The Rival Campers Part 20

Down in the woods, by the path to the landing, Bob saw a sight that sent the hot blood to his cheeks. He had heard shots from the cellar, fired by the detectives after the fleeing Craigie, and wondered what they meant.

Now, to his dismay, he saw Craigie at full speed flying along the path toward him.

He scrambled to his feet, though his heart beat furiously, and he trembled so that for a moment he clung to a tree for support. Then he thought of Tom, and it gave him courage. Standing as he had stood often before on the football field at home, when, as right tackle, he had saved many a goal, he waited breathlessly. Then as Craigie dashed up, he sprang out, tackled him about the legs, and the two fell heavily to the ground.

He was half-stunned by the fall, but he had breath enough to cry for help, and clung like a drowning man to his antagonist. Well for him then that, in his flight, Craigie had dropped the weapon he carried. They rolled over and over for a moment, and then the man had Bob in his grasp.

"Let me go!" he cried, fiercely. "Let me go, I say!" Bob felt his strength going, as the powerful arms tightened about him.

All at once, however, the other's grasp loosened. Craigie felt himself borne backward, as two boyish figures rushed out of the darkness and threw themselves upon him. Then a weapon gleamed at his head, and Miles Burton stood over him.

"Hold on," cried Craigie. "You've got me this time, though you had to get a boy to do it for you."

"It's all the same to me," replied Miles Burton, coolly. "We've got you, that's the main thing. Here, Mason, here's our man."

Mason, running up, stooped over the prostrate form for a moment, there was the sharp snap of steel, and Craigie lay helpless with a pair of handcuffs fastened to his wrists.

"Where's French?" he asked, sullenly.

"Where you left him," said Mason. "It was a bad cut you gave him. He won't run away. That's certain."

"Serve him right," said the other.

"Hark! What's that?" cried Miles Burton, as the sound of two pistol-shots came up from the water. "They seem to be having trouble down there, too.

You wait here, Mason, and I'll get down to the sh.o.r.e."

He ran to the steps, followed by the three boys. Down the rickety stairs they scrambled, and quickly stood on the ledge of the little landing, looking off on to the water.

What they saw was the yacht _Eagle_, not far from the bluff, under full mainsail, standing out of the cove. At some distance astern was the rowboat, in which were Arthur and Joe at the oars. The detective stood at the bow with a smoking revolver in his hand. Not far distant, across the cove, was the canoe containing the other detective and Tom. The detective also had just fired. Miles Burton and the boys could see no one aboard the sloop, but still it sailed steadily on its course. The canoe vainly tried to head it off, but the yacht, obedient to an unseen hand at the wheel, quickly came about and went off on the other tack, soon putting a hopeless distance between it and its pursuers.

They could not see the man aboard, for the reason that he lay flat in the c.o.c.kpit, and, with one arm upraised, directed the course of the yacht.

"What a pity! What a pity!" said Miles Burton, talking softly to himself.

"How could it have happened? I would rather have lost the other two than that man Chambers. He's the most dangerous man of the three, and the man I wanted most."

His face showed the keenest disappointment, but he had learned self-control in his business, and refrained from speaking above his ordinary tone of voice.

"How did it happen, Watkins?" he asked, as the rowboat came in to the landing for them.

"It's all our fault, Burton," said the other, bitterly. "Stapleton and I should have closed in the moment we heard the first shots; and we should have got aboard the yacht and waited. But I was not sure but what Chambers would land and go up the bluff to the rescue of his comrades, and so I waited to see what he would do. I might have known him better.

These fellows are always looking out for number one, and that's a safe rule to go by.

"All at once we saw him come out from the shadow of the bluff, rowing as hard as ever he could for the yacht. We were after him then, both Stapleton and I. And I'm certain of one thing. No one could have got us out to that yacht faster than these boys. They rowed like men. But, you see, he had but a few strokes of the oars to pull, compared with us. And he got to the yacht when we were still some rods away.

"I never dreamed but what we had him then, for his anchor was down. But what did he do but spring aboard, not stopping to see what became of his rowboat, rush forward as quick as a cat, whisk out a knife, and cut his hawser before you could say 'Scat.' Then he jumped aft mighty quick, grabbed the wheel as cool as anything you ever saw, and had her under headway in no time.

"He took long chances, standing up when he went about, and dodging down again, at first. Then when we came close he got down in the bottom of the boat, just as you saw him, and the best we could do was to fire where we thought he ought to be. He dodged back and forth between our boats, tacking right and left as quick as anything I ever saw, and just slipped by us. He couldn't have done it in any ordinary boat, but that yacht just spun around like a weather-vane, and seemed to gain headway as she went about, instead of losing anything.

"I never saw anything so beautiful, if I do say it. Look at her now, just eating away there to windward and leaving this harbour out of sight."

The yacht was, indeed, flying along like the wind. Chambers had got more sail on her now, and they could see him, coolly sitting at the wheel and waving a hand in derision back at them.

"Confound it!" said Burton. "Here we are on an island, with no way of getting a telegram started till the morning boat lands over at Mayville.

That will be many hours yet, and I fear he'll give us the slip for good and all. What luck, that it should have been he, the only seaman of the three, who was left with the boat. Neither of the others could have done what he did. He's probably studied these waters some, enough to find his way down here, and it will be a hard task ever picking him up again."

"Yes, but a man can't conceal a yacht," said George Warren. "I'd know her anywhere. You can telegraph a description, and the whole coast will be on the watch. You can describe exactly how she looks."

"Can I?" laughed Miles Burton. "Yes, I can, but that's all the good it's likely to do. He'll have her so changed over, if he gets a day to himself down among those islands, that the man who built her wouldn't recognize her. It won't be the first time he has done it. He carries a full equipment aboard, a different set of sails, different fitting spars, different gear of all kinds, and paint to change her colour. Once let him get in near a sheer bluff, where he can lay alongside, with some trees growing close to the water's edge, so he can rig a tackle and heel her way over, and he will have a yacht of a different colour before she's many hours older. He did the thing up in Long Island Sound for several years, and changed her name a half a dozen times into the bargain. He's done some smuggling up along the Canadian border, too, I'm told, and there isn't a better nor a more daring seaman anywhere in this world.

However, we'll do the best we can. Lend a hand, now, all of you; we've got to get that wounded man down over the bluff, or down through the woods, and row him across the cove, where we can get a doctor to dress that wound of his. He's not dangerously hurt, I believe, but he's faint and sick, and we must work spry."

A half-hour later, at the wharf across the cove, before the eyes of an excited crowd, composed of villagers, cottagers, and hotel guests, who had gathered hurriedly at the sound of the firing, there was landed a strange boat-load,-the strangest that had ever come ash.o.r.e at the harbour. Imagine the amazement of Colonel Witham upon beholding his favourite guest, Mr. Kemble, bundled unceremoniously out of the rowboat, with manacles upon his wrists. Imagine the concern of the villagers when the man French, his wound clumsily swathed in bandages and his face pale and distressed, was lifted ash.o.r.e and carried bodily up the slip to the nearest shelter. Nothing like it had ever happened before, not in all the island's history.

"And you say you knew that man was a burglar for two or three days, and let him stay in the house and didn't tell us?" demanded Mrs. Carlin, wrathfully, of Henry Burns.

"Yes'm," said Henry Burns.

"Well, if you're not the worst boy I ever had the care of. Here we might all have been murdered and robbed, and you'd be as guilty as he. And to think I sat and talked with him there, and shook hands with him when he went away. Henry Burns, you'll go to bed an hour earlier for a week for this. And you deserve worse punishment than that."

Henry Burns a.s.sumed his most penitent expression.

CHAPTER XI.

AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY

Two weeks had pa.s.sed by. Craigie and French were in jail awaiting trial, and the sensational arrest had run its course in the papers. Messages had sped here and there, and the police of many cities and towns were watching day and night for the missing Chambers. But watchers' efforts were futile. If the sea had opened and swallowed him up, the man could not have disappeared more completely. Not one of the harbours along the coast sighted him, nor did he run to any for shelter. It had come on stormy the morning he sailed away, and something like a gale had set in the next night. So that there were some who believed it more than likely that the yacht _Eagle_ had foundered, with only one man to handle her.

Be this as it may, yacht and man had utterly disappeared. Several times it was thought she was sighted by some pursuer, but it always turned out to be some other craft. Chambers had made good his escape. And he alone knew to what use he intended to put that freedom.

The bright August sun glared in through the canvas tent on a hot afternoon. It fell warm upon Tom, who, divested of his jersey and bared to the waist, stood in the centre of the tent, performing a series of movements with a pair of light wooden dumb-bells. A fine specimen of st.u.r.dy young manhood was Tom, lithe and quick in action. A skin clear and soft, bright eyes, muscles that knotted into relief when flexed and rounded into nice proportion when relaxed, quick, decisive movements, all told of athletics and an abstinence from pipes and tobacco.

"It's your turn," he said, presently, to Bob, after he had counted off several hundred numbers. Tossing his chum the dumb-bells, he slipped on his jersey again, and, reclining at ease on one of the bunks, watched Bob go through the same drill.

"Bob, I'm envious of you," he said. "You are blacker by several shades than I am. I'll have to take it out of you with the gloves."

"It's pretty hot," said Bob, "but come on."

"Heat doesn't bother a man when he is in training," said Tom. "It's the flabby fellows that get sun-strokes. Sun does one good when he's hardened to it."

He fished out a pair of old boxing-gloves, that looked as though they had seen hard service, from the chest, and then he and Bob went at it, as though they had been the most bitter enemies, instead of the most inseparable of friends. They led and countered and pummelled each other till the perspiration poured down their faces and they had begun to breathe hard.

"Time!" cried Tom. "That's enough for to-day. I think you had just a shade the better of it, old chap. Now let's cool off in the canoe. You know what's on the programme this afternoon."

"I should say I did," answered Bob; "and I'll be hungry enough for it by the time things are ready."

They carried their canoe down to the sh.o.r.e, and in a moment were paddling down the island toward the narrows. But they were not destined to go alone. Turning a point of ledge some little distance below Harvey's camp, they came all at once upon Arthur and Joe Warren, walking along the beach.

"Take us in there, Tom," cried Joe.