CHAPTER XXVII
A DAZZLING DISCOVERY
With La Rue’s cry still ringing in his ears, Ralph rushed to the edge of the bridge and peered over. Alongside nothing could be seen but swirling, rushing foam.
But suddenly a flash revealed to Ralph the fact that they had run aground on the point of either an island or the mainland, he could not, for the time being, determine which. Trees and rocks could be made out by the frequent flashes, which showed, also, that the River Swallow had grounded bow on, and was now swinging outward with the current.
Ralph was recalled from his observations by a voice behind him. It was Hansen, the Norwegian. The man had stopped his engines, being seaman enough to know what had occurred as soon as he felt the grinding shock of the landing.
“We bane gone ashore, sare?” he asked.
“Yes, we’ve grounded, Hansen, and I must tell you that your wretch of a master Hawke, while crazed with fright, threw himself overboard. I fear he is lost forever.”
The Norwegian appeared dazed. His fishy blue eyes rolled wildly.
“La Rue bane dade?” he muttered.
“I don’t know anything about La Rue,” said Ralph, thinking the man had not rightly understood him, “I said Hawke had gone. He jumped overboard when we struck. Crazy from fright, I guess.”
“He bane all de same,” said the Norwegian calmly. “Hawke bane La Rue, La Rue bane Hawke. I bane glad he gone.”
“Glad, why?” exclaimed Ralph, horrified at the man’s callousness.
“He bane bad man. He say if I don’t do as he say he lose me mine yob. By yiminy, I got wife and childrens by mine home in Norvay. I no vant lose yob. So I do as he say.”
“What did he make you do?” asked Ralph, too interested for the minute to remember anything but what the man was saying.
“He bane make me take package off motor boat what come by Daxter Island by night. I have to give package to Malvin. Dey say dey bane smoggler and kill me if I talk.”
He sank his voice low.
“Dey bane make me halp Hawke while he put sand by carburetors.”
“So it was Hawke, or La Rue, that played that rascally trick!” cried Ralph.
“Sure. He bane hidden forvard. Dey hear you mean tell police about dem. Den dey cook up plan so you no get avay.”
“The precious scamp! – but, well, he’s gone now. Hansen, you must come below and help me get Malvin on deck. Is he conscious, do you know?”
“He bane sit up when I come trou’ cabin from angine room,” said the man.
“Very well, then. We must get him up here. The boat is hard aground and may be going to break up. We must get ashore.”
“How we do dat?”
“We must swim for it. I’ll try the water and see how deep it is.”
The lead line showed, to Ralph’s great joy, that the water alongside was not beyond his depth. Both Hansen and Malvin were tall men. With good luck, it might be possible to wade ashore. It was while he was heaving up the lead that he noticed a dark object lying on the bridge, right where La Rue had taken his crazed leap.
He picked it up. It was La Rue’s coat. He had cast it off when he took his mad plunge.
As he handled the garment, Ralph suddenly felt a hard, oblong object in one of the pockets. It felt like a case. He plunged his hand into the pocket and drew out – the leather wallet that contained the priceless collection of gems!
What a find!
The boy’s head swam. La Rue, in the desperation of terror, had entirely forgotten the fortune in precious stones. Hastily Ralph thrust the wallet into his pocket.
“You bane find something,” came a voice behind him. Hansen’s voice. Had the Norwegian seen anything? Ralph by no means trusted the man, and he didn’t like the idea of his knowing of the great find.
“It was La Rue’s watch,” he said; “he left it in his coat. Now let us go below and get Malvin on deck.”
“I’ll spare you that trouble,” came a voice behind them both.
They turned and faced Malvin himself. His head was bandaged. His face chalky white.
“Well, you got the upper hand of me,” he said, addressing Ralph, “but I bear no malice. Are we all going to the bottom?”
The man’s cool, calm demeanor offered an odd contrast to the cowardly behavior of La Rue. He appeared to have resigned himself to whatever fate was to be his.
“Better a grave in the river than a long sentence in a Federal penitentiary,” he muttered.
Ralph did not hear this. His mind was concerned with saving their lives. But, like a true boat captain, he still had a feeling that he owed a strong duty to the River Swallow.
“Before we go we must get out stern lines and fasten to them the spare anchors,” he declared. “The boat is riding easily now. If we can keep her stern swung out we may still be able to get her off when the storm dies down.”
Malvin flashed a glance at him. The boy’s voice had rung cool and determined. Malvin was no fool. He recognized in those accents the voice of authority. Moreover, although he had not the slightest intention of using it as a means of persuasion, Ralph had possessed himself of the revolver that La Rue had cast aside when he made his wild leap. The boy contrived that a glint of it should show as he spoke. He didn’t see any harm in providing that his orders should be backed up by a display of force if necessary.
As for Hansen, he was an old hand on the waters. The present situation did not alarm him particularly. He obeyed Ralph’s orders with alacrity. It was the force of habit acting on a man who had so long been accustomed to taking orders that obeying them was second nature.
It did not take long to cast the two spare anchors out astern and swing the River Swallow so that only her prow rested upon the rocks. As mentioned before, she was a very light draft boat and four feet of water was ample to float her.
“She’ll lie snug enough now,” declared Ralph, when his orders had been carried out; “and now let’s see about getting ashore and finding out what sort of a place this is that we have struck.”
The River Swallow’s emergency rope steps were found to be capable of reaching the water’s edge. The lead had already told them that the depth was shallow. Hansen went first with Malvin, displaying no hesitation in following him. Ralph, true to the traditions of the captain’s office, came last. He found Malvin and Hansen half-way to shore, wading painstakingly and not without difficulty, through the swift rushing waters.
The two gained the beach ahead of Ralph. He had supposed that they would be waiting for him. But when he reached the shore he could see nothing of them, and, although he shouted, he gained no response to his cries.
It was then that a disquieting thought occurred to him.
Hansen had seen him transfer a package from La Rue’s coat to his own pocket.
Was it not possible that the man had guessed, through some previous knowledge, that the package he had abstracted was the wallet containing the precious stones destined for transfer across the border? In such a case it behooved him to be on the keen lookout for a surprise of some sort. From what he knew of him, Malvin was not the sort of man to allow a fortune in gems to get into the hands of the enemy.
Ralph felt his breast pocket as, wet through to the skin and half exhausted from his struggle against the rapidly running water, he stood on the shore. A satisfying feeling rewarded his touch. So far he held a prince’s ransom in gems secure.
How long could he do so? Ralph realized that the instant he had become possessed of the wallet of gems he had incurred a responsibility which it might tax his keenest abilities to carry out.
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHECKMATED
“Hull-o-o-o-h!”
Ralph sent the cry shrilly echoing among the trees and brush that topped the rocky rise edging the beach upon which they had struck.
There was no answer. Again and again he sent the cry forth, while the storm whipped it out from his lips and scattered it broadcast. But to his far-flung appeals there came no rejoinder.
“Deserted!” muttered Ralph. “That shows how much those fellows really amount to. When they thought they were going to the bottom they were glad enough to depend upon me. Now that their feet have struck the hard shore they’re off again. Within a week they will be up to new schemes of villainy.”
Thoroughly decided in his mind that Hansen and Malvin, once having gained the shore, had left him to shift for himself, Ralph hesitated about his next move.
The storm had abated, but muttering peals of thunder and spasmodic flashes of lightning showed that it was still hovering about the vicinity. The rain fell in torrents, but Ralph was already so thoroughly soaked that this caused him but small inconvenience. His thoughts were centered on the treachery of the other survivors. The least they might have done, he mused, would have been to await his coming on shore. Then they could have taken counsel together and decided upon their next move.
The strain of the night had told upon the boy. He felt nervous, irritable and chilled. Even La Rue’s fate, much as it had bothered him at first (rascal though the man was), now held little of interest for him. His sole idea was to find some place of shelter, and then he would sleep – and sleep, till nature was recuperated.
It was no light task that the boy had performed. Few persons but those who knew the river could have imagined the tireless skill and vigilance necessary, if a craft, once caught in the vortex of a St. Lawrence storm, was to be kept from disaster.
The trust imposed in him Ralph had loyally carried out while opportunity served. It was through no fault of his that, caught in a swirling eddy with an inexperienced engineer to answer his signals, the River Swallow lay helpless.
And yet Ralph was not weak enough to blame anybody but himself. He saw now, and all too clearly, that it had been an error of judgment for him to send both Harry Ware and Percy Simmons ashore at Piquetville. With even one of them to aid him, he might have been able to stand off the rascals who wanted to gain possession of the River Swallow till aid of some sort arrived.
All these thoughts, and many others, surged through his mind as, brain-sick, footsore and wet to the skin, he stood on the beach and looked at the dark hulk on the waters which he knew was the River Swallow. Ralph had never, in all his adventurous times, felt so much like quitting as he did right then and there.
He ran over in memory other predicaments in which he had been placed: The ruined mission from which he had had to escape by a swaying rope from a tower that rose a hundred feet above the solid ground; the terrible trap into which the boys had fallen in the Northwest, and from which they had escaped only by a desperate leap across a boiling, swirling river, ultimately to seek refuge on a drifting log. Once more he recollected their experiences in the Canadian Rockies; the dread moment when the bear almost had them in his grasp at the entrance to the subterranean cavern.
But all these paled into insignificance in his mind beside the present situation.
In all the predicaments which his excited mind had hastily recalled it was either his life or his companion’s that was at stake. Now, however, in addition to the personal equation, the salvation of a fine craft – the River Swallow– depended upon his grit and enterprise.
“Well, there’s no use standing here,” he said to himself, as he listened to the rumbling of the storm dying away in the distance.
Before the tempest broke the weather had been hot, oppressive, in fact. Now the air had become almost chilly in contrast. Ralph, in his wet clothes, shuddered. The night breeze that crept along in the wake of the storm made him feel that a warm fire would be welcome.
“No use standing still here,” he mused; “there’s nothing to be done till morning, at any rate. If this is the mainland, there should be some farmer’s house in sight. In the event that we have struck an island, it seems almost equally positive that some one is living upon it.”
He sat down in the lee of a rock, sheltered from the driving rain and the wind, and considered his position. On second thoughts, it did not seem so serious. He had checkmated a gang of ruffians, and as he thought of this he gave his chest a thump.
The wallet with the fortune within its transparent inside cover was still there. He controlled the situation. The next morning he resolved that, no matter what happened, he would deliver the entire collection to the authorities.
“Thank goodness, Hansen did not guess what I had taken,” he said to himself. “In fact, I doubt if either Malvin or Hawke would have made enough of a confidant of him to let him know that they had such a sum in precious stones to sneak across the border. So far as I can see, this Hansen was a sort of weak-kneed go-between. He was entirely in their power. Their tool, in fact.”
Musing in this way, Ralph arose to his feet. The rain still beat down, but it was not as violent as before.
Far off, intermittent flashes could be seen on the horizon. The storm had plainly passed.
Ralph patted the pocket wherein reposed the gems.
“Checkmated,” he chuckled, “checkmated, by all that’s wonderful! Now for some sleep and then – to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXIX
A HERMIT OF THE ST. LAWRENCE
For some time Ralph floundered and stumbled along the beach in the direction which he had elected to follow. At length, as he rounded a point, he caught sudden sight of a light, burning amid a clump of stunted, dwarfed cedar trees.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Where there’s a light there’s a promise, anyhow, of a fire and something to eat. Eat! I’ve almost forgotten what the word means, and as for sleep – ”
Ralph’s lips parted in an expansive yawn.
“Oh, for a bed! I could sleep the clock round, I do declare,” he confessed to himself.
With the light as an inspiring goal, he pushed forward vigorously along the beach, wondering to himself, meanwhile, if Hansen and Malvin had reached a place of refuge.
“At any rate, they don’t deserve one,” he thought. “Their desertion of me was a base bit of business. If they have to stay out to-night with the stars for a counterpane and the earth for a cot, I, for one, have no great sympathy for them.”
In due time he reached the place from which he had perceived the light shining through the night. So far as he could see, it was a rough-looking shanty, built of driftwood and old timbers nailed or fastened together in haphazard fashion. The light was proceeding from a small window and, peering in through this, Ralph was able to see a very old man seated at a rough table, apparently repairing a fish net.
“I’ve heard strange stories about some of these squatters along the St. Lawrence,” said the boy to himself, as he hesitated outside the door. “I hardly know if I ought to knock or not. Suppose this is some maliciously disposed old hermit, like that one we met down in Texas?”
He hesitated thus for several minutes; but at last he mustered up the resolution to knock on the door.
He struck a good thundering tattoo with his knuckles, and was immediately rewarded by hearing a voice from within. It was querulous, old and cracked. Plainly, it belonged to just such an old man as he had seen seated at the table when he looked through the window. He was an old, bald-headed, patriarchal-looking man.
Despite the apparent age of the occupant of the lone hut on the St. Lawrence, he looked hale and hearty. Ralph’s first view had established this. The old man’s skin was pink and clear, his blue eyes bright, and although he stooped, he showed traces of having been a well-built, powerful man in his youth.
“Rap! rap! rap!” went Ralph’s knuckles again.
Then from within: “Wa’al, what cher want?”
“To see whoever lives here,” spoke up Ralph.
“Who are you?”
“A boy that was cast up here to-night on a motor boat that went aground.”
“Wa’al, speak up, can’t cher? What cher want?”
“To sleep here to-night and a chance to dry my clothes,” replied Ralph, greatly puzzled over the brusqueness of his reception.
“You ain’t one of the La Rue gang?”
Ralph’s heart gave a leap. What could this venerable old solitary know of the La Rue gang?
“No, of course I’m not one of the La Rue gang,” declared Ralph, in an indignant tone. “If I was I guess I might have better quarters. Open up now, will you?”
“I’m a-comin’! I’m a-comin’. Gosh all fish hooks, but yer in a tearin’ hurry, young fellow.”
“So’d you be if you’d gone through a quarter of what I have in the last few hours,” replied Ralph.
The door was flung open and a lamp held high above the head of the shack’s occupant. Seemingly he wanted to make sure of Ralph before he admitted him.
“City, be’ant you?” he asked.
“Well, I’ve been around in cities a bit,” confessed Ralph.
“Oh, well, none the worse for that, I dessay. Come in. You don’t look as if you’d bite.”
Ralph caught himself recalling some recent moving pictures on board the River Swallow.
“Oh, I don’t know,” rejoined the boy, with a smile he could not control, “just give me something to bite on and I’ll see what I can do with it.”
The old man set out baked beans and bacon, cold potatoes, cold corn and a piece of soggy pie.
“Fire’s done plum give out, er I’d give yer coffee,” he said apologetically.
“Never mind,” said Ralph. “I’d rather have water. You get fine water here on the – ”
He paused an instant to give the old man a chance to speak.
“Island,” croaked the veteran, “Castle Island, we calls it on ’count the odd-shaped rocks and stuff.”
In this simple manner Ralph ascertained without more ado that he was on an island. This, at least, was a valuable bit of information. It gave him something to go on.
His host at this point appeared to wake up to the fact that, while he had been talking pretty freely with his guest, Ralph had not yet unbosomed himself of any of his affairs. The old man’s inquiries were minute.
Ralph told him all of the truth that he thought advisable. Of course he made no mention of the gems or of the smuggling episodes. To old man Whey, as the old chap said he was to be called, he accounted for his presence on the island by saying that his motor boat had run aground.
The old man inquired where the accident had taken place, and Ralph quickly placed him in possession of all the details.
“That’s nuffin’,” declared old man Whey; “we’ll have her off there in mighty quick time. Lucky thing you landed in Deer Bay; otherwise you’d have got in bad waters. If you are lying where I think you are, you can come pretty nigh gettin’ off under your own power.”
It had already become clear that old man Whey knew the river like a book. To Ralph it appeared that here was a good man to tie to.
“If you’ll help me get my boat off in the morning, and we succeed in floating her, I’ll give you whatever you choose to take for your services.”
The old man exploded.
“Sho, boy! Kain’t I do a good turn ter my neebor?” he asked. “Pay me, indeed! My fishing and the work I do for the cottagers once in a while gives me all I want. Pay me, indeed! Git right into that bunk now. Sleep your head off. I’ll call you when I’m ready in the morning.”
Ralph was nothing loath to turn in on the rough sleeping shelf assigned to him. But before closing his eyes he thrust the wallet containing the gems under his pillow.
“It’ll be safe there,” he muttered drowsily to himself.
But in the morning when he awakened the wallet with its fortune in gems was gone.
And also among the missing was old man Whey.
CHAPTER XXX
THE STOLEN SKIFF
The sun streamed into the miserable old shanty. It had looked unattractive enough by night. Seen by day it was ten times more shabby and ramshackle. Old fish nets, ragged, frayed lines, all the paraphernalia of a river fisherman lay scattered about.
On the crude table stood some unwashed tin dishes, great shad-flies and eel bugs buzzing about them with a whirring sound. Against the wall hung some of old Whey’s clothes, queer, homemade garments, half patches and half the original material; it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. The sunlight that streamed into the squalid place, which had an untidy, dirt floor, came from the same window through which Ralph had observed the light the night before.
The place was the typical home of a St. Lawrence River fisherman. In one corner stood the old man’s most cherished possessions, his sturgeon spears and a big jack lantern for night fishing. A crude attempt at taxidermy, too, was above an open fireplace at one end of the hut – a stuffed “butter-ball” duck. It stood wobbling on one leg, the seams of its sewn-up skin bursting through with the cotton that stuffed it.
In the opposite corner was a rusty stove with three legs, the place of a fourth support being supplied by a log. A few tin plates, clumsy knives and forks, bags of flour, potatoes, onions and other staples about completed the furnishings of the hut. The roof was leaky, as some muddy pools on the floor and the sunlight streaming through sundry holes into the room, amply testified.
Ralph’s eye took in all this in a few seconds. Then his mind reverted to his loss. Beyond a doubt, old man Whey was the thief. The old rascal must have decided to search his guest in the night and abstract whatever of value he found. The boy could not help an indignant exclamation as he thought of the almost priceless collection of gems the old man’s rapacious fingers had gathered in.
“Just to think,” exclaimed Ralph indignantly, “that an old, half-senile man should have robbed me of precious stones that I thought nobody could take from me!”
Angry at his lack of caution in not having hidden them before he entered the hut, Ralph went to the door. It was ajar, and a touch threw it open. Outside, the morning sparkled brightly. The hut was on the river’s edge. On the shore was drawn up a St. Lawrence skiff, a narrow, double-ended craft of a type peculiar to the great river.
Its oars lay on their fixed thole pins and the line that lay up on the beach was bone dry. Plainly, if this was the old man’s only boat, which, considering his poverty-stricken state, was likely, old Whey had not been out that morning.
This rather puzzled Ralph. He had made up his mind that the old man had risen as soon as the storm died out – or perhaps he had not gone to bed at all – and had looted his garments and bed and then made off with their valuable contents. If the venerable thief had decamped, however, it was plain he had not gone in his own boat; that is, unless he was possessed of more than one, which, for the reasons mentioned, was highly improbable.
Some bacon was in a frying-pan on the rusty stove in which a fire was smoldering. A pot of coffee, also, stood there; and with some bread from one of the corner cupboards Ralph managed to make a rough breakfast. Then, refreshed and invigorated, he set out for the scene of the wreck. Naturally, the desire to see how badly the River Swallow was damaged was uppermost in his mind. It outweighed even his worry over the losing, or, rather, the theft, of the leather wallet.
He had not proceeded very far when his steps were arrested by a low cry from a clump of brush back from the beach.
“Don’t strike me again! Don’t!” came in a trembling voice from whoever was concealed there.
“Somebody hurt,” said Ralph to himself, and began to hasten up the beach toward the clump of bushes.
As his footsteps crunched on the gravel the voice broke out afresh:
“It’s the boy’s wallet, I tell you. You mustn’t steal it! Give it back! Give it back!”
Much mystified at this mention of the wallet, Ralph parted the bushes. He had hardly done so, when he started back with an exclamation. Old man Whey lay there in a crumpled heap. Apparently he was injured. But Ralph soon discovered that although the old man’s face had been bruised by a brutal blow he was not badly hurt.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Whey?” asked the boy, blaming himself for his suspicions of the old man. “What has happened?”
“Oh, is it you, my boy?” asked the old man, opening his eyes. “Three men came to the hut while you were asleep. I had dozed off and opened my eyes in time to see them taking something from under your pillow.”
“Those men!” cried Ralph, guessing the truth. “Were there three of them?”
“Yes. I saw them take your wallet. I chased them and told them to give it back, but they laughed at me and then struck my face as you see, and threw me into these bushes. I’m not much hurt, but I’m half dead from fright.”
Ralph’s mind was busy reconstructing things. There were three men. That, then, made it plain that La Rue had not perished, but had managed to get ashore through the shallow water. He must have met Malvin and the Norwegian sailor when they landed, which accounted for the prompt disappearance of the latter two.
Apparently, then, they had watched him (Ralph) come ashore, and had tracked him to the hut of old man Whey. Having done this, they had awaited an opportunity to recover the gems, which Hansen had evidently seen Ralph transfer from the coat pocket of La Rue’s discarded garment to his own. It may be said here, that this is precisely what had happened and Ralph’s guesses were not a whit short of the whole truth of the matter.
Despite his anxiety to reach the scene of the wreck, the boy felt that his first duty lay to old man Whey, who was in a pitiable condition of shakiness over his fright. But when Ralph had helped him to his feet, he rallied and began to grow quite angry.
“Ah! If I’d been young and strong like I was once this wouldn’t have happened,” he quavered. “I’d have given them something to think over. Yes, I would. But I’m old and all alone since Jimmie left me.”
“Who was Jimmie?” asked Ralph, more to keep the old man’s mind off his brutal treatment than anything else, as the two advanced toward the hut.
“Jimmie! Why, he was my grandson. He was a fine little lad, Jimmie was, but he was lost in his boat two years ago, and I’ve never got a trace of him since.”
“Lost? You mean that he was lost in a storm?”
“Yes. Jimmie was out fishing when one of those storms we call a twister came up. The last I saw of him he was being blown round that point yonder. I’ve never seen him since. He’d be about twelve years old now, Jimmie would. He was a fine boy,” garrulously went on the old man, “and after his father, my last living son, died, Jimmie meant a lot to me.”
His voice broke and his dim old eyes grew dimmer.
“You don’t think it possible that he may have been saved?” inquired Ralph, with a vague hope of comforting the old man.
Old Whey shook his head mournfully.
“No, sir. Jimmie’s dead and gone, he is, and the old man is left alone. All alone.”
After he had had some strong coffee and breakfast, however, the old man rallied. He said he would accompany Ralph to the scene of the wreck. He suggested taking the row boat, as it would be easier than walking. Just as a westerner catches up a pony rather than walk a quarter of a mile, so a denizen of the St. Lawrence always travels in a skiff or a punt or a “put-put” (St. Lawrence for motor boat), if he is lucky enough to possess one.
But when they came out of the hut, imagine the surprise of the old man and the boy when they saw that the boat had gone!
There was no question about it, the skiff had vanished utterly without leaving a trace.
They hurried to the beach, the old man almost tearful over this new calamity. Ralph bent and examined the ground in the vicinity of the place where the boat had lain. Then he straightened up with an angry exclamation.
“La Rue’s work again!” he cried. “Three men have been here and, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was La Rue and his companions. They have escaped from the island with the gems in your stolen boat.”