“Act carefully, and everything will be well; but once give them cause for suspicion and they are dangerous men to deal with. I have a little score of my own to pay them,—but that’s a long story, and I’ll save it for another time. Now let’s go over this map, so I’ll be sure of my ground.”
When the train left Mayville, Miles Burton, with a hurried handshake, left Henry Burns. It was a little after six o’clock when the latter stepped ashore at Southport, where the boys were waiting for him, upon the wharf.
“Everything is all right,” said George Warren, in answer to Henry Burns’s question. “He was not on the roof at all during last night, for we divided up into watches and kept a lookout from Tom’s tent. He evidently knows about what time his friends are to arrive.”
“How is Colonel Witham?” asked Henry Burns. “Has he pined away any during my absence?”
“Not any to notice,” replied Tom Harris, “but he has gone away, down the island, to be gone two days. You must stop with us to-night at the tent, and the boys are all coming over to the tent now to eat one of Bob’s prime lobster stews.”
So the crowd marched on Bob, and found him down on the beach to the right of the tent, presiding over an enormous kettle, which was hung over the glowing coals of a fire of driftwood, and from which there arose such a savoury odour of stew that, in a burst of enthusiasm, they seized upon the stalwart young cook, and, raising him on their shoulders, bore him with hilarious shouts three times around the fire, much to the apparent discomfiture of the quiet Bob.
Then they sat about the fire while Tom brought some tin plates and spoons from the tent and acted as waiter, and Bob produced a pot of hot coffee and some bread. It seemed as though nothing had ever tasted so good. They called for stew till Bob’s stout right arm almost ached with wielding the long-handled tin dipper that served them for a ladle.
The sun sank while they sat about the glow of coals, and, by and by, the moon rose slowly over the distant cape and poured a flood of soft light over the waters of the bay. They remembered that night long afterward, for its soft lights and its silent, mystical beauty. The moon was at its full, and the tide crept up on the beach almost to the bed of coals that remained from the fire and still showed red. The islands far off across the bay seemed to have drifted nearer in to shore, and showed clear and distinct.
Henry Burns’s story of the day’s adventures lost nothing of its interest, told down there on the shore by the firelight and under the stars. His account of his visit to the banker’s, and how he had gained admittance to Mr. Curtis’s private office, filled them with glee.
“I should have liked to see him when he opened that box,” said young Joe. “Didn’t he look surprised, though, Henry?”