CHAPTER XX.
Dismally barren and lonesome was that desolate bar between the "bay" and the ocean. Here and there it swelled up into great drifts and mounds of sand, which were almost large enough to be called hills; but nowhere did it show a tree or a bush, or even a patch of grass. Annie Foster found herself getting melancholy as she gazed upon it and thought of how the winds must sometimes sweep across it, laden with sea-spray and rain and hail, or the bitter sleet and blinding snow of winter.
"Dabney," she said, "was the storm very severe here last night and yesterday?"
"Worse here than over our side of the bay, ten times."
"Were there any vessels wrecked?"
"Most likely; but it's too soon to know just where."
At that moment the "Swallow" was running rapidly around a sandy point, jutting into the bay from the highest mound on the bar, not half a mile from the light-house, and only twice as far from the low, wooden roof of the "wrecking station," where, as Dab had explained to his guests, the life-boats and other apparatus were kept safely housed. The piles of drifted sand had for some time prevented the brightest eyes on board the "Swallow" from seeing anything to seaward; but now, as they came around the point and a broad level lay before them, Ham Morris sprang to his feet in sudden excitement as he exclaimed:
"In the breakers! Why, she must have been a three-master. All up with her now."
"Look along the shore!" shouted Dab. "Some of 'em saved, anyhow. The coast-men are there, life-boats and all."
So they were, and Ham was right about the vessel, though not a mast was left standing in her now. If there had been, indeed, she might have been kept off the breakers, as they afterward learned. She had been dismasted in the storm, but had not struck until after daylight that morning, and help had been close at hand and promptly given. No such thing as saving that unfortunate hull. She would beat to pieces just where she lay, sooner or later, according to the kind of weather and the waves it should bring with it.
The work done by the life-boat men had been a good one, and had not been very easy either, for they had brought the crew and passengers from the wreck safely to the sandy beach. They had even saved some items of baggage. In a few hours, the "coast wrecking tugs" would be on hand to look out for the cargo. No chance whatever for the 'longshoremen, good or bad, to turn an honest penny without working hard for it. Work and wages enough, to be sure, helping to unload, when the sea, now so very heavy, should go down a little; but "wages" were not what some of them were most hungry for.
Two of them, at all events—one a tall, weather-beaten, stoop-shouldered, grizzled old man, in tattered raiment, and the other, even more battered, but with no "look of the sea" about him—stood on a sand-drift gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the beatings of the surf.
"Not more 'n three hunder yards out. She'd break up soon 'f there was no one to hender. Wot a show we'd hev."
"I reckon," growled the shorter man. "Is your name Peter?"
"Aye. I belong yer. Allers lived about high-water mark. Whar'd ye come from?"
The only answer was a sharp and excited exclamation. Neither of them had been paying any attention to the bay side of the bar and, while they were gazing at the wreck, a very pretty little yacht had cast anchor, close in shore, and then, with the help of a row-boat, quite a party of ladies and gentlemen—the latter somewhat young-looking—had made their way to the land, and were now hurrying forward. They did not pay the slightest attention to Peter and his companion, but, in a few minutes more, they were trying to talk to those poor people on the sea-beach. Trying, but not succeeding very well, for the wreck had been a Bremen bark with an assorted cargo and some fifty passengers, all emigrants. German seemed their only tongue, and none of Mrs. Kinzer's pleasure-party spoke German.
"Too bad," Ford Foster was saying, when there came a sort of wail from a group at a little distance, and it seemed to close with—"pauvre enfant."
"French!" he exclaimed. "Why, they look as Dutch as any of the rest. Come on, Annie, let's try and speak to them."
The rest followed a good deal like a flock of sheep, and it was a sad enough scene which lay before them. No lives had been lost in the wreck, though there had been a great deal of suffering among the poor passengers, cooped up between-decks with the hatches closed, while the storm lasted. Nobody drowned, indeed, but all dreadfully soaked in the surf in getting ashore; and among the rest had been the fair-haired child, now lying there on his mother's lap, so pinched and blue, and seemingly so lifeless.
French, were they? Yes and no; for the father, a tall, stout young man, who looked like a farmer, told Ford they were from Alsace, and spoke both tongues.
"The child, was it sick?"
Not so much sick as dying of starvation and exposure.
Oh, such a sad, pleading look as the poor mother lifted to the moist eyes of Mrs. Kinzer as the portly widow bent over the silent boy. Such a pretty child he must have been, and not over two years old; but the salt water was in his tangled curls now, and his poor lips were parted in a weak, sick way, that spoke of utter exhaustion.
"Can anything be done, mother?"
"Yes, Dabney; you and Ham, and Ford and Frank, go to the yacht, quick as you can, and bring the spirit-heater, lamp and all, and bread and milk, and every dry napkin and towel you can find. Bring Keziah's shawl."
Such quick time they made across that sand-bar!
And they were none too soon; for, as they came running down to their boat, a mean, slouching sort of fellow walked rapidly away from it.
"He was going to steal it."
"Can't go for him now, Dab; but you'll have to mount guard here while we go back with the things."
He did so, and Ham and Frank and Ford hurried back to the other beach to find that Mrs. Kinzer had taken complete possession of that baby. Every rag of his damp things was already stripped off, and now, while Miranda lighted the "heater" and made some milk hot in a minute, the good lady began to rub the little sufferer as only a mother knows how.
Then there was a warm wrapping up in cloths and shawls, and better success than anybody had dreamed of in making the seemingly half-dead child eat something.
"That was about all the matter," said Mrs. Kinzer. "Now if we can get him and his mother over to the house, we can save both of them. Ford, how long did you say it was since they'd eaten anything?"
"About three days, they say."
"Mercy on me! And that cabin of ours holds so little! Glad it's full, anyhow. Let's get it out and over here at once."
"The cabin?"
"No, the provisions."
And not a soul among them all thought of their own lunch, any more than Mrs. Kinzer herself did; but Joe and Fuz were not just then among them. On the contrary, they were over there by the shore, where the "Jenny" had been pulled up, trying to get Dab Kinzer to put them on board the "Swallow."
"Somebody ought to be on board of her," said Fuz, in as anxious a tone as he could, "with so many strange people around."
"WHOM DO YOU THINK I'VE SEEN TO-DAY?"
"It isn't safe," added Joe.
"Fact," replied Dab; "but then I kind o' like to feel a little unsafe."
And the Hart boys felt, somehow, that Dab knew why they were so anxious to go on board, and they were right enough, for he was saying to himself at that moment,
"They can wait. They do look hungry, but they'll live through it. There aint any cuffs or collars in Ham's locker."
All there was then in the locker, however, was soon out of it when Mrs. Kinzer and the rest came, for they brought with them the officers of the wrecked bark, and neither Joe nor Fuz had a chance to so much as "help distribute" that supply of provisions. Ham went over to make sure it should be properly done, while Mrs. Kinzer saw her little patient with his father and mother safely stowed on board the "Swallow."
"I'll save that baby, anyhow," she said to Miranda, "and Ford says his father's a farmer. We can find plenty for 'em to do. They'll never see a thing of their baggage, and I guess they hadn't a great deal."
She was just the woman to guess correctly, but at that moment Dab Kinzer said to Annie Foster in a low tone:
"Whom do you think I've seen to-day?"
"I can't guess. Who was it?"
"The tramp!"
"The same one—"
"The very same. There he goes, over the sand-hill yonder, with old Peter, the wrecker. We've got to hurry home now, but I'm going to set Ham Morris on his track."
"You never'll find him again."
"Do you s'pose old Peter'd befriend a man that did what he did, right on the shore of the bay? No, indeed, there isn't a fisherman from here to Montauk that wouldn't join to hunt him out. He's safe whenever Ham wants him, if we don't scare him now."
"Don't scare him, then," whispered Annie.
The wind was fair and the home sail of the "Swallow" was really a swift and short one, but it did seem dreadfully long to her passengers. Mrs. Kinzer was anxious to see that poor baby safely in bed. Ham Morris wanted to send a whole load of refreshments back to the shipwrecked people. Dab Kinzer could not keep his thoughts from that "tramp." And then, if the truth must come out, every soul on board the beautiful little yacht was getting more and more aware, with every minute that passed, that they had had a good deal of sea air and excitement, and a splendid sail across the bay and back, but no dinner. Not so much as a herring or a cracker.