The Mercer Boys' Cruise in the Lassie

by Capwell Wyckoff

They were now before a wild section of the country. There was not a light to be seen along the shore and the only sound, other than the steady and powerful throb of the marine engine, was the hollow boom of the huge waves on the shore. Terry judged by the sound that there was some shoal near the shore which accounted for the booming sound, for he had read of such things. And then his thoughts were diverted by the fact that Frank was throttling down the engine and swinging the cruiser around toward the shore.

Little as Terry knew about sailing it nevertheless puzzled him as to why the engine should be shut down while so far from the shore, for he knew that they could not possibly drift in that distance. While he puzzled over this the answer was suddenly presented to him.

Something huge and black rose up alongside the cruiser and Terry very nearly cried out in astonishment. It was two or three full minutes before the explanation came to him. They were moored beside the wreck of a huge old ship, one which had been hard and fast aground for years, and because it was in this lonely stretch of beach it had never been burned or destroyed, except by the slow action of the waves. Frank was tying the bow of the cruiser to the splintered rail of the ship, and passing close to Terry while doing so. The task completed, Frank jumped to the deck and called to Benito.

“All tied up, boss,” he said. “Shall we lug that old boy aboard?”

Benito gave gruff orders and the keeper, protesting and a little frightened, was lifted from the bunk and carried out on deck. He was somewhat roughly shoved over the rotting rail of the wreck and the two bandits followed him. For another minute Terry could hear their voices and then all became still.

He raised himself slowly, realizing for the first time that he was stiff and sore. Waiting for an instant to be sure that the men would not return for something, and finding at last that they apparently had no intention of doing so, Terry stood up and surveyed the old ship before him. He did not fully realize just what type it was, but it was a three-masted schooner of the old type, long and low, with splintered stumps of masts and broken wood littering the decks in every direction. Although it had been battered fearfully by the waves it had nevertheless been sturdy enough to resist total destruction, and as it was practically certain that no one ever visited it, it was indeed an ideal hide-away for the gang.

Terry was at first tempted to steal the boat of the gang and run back down the coast to summon aid, and could have done so had he known how to run the thing, but he knew that he could not and so gave the project up. The only thing left for him was to do some further spying and see just what the inside of the schooner looked like. To try landing on an uninhabited coast was pure folly, and as the future was uncertain he decided that his best move lay in inspecting the craft. Accordingly, he stepped from the cabin roof to the deck of the schooner, noting as he did so that it had been named the Alaskan in the days of its pride and glory.

There was a large cabin in the very center of the schooner and toward it Terry made his way, stepping carefully over wreckage which littered the deck in every direction. He doubted if the men were in that particular cabin, for there was no light, but as there was pretty certain to be a good-sized hold under the ship he concluded that the actual place of concealment was there. At the doorway of the cabin he halted and looked around, but no one was in sight and he made his way down three steps, coming at last to the floor. It was wet and slippery but perfectly firm, and treading carefully Terry made his way toward another door which he could see at the other end of the cabin. A faint light shone through this door and he knew he was close to the nest which the outlaw band had made.

When he gained this door he found a new and safe ladder leading down into a large hold that took up much of the space of the ship. At the far end of this hold a small room had been partitioned off, and from this room a lantern sent its rays out into the big, barn-like hold. Terry crossed the hold, conscious of the lapping of water against the sides of the ship, and looked into the smaller room.

Benito and Frank were seated before a table, and the old lady who had been at the house on Mystery Island was setting some meat and potatoes before them. Terry had never seen the woman himself, but he was sure it was the same one from Don’s description of her. The keeper was sitting in a chair bound and apparently awaiting his turn to eat with sullen grace. From time to time Benito, who seemed in high spirits, turned to joke with his captive, but Timothy received all his advances with grunts and disagreeable faces, all of which amused the leader hugely.