The Rival Campers: or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

“Hulloa, Jeff!” answered Harvey.

The speaker was Jeff Hackett, who ran a small sloop from the foot of Grand Island over to the mainland once a day to carry the mails.

“Are you in this race, too?” queried Jeff.

“Rather think I am,” responded Harvey. “Think I’ve got any chance?”

“Looks to me as though you had,” answered the other. “There are only eight yachts going to start. The others backed out because they didn’t think the handicapping was fair. It’s all right, though. You will have to give us fellows a trifle allowance, by just a rough measurement on the water-line; but you’ll get the same from the Bertha and the Anna Maud. They are the only boats that are bigger than yours. You want to get measured right away, too, or it will be too late.”

Harvey had soon complied with the requirements of the regatta committee, as the committee of summer guests chosen to act as judges were pleased to style themselves, and shortly before the hour for the race the yacht Surprise sailed out of the harbour at Bellport, and stood off and on before the starting-line with the others.

Harvey was in high feather, for, by his own estimate of the situation, he had a fair chance of winning. He knew most of the boats, either by reputation, or from having seen them sail, and the others he was able to judge of in a great measure by their general appearance.

The prize to be sailed for was a handsome silver cup, for which a subscription had been taken up among the summer residents of Bellport.

The Bertha, which conceded the greatest time allowance to Harvey’s boat, was a handsome sloop, about four feet longer than the Surprise, and carrying heavy sail. She had never been considered a fast boat of her size, but, owing to the discrepancy in lengths, had to allow the Surprise several minutes over the complete course of ten miles. This, as the Surprise was really fast for her size and rig, would make it quite an even race.

The Bertha was under charter by a party of young men from Benton, who had engaged a sailing-master to pilot her for them during the summer. This made them an object of contempt in Harvey’s eyes, and he wished all the more to “take the conceit out of them,” as he expressed it.

The Anna Maud was a big catboat, thirty-three feet long, carrying an enormous mainsail, and reputed to be one of the fastest boats of her size in the bay. She was owned and sailed by Captain Silas Tucker, a native of one of the islands at the foot of the western bay, that formed part of the main thoroughfare leading out to sea. He was generally accorded the distinction of being the best skipper on this part of the coast.

All the other boats, except one, were smaller than the Surprise. That one was the Sally, a sloop of exactly the same length as the Surprise, and apparently able to sail about on equal terms with her.

The starting-signal was to be a gunshot, the gun to be fired five minutes after a first warning shot. In the interval after the first shot the yachts could manœuvre about the starting-line, ready to cross when the second shot was fired. As soon as the second shot was fired, it was allowable for a yacht to cross the line, and all yachts were to be timed one minute after the second gun, whether they had actually crossed the line or not. So that it was to the advantage of all nine craft to be as near the starting-line as possible at the signal, and under headway and also up to windward as far as possible.

Harvey’s boldness stood him in good stead here. And, moreover, he certainly did know the working of his yacht to a nicety. After the warning gun had been fired, he made his calculations carefully, allowing for the tide which was running out to sea. The race was to be five miles straight out to windward, and a run home, off the wind. The ebb-tide, and the southerly breeze rolling a sea in to meet it, made an ugly chop, and the boats thrashed around, throwing the spray clear aboard.

Just before the second gun the relative positions of the four largest yachts were as follows: farthest up to windward was the Surprise; abeam of her, and a short distance to leeward, was the Bertha; then the Anna Maud, and then the Sally. The Sally, like the Surprise, had an amateur skipper, a youth of about Harvey’s age.

The Sally was a new boat, not long out of the shipyard, in fact. She was perhaps the prettiest craft there. Her hull was beautifully modelled, with a graceful overhang, bow and stern; her sails snow-white, and mast and spars were glistening. She steered with a wheel of ornamental mahogany and brass, and here and there about her cabin and furnishings brass and mahogany had been used, regardless of expense.

“Willie Grimes has us all beat for beauty,” remarked Harvey, as they neared the line, “but that boat is too new for racing; that is, he’s too scared for fear something will happen to her. Most everybody is that way. I used to be scared of the Surprise all the time for fear something would knock a bit of paint off somewhere. It takes about a year to get over that. He handles her as though he was afraid something was going to break. Just watch me take advantage of that.”

Harvey had seen that the Anna Maud and the Bertha would cross the line a moment ahead of him, but he did not mind that so much, thinking his time allowance would give him more than a good chance for the race, anyway. He had selected the Sally for his particular antagonist, and now prepared to get what advantage he could from the start.

Easing his sheet a trifle, he headed off the wind somewhat, allowing the two larger yachts to sail almost directly across his bows. Rushing out just astern of them, and heading diagonally for the starting-line, under full headway, Harvey bore down on the Sally, as though he meant deliberately to run her down.

If young Willie Grimes had not been so taken by surprise and so alarmed at this move of Harvey’s, he would have perceived that the manœuvre was only done to try his nerve; he would have realized that as good a sailor as Harvey would not deliberately foul another yacht, when that must lose him the race, as well as the boat he fouled.

But Harvey had reckoned on the other’s apprehension for his new boat, and the move was successful. Just at the point where a moment more would have sent his boom crashing aboard the other yacht as he headed up into the wind, Harvey threw his yacht quickly about, Joe Hinman hauled in rapidly on the main-sheet, Tim Reardon trimmed in the jibs, and away went the Surprise over the line, footing after the two other boats as fast as full sail would carry her.

At that same moment Willie Grimes, fearful of a collision, threw the Sally completely off the wind, so that when he had recovered his nerve and realized that he had been imposed upon, he was so far below the boat that marked the limit of the starting-line that he had to make another tack to reach it. Before this, the last gun had been fired to mark the taking of the time, and the luckless Sally crossed the line with one full minute counting against her.

The youth’s face burned with indignation, and he had hard work to keep the tears from springing to his eyes.

“Bye-bye, Willie,” sang out Harvey, looking back and waving his cap derisively. “Better courage next time. You don’t want to mind a little paint, you know.”

But the other had regained his spirits and paid no heed. “That’s what yachtsmen call ‘jockeying,’ I guess,” he said, quietly, to his two companions in the boat. “It’s within the rules, so I suppose we cannot complain. That’s like Harvey, from all I hear. He might have given us a fair show, though, as he knows this is my first summer running a boat by myself. Perhaps we won’t be far astern of him at the finish, at that.”

“You did that slick, Jack,” said Joe Hinman, admiringly. “We stand a good chance of winning this race, I think, with the allowance we get.”

“Didn’t he scoot, though, when he saw us coming?” laughed Harvey. “Thought his new boat was wrecked that time, sure. I’ve seen that trick played in big yacht races, but I never saw it work better than it did to-day, if I do say it.”

The yachts were now strung out in line along the course, tacking back and forth, and making for a small naphtha launch anchored down the bay at the five-mile mark. They made a picturesque sight, laying well over under all their canvas and throwing the water high over their bows.

It was soon evident that the Bertha, take it all in all, was the best boat for working up to windward in rough water and a good breeze. The Anna Maud was a very broad, beamy boat, and had a marvellous reputation for running free, but now she seemed to feel the waves more than the Bertha, pounding heavily and drenching every one aboard.

The Bertha took the seas cleaner and headed up higher. She was evidently gaining slowly but steadily. Moreover, although she carried an enormous club-topsail and a mainsail of big area, she heeled over the least of any of the boats. She had been built for heavy weather, and this was exactly the breeze she sailed best in.

The Surprise and Sally were, however, holding their own remarkably well, and it would not be clear for some time which would come out the winner.

“Hello!” exclaimed Jack Harvey, suddenly, in a tone of evident surprise. “What on earth – or, rather, on water – is Cap’n Silas doing? Look where he is standing. I’ve been looking for the last few minutes to see him tack, but there he keeps on away off toward shore.”

The Anna Maud had, strange to say, gone way off the course, apparently heading well over to the westward.

“Why, Jack, don’t you know,” said Joe Hinman, “how we’ve noticed the tide over along that shore? It makes a swing in there and runs like a mill-sluice. Don’t you remember one night how we tried to row against it, and what a time we had?”

“That’s true,” responded Jack Harvey, “and Cap’n Sile Tucker is clever enough to take advantage of it. He knows more about sailing in one minute than that captain of the Bertha does in a week. But there must be something more in it than the tide alone. I’ll tell you, the wind is changing. It’s heading more and more from the westward, and Captain Sile will get the full benefit of the slant when he gets down about a mile further. He knows what he’s doing. We’ll just head over and follow him.”

“Seems to me it’s taking long chances to go so much off the course,” remarked George Baker.

“Of course it is taking chances,” responded Harvey, quickly. “You have got to take chances in a contest of this kind. The fellows that take the chances are the ones that win. But it isn’t taking any great chances, following Cap’n Tucker. I tell you he knows these waters better than any man in the bay. He wouldn’t go over there unless he knew he was going to make something by it. Why, he has sailed that big catboat of his up and down along this coast for the last twenty years and more, that and other boats. The skipper in the Bertha comes from away up beyond Millville. He can sail his boat all right, but he don’t know this coast like Captain Sile.”

Harvey, accordingly, stood over to the westward, in the wake of the Anna Maud.

Only one other boat followed him. That was the Sally.

“I don’t know what they are standing away over there for,” said Willie Grimes to his companions. “I don’t know whether it is the best thing to do or not. It may be that they know something about the tide over there. But I know one thing, and that is, wherever Jack Harvey goes I’m going to follow. I wouldn’t care if every other yacht here beat me if I could only beat him. You never can tell, you know. Something may happen to him yet.”

The wisdom of Captain Silas Tucker’s departure from the straight course soon became apparent. The tide, indeed, at this point made a sweep inshore, for some reason, flowing far swifter in near the land than it did offshore. Again, too, the wind had slanted a little, and the yachts that had taken this course were soon in a better position relative to the stake-boat than the others.

Slowly the Anna Maud drew ahead of the Bertha, the captain of the latter boat realizing the advantage which the others were gaining too late to change his own course. As they neared the mark, even the Surprise and the Sally were leading the Bertha, which now seemed to be hopelessly out of the race.

The race, indeed, seemed narrowed down to these three yachts, with a slight advantage in the Anna Maud’s favour.

“Hooray!” cried Harvey, “we are holding the Anna Maud in fine style. She’s gaining ever so little, not enough thus far to cover our time allowance. They say she is fast off the wind, but so are we. That’s the best point of the Surprise. She sails better running free than any boat of her size I ever saw.”

“Cracky!” cried young Tim, “I hope we take that silver cup back to camp with us. We’ll march through the streets with it, if we get it.”

“Yes, if we get it,” replied Harvey. “It don’t do to be too sure, though.”

Now the Anna Maud was rounding the stake-boat and coming back over the course, not quite before the wind, owing to the slant to the westward that it had taken, but with her sheet well out.

“The wind is in our favour,” said Harvey, gleefully. “There’s just enough slant to it so our jibs will help us some. They will draw a little, and that gives us an advantage over that catboat. Let that sheet go, now, Joe, the minute we turn the mark.”

A moment later the Surprise rounded the stake-boat, with a good lead over the Sally, and still near enough astern of the Anna Maud to give her a good race.

“Up with that centreboard, now, George – lively,” cried Harvey. “It’s a big board, and we don’t want to drag it a minute longer than we have to. It counts a whole lot with this tide running against it. What’s the matter? What are you waiting for? Up with it!”

“Why, hang the thing!” exclaimed George Baker, “I’m trying to get it up as hard as ever I can. It won’t come. It’s stuck.”

“What’s that?” cried Harvey. “Stuck? Nonsense! Here, you, Joe, hold this wheel a moment. I’ll have it up in a hurry.”

He sprang forward, brushing George Baker out of the way impatiently.

“Let me get hold there,” he said.

Harvey seized the iron rod, which was fastened to the centreboard, and gave a strong pull. But the centreboard did not budge. He took a firmer hold and pulled with all his strength. It was of no avail. The board had stuck fast in its box.

“I’ll have it up or break something,” cried Harvey, beside himself with anger, and again he grasped the rod with both hands and gave a furious wrench. There was a most unexpected and baffling verification of his threat, for the rod, broken off short at its connection with the centreboard, did come up, so suddenly that Harvey sprawled over backwards, still grasping the rod with both hands clenched, and rolled over on the floor of the cockpit.

There was no such thing as getting the centreboard up now. It was down to stay.

Harvey, white with rage, sprang to his feet and hurled the rod into the sea. Then he took his seat sullenly at the wheel again.

“That settles it,” he said, as soon as he could speak for anger. “We haven’t a ghost of a chance now. I shouldn’t wonder, even, if the Sally overhauled us.” And he looked back helplessly at the yacht astern.

Slowly but surely the Anna Maud forged ahead. The distance between her and the Surprise grew ever farther and farther.

“That’s queer,” said Captain Silas Tucker, looking back at Harvey’s yacht. “I thought she was going to give us a harder run home than that. I’ve heard the boat was good off the wind, but she doesn’t seem to be doing well. It’s first prize for us this trip, and easily won. Well, your Uncle Silas hasn’t sailed around these parts all his life for nothing.”

Slowly but surely, too, the Sally was creeping up close astern of the Surprise, to the wild delight of Willie Grimes and his comrades.

“If I can only beat Jack Harvey,” he kept saying, “I don’t care about the other yacht’s beating us.”

“If Willie Grimes beats us, I’ll run him down and sink him some day,” muttered Harvey, grinding his teeth.

It was still a close race between these two as the finish-line was neared. The Sally had crept up until she was almost abeam of the Surprise, and was gaining, ever so slowly, but surely. Harvey, dogged to the last, waited until the Sally was nearly abreast of him, and then, as a last resort, tried once more to bully the race from his less experienced rival.

Throwing his wheel over slightly, he tried the tactic of crowding the other off the course.

But Willie Grimes was bound to win or sink this time. He kept his own boat off just enough to avoid the possibility of Harvey’s fouling him, maintaining the same relative distance between them, and all the while drawing ahead.

The judges, watching the close finish through their glasses, perceived this trick of Harvey’s, and were ready to disqualify him in case of any accident. But their determination was unnecessary. Less than a dozen rods from the finish-line the Sally had sailed clear of the Surprise, and now cut in on to the course, leaving Harvey astern, and crossed the line a rod to the good.

Then, as a storm of cheers rang out from the assembled boats, as a fluttering of handkerchiefs and waving of parasols, a tossing of hats and shrieking of whistles, saluted the victory of Willie Grimes over him, Harvey did not deign to cross the line. Angrily he swung out of the course, and stood over, without a word, for the town of Bellport.

“Takes his licking hard, doesn’t he, Willie?” called out a voice, and a chorus of laughter mocked at Harvey’s wrath as he sailed away.

The Anna Maud had won the race, but the honours were as much for the Sally as for the winner. They took substantial form, moreover, for, one of the committee, vowing the Sally should have a second prize, if he had to buy one himself, as there had not been any offered, the suggestion met with a ready response; and the owner and crew of the Sally rejoiced that night in the unexpected award of a handsome compass for their cabin.

“Now,” said Harvey, as the Surprise neared the landing at Bellport, “I want to get out of this town just as quick as I step foot in it. I don’t intend to stay here and have those chaps and those girls laugh at me. They’ve got altogether too good a chance. You fellows have got to stay here and take the Surprise up to Billy Coombs’s marine railway. She’ll have to be hauled out for a day and the ballast come out of her around that centreboard box. Tell him to put a new iron in, and you can pay for it, Joe, and I’ll pay you when you come back to camp.”

“But where are you going?” asked the others.

“I am going to foot it down the road for seven miles to Hackett’s Cove, and wait for Jeff Hackett to come down,” answered Harvey. “Then I’ll go across to the foot of the island with him in his sloop. I’d walk farther than that to get clear of the crowd that will be ashore here soon; but, for that matter, I want to get back to the island to-night, anyway. There’s a dance in the old town hall at Carter’s Harbour, and I’ll get there in time for that.”

“He’s all cut up over Willie Grimes’s beating him,” said Joe Hinman, as Harvey sprang out on the landing and walked rapidly away. “He won’t get over it for a week. Well, we shall have to catch it for him when the boats come in. However, we didn’t sail the boat. That’s one comfort.”

Late that afternoon, Jack Harvey, hot and dusty with his long walk, waited impatiently, seated on a pile of timber by the shore, for the arrival of Jeff Hackett’s sloop. Five o’clock came, and then six, and no sloop in sight. Harvey strolled up to the village store and bought some crackers and cheese for his supper.

“So you’re waiting for Jeff Hackett’s sloop to take you across to the island, are you?” said the storekeeper. “Well, you’ll wait till morning now, I reckon. Wish I’d known you wanted to go over sooner. You see, Jeff engaged Tom Crosby to make his trip this afternoon for him, and he’s been gone an hour now. You must have seen Tom’s boat off there.”

“I did,” replied Harvey, shortly, “but I had no idea he was going across. What can I do, now?”

“Nothing that I see,” said the storekeeper, “except to take it comfortable here to-night, and go over with Jeff in the morning.”

Harvey strode angrily out and walked down to the shore again.

A rod or two out a fisherman was rowing in a small boat.

“Here, you, where are you going?” sang out Harvey.

The man looked up, surprised, but did not answer.

“I say, there, where are you going? Can’t you hear?” cried Harvey, roughly.

The man stopped rowing. “What’s that to you?” he answered.

Harvey laughed. “You’ve got me there,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude – but I’ve been disappointed. I didn’t know but you might be going to row across to the island, and I thought perhaps you might like to earn a dollar. I’ll help row, too, if you like. I want to go, the worst way.”

The man hesitated for a moment, started as though he were going to row away, and then paused again.

“Where do you belong?” he asked.

“Over on the island,” said Harvey. “I’m camping there.”

“What’s that?” said the man, putting his hand to his ear. “Say it again.”

“I’m camping out over on the island,” repeated Harvey.

The man looked stealthily in at him from under his eyebrows. “Camping there!” he muttered to himself, and began backing water slowly with his oars.

“I’ll take you across for – for a dollar,” he said.

“Good!” cried Harvey. “Come on, lively, then. It’s a good five miles, and I’m in a hurry to get across.”

The man, however, was in no hurry. He came in slowly, as though perhaps he might still be considering the matter, whether he should take this passenger aboard or not. He worked the boat inshore, finally, and Harvey sprang aboard.

“You are going to help row,” said the man.

“Yes,” answered Harvey. “Didn’t I say I would?” He took his seat toward the stern of the boat, where there were rowlocks for an extra pair of oars.

The man at the bow oars was a thick, heavy-set, middle-aged man, burned dark by sun and wind. He was roughly dressed in ill-fitting clothes, that looked as though they might have come from the dunnage-bag of a fisherman who had been long at sea. They were patched in one or two places with cloth that did not match the original garments. He wore a red, cheap-looking handkerchief tied loosely about his neck, and a rough beard of several weeks’ growth heightened the effect of his swarthy complexion.

They rowed for some time in silence, making good headway, for the wind had gone down with the sun, and the man in the bow pulled a powerful stroke, making even the sturdy efforts of Jack Harvey seem like child’s play.

The sun sank behind the hills and the shadows deepened across the water, fading out at length into the darkness that settled over all the bay. A few lights glimmered out from the shore of the island, some three miles distant, and the stars appeared in the sky.

“Lucky I fell in with you, just as I did,” said Harvey, as he slowed up his stroke. “Lucky for both of us, I take it. I should have been stuck there all night if I hadn’t met you; and I don’t suppose you mind picking up a dollar, as long as you were going this way.”

“No,” said the man, though there was a queer expression on his face. “I don’t mind, – and the fishing isn’t any too good these days.”

“Got a smack, have you?” inquired Harvey.

“No,” answered the other. “I don’t own any boat myself. But I sail with a man as owns his own boat, and I come in for a fair share of the fish.”

“Where does she lie?” asked Harvey.

The man waited a moment before answering. “She’s down among the islands somewhere,” he said, finally. “She’ll be in for me to-night or to-morrow. I’ve been visiting some relations of mine back of Bellport a few miles. So you’re a summer visitor at the island, are you?”