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

CHAPTER X.
MR. CARLETON ARRIVES

“How d’ye do, squire,” bawled Captain Sam Curtis to Squire Brackett, a morning or two later, as the squire stopped for a moment at the door of the captain’s shop, where he was busily engaged sewing on a sail which he was refitting for the yacht Surprise, for the boys.

“Good morning, Captain Sam,” replied the squire. “You’re busy as usual, I see.”

“Yes,” said Captain Sam, “just helping the boys out a little. Smart chaps, those youngsters. Why, they went to work and raised that ’ere yacht down there in the Thoroughfare, and they’re cleaning her up in great shape; and I vow, when they get her painted and these good sails on her, she’ll be every bit as good as new. And she was always a right smart boat.”

The squire scowled at Captain Sam, who kept on with his work; but the squire made no reply.

“I should er thought some of you vessel-owners that have got the rigging handy would have dragged her out for yourselves,” continued Captain Sam. “I had a mind to do it myself this spring, but I was too busy.”

The squire sniffed as though exasperated at something. But Captain Sam, stitching away, with an enormous sailmaker’s needle strapped to his palm, was apparently unmindful. No one would have thought, to look at his serious face, that he had heard the whole history of the squire’s venture down in the Thoroughfare, through the expedition of Harry Brackett, and that he was indulging in a little quiet fun at the squire’s expense.

“Why, what on earth should I do with another boat?” inquired the squire. “The one I own is one too many for me now. I’d like to sell her if I got a good offer.”

“Would yer?” queried Captain Sam. “Well, you’ll get a good boat in her place if you get the Viking. I hear you are trying to buy her.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed the squire. “Who told you that?”

“Why, Jack Harvey; he was in here a little while ago. He said as how your son, Harry, offered him fifteen hundred dollars for the boat.”

“Fifteen hundred fiddlesticks!” roared the squire. “If he’s got fifteen hundred cents left out of his allowance, he’s got more than I think he has. That’s a likely story. Well, you can just put it down in black and white that I don’t pay any fifteen hundred dollars for a boat for a lot of boys to play monkey-shines with. I’ll see about that.”

“Perhaps it’s one of Harry’s little jokes, squire,” suggested Captain Sam. “Boys will have their fun, you know.”

Captain Sam threw his head back and gave a loud haw-haw. His recollection of Harry Brackett’s most recent fun was of seeing that youth tearing along the highway at night, with a dozen fishermen after him, armed with horsewhips.

The squire’s conception of it was not so pleasant, however, and he took his departure.

“Harry,” he said, at the dinner-table that day, “what’s this I hear about your trying to buy that boat of Jack Harvey?”

Harry Brackett, taken somewhat by surprise, hesitated for a moment. “Why – why – that was a sort of a joke,” he answered, finally, forcing himself to smile, as though he thought it funny.

“A joke, eh?” retorted the squire, sharply. “Well, don’t you think you have had joking enough to last you one spell? Here it is getting so I can’t go down the road without folks looking at me and grinning. Haven’t you any respect for your father’s dignity? Don’t you know I’m of some consequence in this town?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the son, dutifully. “But I didn’t bring your name into it. I didn’t say you wanted it.”

“Well, what did you do it for?” repeated the squire.

“Just for fun,” insisted Harry Brackett.

“May be so,” said the squire, eying his son with some suspicion; “but I’m not so sure of that, either. Now don’t you go getting into any mischief. You’ve had just about fun enough lately.”

“All right, sir,” answered Harry Brackett.

Nevertheless, it was not exactly all right, from the squire’s standpoint. Not altogether above taking an unfair advantage of others, he was naturally suspicious of everybody else; and this lack of faith in humanity extended to his son. So he said no more, but kept his eyes open.

Chance favoured him the very day following, when young Harry Brackett, having some work to do about the garden, threw off his jacket and waistcoat and left them carelessly over the back of a chair in the kitchen. The squire, passing through the room, espied a letter exposed from an inner pocket of the waistcoat. With no compunctions, he took it out, opened it and read it. The letter was addressed to “Mr. Harry Brackett, Southport, Grand Island, Me.,” and read as follows:

“If you have not already made the offer for the Viking, don’t bother about it; for I am planning a visit to Southport, myself. Much obliged to you for your trouble, in any case. Please don’t mention the matter, however.

“Hoping I may be of service to you at some time,

“Very truly yours,

“Charles Carleton.”

“So, ho!” exclaimed the squire, softly. “Been lying to me again, has he? I am not so surprised at that. But what did he do it for?”

The squire’s first impulse was to call Harry into the house and demand an explanation. Then his curiosity led him to alter that determination. Who was this Mr. Carleton? Why was he trying to buy a boat through his son? Why didn’t he want the matter mentioned? What were the relations between this Mr. Carleton and his son? Well, Mr. Carleton, whoever he was, was coming to Southport. The squire would wait and see him for himself.

He did not have long to wait, either, for the very next day he met Mr. Carleton face to face. The squire was waiting in the post-office for the evening mail when there came in with Jeff Hackett, in whose packet he had sailed across from Bellport, a tall, gentlemanly appearing man, dressed in a natty yachting-suit of blue, his face chiefly characterized by a pair of cold, penetrating blue eyes and a heavy blond moustache.

“Good evening, sir,” he said, with the easy air of a man of the world, and, withal the least deference to the pompous individual whom he addressed, which was not lost on a man of the squire’s vanity. “Beautiful place, this island. You should be proud of it, sir.”

“Good evening,” replied the squire, formally, but warming a little. “Yes, sir, we are proud of Southport.”

“True,” he continued, swelling out his waistband, “it does not afford all the opportunities for a man of capital to exert his activities; but it has its advantages.”

“Which I judge you have made some use of, sir,” remarked the stranger, in an offhand, easy way, smiling.

The squire beamed affably.

“Are you going over to the harbour?” he inquired. “If so, I should be pleased to take you over in my carriage.”

“Why, you are very kind; I should like to ride,” responded the stranger. “I’ll just leave word to have my valises sent over, and I’ll go along with you.”

He presently reappeared, sprang lightly into the wagon, and the squire drove down the road.

The stranger proved most agreeable to Squire Brackett. He was an easy, fluent talker, though, to one of finer discernment than the squire, it might have been apparent that he was not a man of education, but rather of quick observation and who had seen something of the world. He pleased the squire by an apparent recognition of him as the great man of the place, without ever saying so bluntly. He spoke of business matters as of one who was possessed of some means, and finally, intimating that the squire should know the name of one to whom he was showing a courtesy, handed him his card.

To say that the squire was surprised, would be putting it mildly, for he had not thought of Mr. Carleton arriving by other than the boat from Mayville. Yet, so it was engraved upon the card, “Mr. Charles Carleton,” with the address below of a Boston hotel.

The squire was, however, somewhat relieved. It flashed through his mind now, quickly, just what it all meant. Harry had met this man at Bellport and had been commissioned by him to purchase the boat. He had seen fit to pose as the real purchaser to create an impression on the minds of the other boys that he had that amount of money. As for this gentleman, Mr. Carleton, he evidently had the means to buy as good a boat as the Viking if he chose.

“I wish you would tell me the best boarding-house in the village,” said Mr. Carleton. “I hear the hotel is burned down.”

“Indeed it is!” cried the squire, warmly. “And a plague on the rascal that set it, and all his kind! It’s a terrible loss to the place; and I say it, though I opposed its being built.”

“What a shame!” responded Mr. Carleton from behind his heavy moustache. But his eyes were coldly unsympathetic.

“There isn’t any regular out-and-out boarding-place this summer,” said the squire; “but I guess Captain Sam Curtis will put you up. He takes a boarder occasionally, and feeds ’em right well, too, I’m told.”

So, at length, arriving at the harbour and alighting at the house of Captain Sam, Mr. Carleton bade the squire good evening. He went in at once, engaged a room, cultivated the captain and his wife studiously for a time, and was soon at home, after the manner he had of getting on familiar terms with whomsoever he desired. A curious trait in Mr. Carleton, too; for, at first approach to strangers, he seemed cold and almost reserved, whom one might set down as a man of nerve, that would not be likely to lose his head under any conditions.

If Mr. Carleton had made up his mind to put himself on friendly terms with the youngsters of Southport, despite his natural inclinations, he certainly knew how to go about it. Witness his appearance, the following day, in the course of the forenoon, at the camp of Joe Hinman and the rest of Harvey’s crew, as they were making their preparations for dinner.

“Well, you boys certainly have it nice and comfortable down here,” he said, cheerily, advancing to where Joe Hinman was stirring a bed of coals, ready for the fry-pan, while two of the boys were finishing the cleaning of a mess of fish down by the water’s edge. “I’ve done this sort of thing myself, and I declare I believe I’d like a week of it now better than living at a hotel or a boarding-house. Good camp you’ve got there.

“That makes me hungrier than I’ve been for a long time,” he added, as Joe proceeded to cut several slivers of fat pork and put them into the fry-pan, where they sizzled appetizingly.

“Better stop and take dinner with us,” suggested Joe. “We’ve got plenty to eat, such as it is. We’ll give you some of the best fish you ever tasted, and a good cup of coffee, and a mess of fritters.”

“Fine!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton. “You’re lads after my own heart. I’ll watch you do the work and then I’ll help you eat up the food.” And Mr. Carleton, smiling, seated himself on the ground, with his back against a tree, lighted a cigar, and watched operations comfortably.

He proved very good company, too, at dinner. For he had a fund of stories to amuse the campers; and he was heartily interested in their own exploits – and particularly in their account of recent adventures down in the Thoroughfare, where Harry Brackett and his companions had been defeated.

“Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he exclaimed, enthusiastically, as they were finishing their camp-fire meal, “I’m in for some fun, just as much as you are. If you will go ahead and dig some clams this afternoon, I’ll go up to the store and order a lot of fruit and nuts and that sort of stuff, and anything else that I see that looks good.

“I saw some chickens hanging up there, too, that will do to broil. I’ll get enough for a crowd. You tell the fellows up above in that camp there, – you know them, I suppose, – well, you get them and anybody else you like. And we’ll build a big fire down here this evening and have the time of our lives.”

“Hooray!” cried young Tim Reardon. “Joe Warren and the others would like to come in on that. How about two more, besides – two fellows that own that yacht, the Viking?”

“Just the thing,” replied Mr. Carleton. “As many as you like.”

There was no more work on the Surprise for the rest of that day. A man who was willing to buy good things for the boys with that recklessness didn’t come to town every day, nor once in a summer.

“He says his name is Carleton,” explained young Tim to Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, some time later. “He says he’s in for a good time, and I guess he is by the looks of things.”

“We know him,” replied Harvey. “He’s an old friend of ours, eh, Henry?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Henry Burns; “he was the Viking’s first invited – no, uninvited – guest.”

Mr. Carleton was as good as his word, and more. The canoe, manned by Tom and Bob, went down alongshore that afternoon loaded with a conglomerate mixture of oranges, bananas, bottled soda, pies, other sweet stuff, and extra dishes from the campers’ stores. And Mr. Carleton, arriving on the scene in the course of the afternoon, brought a lot more. He paid for everything.

“My!” exclaimed young Joe, eying the stuff as the Warren boys put in an appearance about five o’clock. “I hope he stays all summer, don’t you, Arthur?”

“Hello, I’m glad to meet you once more,” cried Mr. Carleton, heartily, advancing to greet Henry Burns and Harvey as their dory landed at the shore. “I thought I might get down this way. How’s that fine boat of yours?”

“Fine as ever,” answered Harvey.

“Good! I’ll go out for a sail with you to-morrow,” cried Mr. Carleton, clapping a hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “Say the word, and I’ll have the soda and ginger ale and a new pail for some lemonade. We’ve got to make the time pass somehow, eh?”

“Suits me all right,” assented Harvey. “What do you say, Henry?”

“Bully!” said Henry Burns.

The fire of driftwood, which was plentiful everywhere along the shores of Grand Island, roared up cheerily against the evening sky. When it had burned for an hour or more, Jack Harvey deftly raked an enormous bed of the coals out from it, on which to set fry-pans and broilers and coffee-pot, still keeping the great fire going at a little distance, for the sake of its cheer.

They feasted, then, by the light of blazing timbers and junks of logs, borne down from the river, as only hungry campers can. Young Joe ceased laughing uproariously at Mr. Carleton’s stories only when his sixth banana and fourth piece of pie precluded loud utterance. And when it was over, and they went their several ways by woods and alongshore, they voted Mr. Carleton a generous provider.

He was ready again, was Mr. Carleton, the following afternoon, with the promised luxuries, alongside the Viking; and he was as much a boy as any of them when he and the owners of the yacht and Tom and Bob set out on a sail up the bay.

The wind was fresh and fair from the southward, the bay furrowed everywhere with billows breaking white, with just enough sea running to make it good sport. The Viking, with sheets well off, made a fine run to Springton, and bowled into that harbour with the spray flying.

They cast anchor and went up into the old town, which was quite a little settlement clustered on a steep bank overhanging the harbour, and which boasted of a fine summer hotel and several smaller ones. And when it got to be late afternoon, Mr. Carleton wouldn’t hear of their departing; but they should all stay to supper at the hotel. If the wind died down with the sun, why, they could stay all night. What did it matter, when they were out for a good time?

So they ate supper in style in the big hotel dining-room, and came forth from there an hour later to see the waters calm and the wind fallen.

“Never mind, we’ll sleep aboard the Viking,” said Henry Burns. “There’s room enough, though we have taken out some of the mattresses so as to put in the fishing-truck.”

But Mr. Carleton would not hear of this. Not for a moment. He liked roughing it, to be sure, as well as any of them. But they were his guests now for the night. They must remain right there at the hotel, and he would see about the rooms. And they should breakfast at the hotel and then sail back the next day at their ease.

They were not unwilling. It was an unusual sort of a lark, but so long as Mr. Carleton was enjoying it and was ready to pay the bills, they were satisfied.

So they sat on the veranda for several hours, enjoying the music of the orchestra in the parlour and watching the dancing through the windows. Then, when Mr. Carleton had bade them good night and had gone up to his room, they followed shortly, Tom and Bob occupying one room together and Harvey and Henry Burns, likewise, one adjoining.

“Jack,” said Henry Burns, suddenly, pausing in the act of divesting himself of his blue yachting-shirt, “hang it! but I’ve forgotten to lock the cabin.”

“Oh, let it go,” said Harvey, who was already in bed and was drowsy with the sea air and good feeding.

“No, I don’t like to,” said Henry Burns. “There’s a lot of boats lying close by; and you know how easy it is for one of those fishermen to slip aboard, and sail out at four o’clock in the morning, with one of our new lines and that compass that cost more than we could afford to pay just now; and there’s a lot of things that we couldn’t afford to lose just at this time. No, I’m going to run down and lock up.”

“It’s a good half-mile,” muttered Harvey. “Better take the chance and let it go.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t say so if you had forgotten it,” said Henry Burns. “I’m to blame. And if you don’t see me again, why, you’ll know I’ve stayed aboard.”

Henry Burns said this last half in fun, as he departed. As for Harvey, it mattered naught to him whether Henry Burns returned or stayed away. He was asleep before his comrade had closed the hotel door behind him.

If it had chanced that Mr. Carleton, too, being a man of shrewd observation, had noticed the omission on the part of Henry Burns, who was the last one overboard, to slip the padlock that made the hatch and doors of the companionway fast, he had not seen fit to mention the fact. Instead, he had been most talkative as they rowed away, pointing out various objects of interest up in the town.

And now that the yachtsmen had retired for the night and Mr. Carleton had withdrawn to his room, it is just barely possible that he may have recalled that fact. At all events, he did not make ready to retire, but sat for a half-hour smoking. Then he arose, turned down the light, and went quietly down the stairs.

It was about eleven o’clock, and the hotel was beginning to grow quiet. Few guests remained in the parlour, and most of the lights were out about the hotel and the grounds. Down in the town, as Mr. Carleton strolled leisurely along the streets, there were few persons stirring. Yachtsmen aboard their craft in the harbour had ceased bawling out across the water to one another, and no songs issued forth from any cabin. Only the harbour lights for the most part gleamed from the little fleet.

The yacht Viking lay some half-mile down below the village, toward the entrance to the harbour, and was hidden now from Mr. Carleton’s view by a little strip of land that made out in one place, and on which some tumble-down sheds stood leaning toward the water.

Mr. Carleton went down confidently to the shore; but when he had arrived at the place where they had drawn the dory out, he met with a surprise, for there was no dory there.

He looked about him, thinking he might have happened upon the wrong place; but there could be no mistaking it. There were the same sheds, with nets hung out, and the same boats in different stages of repair that he had observed with a careful eye when they had come ashore.

He went along the beach for a little distance, to where a lamp gleamed in one of the sheds, and knocked at the door.

“Some one seems to have taken our tender,” he said to a man that opened to his knock. “Do you know where I can borrow one or hire one for an hour so I can go out aboard? My yacht lies down there below that point. Anything you say for pay, you know.”

“I’ve got a skiff you’re welcome to use, if you only fetch it back before morning,” replied the man, good-naturedly. “I don’t want pay for it, though. Just drag it up out of the reach of the tide when you come in.”

He pointed to the boat, and Mr. Carleton, dragging it into the water, stepped in and sculled away.

He was alert enough now, and he worked the little boat with a skilled stroke and a practised arm. There were a pair of oars aboard, but it sufficed him to use the scull-hole at the stern, with a single oar, which gave him the advantage of being able to look ahead. He put his strength into it, and the skiff worked its way rapidly through the fleet of yachts. The evening was warm, and Mr. Carleton threw off jacket and waistcoat and unbuttoned his collar. He was a strong, athletic figure as he stood up to his work, peering eagerly ahead.

Something gave him a sudden start, however, just as he cleared the point that had lain between him and the Viking. Watching out for a glimpse of the yacht, there seemed to be – or was it a trick of the eyes, or some reflection from across the water – there seemed to be a momentary flash of light from the cabin windows. Just a gleam, or an apparent gleam, and then all was dark.

Mr. Carleton had stopped abruptly, straining his eyes at the yacht ahead.

“Strange,” he muttered softly, resuming his sculling and watching the yacht more eagerly, “I could have sworn that was a light in the cabin. If ’twas a light, though, it must have been in one of the other boats.”

He proceeded vigorously on his way.

At this very moment, however, there came another surprise to Mr. Carleton, greater than the other.

Henry Burns, going down to the shore and sculling out to the Viking, had found the cabin unlocked, as he had recalled; but everything was safe. It was comfortable aboard the yacht, and he decided to remain, planning to go ashore early in the morning in time for breakfast at the hotel. He sat up for some little time, however, and it was, indeed, his cabin light that Mr. Carleton had seen, the moment before he had extinguished it, to turn in for the night.

Mr. Carleton, sculling on now cautiously toward the Viking, suddenly heard a noise aboard the yacht. He paused again, then seated himself quickly at the stern of the skiff, as a boyish figure emerged from the companionway of the Viking and came out on deck. It was Henry Burns, taking one last look at the anchor-line, and a general look around, before he went off to sleep.

There was nothing within sight to excite Henry Burns’s interest. Everything was all right aboard the Viking. There were the few lights still left, up in the village streets. There were a few yachts anchored at a little distance. There was the dark shore-line, with its tumbling sheds huddled together here and there. And, also, there was the lone figure of a man, seated at the stern of a small skiff, sculling slowly down past, some distance away. It was all clear and serene in Henry Burns’s eyes, and he went below, rolled in on his berth, and went to sleep.

The lone figure that Henry Burns had seen in the skiff had ceased sculling now. He seemed to have no destination in view. The oar was drawn aboard and the skiff drifted with the tide. What the man in the skiff was thinking of – what he contemplated – no one could know but he.

But he resumed his sculling, very softly and slowly, after the lapse of a full half-hour. Noiselessly he described a circle about the yacht, drawing in nearer and nearer. Then he paused irresolutely, once more, and waited. Only he could know what would happen next. Perhaps he, too, was racked with uncertainty and irresolution. For once he seized the oar and worked the skiff up to within twenty feet of the gently swinging yacht. Then he paused again and waited.

Henry Burns’s sleep might, perchance, have been troubled could he have dreamed of the man now, waiting and watching just off the starboard bow of the Viking, while he slept within. But no dreams disturbed his sound slumbers.

Nor did aught else disturb them. For, presently, there came out from shore another boat, a rowboat with three men in it. They were laughing and joking about something that had happened ashore.

Mr. Carleton, resuming his oar, sculled gently away from the Viking, worked his way back again through the fleet of yachts whence he had come, drew the skiff out of water where he had embarked, dragged it up on the beach, and cast it from him roughly. Then he strode away up the bank to the hotel, muttering under his breath, and looking back out over the water once or twice as he ascended the hill, like a man that has suffered an unexpected defeat.