Chapter XIX More of Mr. Quibb
“Lower away!” shouted Rex, as he put the nose of the Spoondrift into the passage between the two charging files of breakers. In a moment, it seemed, the catboat drifted on the heaving but quiet bosom of the small cove.
Rex Kingdon dealt in melodrama; no doubt of that. He liked to do things to startle his comrades. But they were not always chance things done on the spur of the moment. More often he shrewdly molded circumstances to lead up to his most startling successes. He had had both his friends and “The Happy Family,” as Red had named their guests, speculating during these last few minutes. It had looked as though the old Spoondrift could not possibly be brought into this haven in safety.
“By George!” Horace Pence unwillingly said. “You’re some pilot, you are!”
“Me!” Rex returned lightly. “If I’d sailed with Columbus, we’d landed at New York, not at a little picayune island down in the West Indies.”
“Well, we’ll be getting our canoes over and going ashore, I guess,” Horace said in rather an embarrassed tone for him.
“So long,” returned Kingdon carelessly. “Come up and give me another look at that fast ball of yours to-morrow.”
“Perhaps,” said the black-eyed fellow, non-committally.
The four went ashore. The Walcott Hall boys saw Joe Bootleg meet them at the edge of the water with a lantern. He had evidently been aware of their peril, and from the headland had watched the Spoondrift making her anchorage.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” muttered Red Phillips.
“All but the fat chap,” Peewee observed. “He isn’t such a bad sort.”
“Most onery crowd of coyotes I ever saw,” Cloudman acclaimed with force.
“Forget it!” advised Rex, with more tartness than he usually displayed. “Not worth talking about.”
“Those chaps from the other camp have really gotten under his hide at last,” Peewee whispered to Red.
They spent the night in some comfort. The summer wind-storm blew itself out before midnight, and in the morning they were able to sail around to the little cove below their camp. Nothing had been disturbed there. They found the tent-fly laced down as they had left it.
Kingdon insisted on taking his two pitchers to the top of the island for practice in the afternoon. Neither Horace Pence nor any of his chums appeared. The Walcott Hall boys caught only distant glimpses of the other campers-out during the day.
The morning following Kingdon was too busy with Midkiff, tinkering with the engine of the Spoondrift, to bother about the rival campers. The other Walcott Hall boys went fishing off the rocks in the still water, and caught a mess of cunners that made a nice change from the usual cod, or flounders.
“Never knew there were so many kinds of fish,” Cloudman admitted. “Always thought, till I came East, that fish was just fish. All tasted the same. But even those squirmy eels taste better than Texas venison.”
“What’s Texas venison?” questioned Phillips.
“Jackrabbits,” Applejack replied, grinning.
“Fellers in N’York, they tell me, pay a dollar a pair for them. They kill ’em in big drives in Texas, and use flivvers instead of ponies to run ’em. Then they cold storage the jacks and push ’em up to the Eastern market. All they are worth in Texas is a bad word; and a dollar a pair in the effete East. Some dish, jackrabbit stew—if a feller has good teeth.”
Pudge MacComber came over to the Walcott Hall camp about dark, to borrow a hatchet. He seemed rather embarrassed about asking for it, his cousin’s insistence evidently having been all that brought him.
“We’ve mislaid ours somewhere,” he confessed. “We’ve got to cut some more firewood and a few tent pegs. The wind, the other day, pretty near blew our tents away.”
“You’re welcome to the hatchet,” Kingdon said. “Thought you had a fellow with you who knew all about camping—and was cookee, too?”
“That Injun,” Cloudman put in.
“He’s a good deal of a frost,” admitted Pudge. “He’s lazy. Won’t work any more than he can help. And his cooking!” The fat youth sighed, shaking his head mournfully. “I know I’m going to reduce all right if we stay on Storm Island. I do all the work and haven’t had a square meal once since we landed.”
“You’re looking bad. I noticed that when you came along,” Red Phillips said with commiseration. “You tottered. I bet you’ve lost half a pound.”
“Oh, you can laugh——”
“No laughing matter,” said the lean Cloudman, “to lose flesh. I lost some once, and it made me lopsided. Got thrown from my pony and scraped off some thigh meat against a rock, on one leg. Walked with a list to starboard, as you mariners would say, for a couple of weeks.”
“I wouldn’t care to lose flesh that way,” Pudge said. “When I’m not fat I don’t feel so well. I begin to get weak and all run down——”
“So that you don’t cast a shadow, I s’pose?” suggested Peewee.
“Oh, I guess I always cast more of a shadow than you do, little feller,” Pudge told him, to the amusement of the others.
“But if you get thin, I suppose you are afraid of losing your right proportions,” Kingdon chimed in gravely. “You know, a fellow hates to lose his shape.”
“According to what kind of a shape he’s got,” muttered Peewee.
“Why, the rules for perfect pulchritude are easily remembered,” the curly-haired youth said with serious mien. “You know, ‘Twice around the thumb, once around the wrist; twice around the wrist, once around the neck; twice around the neck, once around the waist’——”
“And in this fellow’s case twice around the waist, once around the ‘big top’ at a circus, I s’pose?” put in Red. “Just about.”
“Oh,” said Pudge, mildly, “you fellows can poke fun if you like. I don’t mind. I’m used to it anyway. I’d rather be fat than uncomfortable. Besides, after what you fellers did for us the other day——”
“Now don’t get maudlin,” begged Kingdon quickly. “The least said the soonest mended. We had to save you from a watery grave! We’re not proud of it.”
This rather closed Pudge up, and he mournfully went away. Midkiff said with scorn:
“They must be having a nice time over at that camp! They don’t open their tent-flies before nine o’clock. Sleep away the best of the day. Then they lay around and squabble most of the time, I s’pose.”
“Don’t let their behavior worry you, Grouch,” Red advised. “You haven’t got to play father confessor to that bunch.”
“I’d like to give ’em penance, all right,” growled Midkiff. “What they need is a rattling good shaking up. Being half an ace from drowning the other afternoon wasn’t enough.”
It looked, the next forenoon, as though the “shaking up” was about to come to the first party of campers on Storm Island. Kingdon and his mates had got the engine of the catboat into running order, and were just about to try her out, when the sound of another motor approaching brought them all up standing. Motor crafts, thus far, had not been very plentiful in the sound.
“See who’s coming to be in our midst again,” invited Peewee. “It’s the jolly constable.”
“Now we’re in for it!” predicted Midkiff, looking solemnly at Rex.
The latter seemed the least disturbed of any of them. Indeed, he smiled quietly and went about preparing for the trial of the catboat.
“Is he coming here?” queried Cloudman after a minute.
“Not first, I guess,” said Red, who was likewise pretty solemn. “But he’ll be here all right. He’s going over to take another squint at that permit, I s’pose. If you had only let us get that paper away from those fellows, Rex——”
“Never mind the ifs and ands, Red,” said Rex. “Let’s go over there and see what happens.”
“He’s got something in reserve,” declared Peewee.
“I believe he has,” muttered Red.
Kingdon went about his business, without further word. In a minute or two their own engine was going, and soon the Spoondrift moved easily out of the cove. By that time Enos Quibb’s motorboat was almost at the landing where the two canoes lay.
The Walcott Hall boys could see that the fellows at the other camp had been rounded up by the excitable Pudge. They were all at the landing when Enos Quibb shut off his engine and stepped forward to make fast a line. Joe Bootleg remained in the background; but even he, it seemed, was more than usually interested.
The boys aboard the catboat could not hear what first was said by the constable, but they heard Horace Pence laugh his sneering, musical laugh, and reply:
“You’re going to have some job proving that, aren’t you, Mr. Quibb? We have the permit——”
“Then, by gum,” the excited constable shouted, “you stole it! That’s what you did. You ain’t got no right to it.”
“You’d better try to prove that, Enos,” Horace said, still laughing.
“I’m a-goin’ to,” cried Quibb. “I’m a-goin’ to take you fellers—all of ye—over to Squire Lowder’s, an’ let him decide this business. No school of tomcods like yeou, is goin’ to fool Enos Quibb right along. No, sir!”