“We got in about five this morning and had breakfast aboard. Then I showed dad the boat and he thought she was swell. Luckily I had the key with me and could get inside. Of course I was surprised to find you fellows weren’t aboard, but I thought maybe you’d gone to the hotel for dinner last night and that it had rained so hard you’d decided to spend the night there. But Barry was here and maybe he wasn’t glad to see me! Well, about half-past seven I saw dad off on the train. Then I came back and didn’t have anything to do. So I thought I’d like to see if I could run her myself. I’d watched Nel lots of times and was pretty sure I could do it. So I tried and there wasn’t any trouble at all. I thought you fellows would come along about eight and find the boat gone and have a fit. Then I was going to come back in time for the last spasm. But she went so well and it was such fun that I went farther than I meant to, and all of a sudden she got peeved and began to cut up.”
“How?” asked Nelson.
“She lost sparks and pretty near stopped. ‘Me to the rescue,’ thinks I. I’d seen you do stunts with the vaporizer thing, you know, so I tried my hand. Well, first thing I knew she wouldn’t go a foot! Just spit and sighed and sulked. I turned that wheel over about a thousand times, I’ll bet! Took my coat off and then my vest, and wilted my collar, but there was nothing doing. ‘Then,’ thinks I, ‘it’s up to little Dannie to do some towing.’ So I put the tender over and came down to change my clothes. That’s where I fell down.”
“I should think so,” said Bob disgustedly.
“You see,” continued Dan, with a grin, “I hadn’t slept very well on the boat coming from New York and I’d got up early. So I was awfully sleepy and tired. ‘So,’ says I to myself, ‘I’ll just lie down here on the bunk a minute and rest up’; I knew I had a hard job ahead of me. Well, that’s about all I remember until I woke up a while ago and smelled coffee; I guess it was the coffee that woke me. At first, when Nelson sung out and told me you were three to one, I thought I was still dreaming. Then I did some thinking and guessed that somehow or other you’d taken me for some one else. I didn’t know what the gag was, but I thought I’d see it through. When you told me to hand over my revolver I remembered Bob’s and got that out. I did what I could for you, you see. But I came near spoiling it by laughing. When I heard Nel’s stern voice I thought I’d have to stuff a pillow in my mouth!”
“It’s good you didn’t get gay and come through the door,” said Nelson grimly. “If you had you’d been laid out with a monkey wrench on the side of your head.”
“That would have been a wrench,” laughed Dan. “Give me some more of the hash, Tommy; it’s the best ever.”
After luncheon was over they decided to go on and try to make New Haven that evening. It was not yet three o’clock and they would have four hours and a half of daylight in which to cover about forty-five miles. So the tender was hoisted aboard and the Vagabond was cast loose from the wharf, and twenty minutes later they left the river water and turned westward. Bob gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad to see the last of that place. I’d begun to think that we were going to spend the rest of the summer there!”
A moment later Tom pointed out the Seamont Inn where it stood on a hill a short distance back from the shore. And for the next half hour he regaled Dan with a history of his brief connection with that hostelry.