heard of hiding things this way, and there might be a hollow piece of the iron, with a cap screwed in it, or something of that sort.”

“He must have been reading detective stories,” said Henry Burns.

Perhaps Harvey, himself, came to the conclusion that he was a little too visionary; for, after he had sounded each piece with the hammer until they had a big pile of it heaped outside, he grinned rather sheepishly and suggested that they had gone far enough. The boys needed no second admission on his part. They passed the stuff in again, and it was stowed away as before.

“Say, Henry,” said Jack Harvey, when, after another half-hour, they had restored the yacht to its former order, “this wasn’t one of your jokes, was it – this hidden treasure idea?”

Henry Burns sat down by the wheel, wearily.

“No, it wasn’t, honour bright,” he replied. “But I guess it is a kind of a joke, after all. You four can pitch in and throw me overboard, if you like.”

But they were too tired to accept Henry Burns’s invitation.