The Adventure Club Afloat

by Ralph Henry Barbour

  CHAPTER XIX

  SHIPWRECKED

  Afterwards the boys looked back on the ensuing five minutes as a dreamrather than a reality. The cruiser grounded with an impetus that setpans rattling in galley, lifted again and once more thumped her sterndown, as she did so swinging her stern slowly around in a last franticeffort to pull clear. Then the boat careened, a sea washed clean acrossthe deck and, with her keel forward of the engine firmly imbedded in thesand, she lay still save for the tremors that shook her when the angrysurf rushed in across her beam.

  There was confusion enough, but on the whole the six alarmed boysbehaved sensibly. Steve, wet to his waist, turned off the engine andbanged shut the chart-box even as he shouted his orders. "Lifepreservers, fellows! Han, get the big cable from the locker. Keep yourheads now!"

  Clinging like a leech to the canted roof of the forward cabin, Stevehimself worked along with the rope and, half-drowned in rain and surf,made it fast to the cleat. The others, struggling into life-belts,clung to the stanchions or whatever they could find. Steve crawled backwith the coil, drenched and breathless.

  "We've got to get off, fellows," he said. "It's only a dozen yards tothe beach and we can make it all right. Close every hatch. Ossie, fetcha can of biscuits. See that the lid's tight." Wave after wave struck onthe starboard beam and fell hissing across the boat. The side curtainswere ripped from the stanchions and fluttered wildly about them.

  "Going to swim for it?" asked Joe above the roar of waves and tempest.

  "Yes! We've got to. The boat would swamp in an instant. I'll start aheadwith the line. You fellows wait and then follow it in."

  "Better let me go along," said Joe, his hands formed into aspeaking-trumpet.

  "No need. I'll make it."

  "Look out for back-tow!"

  The other nodded. He had pulled off his coat and unlaced his shoes andnow he dropped these things through the forward hatch and wrapped thebig rope around his waist. "Better not try to swim with your coats,fellows," he instructed. "Nor shoes. Don't take any chances. Last manoff see that this hatch is shut tight." He crawled around thestanchions on the starboard side and crept along to the bow, the others,huddled together on the sloping bridge, watching anxiously. Then heslipped from sight. Once they saw his head, or thought they saw it, adarker blot in the grey-green welter. Joe was already creeping towardthe bow, and, having reached it, he crouched there, blinded by rain andspray, and waited for the rope to tauten. It seemed a long while beforehe waved an arm to the watchers behind and swung himself off. They sawhis hands travel along the rope a moment and then he was smothered up inthe spume.

  One by one the others followed without misadventure save when Hanslipped on the deck and would have rolled across and plunged over thefurther side had he not fortunately caught the iron support of thesearchlight in front of the funnel. Phil was the last to go. With afinal look about the deck as he clung to an awning pipe, he followedOssie. The latter was swinging himself hand-over-hand by the rope withthe waves surging to his shoulders. Then Phil saw him strike out and thewaters hid him. The beach was visible at moments from the bow, and oncePhil, as he prepared to swing himself off, thought he saw figuresthere. Then he, too, was battling. The waves swept him under the ropeand would have wrenched him from it had he not clung on desperately.Holding to it with his right hand, he sought to find it with his leftand so draw himself on, but the surf swirled him about dizzily and hegave up the attempt. Instead, almost drowned in the smother, he used hisleft arm and his legs for swimming, edging his right hand along thecable as best he could, and presently, although none too soon, felt thechurning gravel beneath his stockinged feet. But when he tried to stand,the receding water swept his legs from under him so unexpectedly andforcibly that he lost his grasp of the rope. He went down and felt thewater tugging him back, swam mightily and was lifted to the top of anin-rushing breaker, filled his lungs with air and felt blindly for therope. Then hands seized him and Joe and Han, clinging to the cable,dragged him ashore.

  Phil found himself under the frowning battlement of the huge cliff on aledge of sand and shingle scarcely twenty feet wide. But there was lesssweep for the rain here and the _Adventurer_ was plainly visible throughthe strange semi-darkness. Steve had made the shore end of the cablefast to a boulder that stood, half out of the shingle, at the base ofthe cliff. For a long minute the six boys huddled there in the storm anddisconsolately gazed at the boat. It was Han who voiced the thought ofmost of them.

  "She won't stay together long, I guess," he said sorrowfully. "Thosewaves will batter her to pieces."

  "She'll stand a lot of battering," answered Steve hopefully. "It'shitting her on the beam and she hasn't swung much since I left her. Thetide's still coming in and--" He stopped. Then: "I ought to havedropped the stern anchor over," he went on. "What an idiot! If she hadthat to hold her from swinging broadside--"

  "Would it hold her?" asked Joe dubiously.

  "It would help." Steve tightened his belt. "I'm going back," he said.

  They remonstrated, but to no purpose. Then Joe and Han wanted to goalong, and were denied. "It's no trick," said Steve resolutely. "I cando it easily. You fellows stand by when I come ashore again. That's theonly tough part of it. Someone might see if there's a way up from thisbeach. If the tide comes much higher it's going to be a bit damp here."

  It was Perry who undertook that task, while the others followed Steve tothe breakers' edge and watched him return to the _Adventurer_. He madeno attempt to swim, but pulled himself along by the line,hand-over-hand, his head for the most of the time under the water. Butpresently he emerged and they saw him clamber to the deck, crawl alongit and disappear. He seemed a long time there, but he came into sightagain eventually and began the return trip. Perry was back by then andthey formed a line by clasping hands and Joe stood well above his waist,battered by the surf, and Steve was helped along from one to another andpresently they were all back on the beach once more.

  "I got it over," gasped Steve, "but it was hard work. I think it willhold. If the storm will only go down pretty soon she may get through. Ithink some of her planks are sprung, though. There's a foot of water inthe after cabin. I got some matches and this cup." He pulled a tin cupfrom a trousers pocket. "Can we get up the cliff a way?"

  "Yes," answered Perry. "There's a sort of a shelf about a hundred feetbeyond there. I'll show you the way."

  "Those waves will batter her to pieces"]

  They followed. Real darkness was coming fast now and Perry founddifficulty in retracing his steps. But in a few minutes, by dint ofscrambling and pulling themselves upward, they reached the shelf. Itwas barely large enough to hold them all and was scarcely ten feet abovethe level of the beach below. Nor was it at all level, for it had beenformed by the accumulation of falling debris from the cliff and slopedoutward at a steep angle. Some dwarf firs and low bushes had gainedrootage, however, and it was possible for them to huddle there withoutfear of rolling to the rocks beneath. Steve tried to find some deadbranches to build a fire, and did succeed in getting a few, but hisfirst attempt to set them alight proved the futility of the undertaking.There was nothing for it save to lie as close together as they could,for warmth, and await the morning.

  That was a miserable night. They all slept at times, and by changingplaces they all, for a while at least, found some degree of warmth. Butthey had been drenched through to start with and when, at last, thestormy world began to lighten their garments were still sodden and theyshivered whenever they stirred. Ossie was ill toward morning, but therewas nothing they could do for him except huddle closely about him. Hecomplained of intense pains in his chest and Steve had horrible visionsof pneumonia until Ossie, asked to locate the trouble more definitely,laid a trembling hand on a portion of his anatomy and muttered "Here"through chattering teeth.

  "That's not your chest, you idiot," said Steve, vastly relieved. "That'syour stomach!"

  "Is it?" returned the sufferer miserably. "Well, it hurts just thesame!"

&n
bsp; But after an hour he felt considerably better and went off to sleep. Bythat time it was early morning and they could see about them. The rainhad almost ceased, but the wind still blew hard and the surf was stillpounding. Once during the darkness the waves had, from the sound,entirely covered the little beach. Now, however, they had receded and,as the light grew, they saw that the _Adventurer_ lay, with regard tothe tide, about as they had last glimpsed her. But she had swung herstern further around, in spite of the anchor Steve had dropped, and thewaves were breaking almost squarely across her. She was a patheticsight. Her side curtains were waving in ribands, the forward flag-poleheld nothing but one tiny rag of blue bunting and the tender, torn fromthe chocks, was jammed between the stanchions ahead.

  "But she's still whole," said Steve from between blue lips. "And thestorm's going down. If she isn't sprung too much, and we could only gether off of there--"

  "Getting her off," said Joe with a pessimism born of hunger and cold andthe gloom of the early morning, "will be about as easy as moving a housewith a toothpick. I dare say the sand's bedded around her two feethigh."

  "I'm afraid so," Steve agreed. "Well, let's have something to eat. Willyou have steak or chicken, Joe?"

  "Broiled ham and a baked potato, please, and a couple of eggs. Not morethan two minutes for the eggs. And you might bring me a couple of hotbiscuits--"

  "Oh, shut up," begged Steve miserably.

  "Well, you started it! Who's awake here?"

  "I am," muttered Perry. "Seems to me I haven't been anything but awakefor ten years."

  "Well, want to order your breakfast now, or will you wait?" asked Joecheerfully.

  "Guess I'll wait," answered Perry grimly. "Where are those crackers?"

  They got Ossie awake with difficulty and Steve doled out six crackers toeach. The tin cup came in handy, for there was a pool of rain water in aledge below them.

  "What I can't see," grumbled Ossie, "is why we didn't stay on board theboat. It would have been a lot drier than this place."

  "You may think so now," replied Steve, "but wait till you get aboardagain. We might have stayed on her, as it's turned out, but the boatdidn't look very homelike to me yesterday!"

  "How the dickens were we to know that it would hold together, or evenstay on its keel?" asked Joe disgustedly. "Don't talk like a sickgoldfish, Ossie!"

  As soon as they had consumed breakfast they scrambled down to the beachwith many groans and stretched their cramped and aching limbs. The rain,although now little more than a very heavy mist, limited their vision toa hundred yards or so in any direction. Steve hazarded the opinion thatthey were not more than two miles from the mainland, although he made noattempt to give a name to the island they were on. The fate of the_Follow Me_ worried them all, but Phil, always the most sanguine intimes of stress, pointed out that as the other craft had not followedthem onto the island she was probably safe.

  "She may be piled up further along somewhere," suggested Joe. "I saywe'd better have a look. It would help a bit to know what sort of aplace we've struck, anyway. For all we know there may be a house justaround the corner!"

  So they set out in two parties, Steve, Ossie and Phil going one way andthe rest the other. It was agreed that they were to be back in an hourat the most. Twenty minutes later, each exploration party having stuckto the beach, they came together again, much to their mutual surprise.

  "The pesky thing isn't more than a few acres big!" exclaimed Joedisgustedly.

  "And it's entirely surrounded by water," added Perry brightly.

  "Most islands are," said Ossie. "We can get up on top easily enoughhere, fellows. Let's see what it looks like."

  Their island was little more than a rock stuck out of the water. Justhow big it was was difficult to determine since the haze of driving mistallowed but little view. From the beach, at a point presumably directlyopposite the place where they had come ashore they climbed by the aid ofrocky footholds and bushes to a broken but generally level summit cladwith a tangled growth of blueberry and briars and sprinkled mostliberally with boulders. The ground arose gradually as they advanced,guided by Steve's pocket compass, and before very long they reached thewind-swept edge of the cliff against which they had spent the night.From the summit they could see dimly at brief intervals the form of the_Adventurer_ far below.

  "Well, I don't see that we've accomplished much," said Han. "We're here,but where are we? And how the dickens are we going to get back again? Ifanyone thinks that I'm going to risk my neck sliding down here he'smistaken."

  "We don't ask you to, Ossie dear," said Han. "Your little neck is muchtoo precious. One thing is certain, anyway, I guess: there's no hotel onthe place!"

  "Hotel!" said Joe. "Gee, I'd be satisfied with a--um--cow-shed!"

  Nevertheless, they made the return journey in better spirits, for theyhad walked the aches from their limbs and warmth into their bodies. Onthe way Steve made them gather fagots of dead branches and they found anumber of larger pieces of wood on the beach. By the time they were oncemore "at home," as Perry put it, they had all the material for a firesave paper or some other form of kindling. Steve experimented with twigsfrom the fir trees on the ledge, but they were too wet to burn. No onehad any paper, or if they had it was too damp.

  "What would Robinson Crusoe have done?" asked Steve, frowningthoughtfully.

  Joe, who had seated himself tiredly on the wet sand and was digging hisstockinged heels into it, sneered at Mr. Crusoe. "He'd have made a tripon his raft," he said, "and fetched ashore a bundle of kindling. If ithadn't been for that wreck to draw on Robinson Crusoe would have starvedto death in twenty-four hours!"

  "Of course!" exclaimed Steve. "That's the idea!"

  "What, starve?" asked Joe distastefully.

  "No, you idiot, go out to the _Adventurer_ and get some gasoline!"

  "Sure!" agreed Ossie. "Only--just when we were getting dry at last--"

  "What's the matter with stripping," asked Steve cheerfully, suitingaction to word. "Is there a can or anything I can put it in, Ossie?"

  "There's a jug in the starboard locker. There's about a pint of vinegarin it, but I guess we can sacrifice that."

  "Drink it, Steve, and save it," suggested Perry.

  The tide had retreated further by now and the bow of the cruiser wasalmost beyond the breakers and Steve's journey was not difficult. Whenhe got back, with the vinegar jug filled with gasoline hung around hisneck, he reported the _Adventurer_ waist-deep in water at the stern."You fellows start the fire," he said, "and I'll go back and bring somegrub ashore. There's no reason for starving with food handy."

  Joe volunteered to accompany him, and, after disrobing and putting hisdamp clothes under a stone to keep them from blowing away, he and Steveplunged back into the water. Meanwhile success met the efforts of thefiremen and soon a good-sized blaze was roaring in spite of wind andmist. They had located it as near the foot of the cliff as possible and,although the smoke made itself disagreeable by billowing out in theirfaces, it was thereby somewhat sheltered from the elements. Steve andJoe made three trips and brought back frying-pan, coffee-pot and smallerutensils, as well as provisions, and a half-hour later they werebeginning a supplementary breakfast of bacon and coffee. And if anythingin all the wide world, from the time of Noah to that of the AdventureClub, ever tasted sublime to a shipwrecked mariner it was that samebacon and coffee!

  When they had finished, Phil's watch--the only one of six which hadneither run down for lack of winding or been incapacitated by immersionin salt water--gave the hour as twenty minutes past seven. Comforted byfood and drink, they warmed themselves at the fire and waited for thetide to recede far enough to allow a survey of the _Adventurer_. Thecomfort was too much for Perry and he fell asleep with his feet almostin the embers and his head on a rock and slumbered emphatically. At lastthe line of breakers was well astern of the cruiser and the boys,leaving their stockings to dry by the fire and rolling their trousersup, began their investigation.

  On the whole
the _Adventurer_ had so far come off easily. Her planks hadbeen strained in several places, but there were no breaks. Steve,hanging over the stern, tried to get sight of the propeller but failed,as the sand had settled about it. Joe, wading out into the water, hadbetter success when he investigated. He came up, dripping, with thewelcome announcement that the blades were intact and that, so far as hecould ascertain by feeling, the shaft was not bent. But things lookedpretty dismal below-decks. The forward cabin was awash, as was theengine-well, and the after stateroom was knee-deep. They gathered on thebridge deck and held council.

  "We can plug her seams, all right," said Steve, "and by keeping a pumpgoing get to port, _if_ we can only get her off the beach. But I can't,for the life of me, see how we're going to do that. Her bow's settled afoot deep in sand and it's piled up along this side of her. Even herpropeller's buried!"

  "Not very much," said Joe. "If we start her she'll kick it away in aminute."

  "But there isn't any use starting her," said Steve thoughtfully, "unlessshe's afloat a good deal more than she was this morning. If only we hadsomething to fix a line to astern we might pull her off with thewindlass." His gaze ran seaward and in an instant he was on his feetgazing intently through the mist. "What's that back there?" he demandedeagerly. "Isn't it a rock, fellows?"