by Oliver Optic
"What did you do with it?"
"Laid it on the desk in his office," replied Robert, wondering what all these questions could mean.
"He never got it."
"Didn't he? Well, I put it on his desk," added the boy, startled and annoyed at the situation.
Just then the squire himself entered the office, and confirmed the statement of the post-master. The lawyer questioned Little Bobtail sharply, perhaps rather from his professional habit than because he suspected the youth of anything wrong.
"I put it on your desk, sir; and that is all I know about it. Captain Chinks was in your office at the time, and he told me to put it on the desk," said Robert, stoutly.
"Now I remember, I gave Bobtail a letter for Captain Chinks at the same time," added the post-master.
"Yes, sir; and I gave it to him in the squire's office."
"Well, we will look the matter up when Captain Chinks comes back. He has been away a week now," added the lawyer.
Robert was vexed. He was not directly accused of stealing the letter, but he did not like the sharp questions which the squire asked him. He left the office, and, after buying a sheet of gingerbread and some cheese, he hastened down to the old boat, which was now afloat. He had put a bucket of clams into her the night before, for bait, and otherwise prepared the boat for a cruise. The wind was pretty fresh from the westward, and he went off wing-and-wing before it. He tried the usual places, but the fish did not bite, and he kept sailing farther and farther out from the shore; but he caught hardly any fish. He was in no hurry to go home, for Ezekiel was in his tantrums, and his mother had gone to Rockport to spend two or three days. The wind, instead of subsiding as the day advanced, increased in force. The sea was heavy out in the bay, and it was utterly impossible to beat the old boat up to windward, for she made more leeway than headway.
"No matter; I'll make a night of it," said he to himself, when he realized that it was impossible for him to beat back to Camden.
The bay is full of islands, and Little Bobtail concluded to get under the lee of one of them, and wait for better weather. He took in his jib and mainsail, and the old boat went along very well, taking in very little water. The sun went down, and it was dark before he had made a harbor. He was approaching Blank Island, where he knew a good place to anchor for the night, when he discovered a large sail-boat, drifting down the bay. Her sails were all lowered, but had not been secured, and were flapping about in the wind.
"Boat, ahoy!" shouted Little Bobtail.
No answer came to his repeated hails; and, throwing the old craft up into the wind, he awaited the approach of the abandoned boat. Placing himself In the bow, with the painter in his hand, he leaped on board of the stranger, as she drifted upon his old craft. The abandoned boat was worthy to be called a yacht. She was about thirty-two feet in length, with eleven feet beam. Two thirds of her length was decked over, with a trunk cabin, in which were transoms large enough for four berths, with a cook-room forward. She was handsomely fitted up, and Little Bobtail wondered how she happened to be adrift. He hoisted the mainsail, and in a few moments ran her into a little bay under the lee of Blank Island, where he anchored her. As she had an anchor it was evident that she had not broken away from her anchorage. Having secured the old boat at a safe distance from the yacht, the young boatman had an opportunity to examine his prize, for such it proved to be.
CHAPTER IV.
THE JANTY YACHT.
It was very dark, and Little Bobtail was unable to obtain a very clear idea of the craft he had picked up; but he had brought her to a secure anchorage under the lee of Blank Island, and, quite exhausted with his energetic efforts, both in boarding the yacht and in mooring the boats, he was content to rest himself for a while on the cushioned seats of the standing-room. The fresh wind which had blown all day had not permitted him to pay much attention to the dietary department, which is always an important one in a boat; and, not being over sentimental, he was positively hungry. Even the half of his sheet of gingerbread and his "hunk of cheese" remained untouched.
Little Bobtail was an ingenious youth, and when he anchored the old boat he had taken a line from her stern to the yacht, so that he could haul the former alongside the latter at his pleasure. By this means he was enabled to recover his provision box and jug of cold water without any difficulty. He devoured the balance of what had been intended only for his dinner, which, expanded into both dinner and supper, did not half cover the needs of the occasion. He was still hungry, but he had recovered his breath, and was in condition to make another effort, if another were required of him.
We confess that we have written very coolly and composedly of the event in Little Bobtail's experience which had just transpired, hardly attempting to describe his wonder and exhilaration; but it is not to be supposed that he was unmoved by the discovery and recovery of the abandoned yacht. He was so tremendously excited, that he had worked all the breath out of his body, and had hardly an opportunity to consider the nature and extent of his achievement till he had regained his wind, and partially filled the vacuum in his stomach, which prudent Nature abhors.
We said he was ready for another effort; but before he put forth his strength again, he indulged in a series of speculations in regard to the immediate history of the yacht he had picked up under such singular circumstances. He had not been into the cabin yet to obtain whatever evidence might be available in solving the problem; he had not yet had time to do so. But people speculate and construct theories even before there are any premises on which to base them.
The yacht was fine enough to be a pleasure craft, and he leaped at once to the conclusion that some gay party had landed on an island to have a good time, and, having run the yacht aground, the fresh breeze had blown her off as the tide rose. Entirely satisfied with this solution, the history of the fair craft seemed to be no longer a mystery to him. In the morning he would run her over to Camden and anchor there. The owner would soon appear; and, as he was fairly entitled to salvage, he thought he could reasonably hope to receive as much as ten dollars for his services, for the yacht might have been thrown upon the rocks and utterly smashed, if he had not picked her up. Indeed, she was not three miles from Deer Island when he discovered her, and in an hour or two more nothing could have saved her from destruction.
To Little Bobtail ten dollars was a vast sum of money, and the very first thought of obtaining it suggested, as the next one, the use to which it should be applied. That old tub of a boat in which he had been sailing all day could be bought for thirty dollars. It is true she was not much of a boat; but it would afford Little Bobtail almost as much pleasure to repair her and put a proper keel upon her, so that he could beat to windward in her, as it would to sail her. Prince, who owned her, would take ten dollars as the first payment, and in time he could earn enough with her to pay the other twenty. Altogether the dream was a brilliant one to him, and as he gazed through the gloom of the night at the old tub, his fancy kindled with the glowing future. He wished the old thing was bigger, so that he could have a cabin and a place to sleep in her, when the drunken fury of Ezekiel drove him from the cottage.
Now, really, our hero did not think half so much of the janty yacht he had captured as he did of the old tub, and we do not know that he would have taken the trouble to enter her cabin before he wanted a place to sleep, if he had not been hungry. Half a sheet of gingerbread and "half a hunk of cheese" for supper were altogether insufficient for a growing boy. If the party which had lost the yacht had been on a pleasure excursion, of course they had brought provisions with them; for, to the imagination of a boy of sixteen, eating is one of the chief pleasures of existence, especially on the salt water. If the excursionists had gone on shore,—as they must have done, since they were not on board,—probably they had taken their provisions with them. It was a startling thought; but then perhaps the yacht had broken adrift before they were removed from the lockers. The alternative was very pleasant to Little Bobtail, though it suggested the m
iserable condition of the excursionists left on the island, perhaps to pass the night there, without food. Our hero thought they could stand it better without any supper than he could, for he had had only half a dinner, and besides, everybody thinks his own misfortunes are infinitely more trying than those of other people. But we must do our young skipper the justice to add that he sympathized with the excursionists in case they had no supper.
The doors of the cabin were closed, but they were not locked. Little Bobtail threw them open, and gazed down into the darkness. He could not see anything but the faint light through the round ports in the trunk. He descended the steps, and then stumbled against some boxes. Feeling his way overhead, he placed his hand upon a lantern suspended from above.
"All right!" exclaimed he. "That lantern is the right thing in the right place. We will have some light on the subject."
He was an early riser, and made the fire in the cook-stove every morning at home, which may account for the fact that he had a quantity of matches in his pocket. He always carried them with him, for he had been blown off once before, when he had a boat full of fish, and had to go hungry all night because he could not make a fire to cook one or two of them. Besides, when he sailed with strangers or with town's people, most of them smoked, and he often found that a match was the one thing needed in a boat. On account of this wise forecast and this prudent habit, Little Bobtail had plenty of matches in his pocket; and having them, he lighted one, and communicated the flame to the lamp in the lantern.
Excitedly he waited the revelations which the lamp was to make to him. It was a beautiful cabin. The transoms were all cushioned, and there was a table between them. Forward was the door which opened into the cook-room. Over the table was a rack for bottles and glasses, and there was a score of lockers filled with dishes and other table ware, with charts, books, compasses, and other nautical necessaries. A handsome spy-glass hung on a pair of brackets. At the end of the transoms were several cushions, used as pillows, and some robes to cover the sleepers.
After this general survey of the interior of the cabin, Little Bobtail turned his attention to the boxes upon which he had stumbled. All the cabin floor, except a small portion aft, was covered with these boxes, of which he counted twenty. The theory he had adopted that the yacht had been used for a pleasure excursion, crumbled away as he saw these boxes, for no party would go out sailing with the cabin lumbered up in this manner. He overhauled one of the boxes, without being any the wiser, and Little Bobtail was sorely puzzled. Taking the lantern in his hand, he crawled over the boxes to the cook-room. It was very small, but it was admirably fitted up, with a tiny stove and plenty of lockers. In one corner hung a log of bacon, from which a few slices had been out at some recent period.
"That suits my case exactly," said the explorer, as he took down the bacon. "I shall treat myself to a slice of fried ham before I bother my head any more about this craft or any other."
In a locker on which the cook sat while engaged in his duties was a supply of wood; and in five minutes Little Bobtail had a good fire in the stove. A frying-pan lay by the side of the locker. Indeed, our hero could want nothing which he did not immediately find ready for use, just as though a multitude of fairies stood at his elbows to meet his every wish. In another locker he found a kid of cold potatoes, and there was an abundance of hard-tack in a keg on the transom. The slice of bacon hissed and sizzled in the pan on the stove, and the odor was delightful to the hungry boy. It was soon "done to a turn," and the fried potatoes were as brown and nice as those prepared by his mother. He might have had tea or coffee, but he did not care for them. At his age they are not reckoned among the substantials for a good meal. Procuring a plate, knife, and fork from the cabin, he helped himself from the pan on the stove.
"That's what I call first rate!" exclaimed he, when he had duly tested the bacon and the potatoes. "I shall be ready to hire out as a cook after this. That's tip-top bacon, and I respect the pig that left this leg I see to me."
Little Bobtail glanced up at the leg of bacon in the corner, and thought he had made a good pun; but it was fearfully old and stale to be printed in a book, and we do so only out of deference to his feelings. No right-minded and highly moral person will make puns; and our hero is only excusable on the ground that he was alone, and did not force it upon other people. He ate all he wanted; nay, more—all he could. He devoured the entire slice he had cooked, leaving none for a lunch, in case he wanted one, when he had not time to cook. He was entirely satisfied, and that is saying a great deal of a boy of sixteen, growing, and sailing on the salt water, too. He could not eat any more, or he would; and, being too full for utterance, he made no more speeches to himself. Doubtless he had endangered the peace of his dreams by overloading his stomach at that hour in the evening, for by this time it was ten o'clock; but it so happened that he had time to digest his supper before he put himself in the way of dreaming.
Having satisfied his hunger, he felt entirely satisfied with himself, and especially with the person or persons who had fitted out the yacht in the commissary department. Taking his lantern, he crawled over the boxes to the after part of the cabin, where there was space enough for him to sit comfortably. He looked at the boxes, and wondered what was in them. We do not know that he had more curiosity than boys in general; but he felt that a knowledge of their contents might enable him to establish another theory in regard to the previous history of the yacht. He had seen a shingling hatchet in the cook-room, used for splitting up the kindling wood. He went for it, and, with no great difficulty, opened one of the boxes. It was filled with bottles, packed in straw, and each one enclosed in a curious case made of the same material. He slipped one of the bottles out of its casing. It was labeled " James Hennessy & Co.—Cognac. " The name of the firm, so well known to old topers and moderate drinkers, afforded him no light; but he knew that "Cognac" meant brandy.
"Oho! aha!" said Little Bobtail, knowingly; "I smell a mice now. This boat wasn't used for a pleasure party."
He had heard about those mysterious custom-house inspectors and detectives, who poke their noses into grocery stores, cellars, and all the sly places where contraband goods were supposed to be concealed. Promptly he arrived at the conclusion that the brandy in the yacht had come "thus far into the bowels of the land" without paying its respects to the custom-house, or any of the heavy duties which go to support the army and navy, and a host of beneficent institutions which make our country "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and the collection of which affords a multitude of officials an opportunity to steal. But Little Bobtail did not trouble himself to discuss any of the vexed questions about free trade and tariff, or even to weigh carefully the immorality of smuggling.
Our hero did not believe in brandy, abstractly or concretely. It was liquor, and liquor had been a curse to his home, a curse to his mother, and a curse to himself; and he was tempted to take the boxes on deck, open them, and spill the contents of the bottles into the sea. Possibly—not probably—he would have done so, if he had not been afraid the liquor would destroy the fish, or drive them away to prohibition waters. The problem of the yacht had become intricate, and he was puzzled to determine what to do with her. If he had been properly instructed in regard to the duty of the citizens to his government, and properly inspired to discharge this duty, he would have sailed the yacht and her cargo over to Camden, and delivered her to the deputy collector in charge of the port. He knew what smuggling meant; but his views were very indefinite. According to the fishermen, and most of the traders, to whose conversation on this subject he had listened, smuggling was hardly to be regarded as a sin, or, if a sin, it was one of the most trivial character.
It is a melancholy truth, becoming more and more familiar to us every year, that cheating the government is hardly considered a crime; that respectable men, as the world measures them, and even members of the church, defraud the revenues of the government without compunction.
We are sorry to acknowledge tha
t Little Bobtail did not think of such a thing as handing over the yacht and her contraband cargo—as he was fully satisfied it was—to the custom-house officials. He had not been educated up to a point which compelled him to do so. His conscience was not sensitive on this point above the average of the town's people. He was afraid, if he did so, that the government would coolly ignore him because he was a boy, and he should lose his ten dollars. Perhaps he thought he could make better terms with the smugglers than he could with the honorable and high-minded deputy-collector. While he was thinking of the matter, the moon rose in the clear sky, and shed a welcome light over the bay. It occurred to him that those who had lost the yacht might be in search of her. They might blunder upon him in the morning, and, being reckless smugglers, might even kill him to prevent his bearing testimony against them. He did not like the idea of meeting any such men alone. He preferred that the interview should take place in Camden harbor. The wind was still fresh, and in the yacht he could beat over to Camden in three or four hours; but he thought the breeze was hauling to the southward, which would give him a slant so that he could run over without tacking.
Moved by these considerations, he hoisted the mainsail of the yacht, which required all his strength and skill. He then weighed the anchor of the old tub, and carried her painter to the larger craft. He had a hard pull at the anchor of the yacht, but he got it up after a while, and stowed it securely forward. Rushing to the helm, he hauled in the sheet, and taking the wind on the quarter, he stood to the northward, in order to pass around the island. The yacht worked beautifully, even without her jib. Hauling in the sheet when she was clear of the island, he laid her up to the wind as close as she would go. In a short time he got the bearings of the lights, and found that he could let out his sheet a little. The yacht seemed to fly under the fresh breeze, and Little Bobtail watched her motions with perfect delight. After a while he discovered the light on Negro Island, and it was all plain sailing to him.