The stranger’s cigar was almost blazing with the vigour of his smoking.
“She came into the harbour of Southport—that’s on Grand Island, below here, where we are bound—one day last summer, to pick up a guest at the hotel. There were two men aboard her, and it turned out that these two men, and the man they were after at the hotel, had committed a robbery at Benton. That’s way up the river.
“Well, it’s a long story how they were discovered; but they were, and some jewels they had hidden were recovered. I said they were captured—but one, a man named Chambers, got away in this very yacht. But he came back, later, and set fire to the hotel for revenge.
“That was along toward the end of the summer. Then it happened that Jack, here,—Jack Harvey,—captured the man, Chambers, in this yacht, down in a thoroughfare below Grand Island. Jack’s boat, the Surprise, was sunk there, when the two yachts crashed together, bow on.”
“Poor old Surprise!” interrupted Jack Harvey.
“Well, then,” continued Henry Burns, “there is a man over at Southport, Squire Brackett, that hates all us boys, just because he is mean. He told Witham, the hotel proprietor, that he had seen us boys in the hotel basement, shortly before the fire; and he and Witham had us accused of setting it, although everybody in Southport was indignant about it. And all this time, Jack was on the right track, because he had seen the man running from the fire and had followed him over to the other shore of the island, and recognized the boat he sailed away in.
“So Jack sailed down the other side of the island, and captured the man, Chambers, in the thoroughfare; that is, Jack and his crew did. And they brought Chambers back just at the right time—and Squire Brackett and Witham were so ashamed they wanted to go and hide away somewhere.”
The man they had taken aboard looked smilingly at Henry Burns.
“That is certainly a remarkable story,” he said, knocking the ashes carelessly from the end of his cigar.
“Yes, but the rest of it is the oddest part of it,” responded Henry Burns. “There was an old lady named Mrs. Newcome, whose life we saved at the fire. She was furious at the squire and Witham for blaming us, and thankful enough when Jack got us out of it.