Four Afloat Part 34

So he set off through the fog, keeping the river's edge dimly in sight.

He began to feel rather soggy and very, very hungry. Also, it was none too warm that morning, although after he had been walking for a time his chilliness pa.s.sed off. When he reached the woods he hesitated. To turn to the left and follow the sh.o.r.e would mean much harder walking and a much longer trip. So he decided to go through the wood and come out on the other side of the point. After five minutes he began to think that he had made a mistake. For there was no sign of a break in the trees, nor, when he paused and listened, could he hear the lap of the little waves along the sh.o.r.e. Probably he had borne too far inland. He changed his course to the left and started on again. But the trees grew near together, there was a good deal of underbrush and keeping a straight course was out of the question. By this time his only thought was to reach the sh.o.r.e again, and he kept bearing farther and farther to the left. Some ten minutes pa.s.sed. Tom's face began to grow anxious. He had visions of spending the day in those woods, breakfastless, luncheonless, dinnerless! He stopped and sat down on a fallen log to consider the situation calmly and to get some of his breath back.

"The next time I leave home in a fog you'll know it!" he muttered, apparently addressing the nearest tree. "What good's a fog, anyway?"

Presently he realized that his thoughts had wandered away on the subject of fogs and that he hadn't solved his dilemma. By this time he had lost all sense of direction and didn't pretend to know where the river lay.

The wood, he thought, couldn't be very large and so if he kept on walking in a straight line he was certain to get out of it before long.

Once out of it-Well, maybe he could find a house or a road. As for the _Vagabond_ and Dan and Nelson and Bob they could choke for all he cared; what he wanted was breakfast, and lots of it!

So presently, having recovered his wind, he got up, fixed a direction firmly in his mind and trudged on again. The fog was thinner here in the woods than it had been along the sh.o.r.e; possibly, he reasoned, the farther inland he got the less fog there would be. Although if he could only find something to eat he wouldn't bother about the weather. He had been walking for some five or six minutes when the trees suddenly disappeared and he found himself on the edge of a planted field. The fog seemed as thick as ever and it was impossible to see more than twenty or thirty feet away. But a planted field, especially one planted with vegetables, as this one was, argued a house near by. So he got between two rows of cauliflower and tramped on. Presently he found his way barred by a stone wall. On the other side of the wall was gra.s.s. Tom perched himself on top of the wall and speculated.

He cut a queer figure as he sat there with the red-bordered gray blanket over his head. One corner of the blanket had been dragging for the last ten minutes and was covered with mud. Here and there a wet leaf was pasted upon it. His shoes, the white canvas, rubber-soled "sneakers"

worn on the launch, were sights to behold, and within them his feet were very wet and very cold. But what bothered him most of all was his stomach. That felt dreadfully empty, and now and then little "shooty"

pains made themselves felt.

Probably he had mistaken the direction of the house belonging to the field, he told himself dispiritedly. He should have walked across the rows instead of along them. And the gra.s.s in front of him only meant a meadow with silly cows, and, maybe, a bull! He wondered what a bull would think of him if he saw him; nothing flattering, probably. On the whole, he decided that he would a little rather not run across a bull this morning. Then suddenly he heard, far away and indistinct, the _Vagabond's_ whistle. He knew it too well to mistake it.

"Go on and blow it," he muttered. "Hope your arm gets tired. You won't see me until I've had some breakfast, I can tell you that. That's right, blow, blow! Who the d.i.c.kens cares?"

From the direction of the sound it was evident to him that he had left the river almost directly behind him. But what bothered him at the present moment more than the location of the river and the _Vagabond_ was the location of the house and something to satisfy the craving of his empty stomach. He strove to remember what he knew about farms.

Usually, he thought, the vegetable fields were near the buildings and the meadows at a distance, although he didn't suppose there was any hard and fast rule about it. Then it dawned on him that for a meadow this one was unusually well kept. The gra.s.s was short and thick and the field quite level. He wondered if it could be a lawn. He would explore it.

So, rather stiff by this time, he slipped off the wall and started straight ahead across the turf. Presently he came to a ridge some three feet high, rounded and turfed. He stopped and wondered. It disappeared on either side of him into the surrounding grayness. He climbed to the top of it and looked down. On the other side was a six-foot ditch of coa.r.s.e sand. He was on a golf links and the ridge was a silly old bunker!

He slid down on the other side of it and rested there with his wet shoes in the sand. It was all very nice, he told himself, to know that you were on a golf course, but it didn't help very much. A chap could be just as lost, just as wet and miserable and hungry on a golf course as anywhere else. Somewhere, of a certainty, there was a clubhouse, but if he knew where it stood and could find it it was more than probable that it would be closed up on a day like this. And, anyhow, they wouldn't be serving breakfast there! The idea of sitting just where he was until some one came along suggested itself but didn't appeal to him. Once he thought he heard a noise of some sort, but he wasn't sure. However, he got up and headed in the direction from which it had seemed to come.

After a minute or two he came to a green with a soggy red tin disk, numbered fourteen, sticking out of a hole.

"Glad it wasn't thirteen," said Tom to himself as he went on. "That might have been unlucky."

Presently it seemed that the fog had lessened and that his range of vision had enlarged; he was quite sure that he could discern objects at a greater distance than before. But as there wasn't at that moment anything particularly interesting to discern the discovery didn't bring much encouragement. He was going up a steep hill now and when he had gained the summit and seated himself for a moment on the edge of the sand box, which stood there at the edge of a tee, he saw that the fog was thinner because he was higher up. Behind him the ground sloped away again, but not so abruptly as in front. As he sat there, struggling for breath after his climb, it seemed that he was the only person in existence. On all sides of him the hill lost itself in the enveloping mists. He was alone in an empty gray s.p.a.ce in which there was neither food nor fire. He got quite discouraged about it and a little watery at the eyes until he shook himself together and told himself that he was a baby.

"There are houses and people all around you," he said disgustedly, "only you can't see them. All you've got to do is to brace up and keep on walking until you find them."

But that was easier said than done, for he had been walking a long time, and for much of that time over hard ground, and his legs were tired out.

But he went on presently, slowly and discouragedly, down a long slope and up another. He had begun to talk aloud to himself for very loneliness, and some of the things he said would have sounded quite ridiculous had there been anyone else to hear them.

At the summit of the slope he paused again to rest, and as he did so he suddenly lifted his head intently, straining his eyes before him into the fog. Of course it was all perfect tommyrot, but, just the same-well, it did sound like music! In fact, it _was_ music, very faint and sometimes dying away altogether, but still music!

"Maybe," said Tom aloud, "I've starved to death and got to heaven. But I don't feel dead." Then, with returning animation, he strode forward again. "Me for the music," he said.

Less than a minute later a great dark bulk took shape and form ahead of him. At first it seemed like the edge of a woods, but as the music increased momentarily that was out of the question. No, plainly it was a building, and a big one! And in another minute Tom was standing in a gravel roadway in front of a big hotel which stretched away on either side of him. There were lights inside, and an orchestra was playing merrily. The windows of the lower floor were dimmed with the fog, but he could see the indistinct forms of persons inside and the dancing light of a fire. Directly in front of him was a covered porch and beyond it the wide gla.s.s doors.

Tom drew the blanket from over his head, folded it as neatly as he might, laid it across his arm and, bareheaded and bedraggled, crossed the porch, opened the door and went in.

He found himself in a great, luxuriously furnished hall. At the back a wide staircase ascended. In the center a huge fireplace held a pile of blazing logs. Beyond it, half obscured by palms in tubs, a scarlet-coated orchestra was playing. To his right was a long counter behind which two immaculate clerks moved. About the fireplace and spreading across the big exchange were seated many persons. They had been talking very industriously until the door opened. But for some reason at Tom's advent the conversation lessened and lessened until, as he walked across the s.h.i.+ning oak floor, there was an impressive silence.

The two clerks stopped their work and gazed at him in amused surprise.

Tom, aware of the effect he was causing but caring not at all, stopped at the desk, stuck his hands in his pockets and addressed the nearest clerk in the calmest manner possible.

"I would like to see the manager, if you please," said Tom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I would like to see the manager, if you please.'"]

CHAPTER XIX-NARRATES A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

The fog held close until just before sunset, although there were times when the three on the _Vagabond_ could make out the sh.o.r.e quite distinctly and thereby gained a very fair notion of where they lay. When the mist finally disappeared inland they found their notion to be correct. The launch lay some hundred yards from sh.o.r.e to the east of the river's mouth. Just how they had managed to reach the position it was hard to say, although Nelson's idea was that they had become both actually and metaphorically turned around when the launch had gone aground and had subsequently, instead of running upstream, crossed it diagonally and pa.s.sed out toward the east.

It was a long day. The _Vagabond_ rolled sleepily from side to side in the slow swells and seemed very bored and weary. The boys played cards for a while after luncheon, but, as Dan remarked, there wasn't a decent game that three could play. So they threw down the cards in disgust and went to writing letters. But, somehow, inspiration didn't come very well, and finally Nelson gave up the attempt in despair and went out to the engine room and "fiddled with the engine"; the expression is Dan's.

Nelson could always manage to spend an hour or so quite contentedly with wrenches and pliers, oil cans and emery cloth and a nice big bunch of cotton waste. Just what he accomplished this afternoon I can't say; but he killed fully an hour.

In the meanwhile both Bob and Dan had taken to their bunks and had succeeded in getting to sleep. And so it was Nelson who discovered that the fog was lifting when, his "fiddling" completed, he put his head out of the door to toss a bunch of very dirty waste overboard. As the easiest way to awaken the sleepers he gave a long blast on the whistle.

The effect was almost magical. Dan jumped clear out of the bunk and landed very wide-awake in the middle of the floor. Bob managed to escape with a b.u.mp on the side of his head. After recovering themselves they descended wrathfully on Nelson, demanding explanations. Nelson, wedged in a corner between the engine and the ice box, explained and was permitted to adjust his rumpled attire. Whereupon all went out to the dripping c.o.c.kpit and watched the land appear slowly before them out of the gray void. It was like watching the development of a negative in the dark-room. At first there was a blank expanse of gray. Then a shadow appeared, dark and formless. Then a bit of the low-lying sh.o.r.e stood out boldly, its colors still blurred by the dissolving mist. And presently the sun appeared in the west, a hazy orange disk at the end of a funnel of orange light. And then, in an instant, the fog was nowhere to be seen save that here and there on an inland hillside a wisp of gray, like a floating veil, hung entangled amidst trees or bowlders. And with the returning sunlight came a brisk breeze from the south that stirred the oily surface of the water into tawny ripples that began to lap cheerfully against the hull of the _Vagabond_. Dan started to whistle blithely.

A few minutes later the launch was speeding back across the bar, bound for the little cove where they had left Tom. That young gentleman's fate had not greatly bothered his friends, although there had been throughout the day much idle speculation as to his probable whereabouts. Tom could look after himself, said Dan, and the others agreed. But when they reached the cove and the little beach with the blackened embers disfiguring the clean gravel and saw no Tommy they were at once surprised and disappointed. Bob was even inclined to be indignant.

"Where the d.i.c.kens has he gone to?" he asked. "He might have known we'd be back for him as soon as the fog cleared away."

"Well, I suppose we could hardly expect him to spend the day here waiting for us," said Nelson. "Probably he found a house where he could get dry and have something to eat. As we can't see any from here maybe he had to go quite a ways. We'll wait a while and see if he doesn't turn up."

"Bet you he's asleep in the best bed in the house," laughed Dan. "We'll be lucky if he turns up before to-morrow noon. Tommy's just as likely as not to sleep the clock around if there's n.o.body there to wake him up!"

"I suppose," said Bob, "we might as well have something to eat while we wait." But Dan demurred.

"No, let's go back to New London and get a good feed. We'll wait until six-thirty and if he doesn't show up by that time-Say, maybe he's gone back to New London himself!"

"I'll bet he has," Nelson agreed. "Let's go and see."

So they returned up the broad twilit stream and made their former berth near the ferry slip. A hasty toilet followed and then they hurried up the street to the hotel. But no Tommy awaited them. The clerk a.s.sured them that no one answering to the description which they gave had been seen that day. Nor did the register show Tom's elegant handwriting. But after the first moment of disappointment they comforted themselves with the a.s.surance that the missing member of the crew was quite safe somewhere, and went in to dinner. Nor did anxiety over Tom's fate interfere with their appet.i.tes.

Up until bedtime they expected at any moment to see Tom stumble down the steps, and when, at half-past nine, lights went out it was unanimously decided to leave the hatch unlocked in case he should turn up during the night. Once, along toward morning, Bob was dimly aware of some one moving about the cabin.

"That you, Tommy?" he asked sleepily.

But if there was any answer he didn't hear it, for he fell asleep again immediately. In the morning, in the act of yawning and stretching his arms over his head, he recollected the noise in the night and looked inquiringly at Tom's bunk. But it hadn't been slept in. Bob puzzled over this fact for a moment. Then--

"Where's Tom?" he asked.

"How the d.i.c.kens do I know?" asked Dan, sitting up in his berth.

"Didn't he come back last night? I heard some one and I thought sure it was Tommy."

"That was me," said Nelson, opening his eyes. "You asked if it was Tommy and I said No. I was closing the ports. The wind and rain were just drowning me out."

"Rain!" exclaimed Bob and Dan simultaneously. Then--

"Gee, what a storm!" muttered Dan, as he subsided after a glance through the nearest port. "I see where we stay in New London for a day or two."

"Well," said Bob philosophically, "it's better to be here than tied up in some little old cove along the Sound. We can go ash.o.r.e, at least."