Chapter VII On the Verge of Something
Through the smother of fine rain the mast and rigging of the Spoondrift loomed above the two swimmers. Midkiff observed, as he caught the anchor cable:
“Must be the boys are asleep. Anybody could steal ’em.”
“What for?” chuckled Rex. “Nobody’d want to kidnap this bunch. Tie that painter securely, old man. We don’t want to lose the canoes.”
“Going to keep watch?” asked Midkiff as they swung over the catboat’s rail.
“For what?”
“Those fellows over there may have more boats.”
“Not likely. They’d have ’em all moored at one point—below their camp. No. We’ve appropriated all their means of water locomotion.”
“Like to know what good it’s going to do?” was Midkiff’s characteristic grumble.
“Don’t let it worry you, Jawn. Come on down and dry off—and see if the others have left us room to stretch out for a sleep. ‘Sleep, baby, sleep! Close your sweet eyes!’”
“Huh!” grunted Midkiff again; but he went to bed without further argument.
Rolling mists masked island and sound at daybreak; the crew of the catboat was astir, however, without anybody having rung the rising bell. Four of the Walcott Hall crowd hopped into their bathing suits and prepared for the early plunge.
“This beats waiting in turn at the showers. What say?” cried Red Phillips, at the rail. “Hey! where’s Peewee?”
“Why, the little fox!” said Cloudman, sticking his head down the hatchway. “He’s rolled up tight in his blanket.”
“Oh! Oh!” gasped the auburn-haired youth. “Say not so! Trying to grab another nap, is he?”
“It shouldn’t be. Bad for children to sleep too long,” the Westerner said.
“Bad? It’s awful! Come on! We’ve got to save him from the effects of such a course.”
Rex and Midkiff were struggling to get into their own wet suits, so were behind the others. But little Hicks was not allowed to be last into the rather chilly sound. Red and Applejack brought him on deck in his shirt, struggling and sputtering.
“Lemme go! Rex! King! Middy, old boy! Give a hand!”
“Can’t,” chuckled Kingdon. “Both of ’em’s busy.”
“You go fish,” growled Midkiff. “I’d like to see you get started early in the morning for once. You’re the laziest young one I ever saw.”
“One!” sing-songed Red, he and the Colorado youth swinging the squalling Peewee. “Two! Three—and over!”
They chucked him, feet foremost, over the side. Peewee sank like a plummet, his nightshirt floating up around his neck.
“That shirt will strangle him,” suggested Rex, with some seriousness. “He can’t swim in a thing like that.”
“Then why doesn’t he wear pajamas, like a sane male human being?” growled Red Phillips.
“Cause his mother won’t make ’em for him. And he’s just come from home with a new outfit. Say, you murderers, go after him!”
Thus adjured, both Red and Cloudman went overboard, each in his own way. Red made a long, graceful dive; the Colorado youth went in like a frog.
It was a fact that some seconds passed and Peewee Hicks did not come up. Midkiff stared over the rail, with his shirt half on, growling:
“What’s the matter with those microbes? Can’t they have a little fun without drowning the child? Red Phillips is as gentle as a wild dog, and Cloudman’s no better——”
Phillips’ hectic thatch shot to the surface. He rose breast high, dashed the water from his eyes, and squawked:
“Where is he?”
“Hasn’t come up!” roared Midkiff. “He’s tangled up in that nightshirt somewhere down there.”
Red disappeared, and John wrenched his way into the clinging woolen upper half of his bathing suit. Cloudman’s red face appeared. He blew like a whale.
“Didn’t the kid come up, fellers?” he gasped, having cleared his mouth of water.
“No. He’s down there. Get after him!” commanded Midkiff, preparing to throw himself over the boat’s side.
A mellow chuckle from behind him made the big fellow pause. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering what Rex Kingdon found to laugh about in this serious moment. There were two hands clinging to the port rail, and the grinning face of Peewee was in sight above it, as he hung on. He had dived under the catboat’s keel, and was perfectly safe while Red and Cloudman combed the depths on the other side.
“Let ’em look,” he begged. “Big loafers! Took two of ’em to throw me in, at that.”
This amused Kingdon much more than it did his roommate. Midkiff glowered at the shrewd face of the youngster.
Up came Red again, evidently greatly excited. He wanted to know, choking and sputtering:
“Hasn’t he come up at all? What’s the matter with him? Is he made of lead? That boy ought to be an anchor; he’d never drag on any kind of a bottom——”
Cloudman shot to the surface. He wasn’t as good a swimmer as Red, and he was about all in.
“I—I can’t find him!” he chattered. “Got to get aboard and get my wind. Hey! why ain’t you fellows doing something?”
“We are,” said Rex, broadly smiling. “We’re crying over your distress. Come on in and eat an apple, Cloudman.” With one hand he reached for Hicks and hauled him over the rail by his wet shirt.
Hicks declared himself satisfied with his temporary bath. In fact, a single plunge seemed about all any of the party cared for, the water being several degrees cooler than the inland streams and lakes with which the boys were familiar, as well as the tempered needle-showers of the Walcott Gym.
Before they were dressed the sun broke through the mist, and then they saw something that was worth looking at—Storm Island glorified by the morning sun. It blazed like a green jewel, surrounded by the rolling sea fog—the upper reaches of the isle at first revealed, and then, gradually, all the wooded northern shore down to the lapping little waves that kissed it.
“Some ugly spot, old man!” Red said, addressing Kingdon. “You certainly pick lemons!”
“Purty as a little red wagon with yellow wheels,” announced Cloudman.
“I wish I was an artist,” murmured Peewee.
Midkiff had nothing to say until the mists were dissipated sufficiently to reveal the spot where he and Rex had had their nocturnal adventure. Then he said, grumpily enough:
“They’re there yet, Rex.”
The two tents were plainly visible from the Spoondrift.
“Well, you wise owl!” was the polite response. “How’d you think they’d leave? Swim?”
At that moment Peewee spied the two canoes moored to the Spoondrift’s stern. The excitement attending the brief morning bath had quite dimmed the eyes of those of the crowd who had not been ashore.
“Where’d they come from?” Hicks wanted to know. “You fellows bring ’em out last night? What did you find on that island, anyway?”
Cloudman had spied the tents as well. He drawled: “Guess there’s somebody ahead of us. Is that what took you and Midkiff ashore?”
“Who are those fellows, Rex?” demanded Red Phillips. “And how did you clutch on to their canoes? Don’t you know
‘It is a sin
To steal a pin;
It is a greater
To steal a “tater”’?”
“Maybe those fellows stole the canoes first,” muttered Midkiff.
“Hustle up the breakfast, Cloudman,” Rex commanded. “And I’ll tell you all our tale of woe. It’s some tale, too. How’s your stone-bruise, Jawn?”
“About the same as your scraped shin, I reckon; and your foot. Why, that’s badly bruised, Rex,” he added, with sudden commiseration, as he saw how tenderly the skipper of the Spoondrift was bathing his injured foot with arnica.
“Goodness gracious! Yes!” barked Rex. “Hospital job, very likely. That Indian has a foot like an elephant’s.”
“Vicious scoundrel,” acclaimed his friend.
“He’s a hard hitter—with his feet. Perhaps the rest of them are when they’re not hived up in a tent.”
“We’d better sail over to that Blackport place and get a constable,” the older boy suggested. “Those chaps are trespassers, all right.”
“Leave it to yours truly,” Rex said, putting on his canvas shoe with care.
“What’s your scheme?”
“Haven’t any. I’ll roll my sleeves up to prove my innocence,” returned Rex. “But I am awfully curious.”
“I believe, on my soul,” said Midkiff with vigor, “that you’d rather get into trouble than not.”
“No, I like to get out of it,” confessed Rex. “Of course, a fellow can’t slip out of a row unless he first gets into it. See?”
“Sounds foolish,” declared the older fellow. “That’s because you don’t know all the facts in these premises, as old Yad would say. Wait till we’re hitting the eats, then I’ll talk. Don’t that smell good?”
For some minutes the sputtering of pork, frying out in the pan, had come from below. Now the fragrance of frying fish was wafted to the nostrils of those in the cockpit. Cloudman and Peewee were busy with the breakfast. Red came up, fully dressed, and began to spy out the encampment and its surroundings through a pair of opera glasses.
“What do you see, Father William?” queried Rex.
“Not much,” grunted Phillips.
“They must be sleeping late after our call last night,” muttered Midkiff.
“Sleep? They must be dead,” said the red-haired youth. “What do you know about fellows camping out, sleeping till this time of day?”
“They are rich. Don’t have to work,” said Cloudman, coming up to breathe.
“Say, King,” little Hicks begged to know, “did you and Mid call on those chaps last night? I suppose they gave you the canoes?”
“Sure,” Red grumbled. “Bet there was a pretty mess—and the rest of us out of it.”
“You could have my lame foot, for all I care,” Rex said sweetly. “Keep your hair on, Reddy. Maybe it isn’t as bad as you think. At any rate, I fancy you will be in plenty of time for the next mess—if it comes off.”
Cloudman darted down to dish out the first relay of fried soup and potatoes. Hardtack took the place of bread, and the coffee was good. The cowboy had not lived most of his life on the plains for nothing.
“You’re a pretty fine cook, Applejack,” admitted Rex, beginning on his plateful with gusto.
“Don’t jolly me,” said the Westerner. “I’ve pretty near got fed up with that. When we get ashore, it’s somebody’s turn beside mine—don’t you forget it.”
“Are we going to get ashore—on this island, I mean?” put in Midkiff.
“Come on,” Red urged. “Give us the yarn, Rex. Who are those fellows over there?”
“Haven’t the first idea—only I got their names down pat. But I never heard of them before, that I know. However, that makes no difference. They know us.”
“They do?” exploded Midkiff.
“One-sided introduction, eh?” giggled Peewee.
“At least,” explained Kingdon more fully, “they are expecting us on the island. Our coming to camp here is known to them, and they know that they are in for trouble. Of course, the signs along shore would tell them that much, even were they greenhorns from afar.”
“What do you know about that?” said Red, scowling.
“We’d better sail over to Blackport and bring the constable,” urged the cautious Midkiff.
“Let’s go put ’em off, bag and baggage,” cried Phillips.
“They can’t get off if we don’t give ’em back their canoes,” cried Peewee. “Hi, King! What do you mean to do?”
Just then, while all eyes were fastened upon the encampment on the shore of Storm Island, the first of the lazy campers appeared from the main tent. He was a tall, black-haired fellow; they could see that easily enough without the use of Red’s glasses.
He came down toward the place where the canoes had been moored, wearing a scarlet bathing suit and carrying a towel over his arm. Suddenly he appreciated the fact that the canoes were gone. A glance showed him the catboat with the missing craft tied to her stern.
He turned to shout something to his friends still in the tent. Midkiff muttered:
“Now there’ll be a stir!”