“To Oxford. Egan is a sailor-man, and—you know Mr. Shelby, of course.”
These words enabled the students to see through Mack’s plan at once, and they made another boisterous demonstration of delight and approval. They knew Mr. Shelby, who owned the finest and swiftest yacht in Oxford. He was an academy boy, and had once been famous as a good runner. He was a soldier as well as a sailor, as full of fun and mischief as any boy in Mack’s squad, and just the man to help Lester and his band with one hand, while giving their pursuers a lift with the other. Of course he would lend them his yacht and take as deep an interest in the race as any student among them.
Breakfast over, Don asked and obtained permission to run up to Mr. Packard’s and let him know what had become of the Sylph. To his great surprise the old gentleman took it as a huge joke, and laughed heartily over it. He warned Don that the schooner was a hard boat to beat when Coleman was at the helm, and declared that if the deserters would return her safe and sound, they might keep her a month and welcome. He would never make them any trouble on account of it. He was sorry to give up his cruise, but then his brother had just left Newport in his yacht, and when he arrived, he (Mr. Packard) would go off somewhere with him. It was plain that his sympathies were all with the runaways, although he knew nothing of the great service they were going to render him and others. If it hadn’t been for those same deserters, Mr. Packard would never again have seen his brother alive.
CHAPTER XV.
ANOTHER TEST AND THE RESULT.
“Keep her away, Burgess! If the ragged end of that spar hits us it may send us to the bottom. Slack away the fore-sheet! Stand by, everybody, and don’t let him go by for your lives! He looks as though he couldn’t hold on another minute.”
It was Egan who issued these hurried orders. He was standing on the weather-rail of Mr. Shelby’s yacht, the Idlewild, which was sailing as near into the wind’s eye as she could be made to go, now and then buoying her nose in a tremendous billow that broke into a miniature cataract on her forecastle and deluged her deck with water. He was drenched to the skin, and so were the boys who were stationed along the rail below him, trembling all over with excitement, and watching with anxious faces one of the most thrilling scenes it had ever been their lot to witness.
There had been a terrible storm along the coast. It was over now, the clouds had disappeared and the sun was shining brightly; but the wind was still blowing half a gale, there was a heavy sea running, and the waves seemed to be trying their best to complete the work of destruction that had been commenced by the storm. Two points off the weather-bow there had been, a few minutes before, a little water-logged sloop, over which the waves made a clean breach; but she was gone now. All on a sudden her bow arose in the air, her stern settled deep in the water, and the yacht, which had set sail from Newport a few days before with a merry party of excursionists on board, went down to the bottom of the bay. Broad on the Idlewild’s beam was the Sylph, the deserters working like beavers to rescue the crew of the sunken yacht, heedless or ignorant of the fact that they were in jeopardy themselves, their vessel being so badly handled by the frightened and inexperienced boy at her wheel, that she was in imminent danger of broaching to. Tossed about by the waves which rolled between the Idlewild and the Sylph was a broken spar to which a student, with a pale but determined face, clung desperately with one arm, while in the other he supported the inanimate form of a little boy. The student was Enoch Williams, and the boy was Mr. Packard’s nephew.