XIII—ON THE FISHING-SMACK
When Tom and Lanky had turned to the right and investigated the fishermen’s shanties that were nearest to the marshes, David had turned to the left, in the direction of the ocean. He had no particular object in view, except to see what the man they had met on the other bank of the cove was doing and exchange a few more words with him, if the opportunity offered.
He looked through the clutter of small, weatherbeaten sheds without seeing the man, and came to the beach on the ocean side. A short distance to the south was a spit of sand, and there, seated on a log, was the fellow with the straw hat.
David enjoyed an argument. He was not by nature so curious about other people as Ben was, but he liked to tease. So, with his hands stuck in his pockets and a little swagger in his walk, he went toward the man.
“Looking for a boat to come along and take you for a sail?” he said. “It’s a long walk to town.”
“You’d better be on your way then,” the man retorted. His tone was not very civil, and it made David flush.
“I can look out for myself.”
“Oh, you can, can you?” The man turned round and glared at the young fellow. “Well, my advice to you is to make yourself scarce pretty quick.”
David squared his shoulders. “You don’t want me and my friends round here, do you? A person might think you owned the beach.”
“No,” said the man, “I don’t want you round here.” He looked at the boy fixedly for a minute. “That’s plain enough, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it’s plain enough,” David admitted. “But I don’t see that it’s any reason why we should go.”
“I’ve business here, and you haven’t.”
“Business? You don’t seem very busy.”
The man got up from the log and walked away, down the beach toward a ledge of rock that shut off the southern end.
What was the man’s business? David, rather amused at the other’s surliness, followed after, walking jauntily.
He climbed the ledge of rock. There was another scallop of beach, with bushes close down to the sand. The man was not in sight. But there was a small fishing-smack at anchor not far from the shore, and a dory was just pulling away from her.
David stepped down on the beach, and the first thing he knew something had knocked him flat. He lay sprawling on the sand, a heavy weight on his back. Someone had caught his two hands and held them like a vise.
“Holler if you want to,” said the man with the straw hat.
David had no wish to shout. The breath was knocked out of him.
The man pinned him down, and after kicking a little, David decided the wisest course was to lie still.
After a few minutes there was a grating sound on the sand. David twisted his head enough to see that the dory had landed and that two men were coming ashore.
“Hello, Sam, what you got there?” exclaimed one of the strangers.
“A fresh guy, who wouldn’t mind his own business,” was the answer. “Now I’m going to teach him not to meddle:”
“Good for you, old sport! Give him a good licking.”
“Pity we left the cat-o’-nine-tails out on the boat,” said the second man.
“Three of them came to the cove,” said the man on David’s back. “The other two went away; but this fellow had to go nosing around into other people’s business. I told him to make himself scarce. But not he! Oh no, he had to find out what I was doing. And now I’m going to take him out on the boat and watch me do some fishing.”
There was a laugh at this. “You’ll let him bait your hook, won’t you, Sam?” asked one.
“I’ll let him take the fish off,” Sam retorted. “You fellows row us out, will you?”
The others agreed. The man on David’s back eased his position. “Now,” said he, “you can come along without any fuss or trouble, or you can come with a black eye. Suit yourself; it doesn’t make any difference to me.”
Three to one was greater odds than David cared to tackle. “I’ll go along,” he grunted.
The man got up. David followed. Assuming a care-free manner he walked to the boat and climbed over the high side. A man sat at the oars, and Sam and the two others took seats on the thwarts. The oars dipped in the water, and the dory was rowed out to the smack.
David and Sam went aboard, and the dory with her crew of three rowed away again in the direction of the cove.
“Now,” said Sam, “make yourself comfortable. You’ve found out my business. I’m going to fish for flounders.” And he walked aft and down into the cabin.
David was puzzled. He could understand that this man might have had a grudge against him, even that he might have lost his temper and attacked him as he had; but why should he carry a grudge so far as to make him a prisoner on his fishing-boat?
He stared at the shore some time, then walked up toward the bow. Sam had reappeared from the cabin with fishing-tackle and was angling over the side. There was a line for David, and so, there being nothing better to do, David also set to fishing.
Fish were not biting on that particular afternoon, however. Presently Sam hauled in his line. “The pesky things never come when you want them,” he said morosely. “I suppose there are lots of them swimming around everywhere except where I cast my hook.”
“You’re not a real fisherman,” said David. “There’s a knack to catching fish.”
“No, I’m not; and I don’t want to be,” was the man’s answer. “Of all the stupid jobs, I think fishing takes the cake.”
David was about to argue this point when another man came out from the cabin and joined them. At once David, wise in the look of sailormen from his acquaintance with them on the docks of Barmouth, decided that this was the skipper. The new arrival stretched his arms and yawned prodigiously. “Golly, I’m only half-awake yet,” he declared. “Sam, where’d you pick up this fellow?”
“He wanted to have a look at the boat,” said Sam. “In fact he was so set on having a look at her that I just had to invite him aboard.”
He said this with a sly glance at David, but if he had expected to get an angry denial he was disappointed, for David, leaning his arms on the rail, appeared to be in such a deep study of the shore as to allow for no interruption.
“The others gone ashore?” asked the skipper, evidently regarding the reason for David’s presence on the boat as a matter of small importance.
“Yes,” said Sam. He pulled a large watch from the upper pocket of his coat and looked at it. “And it’s about time they were coming back.”
There was no sign of them, however; and the sun began to slant toward the west, and then to dip behind the trees, and still there was no boat to be seen coming out from the cove. David, strolling up and down the deck, noticed that Sam was becoming impatient. After a while there was a fragrant odor of cooking, and David, putting his head in at the cabin door, saw that the skipper was getting supper in the galley.
The sun had set when the skipper’s voice announced that food was ready. “Come along,” Sam said to David, and though the invitation was not very cordial David went down to the cabin and ate his fair share of the meal.
Afterwards the three, on deck, watched the shore for a boat. And when the beach was quite dark and Sam had looked at his watch a dozen times, he said, almost angrily, “Well, Captain, I think it’s about time to beat it. They must have changed their plans. We don’t want to stay here all night.”
The skipper glanced at David. “How about him?” he asked, with a jerk of the head.
“He can help you sail the boat down to Gosport. That’ll pay for his supper.”
David was tired of inaction. To sail to Gosport attracted him much more than staying here at anchor any longer. He spoke up quickly:
“Yes, Captain. I know something about handling sails.”
“Good enough. That’s more than Sam does,” remarked the skipper. “He’s about as useful in handling this boat as a belaying-pin.”
Shortly the anchor was up and the fishing-smack under way. David carried out the skipper’s orders with proper efficiency. With a gentle breeze the boat stole southward along the shore, and in half-an-hour the lights of the little settlement of Gosport were glimmering over the water.
The smack came up to a wharf. “Now,” said Sam to David, “you can go ashore if you like. The captain and I may do a little cruising, but we don’t need you any longer.”
“Thanks,” said David. He had a retort on the tip of his tongue, but wisely forbore to utter it. He jumped ashore. “If you come to Barmouth, look me up,” he called back. “I’ll be glad to show you the town.”
There was a laugh from the skipper, but none from Sam. Immediately the fishing-smack pushed out again.
Gosport was a small place, and David knew no one there. He felt in his pocket, and found he had no money to pay his fare to Barmouth. He walked along the waterfront, considering what he should do, and presently came upon a young man, who was starting the engine of a small motor-boat.
“You’re not going anywhere in the neighborhood of Camp Amoussock, are you?” David asked the man in the boat.
The other looked around and surveyed the fellow who had asked the question. “Are you one of the boys from the camp?”
“I was there at dinner.” And in a few words David told the story of what had happened to him during the afternoon.
“Well,” said the man, “that’s a queer yarn. I was just going out for a moonlight spin, and I might as well go up to the camp as anywhere. Jump aboard.”
David accepted with alacrity. The motor-boat chugged out from the landing-stage, and leaving a smooth silver ripple, darted north.
The owner of the motor-boat—he had told David that his name was Henry Payson—said that, although he had only been a month at Gosport, he knew that part of the coast quite well, and had never happened to see any fishermen in the cove that David described. “That fellow Sam was a vindictive chap,” he added musingly. “But you know, it almost seems as if he had some other object than merely showing his spitefulness when he took you off in his boat.”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed David. “But Tom and Lanky were still at the cove. He didn’t lay hands on them.”
“Well,” said Payson, “the cove’s around that next point of land. No use stopping there now, I suppose. Your friends will surely have gone back to camp.”
When the motor-boat rounded the point, however, Payson changed his mind. On shore there were a score of lanterns; both banks of the cove fairly bristled with them. “Hello,” exclaimed Payson, “there’s something doing there all right!” And he altered his course so as to bring his craft into the mouth of the river.
As the boat ran up to the bridge boys came down from both sides, apparently all the boys of Camp Amoussock.
“Why, it’s Dave!” cried John Tuckerman. And immediately the two in the boat were the target of a volley of questions.
“Hold on!” cried David. “Wait a minute.” He swung himself out of the boat and up to the bridge.
“Where are Lanky and Tom?” someone asked.
“Aren’t they here?” said David. And as Tuckerman and Mr. Perkins and the boys from the camp crowded around he told them briefly his adventures since dinner.
“We’ve been hunting for you ever since supper,” said Mr. Perkins. “I can’t imagine where Larry and Tom can have gone.”
“Those three men rowed in here in the dory,” said David. “Perhaps they carried Larry and Tom off somewhere.”
“We’ve hunted through every shack,” said Bill Crawford. “And we’ve been down the coast a couple of miles.”
The chorus of voices explaining where they had hunted started in again, interrupted by Mr. Perkins giving the order to his troop to take the road back to camp.
David thanked Henry Payson, and the motor-boat chugged away. By the path along the shore the searchers regained Camp Amoussock. And there Mr. Perkins and John Tuckerman and David held a council as to what to do next.
The upshot was that Mr. Perkins got out a small car, and with Tuckerman and David set out to see if they could learn any news of the missing boys.