Chapter XXV The Eight-Oared Shell
The sun broke gloriously through the clouds, and it became a lovely morning. The Walcott Hall boys began finally to feel more cheerful. They spread out their belongings to dry in the sun, and Peewee actually took spade and pick and went to work on the shallow trench and drains that should surround every tent, no matter how good the natural drainage is.
While he was sweating and grunting over his work, he looked off on the water, and promptly called:
“See the ca-noe! Do you see the ca-noe? What is the ca-noe doing?”
“That Indian and Kirby are just getting back from Blackport,” said Phillips, after glancing in the same direction.
“They must have started mighty early,” Midkiff said. “They’ve had to beat up the sound against a stiff breeze.”
Kingdon said nothing, but he watched the two in the canoe make a landing. The light craft was heavily laden. He was quite sure it had made no quick passage from Blackport Channel; and at sunrise the weather had not cleared.
With an idea in his head that he did not mention to the others, Kingdon wandered away by himself for a tramp along shore, strolling westerly. His chums had expressed their wonderment regarding the rolling of the bowlder, all through breakfast and afterward; but they suspected nothing. They were quite satisfied that it had been set in motion by the heavy rain.
Storm Island was several miles long, and it was no inconsiderable walk to the western point of it. As he came within half a mile or so of the high clay bank under which he believed he had seen the small boat take shelter the previous afternoon, he looked sharply as he went along for signs of a landing on the beach.
He found the place for which he was searching. The canoe had been lifted out and carried into a narrow, sandy and well-drained gulley. It had been overturned, and its cargo sheltered beneath it. The marks of two human beings who had crouched under the overturned boat were likewise plainly visible.
Presently he went back to his friends, and found that the boys from the other camp, with the exception of the Indian, had come to see what the bowlder and debris on the plateau meant. They had spied the heap soon after the canoe arrived. Horace, of course, was reserved in his observations, as usual. Ben Comas was silent. Pudge was openly congratulatory that nobody was hurt. Kirby did the most talking.
“Wonder our fellows here didn’t hear it,” he remarked.
“It ought to have been heard in Blackport,” Kingdon said grimly.
“You chaps must have slept like the dead, over there at the camp,” said Kirby. “I’m sure I should have heard it if I’d been there.”
“Perhaps I did hear it,” drawled Pence, “but thought it was only Pudge snoring.”
Kingdon continued cheerful and talkative while the visitors remained. He did not appear to, but he made friendly advances to Kirby.
“You had a bad night, didn’t you?” he questioned. “I guess I saw you and Bootleg making the Clay Head just before the storm burst.”
“Wha-at?” cried Kirby. “We didn’t either! We stayed at Blackport all night.”
“Where’d you stay?” Kingdon asked curiously, with raised eyebrows.
“On—on the wharf. A feller let us sleep on some bags in a fish-shed. If you saw anybody land here last evening, it wasn’t us.”
He was so voluble and eager to deny it that he attracted Horace’s attention. “What’s the matter with you, Harry?” the black-eyed fellow drawled. “Having a fit? I heard you say you slept in the fish-house, which is believable; for both you and Joe Bootleg seem to carry a rather fishy odor about you this morning. It wouldn’t have been a crime if you had reached the Clay Head last night, and were afraid to sail the rest of the way up here.” He laughed his unflattering laugh.
Kingdon wondered. He had left the rusted hatchet he had found in the woods stuck in a rotting log in plain view. Pudge came across it.
“My goodness!” said the fat boy, growing red in the face. “I feared that had been lost. Do you know, Hicks, I don’t remember bringing that hatchet back after I borrowed it. We found ours the next day.”
“Don’t ask me,” Peewee said carelessly. “I don’t know a thing about it.”
“I found it,” Kingdon put in quietly, watching Pudge now.
“Did you?” asked the plump lad. “Where?”
“Where it was lost,” returned the other laughing. “Don’t need to worry about it. But you fellows don’t want to cut green wood on the island. If one of the Manatee wardens should come over here and find out that you had——”
“Why, I never!” declared Pudge.
Again Horace intervened. “What’s all the row?” he queried, strolling up to the group at the log.
“I found a good sized stick cut, up there in the woods,” Kingdon told him. “This hatchet that Pudge borrowed of us lay beside the raw stump. That’ll never do, you know—cutting well grown saplings is a crime in the eyes of the lumber company.”
“You never said a word about it before, King,” Hicks observed. “Thought we all understood there was to be no green wood cut.”
“We do,” Horace said, his eyes narrowing.
“I never did it!” Pudge exclaimed again.
“I’ll ask Joe. He’s the only one that’s likely to have used the hatchet,” Horace said grimly. “You know how these Indians look at things, Kingdon. To such fellows a rule is only made to break.”
“I wonder,” thought Kingdon, “if that isn’t pretty nearly the attitude of everybody else?”
To tell the truth, he was puzzled. Joe Bootleg, Kirby, Pudge, even Horace Pence himself, was under suspicion in Rex’s mind. As for Ben Comas, sour as the chap appeared, somehow Kingdon did not consider him in any way connected with the affairs of the sapling-lever or the bowlder that had rolled down the hill.
It was much too wet that day to get in any baseball practice, but the following afternoon the two parties of campers met on the field. Pence and his followers seemed rather more friendly than before. The two parties of boys mingled and spent an hour in a lively scrub game. Kingdon learned on this occasion that Horace was something of a batter.
“Over the fence and out, boy,” the backstop said, grinning at Pence cheerfully. “Some wallop that. We’ve a real field at the Hall, and that fly would have gone pretty near to the lake. Old Jerry Lane never did better when he got a real clout at the sphere, eh, Red?”
“Lane couldn’t do as well,” Phillips agreed, with honesty, though still rather niggardly of praise regarding any of Horace Pence’s achievements.
“Lane was our ‘baby grand,’” laughed Kingdon. “He was some large person. Only trouble with Jerry was, his wits were in his feet and his feet were awfully slow. He ran bases like cold molasses. I bet Pudge could beat him. Made a fair football center, though.”
“You fellows at Walcott Hall go in for almost every kind of sport there is, I guess,” observed Horace, almost as though he were interested.
“From tiddledywinks to button-button,” Kingdon chuckled. “You should see our gym. There’s few prep. schools can beat it, and some of the colleges have to lift their bonnets to Walcott Hall. Old Til loves clean sport himself, and some of the teachers aren’t bad at tennis, golf, tatting, embroidery—even football. We’ve got a prof. of math, who is a regular shark at baseball. Used to coach for some southern college, I believe. Cloud can tell you. Cloud’s known Yadkin since he was in pinafores. Cloud, I mean.”
“Look here,” drawled Horace Pence, his black eyes twinkling, “don’t you ever study at that school of yours?”
“Study!” exploded Phillips. “Man, they drive you like a dynamo at that institute of erudition.”
“But the dynamo’s hooked up to plenty of fun, too,” Kingdon hastened to say, favoring the clumsy Red with a frown. “Of course, we have to keep up in the lessons, without too many conditions.”
“Textbooks make me sick,” yawned Horace. “I could almost like the sport end of it at Belding; but having to get lessons, and face the sour visage of an unappreciative faculty—not for me!”
“Why waste your time with that fellow, King?” complained Red, as they walked down to the camp together. “He’s neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. Thinks he’s too old for school, whereas he doesn’t know any more than little Peewee.”
Suddenly they both saw something in the cove below that brought a cry of surprise to their lips. Along beside the Spoondrift another craft was just drifting in, its snowy sail rumpled on the deck.
“Pirates!” shouted Red to the boys behind them.
“That’s the Nothing To It,” Kingdon added, striking into a trot.
The five Walcott Hall youths came scampering down to the shore just as Yansey and his friends carried a line aboard the Spoondrift. The Blackport boys hailed the campers vociferously.
“Where’s the rest of your band, Kingdon?” Yansey asked, after the greetings were over. “I see you’ve got two camps. We didn’t know which one to anchor off of, but this was nearest.”
“The other fellows—Pence and his crowd—like that location best,” Rex returned easily. “We eat in two squads, anyway. By and by we’ll all go over there. I want you to know Horace.”
“Another of your Walcott Hall crowd?”
“Er—not yet,” Kingdon admitted with a quiet smile.
The skipper of the Nothing To It agreed. “We haven’t got to hurry. There’s a moon to-night, and we’ll sail home by light of her. We’re allowed to stay out late since we’ve put on long pants.”
Midkiff cooked a chowder. Cloudman fried fish and made biscuit. The Walcott Hall boys made great inroads on their choicest canned goods store, to balance the spread the Blackport Boat Club boys had previously given them.
Kingdon found time to sound Yansey regarding the discarded eight-oared shell at the boat-builder’s.
“No, he hasn’t sold it for us yet. Not much chance of that till next spring when the rowing season opens.”
“Give you ten dollars for the use of it this summer,” Kingdon offered.
“What for?”
“Well, we don’t want to eat it.”
“You haven’t the men to fill it.”
“Yes, I have. Fancy I can lick ’em into shape so as to give you Blackporters a practice race. I’ve offered ten dollars,——”
“Ten nothing!” cried the skipper of the Nothing To It. “If you really think you can get up a crew——”
“Wait till you see us cutting circles round you,” laughed Kingdon.
“I’ll never live long enough to see that,” said Yansey. “You can have the old skiff.”
“For ten dollars?”
“For ten kicks! We won’t take your money. You look like a square chap to me, Kingdon. You’re welcome to the use of our old boat. Perhaps you might beat some of the other crews in August.”
“We’re going to break our backs to beat you Blackport fellows, I warn you,” said Rex seriously.
“I admire your nerve!” chuckled Yansey. “But don’t expect me to furnish liniment for your broken backs.”