The Rival Campers: or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

“All but Colonel Witham,” said young Joe. “Catch him being grateful for anything, with his hotel in ashes.”

“Keep quiet, Joe!” exclaimed George Warren, sharply.

The very mention of Colonel Witham’s name was irritating. It was only too certain that no mercy could be expected from the colonel.

“But,” said Arthur Warren, “we’re not to blame, so why should we consider that at all? You remember,” he continued, turning to Henry Burns, “how we waited after I had blown the last lamp out and the room was absolutely dark, and we had to stand still a moment till our eyes got accustomed to the darkness before we could find our way to the window?”

“I remember that,” answered Henry Burns; “and not one of us lighted any matches all the time we were there, because the lamps were all burning dimly when we went in; but,” he added, somewhat desperately for him, “that is not going to save us the moment an investigation begins, if they have one. The first time they begin to question one of us we’re done for. The moment they know we were in there last night, that will settle everything in their minds.”

“And what then?” asked young Joe.

“Well,” said Henry Burns, more calmly, “it means that we’ve got a twenty-five thousand dollar hotel to pay for.”

The proposition was so absurd that they burst out laughing; but it was a short-lived and bitter merriment, and they could just as easily have cried.

“What would our fathers say?” said Arthur Warren. “Ours told us we’d have to make our pocket-money go a long way this summer, because he rigged the boat all over for us. There couldn’t any of us pay for the hotel in all our lives.”

“Perhaps they’d send us to jail,” suggested young Joe.

This happy remark was received with howls of indignation, and the originator of it was invited to clear out if he couldn’t keep quiet.

“They couldn’t send us to jail,” said Arthur, gravely, “for, at the worst, we could convince them that it was accidental. We may be nuisances, but we’re not criminals. Wouldn’t it be better, on the whole,” he concluded, “to make a clean breast of it to father, and do whatever he says is best?”

“I’d do it in a minute,” said George Warren, “but when I know we didn’t set the fire, even accidentally, I hate to put all that trouble and worry on father; because, you see, we might not be able to convince him absolutely that we may not, in some way that we don’t know of, have been responsible. Of course, if it comes to it, we’ll tell him all, – and he’ll believe it, too. That is, he’ll believe that we are telling what we think is right, for we’ve always done that way, because he puts confidence in us.”

“Then,” said Bob, “we’ve got to keep out of the way for awhile till this thing blows over some. Everybody that sees us now will stop and ask us how we first saw the fire and all about it.”

“They’ve done that already to us,” said George Warren. “And, luckily, we could say truthfully that we first saw the fire from our cottage piazza. And we said we ran down to your camp and roused you boys. Now that is all right for a touch-and-go conversation, but suppose they see fit to follow it up, we’ll soon find ourselves either obliged to lie or to confess.”

“Then what are we going to do?” asked Tom.

“Take a fishing-trip,” suggested young Joe.

They looked at young Joe savagely, for each knew in his own heart that it was running away from danger, – but it was significant that not a boy objected.

“We’ve been planning one for a week or more,” urged Joe, in extenuation of his plan. “And we needn’t stay long. We can come back in a day or two and then start right out again, so as not to attract attention by being gone too long.”

“I suppose a little trip down among the islands wouldn’t be so bad for our health,” said Henry Burns, dryly; but it was clear he had no great liking for the plan.

And so, in a vain endeavour to escape from what seemed to them a most unfair and cruel predicament, and without realizing that it was the worst thing they could do, the boys agreed to start early on the following morning in the Spray for a cruise.

Much surprised was Mrs. Warren when informed of their plan.

“And just as everybody is telling what brave boys you were,” she said. “They all say that half the guests would have lost their lives if it hadn’t been for you.”

This was worse than punishment, and the boys groaned inwardly, for Mrs. Warren had taught her boys to respect her, and they valued her good opinion more than anything else in the world. They went off to bed soon after supper, “so as to get an early start in the morning,” they said.

It was early that same evening, while the boys were at tea, that Squire Brackett stepped ashore from his sailboat in a perfect fever of excitement.

“I knew it and I said it,” he muttered to himself, slapping one hard fist into the palm of the other hand. “When I saw that blaze across the water this morning, and knew that it couldn’t be anything else than the hotel, I says to myself, ‘Those boys have done it, with some of their monkey-shines,’ and that’s just the way of it. By Jingo! but won’t Colonel Witham jump out of his skin when I tell him what I saw through that window.

“P’r’aps them ’ere boys won’t be’ so much inclined to tying other people’s dogs to ropes and drowning them when they get caught for setting fire to a fine hotel!”

And so, nearly bursting with the magnitude of his secret, and bristling with more than his usual importance, Squire Brackett hurried up from the landing and lost no time in finding Colonel Witham and escorting him in great haste to his own home.

There on the veranda of Squire Brackett’s house sat the two worthies, while the squire poured out his news into the eager colonel’s ear.

“Whew!” exclaimed Colonel Witham, when he had heard it all. “We’ve got them at last and no mistake. What’s more,” he added, jumping from his chair and stamping vigorously on the piazza floor, “I’ll prosecute them, every mother’s son, to the extent of the law. It’s breaking and entering, too, – forcing their way into my hotel at night, – and the fire was caused by their criminal act. That’s serious business, as they’ll find before I get through with them. Blow me if I don’t take the boat for Mayville this very night, and see Judge Ellis and get the warrants for Captain Sam to serve first thing in the morning!”

“I’ll go with you, colonel,” cried Squire Brackett. “We’ll be back here before midnight, and be all ready at daylight to arrest them. Reckon we’ll surprise folks a little.”

And so, chuckling maliciously together, the squire and the colonel waited eagerly for the whistle of the little bay steamer, upon hearing which they walked arm and arm down to the wharf and went aboard, with their heads together, in great satisfaction.

Their trip must have been greatly to their liking, for some hours later found them coming ashore again, evidently in a most agreeable state of mind; and as they bade each other good night on the veranda of the squire’s cottage, the colonel might have been heard once more to exclaim, exultantly: “We’ve got ’em this time, squire! They can’t get away.” And so strode away, caressing in one hand some crisp, official-looking papers, which boded no good in their contents to six boys whose names the colonel had given with evil delight to the judge at Mayville.

Very early next morning good-hearted Captain Sam might have been seen at the door of his home, his fist clenched and his face burning with indignation. Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett stood by the stoop.

“Now look here, colonel,” exclaimed Captain Sam, hotly, “you surely ain’t going to ask me to serve these papers on them innocent young lads? There’s some mistake, somehow, and the way for us to do is to get them up here and just give them a talking to; ask them all the questions you want. I’ve watched them boys for a good many summers now, ever since they was little shavers no bigger’n mackerel, and I tell you they wouldn’t do no wicked thing like setting fire to a hotel full of people, and there ain’t nobody on this island mean enough to believe it.”

“We didn’t come here asking you for advice,” sneered the squire. “You’re a constable of this village, sworn to do your duty, and your duty is to serve these warrants, the same being legally drawn and signed by the judge. That’s all your part, and all we ask of you to do. We take all the consequences.”

“Well, it’s a shame. It ain’t the right thing to do, squire, as you ought to know, having a boy of your own. But, as you say, it’s my duty if you insist, and I’ll do it, – but it’s the hardest job I ever done in all my life.”

“Let’s go down to the tent first,” said Colonel Witham. “There’s always two of them down there, and sometimes more. If Henry Burns is there, I just want to get my hands on him. I suspect he’s been fooling me all along and playing his tricks on me, when I thought him in his room asleep.”

The dew was still heavy on the grass and the sun had not lifted its face above the distant cape when the three men walked down to the tent upon the point. Not a sound broke the early morning quiet, save the cawing of some crows in a group of pines, and the lazy swash of the sluggish rollers breaking on the shore.

“They’re fast asleep,” whispered Squire Brackett. “We’ll give them a little surprise – just a little surprise.” And he gave a hard chuckle.

Captain Sam, at this same instant, casting his eyes offshore and hastily surveying the bay with the quick, comprehensive glance of an old sailor, gave a sudden start, and, for a moment, an exclamation of surprise escaped him.

“What is it?” asked Colonel Witham. “Did you remark anything, Captain Sam?”

“Nothing,” answered Captain Sam. “I was just a-muttering to myself.”

And at this moment the squire threw open the flap of the tent, saying, as he did so, “If you boys will – ”

But as he and Colonel Witham poked their heads through the opening, the sentence was abruptly cut short.

“Empty!” gasped the colonel.

“Gone!” cried the squire.

The tent was, indeed, deserted.

“Where can they be?” asked Colonel Witham.

“I know,” answered the squire. “Up at the Warrens, of course. They are there half the time. It simply means we capture them all at once and save trouble. Come on, Captain Sam, you don’t seem to be in much of a hurry to do your duty, as you’re sworn to do.”

Captain Sam was, indeed, in no hurry. He loitered behind, stopped to tie his shoes, dragged one foot along after the other slower than he had ever done before, while every now and then, as he followed in the footsteps of the colonel and the squire, he cast a hasty glance over his shoulder out on the bay. What he saw must have pleased him, for on each occasion a broad smile spread over his face and a mischievous twinkle kindled in his eyes.

The colonel and the squire strode along impatiently, pausing now and then for Captain Sam to catch up with them; but as they drew near to the Warren cottage Captain Sam quickened his steps and halted them.

“You two will have to stay here,” he said, with an authority he had not shown before. “I’m commissioned with the serving of these warrants, and I’m going to do it; but Mrs. Warren is a nice, motherly little woman, and I don’t propose to have three of us bursting in on them like a press-gang and frightening her to death. I’m just going to break the news to her as best I know how, and I don’t want no interfering.”

So saying, and with face set into a reluctant resolve, the captain walked on alone, leaving the colonel and the squire much taken aback, and too much astonished by the sudden declaration of authority to attempt to dispute it.

What Captain Sam said to Mrs. Warren only she and he knew. There were no boys called in to listen to what was said. There were no boys there to see how Mrs. Warren’s face paled and how the tears rolled down her cheeks, nor to hear Captain Sam’s words of burning indignation as he tried to comfort her. No boys came to gather about her chair, to assure her it was all a dreadful mistake. There were no boys to face the colonel and the squire and declare their own innocence.

But out on the bay, with all her white sails set to catch the morning breeze, the yacht Spray was beating down toward a distant goal among the islands. And aboard her were six boys, whose hearts were heavy and whose faces were drawn with an ever present anxiety. For a time they cast apprehensive looks back at the disappearing village, but as the morning wore on and no pursuing sail appeared, they became more cheerful; and to forget so far as they could the real cause of their flight, they talked hopefully of the fish they expected to catch and the swimming and other sport along the white sands of the island beaches.

But although no familiar craft as yet followed where they sailed, there was, far in the lead of them and some miles down along the island, a yacht they all knew, and in whose mission, had they but known it, their deepest interests, their very fate, in fact, lay.

Jack Harvey had lost little time in reaching his camp. While he ran the fire blazed brighter and brighter, sending an angry glare over the waters of the bay and lighting up the country around. Looking back now and then, he could see men and women running about in the light of the fire, and the frantic, though unavailing, efforts of the village fire department to stay the flames.

“Seems funny,” he muttered to himself, “to be running away from a fire, and the greatest fire we ever had on this island at that. I never did such a thing before, but I guess there’ll be something more exciting ahead than a fire before we get through.”

Harvey found his camp deserted, as he had expected. Not a sign of life showed about the place.

“They’re all up to the fire,” said Harvey; “but I’ll bring them soon enough, though I reckon they’ll be mad at first to have to leave when the fire is just at its best.”

And he began ransacking the camp, rolling up blankets, tying them into compact bundles and hurrying down to the shore with them, where he deposited them in a rowboat.

He made a pile of the rude dishes that the camp afforded, a saucepan, a fry-pan, tin dippers, and a few tin plates, tying them all together in a bundle and rattling them all down to the shore in great haste.

Finally he got a boatload of the stuff, and, jumping in, sculled the little craft out to the Surprise. Leaping aboard, he rushed down into the cabin, threw open a locker, drew forth a big tin horn, which he raised to his lips, and blew four loud, long blasts in succession.

“The hurry signal will surprise them, I reckon,” he exclaimed; “but they’ve always answered it before, and I guess they’ll come, – even from a fire.” And Harvey began stowing the stuff away aboard the yacht. Then he proceeded to untie the stops in the mainsail, and was thus engaged when a voice hailed him from the shore.

“Halloo, Jack!” came the call. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you up to the fire? What’s up?”

“Wait a minute,” answered Harvey. “I’m coming ashore. Are the others on the way?”

“Yes,” answered the boy on shore, who proved to be Joe Hinman; “but they don’t like it a bit. It’s a shame to lose this fire, Jack. Why, you ought to see Colonel Witham. He’s the craziest man I ever saw, running around and begging everybody he sees to rush into the blaze and save his old office furniture.”

“Well, Joe,” said Harvey, as he stepped out of the small boat on to the beach, beside the other, “we’ve got some work cut out for us that beats watching a fire all to pieces. I’ll tell you all about it, but there isn’t one half-minute to lose now. Believe me, you fellows won’t regret it, – hello, here are the others!”

The three other members of the crew, George Baker, Allan Harding, and Tim Reardon, burst out of the woods into the clearing, gasping from running, and amazed beyond expression that Harvey should have called them from the fire.

“Fellows,” said Harvey, “I’ll tell you the whole story just as soon as we get aboard and up sail. This is the greatest thing we ever did in all our lives; but it’s the minutes that count now, and we have got to get under way the quickest we ever did yet.”

And then, as the boys hesitated, and Joe Hinman ventured the question, with something of suspicion in his tone that he could not all conceal, “Why, Jack, there’s no trouble, is there – no trouble – about the fire?” it suddenly dawned on Harvey that this sudden departure did have a queer look to it, and that he was, indeed, open to their suspicion.

“Yes,” he cried, “there is trouble, and it’s about this fire; but it isn’t our trouble. The trouble is for the man that set it, – and we are going to make it for him. We’re going to catch him. Now will you hurry?”

“Will we?” exclaimed George Baker. “Just watch us!”

And every boy made a dash for the camp to secure anything he might need on a cruise down the bay.

Harvey and Joe Hinman seized two big jugs and made off for the spring, whence they returned quickly. Then the entire crew piling into the small boat, they were soon aboard the Surprise.

The anchor was up in a twinkling. The sails were never spread in such time. Almost as quickly as it takes to tell it, the yacht Surprise was under way, and with Harvey at the wheel was standing out of the little harbour.

Then, as they left the glare of the fire upon the waters astern, but still flaming like a giant beacon against the sky, Harvey, with his crew about him, narrated his extraordinary adventure with the strange man, and asserted his conviction that the man was none other than the same Chambers who had fled from the island not long before.

“That is a fast boat, and we can never catch her in plain sailing,” said Allan Harding. “She is full half again as big as we, and she would sail around us a dozen times and then walk away from us without half-trying.”

“I know that,” said Harvey, “and that is just why I am so anxious to catch up with him before he gets out of the western bay into the open sea. If we don’t get him in the bay we shall lose him. Now let’s overhaul everything, and be sure that something doesn’t break just as we come to the pinch.”

There was little to be done, however, on that score; for, however carelessly they lived ashore, they had the true yachtsman’s spirit aboard the Surprise, and kept her shipshape. Then they set the club and jib topsails, for there was not much air stirring, and they drew the tender up close astern, so it would drag as little as possible.

“We have one advantage,” said Harvey. “We can depend upon it, he knows enough not to try the open bay and sail down toward the Gull Islands. The first part of the way is clear sailing enough, but when you get down just off the islands you come to the shallows, and a man has to follow the marks to get clear and safely out to sea. And then, too, the alarm is going to be sent out just as soon as a boat from the village can get over to the mainland. They won’t lose any time about that, – and Chambers is sharp enough to know it. He knows the whole bay down below there will be alive with boats, just as soon as they get the news wired down to them.

“Depend upon it, Chambers will try to fool them. I think he will come through the Thoroughfare at this eastern end of Grand Island, which he must have studied out on the charts. He will not dare to try the Thoroughfare to-night, however, and if we can only beat down to somewhere below the Thoroughfare to-night we shall be well to windward of him in the morning, and he will think we are a boat coming in from outside, while he will still be beating into the wind, if it holds from the south’ard, the way it is blowing now.”

“That’s right,” said Joe Hinman. “He cannot make the passage out through the Thoroughfare in the night, unless he knows the way better than I think he does. It is a bad run in the dark, even for a man that was born around here. We have done it only once or twice ourselves.”

“You fellows turn in now, all but Tim,” said Harvey, “and get some sleep. We two can run her for awhile. I’ll call you, Joe, in about an hour or two, to handle her while I get forty winks, but, mind, everybody will be called sharp the minute we clear Tom’s Island, for no knowing what we shall see then at any minute. Chambers will lie up in Seal Cove for an hour or two, I reckon, if he has got down that far. I only wish I was sure of it. We’d go ashore and take a run across the island and catch him napping —

“By the way, George,” exclaimed Harvey, “how do you feel? It’s mighty lucky you happened to be taken with that colic in the night, just at the right time, and that I started out to rouse up old Sanborn to get some ginger for you. All this would never have happened if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Why, I’m all right,” answered George Baker. “I could hardly walk when we first saw the fire, but I just made up my mind I wasn’t going to miss it, and so I started out. When the sparks began to fly I forgot all about the pain, and I hadn’t thought of it since. It’s all gone now, anyway.”

Two hours later they were nearing the southern end of Grand Island and coming in sight of a chain, or cluster, of smaller islands, through which an obscure and little used passage ran from the western bay to the outer sea. Jack Harvey had sent young Tim into the cabin to snatch a wink of sleep, and Joe had come up, heavy and dull.

“I’ll go without my sleep this once,” said Harvey. “Here, Joe, hold her a minute. I’ll get a bit of rest right here on deck, with one eye open.”

It was growing light fast now, and they strained their eyes for a sail.

“I guess we are in time,” said Harvey, as they came abreast of Tom’s Island. “He is not in sight. We’ll head out to sea a bit more, and cut into the Thoroughfare farther down, for the tide will be high in an hour, and we can cross Pine Island Bar. Then, if he has taken the channel on the other side of Tom’s Island, we can still head him off, – unless he went through in the night.”

And Harvey, having relinquished the tiller to Joe, stretched himself out at full length on the seat to rest.

Thus they sailed for a short cut into the Thoroughfare at a point where they could command the farther of the two channels.

And, as they sailed, so sailed another and a larger sloop, beating its way out to sea through the farther channel. A man, powerfully built, and with a hard, desperate look in his eyes, sat at the wheel, – and he was all alone. The yacht cut a clean path through the smooth waters of the Thoroughfare, and, as the man looked at the coast-line along which he was passing rapidly, he muttered: “It’s a clear passage; a safe run to sea. And, once there, who’s to say I was ever in these waters? I said I’d have revenge on this town for what I’ve lost, if it took all summer, and I’ve done it. The blaze did me good as it lit the sky. Twenty minutes more and I’ll be clear of this, and good-bye to this coast for ever.”

But even as he said it a smaller sloop turned the head of an island half a mile ahead, and came down the Thoroughfare, running off the wind.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PURSUIT

Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they discovered that the boys had escaped.

“But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end,” said the squire. “The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and will count hard against them when we once get them into court.

“Colonel,” he continued, gazing off on to the bay, “I believe that’s them now, about two miles down along the shore. Cap’n Sam, you’re a sure judge of a sail. Isn’t that the Spray beating down along the island, just off Billy Jones’s beach?”

Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically:

“That’s the Spray, sure’s a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there’s the youngsters, and no mistake.”

Captain Sam did not see fit, however, though a constable, sworn to do his duty, as the others had suggested, to explain that he had seen the Spray for the last hour or more, and that he had been conscious all along of the precious time they were losing. But a sharp observer might have detected him chuckling down deep in his throat as the colonel and the squire stormed and raged.