Joe Wayring at Home; or, The Adventures of a Fly-Rod

by Harry Castlemon

The vagabonds worked with surprising celerity, and in a very short space of time two of the finest boats in the lot had been pushed into the water, and the old woman was piling provisions into them by the armful, while Jake and Sam busied themselves in disposing of the other things as their sire had directed. I was sent whirling through the air toward the opposite side of the bay, and sad to relate, was stopped in my headlong flight by a tree, against which I struck with a sounding whack. There was a loud snap, and I fell to the ground helpless. My second joint was broken close to the ferrule.

I lay for a long time where I had fallen—so long that I began to wonder if I was to remain there until my ferrules were all rusted to pieces and I became like the mold beneath me. I heard Matt and his family leave the bay in the stolen boats. I knew when they forced their way through the bushes into the creek, and was greatly astonished to know that they turned down stream toward the pond, the direction in which their pursuers would have to go when they returned to the hotel. But Matt, the sly old fox, had reasoned with himself on this point before he adopted these extraordinary tactics. It lacked only about half an hour of night-fall, and Mr. Swan and his party would soon be obliged to go into camp; while Matt knowing every crook and turn in the creek, could travel as well in the dark as he could by daylight. Before the sun arose, he would be miles away and among friends. If Mr. Swan took it for granted that he had gone up instead of down stream, and went that way himself in hope of being able to overtake him, it would give the squatter just so much more time in which to make good his escape. It was a very neat trick on Matt’s part.

At last, after a long interval of waiting, I heard voices and footsteps on the other side of the bay. The birds having flown there was no need of caution, and some of the returning party were talking in their ordinary tones, while others were shouting back at their friends in the rear. My acute sense of hearing told me when they came out of the bushes, and I also caught the exclamations of rage and astonishment that fell from their lips when they saw what had been done in the bay during their brief absence. The guides were almost beside themselves with fury, but the two city sportsmen laughed uproariously.

“We’re a pretty set, I must say,” I heard one of them exclaim. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never should have believed that any man living could play a trick like this upon us. Two of the best boats, all the rods, provisions and dishes, as well as the frying-pans are gone. I think we had better camp right where we are, start for home at the first peep of day and never show our faces in the woods again.”

“Hallo! What’s this here?” cried one of the guides, who, for want of something better to do, had stepped into the skiff and shoved out into the bay. He looked down into the clear waters as he spoke, then seized the boathook, and after a little maneuvering with it, brought one of the frying-pans to light.

“And what’s that over there on the other side?” exclaimed the familiar voice of Mr. Swan.

“Why, it’s my unlucky bait-rod, as sure as the world,” said Arthur Hastings. “But he was lucky this time, wasn’t he? If he hadn’t lodged in the friendly branches of that evergreen, I should have thought that Matt Coyle had carried him off again.”

These unexpected discoveries led to a thorough examination of the bay and of the bushes surrounding it, and the result was most satisfactory. Before dark every single article that Jake and Sam had thrown away, had been recovered. There was nothing missing now except the boats and the provisions; but the loss of these things did not put the party to any great inconvenience. There was an abundance of game in the woods, plenty of fish to be had for the catching, and Matt’s scow could easily carry the four men who had lost their skiffs.

But little more remains to be told. Mr. Swan and his party camped “right where they were” that night, made an early start the next morning, and reached Indian Lake on the afternoon of the following day. The chums found their skiff in the best possible condition, and looking very nobby in her new dress, by which I mean a fresh coat of paint. They gave it another day in which to dry, then laid in a supply of provisions and fearlessly turned their faces toward the wilderness; while the two city sportsmen, thoroughly disgusted with their failure, and by the trick that Matt had so neatly played upon them, set out for home declaring that they would never visit Indian Lake again until their guns had been restored to them, and the man who stole them was safely lodged in jail.

During the next few days I had nothing to do but make myself miserable while the other rods caught the fish that were served up three times a day until the boys grew tired of them. I was glad when Joe said that it was time to start for home, but sorry for the disappointment he met when he got there. Uncle Joe, who was to have taken them upon an extended tour, “either East or West, they didn’t know which,” had suddenly been called away on important business, and the probabilities were that if they took their contemplated trip at all it would not be until near the end of the vacation; and then it would have to be a very short one. But Joe didn’t get sulky, as some boys would have done under like circumstances. He wrote to his uncle, found out when he was coming home, and suggested an immediate return to Indian Lake. Arthur and Roy were delighted with the proposal, and I was at once given into the hands of a skilled mechanic, who in two days’ time mended my broken joint so neatly that no one could tell, even with the closest scrutiny, that there had ever been any thing the matter with it. Joe came after me on the afternoon of the second day, and when he carried me to his room and stood me in the corner where I was to stay until something that he called “ferrule cement” had had time to harden, whom should I see but my old friend, the canvas canoe, occupying his usual place in the recess, and looking none the worse for his forced sojourn among the Indian Lake vagabonds.