Chapter XVIII “The Happy Family.”
“It’s that Horrors kid and his chums,” Cloudman cried. “They’re in for it, I reckon!”
“They’re out for it, you mean,” Midkiff said.
“What can we do?” wailed the dancing Peewee. “They’re trying to paddle back to the island.”
“Right into the eye of the wind,” said Phillips, who now had a good view of the two canoes.
“They’ll be drowned!” declared little Hicks.
“Easy there, Midget,” Kingdon requested. “Don’t weep yet. Steady, you fellows. I’m going to wear ship. Give me the course, Red.”
“You’re sure not going to run down to them, Kingdon?” questioned Cloudman.
It looked dangerous to him. Even Midkiff said:
“Better look before you leap, Rex.”
“Pshaw! As our Blackport friend says, ‘There’s nothing to it!’ We can reach ’em all right—without shipping a capful of water.”
“Yes,” Midkiff muttered. “But can we get back to the island again?”
Kingdon did not answer that question. He knew he had a sound craft under him. A catboat of merely the Spoondrift’s length has run many a mile out to sea and lived through an offshore gale; but it wasn’t a chance he fancied, and Kingdon fully felt the responsibility of taking the risk. Nevertheless, he could not think of letting those other fellows drown.
Drown they might unless they received immediate aid. Under the lift of the boom, Rex caught a glimpse of the two canoes. One fellow in each was paddling madly while his companion was bailing out the water shipped from the curling top of every wave.
It was a bad outlook for Horace Pence and his friends. Undoubtedly they had been fishing off the eastern point of Storm Island when the wind shifted. If that was so, then for nearly two hours the boys had been battling to get back to safety.
“Careless goats,” Kingdon said to Midkiff, who stood beside him. “They ought never to have brought such dinky craft out here. Canoes are all right in the sound when it’s quiet; but to try to manage a canoe out here, with the surf running the way it does on this south shore of Storm Island, is craziness.”
“Guess they know all that now,” grunted Midkiff.
“True for you, Jawn. Stand by to give them a hand. Save the canoes if you can. I’ve got to run her in between the two, and you and Red will each have to handle one of the cockleshells.”
“Cockleshells. Now you’ve said a bushel, Rex,” Midkiff rejoined. “Those fellows ought to be at home sailing chips on a puddle.”
“They’re putting up a plucky fight, just the same,” Kingdon said, peering ahead. “Take your place. Speak to Red. Stand by the sheet to lower!” he bellowed.
“Aye, aye, skipper!” Phillips shouted back.
“Come aft here, Peewee, and help Cloudman pull ’em over the side. Keep your wits about you, Applejack.”
“Oh, thank ye!” grunted the boy from the West. “I didn’t spill them back there in that choppy channel.”
Carried on by her own momentum, the Spoondrift shot in between the two canoes. The struggling boys paddling at the moment—Pence in one canoe and Pudge MacComber in the other—might have ceased their work, seeing the catboat so near, had not Kingdon shouted:
“Keep it up, you fellows! Stick to the paddle. We’ve got to snake those other fellows inboard first.”
Cloudman and Peewee each seized their man, while Red and Midkiff, lying precariously themselves on the decked over portion of the catboat, got a grip on the gunwales of the canoes.
Ben Comas and Kirby were hauled into the cockpit; but each canoe shipped so much water it began to sink.
Pudge was frankly crying; but he tried to balance his boat and use the paddle on the starboard side. Pence’s countenance wore its usual sneering smile. His black eyes flashed and his glance did not quail in the least.
“Awfully decent of you, Kingdon,” he shouted. “Try to save the canoes, if you can.”
“Scramble aboard!” commanded the skipper of the Spoondrift. “Never mind the canoes.”
But Midkiff and Phillips did their part nobly. They hung onto the sinking craft until Horace Pence and Harry Kirby could aid in dragging both upon the deck of the catboat.
“Lash ’em there,” commanded Kingdon. “Give us more sail. We’ve got to make headway against this breeze.”
He had brought the Spoondrift into the eye of the wind and, when a reef was shaken out, the sail got the breeze on such a slant that she staggered and rolled like a drunken man.
“Oh, Rex!” squealed the frightened Peewee. “You’ll have us turned turtle!”
“Don’t worry, infant,” responded Kingdon. “You couldn’t tip this old girl over. She’s as safe as a house.”
The plunging of the catboat made them all hang on for dear life. Pudge had stopped crying, and he showed a courage far superior to that of his cousin. Deathly pale, Ben Comas was accusing Horace of having dragged them all into this perilous adventure.
That Pence had elements of the right stuff in him was proved by what he said in return: “You keep that to yourself, Comas, or I’ll chuck you over the side. Thank Kingdon and his friends—as I do. We’d all been by-low in a few moments if it weren’t for them.”
“Huh!” grunted Ben. “What chance have we now?”
“If we are to drown we’ll go down with these fellows who have done their best to save us,” Pence put in curtly. “Don’t forget that. Let’s be decent—or, as decent as we can be—if we really have got to drown.”
Kingdon smiled at the black-browed fellow.
“You’re improving, Horrors,” he said. “But we’re not going to be swamped. We’ll pull through all right.”
“You’ll never get us safely around to the other side of the island with the wind this way,” Kirby shouted.
“Am not going to try,” retorted Kingdon, shrugging his shoulders. “But we’ll be all right—in time.”
“Yes we will!” sneered Ben Comas.
“Drop that, or I’ll punch you!” threatened Horace Pence, edging over toward the coward.
“Nice crowd, aren’t they?” said Red Phillips, happening to be near Kingdon. “They must get along fine together in that camp up there. Regular happy family, such as you see in the sideshows—what?”
Kingdon laughed and shook the damp hair out of his eyes, for the spray had wet them all pretty thoroughly. Their oilskins had saved the Walcott Hall boys; but the canoeists were saturated above their waists.
“I’d feel better if I co-could get dry,” chattered Pudge.
“So say we all of us, Fatty,” Cloudman told him. “But no use trying to light the oilstove below. Might set the cabin afire.”
“Don’t take any favors from ’em, Pudge,” ordered Ben in his nastiest way.
“Why don’t you get out and walk,” demanded Peewee hotly, “if you don’t want to accept any favors? You’re a fine chap—I don’t think.”
“Close up, infant,” commanded Kingdon, hearing this. “Try to be hospitable.”
“Hospitable!” muttered Hicks. “They’ve been so nice to us—stealing that permit and trying to get us put off the island——”
Horace Pence actually grinned at this. “You must have put it all over Enos Quibb,” he said in his drawling way. “How did you do it? Gratitude for saving him from a watery grave, no doubt?”
“If he showed gratitude, it’s more than somebody else,” snapped Midkiff, boiling over.
“You’re the fellow they call Grouch, aren’t you?” Horace asked, still smiling. “Name seems to fit.”
Kingdon interfered before the slow Midkiff could get back at his tormentor.
“Let them rave, Midkiff,” the skipper said. “They got the best of us the other day. We have to admit it. But the affair isn’t over yet.”
“We got the permit just the same,” laughed Horace openly.
“We’d ought to take it away from them,” put in Red Phillips, inclined to feel as Midkiff did.
“Remember they are our guests,” drawled Kingdon. “Hands off. We must put them ashore in safety. After that——”
If the truth were told at that moment, Rex would gladly have gone to a clinch with the sneering Pence. There was something about the crass ingratitude of the cheeky fellow that made it hard for Kingdon to restrain himself. Pence and his crew were unbeaten cubs.
But Rex gave his first, and very earnest attention to the sailing of the Spoondrift. She staggered along for an hour, making very heavy weather, and very short legs in her tacking, but finally, the eastern head of Storm Island began to break the wind.
“We’re pulling out of it,” Red shrieked in Kingdon’s ear, for the roar of the nearby surf was now almost deafening.
“By the way,” Rex asked of Kirby, “where’s your Indian friend?”
“He didn’t come out with us.”
“Oh! I fancied he might have been drowned. That would have been a sad calamity. I think he has it in for me.”
“Maybe he has,” Ben said, overhearing this conversation. “But he doesn’t dislike you any more than the rest of us do.”
“Aw, Ben!” said Pudge MacComber, “I’m sure I’m grateful to Mr. Kingdon and his friends. He may not believe it——”
“Oh, I do,” Rex interrupted, sweetly. “But don’t lay it on too thick. I begin to feel slight symptoms of mal de mere. A little of the kind of gratitude you fellows feel goes a long way with me.”