Jack Harvey's Adventures: or, The Rival Campers Among the Oyster Pirates

“Who asked you what was the matter?” he demanded. “You’d get chained up, if I had you out aboard. You wouldn’t be talking so smart to folks as has their stomachs run into by a crazy, June-bug booby of a boy. I reckon the end of a jib halliard would teach you some manners.”

The man’s reply surprised Henry Burns, and interested him. He looked at the squat, chunky figure, the big, round head with its shock of reddish hair, and the dull gray eyes that glinted angrily at him. His retort was, on its part, a surprise to the man.

“Do you knock your crew down?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact way, as though he had been merely inquiring the time of day.

The stranger was too taken aback for a moment to reply. It was a new type of boy to him – one who could put a query of that kind as calmly and dispassionately as though he were a lawyer, trained to keep his temper. Then the man advanced, with hand raised threateningly.

“Get out of my way, you young rascals!” he said. “Where’s the man as lives in this ere house? His name’s Warren, isn’t it – where is he?”

Edward Warren, who had remained in the background, amused at the unusual situation, now stepped to the door and inquired what the man wanted.

“I want to do some trade,” replied the man. “At least, that’s what I came for, when that boy, he comes out at me like a crazy steer. I hear you have some potatoes to sell. My name is Haley, and I’m lying off shore there.”

He pointed with a jerk of his thumb out toward the river, evidently intending to convey the idea – somewhat different from his words – that it was his vessel, and not himself, that was “lying off shore.”

“Well,” answered Edward Warren, “it’s a time I don’t usually do business, on Christmas eve, but since you’ve come up, I guess you can have them. I’ve got two or three barrels in the cellar. Come on out.”

Captain Hamilton Haley, muttering a retort that Christmas eve was as good a time for buying potatoes as any other, so far as he knew, so long as he had a chance to come and get them, followed Edward Warren away. A third man, who had remained in the background, went along with them. It was Jim Adams, the mate.

The bargain was made, Haley saying that he would be back the day after Christmas for the potatoes; whereupon he and the mate went on again up the country road. Edward Warren returned to the house.

“That’s a rough customer, that man Haley,” he remarked, as he resumed his seat by the fire. “He’s a specimen of the dredging captain that gives the fleet a hard name.”

“The kind that knocks his men down,” remarked Henry Burns.

“That seems to have made a great impression on your mind,” said Edward Warren, turning to the boy. Henry Burns’s face was serious, and he spoke with unusual demonstrativeness for him, for he doubled up his fist and struck the arm of his chair with it.

“Ever since I saw that fellow knocked down,” he replied, “I’ve wanted to tell one of those captains what I think of it. I’d have done it to-night, if he hadn’t said he came to trade with you.”

Edward Warren laughed. “You could have told him anything you liked, for all of me,” he said. “But you chaps better turn in pretty soon. We’re going after rabbits, to-morrow forenoon, you know. Mammy Stevens makes a rabbit saddle roast that beats turkey.”

“Great!” murmured Young Joe.

The darkness that enveloped the old Warren homestead, when, one by one, its lights went out and the household sank into stillness, was illumined by brilliant starlight in the heavens. It was a glorious Christmas eve, clear, frosty, cold – just the night a traveller on the road, warmly dressed and well fed, might enjoy to the utmost. The wind had died down and the night was very still. The vessels in the Patuxent swung lazily with the tide. Now and then the sound of an untiring banjo, or guitar or accordion, or a snatch of song, came across the black water to those that lay nearer the Solomon’s island shore. Across on the western shore, all was still, save for the occasional barking of a dog in some farmyard.

The bug-eye Brandt, for the convenience of its owner in going up country after some supplies, lay nearer the latter bank of the river, though with the usual discretion in the matter of distance – greater even than customary, following the escape of the mulatto seaman. There was no other craft near by. All aboard were apparently asleep, and not even a light showed in the fore-rigging, to warn others where she lay.

Down in the dingy forecastle, however, two persons were astir. They moved about quietly, not to disturb the other sleepers, though the latter slumbered heavily and would not be easily aroused.

“Well, Jack,” said the taller of the two, buttoning his coat and proceeding to thrust his legs into a pair of oil-skin trousers, “this is the night we celebrate, eh?”

Jack Harvey turned a face, set with determination, toward his companion, and answered, huskily, “Tom, old man, I’m going ashore to-night, if I have to swim for it. Celebrate! You bet I’m going to celebrate – and so are you. We can do it, too. I’ve watched and watched, and it’s our chance. Haley and Jim Adams both gone, and no one here to stop us.”

“Except the cook,” interrupted Tom Edwards.

“Let him try it!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, his face flushing angrily at the mere suggestion. “Just let him try it! I tell you I’m going ashore to-night, Tom Edwards, and there isn’t any George Haley in Maryland that can stop me.”

Tom Edwards slapped the boy on the shoulder.

“That’s the way to look at it, when we once start,” he said. “My muscles aren’t so soft, either, as when I came aboard. I guess I could do something on a pinch. But he’s got a revolver, probably.”

Harvey shrugged his shoulders.

“He can’t stop us this time,” he said. “I tell you it’s Christmas eve, and we’re in luck. Haley’s left us a Christmas present of that old float and junks of fire-wood and odds and ends of stuff, in the hold; and we’ll sail ashore on it like sliding down hill. Come on.”

They went cautiously out on deck.

“My! but it’s chilly,” muttered Tom Edwards, turning the collar of his slicker up about his neck. “If we didn’t have these oil-skins we’d pretty nearly freeze to death.”

“We’ll warm up when we get to work,” replied Harvey.

The two proceeded to the main hatch, through which the most of the oysters were put into the hold, and lifted it a little. It was a huge affair, and so heavy it took their united strength to stir it and drag it away, so they could have access to the hold.

“We’ve got to have that lantern,” said Harvey, and he went and got the one from the forecastle. Then he sprang down into the hold.

“I’ll pass the stuff up to you,” he said, “and you set it down on the deck. But look out and don’t drop any.”

Hanging the lantern so he could see to work, Harvey presently passed a piece of timber out to Tom Edwards. This was followed by several pieces of planking, exceedingly heavy, bits of board and even some long sticks of firewood – branches of oak that had been picked up by the crew down along shore. It was all more or less soggy with the dampness of the hold; some of it seemed to be completely soaked through. It nearly proved their undoing.

Tom Edwards, disregarding Harvey’s admonition to wait till he could assist in carrying the wood to the side of the vessel, started with a stick of the timber. Of a sudden, a rotted edge of it crumbled and broke away in his hands. The heavy stick slipped from his grasp and slammed down upon the deck. The next moment Harvey leaped out on deck, in alarm.

“Tom, that made an awful racket!” he said, anxiously. “Listen. By Jove! we’re in for it now. There’s somebody stirring – it’s in the cabin. Tom, you get down into that hold quicker’n scat; and if Haley comes, you talk to him, but don’t let him see you. I’ll take care of him.”

It was an odd situation, that the positions of man and boy should be reversed at the crisis. But Tom Edwards was not the equal of Jack Harvey in strength, and he knew it. Years of activity, at baseball, swimming, yachting and the like, had developed Harvey into an athlete of no mean proportions, as the muscles that played beneath his sweater denoted; Tom Edwards had been flabby and easily winded when he came aboard the dredger, and he had had little chance to gain strength with the bad food that Haley provided. Now he obeyed Harvey, without a question. He sprang into the hold, and Harvey darted back and hid behind the shadow of the forecastle.

They were not much too soon, nor had Harvey been deceived in the sounds he had heard. The cook, awakened by the noise, and mindful of the parting injunction of Hamilton Haley that the vessel and crew were in his keeping, stepped out of the companion and looked forward. In his right hand he held Haley’s revolver.

He started, as his eye fell upon the mass of wood heaped at the edge of the hatchway. He advanced quickly, holding his weapon ready. At the edge of the hatchway, he stopped and listened. Then he aimed the revolver into the lantern light and called out, “Here you, who’s down there? You’re caught. I’ll shoot the first man that tries to escape.”

The answering voice of Tom Edwards came from the hold.

“I’m down here – Tom Edwards. I’ll come out, all right. Don’t shoot. I’m wedged in here, though. I can’t be quick.”

“Well, the lubber!” exclaimed Haley, in surprise. “You’re the last one I’d have expected – ” He broke off and stooped, to peer into the hold.

The next moment, the cook felt himself thrown violently backwards on the deck. The revolver was wrenched from his hand, and Jack Harvey stood over him.

“Don’t you make any cry,” muttered Harvey, “or you’ll get hurt. Come on out, Tom, I’ve got Mr. Haley.”

The cook, lifting himself to a sitting posture and gazing at the two in astonishment, still sought to intimidate them.

“Don’t you go trying to escape,” he said. “You’ll get the worst of it. Haley’ll make trouble, and you’ll be back here again inside of a week, and you’ll get it worse than ever. Besides, you can’t get ashore on that stuff.”

He changed his tone to a wheedling, mollifying one.

“Just you go back now, like good fellows,” he said, “and I’ll promise Haley I won’t say a word about it. And I’ll promise you the best grub you ever tasted, all the rest of the season. There won’t be anything too good for you two.”

Harvey laughed softly.

“It’s no use,” he replied. “You’ll have to settle with Haley when he finds us gone. I hope he takes it out of you, too, for the stuff you’ve made us eat. Get up, now, and march aft.”

Haley, whimpering, threatening and begging by turns, obeyed orders. They escorted him back to the cabin. In five minutes, Harvey had him tied up as ship-shape and as securely as ever a captive was bound. They laid him down on a bunk and left him.

With the revolver in their possession, there was no longer need of caution or quietness. Boldly they worked away, with the stuff from the hold, hitching it with bits of rope and making a raft of it alongside the vessel. They laid a flooring of the stuff and Harvey stepped on to it. To his chagrin, the raft sank under his weight.

“It’s water-soaked!” he exclaimed to Tom Edwards, as he scrambled aboard again. “Well, we’ll lay a cross-flooring and see what that will do.”

They threw over the rest of the planks and wood, cross-wise, on the raft they had made. Harvey again stepped on to it.

It was, alas, little better than before. The wood, rotten and water soaked, had scarce sufficient buoyancy to float itself, let alone support two of them. Of its own weight, it sank so that the upper tier of wood floated clear of the lower.

Jack Harvey and Tom Edwards looked at each other, silently. Harvey’s face was drawn with disappointment.

“Tom,” he cried, desperately, “I’ll take an axe and chop the old cabin of the Brandt apart before I’ll give up. Come on, we mustn’t lost time.”

Tom Edwards, whose wits had been trained in years of successful business, proved more resourceful.

“What’s the matter with using that hatch cover?” he said, pointing to it.

Harvey stopped short and gave a roar of delight. “Tom Edwards,” he cried, “you’re a daisy. I’m a simple-minded, brainless, wooden-headed, thick-skulled land-lubber. I never thought of that hatch, and there it was all ready to use. Here we’ve been working like dogs, and that old hatch will float us ashore like a ship. Come on. In with it.”

It cost them some effort, for the hatch was a big one. But it floated buoyantly when they had dragged it overboard; and it scarcely sank at all under Harvey’s weight; and it held him and Tom Edwards when the latter had stepped cautiously off on to it. They made it fast alongside, with a piece of rope cut from dredging gear. Then they ran joyously for the cabin.

The cook met them with a flood of protestations, but they shut him up in short order. With the lantern light, they helped themselves to the meagre stores of the Brandt, and stuffed their pockets with biscuit and corn bread, baked for Haley and the mate. They also took matches, and they exchanged their ragged oil-skins for better ones. They had earned them ten times over, and they were leaving without a penny of wages for all the hard labour they had done.

“Say good-bye to Haley for me,” said Tom Edwards, pausing a moment before the helpless captive. “And tell him I hope to meet him again some day. And if I do, he’ll be sorry.”

They carried the cook into his galley, and shut him in. Then they found an extra pair of oars, stepped aboard the inverted hatch, the finest craft in all the world to them, and pushed for shore.

It was not easy, sculling the clumsy hatch, but Harvey made fair work of it, after he had cut a scull-hole in the combing, with his knife; and Tom Edwards aided by paddling on either side, making up with energy what he lacked in skill. The work warmed them, and they threw off their oil-skin coats.

The tide was running up the river and carried them some distance out of the course they had tried to make; but they came in to land finally and sprang out on shore. Harvey stooped and picked up a handful of the coarse dirt and gravel, and handed it gravely to Tom Edwards.

“Merry Christmas, Tom Edwards,” he said. “It’s the real thing – the shore – the dry land once more. Isn’t it bully?”

Tom Edwards threw his arms about his stalwart companion and fairly hugged him.

“Harvey,” he said, “you’re a comrade worth having. You’ve stood by through thick and thin, and you’ve lost chances to escape in order to stand by me. I won’t forget it.”

Harvey, freeing himself from his friend’s grasp, offered his hand and they shook heartily. They started off, but Harvey turned back once and, seizing one of the oars, shoved the hatch out into the stream. Then he threw the oars after it.

“We owe Haley that much,” he said – “and more. He’ll have to follow the tide up river some time before he finds that stuff. Now, Tom, what shall we do? We’re ashore – by Jove! there was one time I began to think we’d never get here. And now we’re here, I’m blest if I know what to do next.”

“Well, we’ll stop and hold a council of war,” said Tom Edwards. So they paused at the top of the little bank they had ascended, adjusted their oil-skins once more, and looked off on to the river and the vessel that they had left behind.

Harvey whistled a tune and looked at his comrade, jubilant in spite of their perplexity.

“It’s a regular jim-dandy Christmas eve!” he exclaimed.

“I’ll remember it as long as ever I live,” replied Tom Edwards.

CHAPTER XIII

HENRY BURNS MAKES A DISCOVERY

It was after eleven o’clock when Harvey and Tom Edwards paused to rest and consider what they should do. The night was very still and clear, and, with the approach of Christmas day, there was already a perceptible change in the temperature. It was growing milder. With that, and the relief from their long oppression, – the sensation of being once more free – they felt a great buoyancy of spirit.

“I could sit right here all night,” exclaimed Harvey, breathing deep and looking off exultantly at the river. “There’s the old Brandt– bad luck to her! You can see the masts against the water, as she swings. Whew! But we’ve had a time of it. I’d like to see Haley when he finds us gone, and his hatch missing.”

“Well, you are young and tough and you may not want a place to sleep, to-night,” replied Tom Edwards; “but I don’t mind saying that I do, and I want it soon as I can get it. I’m dead tired, and I’m dead sleepy. I wonder which one of these houses we’d better try.”

“That’s what bothers me,” answered Harvey. “Sam Black told me once that a good many of these people along shore own shares in some of the dredgers, and they’d give a sailor up, if he ran away.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Tom Edwards.

“I’m not so sure he wasn’t trying to keep me from trying to escape,” admitted Harvey. “I dare say some of these folks would be glad to see us get away. Let’s try that little house over there, through the trees.”

He pointed to a house a few rods up on a road that led from the shore, and they proceeded towards it. It was all in darkness, and, indeed, seemed almost deserted. They passed in through a half tumbling gateway, with rotting posts on either hand, and Tom Edwards knocked at the door.

There was no answer, and he knocked again. They heard some one stirring within. Presently a chamber window was thrown up, and an old woman poked her head cautiously out.

“What do you want, this time of night?” she asked.

“Madam, we want a night’s lodging,” replied Tom Edwards, removing his tarpaulin, and making as polite an appearance as his fisherman’s oil-skins would permit.

“Hey?”

“A night’s lodging, madam. We have left the vessel, and we haven’t any place to stop.”

“Oh, you be sailor men, eh – but you talk like a man as tried to sell me a sewing machine once – sort of smooth like. Well, I’m a lone woman, and I haven’t any lodgings for anyone. You’ll have to go along.”

“We can pay,” ventured Harvey.

The woman shook her head.

“I’ve heard they do beat ’em dreadful on the dredgers, oftentimes,” she said, “and I don’t know as I blame you for running off, if that’s what you’ve been doing. But you’ll have to try somewhere’s else. I guess you couldn’t pay much, by the looks of you.”

Harvey and Tom Edwards looked at each other. Tom Edwards shook his head.

“It’s no use, Jack,” he said. “She won’t let us in.” Then he turned to the window once more and made a sweeping bow, with his greasy tarpaulin in hand.

“Allow us to wish you a Merry Christmas, madam,” he said.

“Hey?”

“A Merry Christmas, I say.”

The old woman suddenly withdrew her head from the window, and they started to go away; but she reappeared and called to them.

“Here,” she said, “catch this.” And she tossed something out of the window.

A coin fell at Harvey’s feet, and he stooped and picked it up. It was a quarter of a dollar.

“If that will do you any good, you are welcome,” she said. “It’s all the Christmas I can afford to give you.”

Then she shut the window.

Harvey and Tom Edwards, amused and disappointed, passed out of the gateway and went on.

“Well, we’re a quarter better off,” laughed Harvey, untying his oil-skins and stowing the coin away in a trousers’ pocket.

“Oh, hang the quarter!” exclaimed Tom Edwards, sleepily. “I’d give ten dollars for a good night’s lodging, a bath and a shave – that is, if I had the ten,” he added. “What shall we do, Jack?”

“I know,” replied Harvey, promptly. “I’ve seen a big old farmhouse, with a lot of barns and hen-houses and cattle sheds and things, when we’ve been lying off shore, and it looked mighty comfortable and home-like. It’s down the shore a piece. Let’s go there. We won’t ask for lodgings, though. We’ll get into one of the barns, and make ourselves comfortable. They can’t find us until morning, anyway.”

“Go ahead. I’m with you,” said Tom Edwards.

Harvey led the way, across the open country, through a series of little hills and hollows, to the eastward of where they had landed. Tom Edwards, wearied and burdened with the weight of the cumbersome oil-skins, followed doggedly, nearly falling asleep as he walked.

They came presently to the outskirts of a farm of some considerable size, fenced in, and skirted with small trees and bushes. From the shelter of these, they could look across some ploughed land, with the old stubble of corn-stalks showing, to the farmhouse and out-buildings. There were, as Harvey had noted, several of these.

“I wonder if there are any dogs,” muttered Harvey, as he surveyed the prospect. “If there are, we’re done for – unless we have better luck than we did before.”

He gave a low whistle, not to be audible far, but which might carry in the still night air to the buildings. Then they waited anxiously. There was no answering bark. They stole quickly across the open fields and came within the shadow of one of the barns. There they paused again, listening intently for any sound that might come from the house. The place was silent, save for the stirring of some cattle within the barn.

This barn was one of the larger ones, evidently built for storing hay, with a part of it used for cattle. It was nearest the farmhouse – only a few rods distant. They made the round of three sides of it, keeping close within the shadow of its walls, looking for a possible means of entrance. To their disappointment, there were no windows large enough to admit of the passage of even a boy – only some small ones, high up, that admitted light and air for the cattle.

At the farther end, however, they discovered two doors; the larger one on the ground floor, used for teams and farm wagons, and, high above that, a smaller door that opened on to the second floor, used for hoisting in hay. The smaller door they perceived to be slightly ajar – evidently through the oversight of some farm hand.

Tom Edwards pointed to the door, half-heartedly.

“Isn’t that tantalizing?” he said. “Of course, it’s the door that’s out of reach that’s open.”

“We’ll make it,” replied Harvey. “Whoever heard of a farm without a ladder of some sort?”

They found one, after a cautious hunt, lying alongside another shed. In a twinkling, they had raised it to the upper window, ascended, and were inside.

There was absolutely no way of telling where they were, save that they were in some sort of a hay-loft, with a window at the farther end, through which the stars gave scarcely any light at all. They ventured to strike one match, but it gave them only a transient, shadowy view of their surroundings; and they dared not repeat the experiment amid the dry hay.

There were cattle and perhaps other stock on the floor below, judging by the sounds. There was hay scattered all about them, and a huge mow of it on one side. There was a bucket filled with sand that Harvey discovered by bumping his shins against it. A rope went up from this to the beam above. Harvey knew the contrivance, for he had seen the like in barns at home. The rope ran through a big block fastened to a beam overhead, and passed down again from that pulley through a hole in the floor, to the room below. There it connected, he knew, with a barred door, like a large gate, that was used in summer nights, instead of the regular sliding doors, to admit of a free supply of air into the barn. The rope connected with it like a window cord, and the bucket of sand answered for the weight. This much of their surroundings was apparent. All the rest was hidden in darkness.

Tom Edwards unbuttoned his oil-skin coat, removed it, and dropped upon a little pile of hay, using the coat to cover him.

“It’s gorgeous! Jack, my boy,” he exclaimed. “It beats any bed in the Parker House in Boston. Turn in. There’s room for two, and not a cent to pay. My, but I’m tired!”

“I’m with you,” answered Harvey, “but I’ll just close that door a bit more. We haven’t got much bed-clothing.”

He stepped to the door and shut it almost tight. Then he started back, for where Tom Edwards lay. It was dark, and he could not see his way. He took a few steps, when something impelled him to stop abruptly. The next moment he discovered he was at the top of a pair of stairs leading down to the lower floor.

“Jimminy! Tom,” he cried softly, “I came near taking a flying trip that time. Here’s a pair of stairs.”