The Rival Campers Part 22

Bowls of the chowder and big plates of the clams were carried to the tables. There were dishes of the hot corn piled high; potatoes that came to table black as coals, and which, being opened, revealed themselves white as newly popped corn. There was a mingled odour of foods, piping hot, and over all the grateful aroma from half a dozen coffee-pots.

"Cracky! do they expect us to eat all this?" exclaimed young Joe, as he surveyed the prospect. "I wonder where it is best to begin-and what to leave out."

"Don't try to eat it all, Joe," said Arthur. "Give somebody else a chance, too. You know the night you went to Henry Burns's party you ate so many nuts and raisins you woke up dreaming that somebody was trying to tie you into a square knot, and when you got fully awake you wished somebody would, and I had to get up and pour Jamaica ginger into you.

Don't try to eat more than enough for three ordinary persons this time, Joe, and you'll be all right."

Young Joe tried to smile, with a slice of chicken in one hand and a spoonful of preserves in the other, and a mouthful of both. His reputation at the table had been made long before that day, and had gone abroad, and here was the opportunity of a lifetime, for every good-hearted motherly-looking housewife within reaching distance was pa.s.sing him food.

"I hope there's a seat for me," said Henry Burns, who came hurrying up.

He and George Warren had made the run down the island on bicycles.

"Come on, both of you," cried the crowd. "There's always room for you,"

and made places for them at once.

"It seems too bad not to invite those other campers up on the sh.o.r.e,"

said one of the women. "I'm sure they haven't had anything as good as this for all summer."

"What! Harvey's crew?" queried a chorus of voices, in astonishment.

"Well, you don't live near enough to where they are camping to be bothered by them. If you did, you wouldn't want them."

"We don't mind some kind of jokes so much," continued one of the villagers, at which Tom and Bob and Henry Burns and the Warren boys tried to look unconscious, "but when it comes to taking things that don't belong to them and continually creating a disturbance, we think it is going a little too far. Perhaps it might do them good to get them over here and repay them with kindness, but some of us are not just in the mood for trying it."

"Besides," said another, "it's too late now, if we wanted to, for I saw them starting out about half an hour ago in their yacht, and wondered where they could be trying to go, with wind enough to barely stir them.

Some mischief, like as not, they're up to. No good errand, I'll be bound."

Which was quite true.

However, in most surprising contradiction to the speaker's a.s.sertion, there suddenly appeared along the sh.o.r.e Harvey and all his crew, walking close to the water's edge, but plainly to be seen.

"Well, those boys must have changed their minds quickly," said the man who had spoken before. "It is not more than half an hour, surely, since I saw them all starting out in the yacht. I guess they found there was not enough wind."

Perhaps, however, there had been wind enough for the purpose of Harvey and his crew. There was enough, at all events, to carry them up past the village and back again to their mooring-place. If they had had any object in doing that, there had been wind enough to satisfy them. They seemed, moreover, in high spirits when they returned from this brief voyage, and laughed heartily as they made the yacht snug for the night.

Now they went whistling past the picnic party, all of them in line, and went down along the sh.o.r.e till they were lost to view in the woods.

"Hope they're not going down my way," said some one. "They're up to altogether too much mischief around here; that is, I know well enough it's them, but I can't ever succeed in catching them at it. I'd make it hot for them if I could."

But Harvey and his crew had surely no designs on the property of any one down the island, for they had not gone far in the grove of woods before Harvey called a halt, and they all sat down and waited. It was rapidly growing dusk, and they waited until it had grown quite dark. Then they arose, cut across through the grove toward the Narrows again, but keeping out of sight all the while, both of chance villagers who might be pa.s.sing along the road, and of the crowd about the picnic fire.

When they had come to the Narrows, Harvey again called a halt, and stole ahead to see if the coast was clear. The island was a narrow strip of land here, with the bay on either hand coming in close to the roadway, but by keeping close to the water's edge, and dodging behind some low cedars, provided the campers were all about the fire, they might pa.s.s un.o.bserved. This they managed successfully, for, the driftwood fire having been renewed, the picnic party were seated about it, singing and telling stories.

Harvey and his crew went on up through the woods to their own camp, where two of them remained, while Harvey and George Baker and Allan Harding took their yacht's tender and rowed rapidly on up toward the town. After they had started, Joe Hinman and Tim Reardon stole down through the woods again, and kept watch for a long time on the group about the fire. They did not return to their camp till the sound of a horn, some hour and a half later, signified to them that Harvey and the others had returned from their mission, whatever it was.

The driftwood fire began to blaze low as the evening wore on, and by nine o'clock the greater number of the picnickers had said "Good night" and started on their journey home. Some of them had come from away down at the foot of the island, and still others from the little settlement at the head. These now harnessed in their horses, which had been allowed to feed near the grove, and drove away, their flimsy old wagons rattling along the road like so many wrecks of vehicles.

Around the fire, however, there still lingered a group of fishermen and village folk, telling stories and gossiping over their pipes.

"I wonder whatever became of that fellow Chambers," said one. "He was the slickest one of the lot, so that Detective Burton said. Do you recall how he sailed away that morning, as cool as you please, with the pistols popping all around his head?"

The subject had never ceased to be the one great topic of interest in the village of Southport.

"I reckon he'll never be seen around these parts again," remarked another. "Like as not he's up in Long Island Sound long before this. Or maybe the yacht's hauled up somewhere, and he's got clear out of the country. There's no telling where those fellows will travel to, if they're put to it, according to what I read in the papers."

"It's mighty mysterious," said Captain Sam. "For my part, I think it's queer n.o.body's sighted him somewhere along the coast. A man don't sail for days without somebody seeing him. He ought to be heard from along Portland way, that is, if he ever left this bay, which I ain't so sure of, after all."

This remark seemed to amuse most of the group.

"Seems as though you expected you might see him and that crack yacht some night sailing around here like the _Flying Dutchman_," said one, at which the others took their pipes out and chuckled. "You'll have to get out your old _Nancy Jane_ and go scouring the bay after him, Cap'n Sam. If he ever saw her coming after him, he'd haul down his sail pretty quick and invite you to come aboard."

"Well," replied Captain Sam, good-naturedly, "there's no accounting for the strange things of the sea, as you ought to know, Bill Lewis, with the deep-water voyages you've been on. Still, I'm free to say I don't see how that 'ere craft can have got out of here and gone clear up Boston way or New York, without so much as a sail being sighted by all them as has been watching for her. I don't try to explain where he may be, but I stick to my idea that there's something mighty queer about it."

"He may be at the bottom of this 'ere bay," said the man addressed as Bill Lewis. "Stranger things than that have happened, and he was but one man in a big boat on a coast he couldn't have known but little of.

There's many a reef for him to hit in the night, and the day he escaped was stormy. For that matter, I give it up, too. He was a slick one, that's all I can say."

And so they rolled this strange and mysterious bit of gossip over, while the fire burned to coals and the coals died away to ashes.

"Tom," said Bob, as they launched the canoe from the shelving beach some time after ten o'clock, "it's too glorious a night to go right home to bed. What do you say to a short paddle, just a mile or so out in the bay, to settle that terrible mixture of pie and clams that we've eaten? We'll sleep all the sounder for it."

"Perhaps 'twill save our lives," replied Tom. "I ate more than I've eaten in the last week. Let's take it easy, though. I don't feel like hard work."

So they paddled leisurely out for about a mile, enjoying the brilliant starlight and watching the dark waters of the bay flash into gleams of phosphoric fire at every stroke of the paddle. It was like an enchanted journey, gliding along through the still night, amid pools of sparkling gems.

It was nearing eleven when they drove the bow of their canoe in gently upon the sand at their landing-place and stepped out upon the sh.o.r.e.

"One, two, three-pick her up," said Tom, as each grasped a thwart of the canoe, ready to swing it up on to their shoulders. Up it came, fairly on to the shoulders of Bob, who had the bow end, but Tom, who never fumbled at things, seemed somehow to have made a bad mess of it. His end of the canoe dropped clumsily to the ground, twisting Bob's head uncomfortably and surprising that young gentleman decidedly.

"What's the matter, Tom?" he asked, laughing good-naturedly, as he turned to his companion. But Tom for a moment answered never a word. He stood staring ahead like one in a dream. Bob, amazed, looked in the same direction.

"Bob," whispered Tom, huskily, "do you see-it's gone-it isn't there. Do you see-the camp-the old tent-it's gone, as sure as we're standing here."

They rushed forward to where the tent had been but a few hours before that afternoon, and stood there dismayed. There in the open air were their bunks, their camp-stools, their camp-kit, and the great chest; but the tent that had sheltered them had disappeared. Around about the spot were holes where the stakes that had held it had been hastily wrenched out, but not a sc.r.a.p of canvas nor a piece of rope that had guyed it were to be seen. Only the poles that had been its frame lay upon the ground.

Their tent had utterly vanished.

CHAPTER XII.

A CRUISE AROUND THE ISLAND

"Well, Bob," said Tom, as they seated themselves on the bunks to collect their wits and think the situation over, "we know who did it, of course.

The next thing is to prove it."

"It won't be so easy," responded Bob. "Jack Harvey hasn't done this thing without first planning out how he could dispose of the tent without attracting the slightest attention. He planned it in a good time, too, when half the village was away at the clambake."

"Yes," said Tom, "and that's what he sailed out on that short trip for, to look in at our tent without exciting any suspicion. He found out that there wasn't anybody around it, and then he and the others came down past our fire on purpose for us to see them and to prove by every one there that they were in another part of the island when our camp was stolen. He did it, though, and he's covered it up well. We'll have hard work to prove it against him."

"I'll be madder to-morrow, when I'm not so sleepy." said Bob. "Let's go on up to the Warren cottage now, and wait till to-morrow before doing anything. It isn't going to rain to-night, and the stuff will not be harmed out here without a covering."