Ruel Smith - The Rival Campers - or, The Adventures of Henry Burns

“There be rough sailors come by some nights,” he said, in a manner apologizing for his suspicion. “I’m here alone, and” – he lowered his voice to a husky whisper – “they do say that I have a bit of money hid away in the old house. But it’s a lie. It’s a lie. It’s the sea and the garden I live on. There’s not a bit of money in the old house. But what brings you out in such a storm? You haven’t lost your way, have you?”

They told their story, while the old man sat in a chair, shaking his head dubiously. When they told him of the finding of the canoe, and their certainty that the boys had crossed in it, he declared that it could never have lived to get to the island.

“It must have come from down below,” he said. “It could never have been paddled across the bay against this sea. Two boys, d’ye say, paddled it? No. No, my lads, never – upon my life, never. Two stout men in a dory, and used to these waters, might have done it; but two lads in a cockle-shell like that would never have reached the Head, let alone getting beyond it.”

He seemed to regard them almost with suspicion, when they told him of how they had sailed up along shore in search of their comrades, and was perhaps inclined to believe their whole story as some kind of a hoax. Certain it was he gave them little comfort, except to say he would look alongshore in the morning. If any one had drowned offshore in the evening, they might not come ashore till the next day, he said.

But he got a battered lantern for them and handed it over with a trembling hand, cautioning them to be careful of it, and to leave it by the door on their way back. They heard him bolt the heavy door behind them as they turned out of the yard into the road. A clock in the kitchen had struck the hour of ten as they left the house.

“Isn’t it very probable, after all,” said George, as they walked along, “that the man may be right, and that this canoe we have found is one that has been lost off some steamer?”

“It seems to me perhaps as probable,” answered Henry Burns, “as that the boys should have attempted to keep on in the storm, having once reached a place of safety.”

“I wish I could think so,” said Arthur. “But I can’t help fearing the worst, – and if the boys are lost,” he exclaimed bitterly, “I’ve seen all I want to of this island for one summer. I’d never enjoy another day here.”

“I won’t believe it’s their canoe until I have to,” said George. “They are not such reckless chaps as we have been making them out.”

And he tried to say this bravely, as though he really meant it.

They tramped along the rest of the way to the shore in silence, for none of them dared to admit to another that which he could not but believe.

By the lantern’s dim and flickering light they searched the beach again for a half-mile along in the vicinity of where the canoe had come ashore. But nothing rewarded their hunt.

“The old man must be right,” said George Warren. “The canoe must have come ashore from some steamer. Let’s go home, anyway. We’ve done all we can.”

Heart-sick and weary, they began the tramp back to the cottage. At about a mile from the old farmhouse, where they left the lantern, they turned off from the road and made a cut across fields, till they came at length to the shore of the cove opposite the Warren cottage. They could see across the water the gleam of a large lantern which young Joe had hung on the piazza for them; but the boat they had expected to find drawn up on shore was gone.

“Old Slade must be over in town,” said Henry Burns; “and he won’t be back to-night, probably. So it’s either walk two miles more around the cove or swim out to the tender. We’re all of us tired out. Shall we draw lots to see who swims?”

“I’ll go, myself,” volunteered George. “I’d rather swim that short distance than do any more walking. I’m about done up, but I am good for that much.” And he threw off his clothing once more, and swam pluckily out to the tender and brought it ashore. They pulled across the cove to the shore back of the cottage, and, springing out, carried the boat high up on land.

They were at the cottage then in a twinkling; but, even before they had reached the door, dear Mrs. Warren, who had heard their steps upon the walk, was outside in the rain, hugging her boys who had braved the storm and who had come back safe. She was altogether too much overcome at the sight of them, it seemed, to inquire if they had found those in search of whom they had set out.

And then the dear little woman, having embraced and kissed them as though they had been shipwrecked mariners, long given up for lost, – not forgetting Henry Burns, who wasn’t used to it, but who took it calmly all the same, as he did everything else, – hurried them into the kitchen, where young Joe had the big cook-stove all of a red heat, and where dry clothing for the three from the extensive Warren wardrobe was warming by the fire.

A comical welcome they got from young Joe, who had been just as much worried as Mrs. Warren, but who hadn’t admitted it to his mother for a moment, and had scornfully denied the existence of danger, and yet who was every bit as relieved as she to see the boys safe. He tried not to appear as though a great weight had been removed from his mind by their return, but made altogether a most commendable failure.

The big, roomy, old-fashioned kitchen – for the Warren cottage had originally been a rambling old farmhouse, which they had remodelled and modernized – had never seemed so cosy before. And the fire had never seemed more cheery than it did now. And when they had scrambled into dry, warm clothing, and Mrs. Warren had taken the teakettle from the hob, and poured them each a steaming cup of tea, to “draw out the chill,” they forgot for the moment what they had been through and their sad discovery.

In fact, it seemed as though Mrs. Warren and young Joe were strangely indifferent to what had sent them forth, and were easily satisfied with the opinions expressed by the boys, who had agreed not to mention the finding of the canoe until something more definite was learned, that Tom and Bob had in all probability not left the river.

So easily satisfied, indeed, and so little affected by the fruitless errand they had been on, that all at once Henry Burns, who had been eying Mrs. Warren sharply for some moments, suddenly rose up from where he was sitting, and rushed out of the kitchen, through the dining-room, into the front part of the house. Wondering what had come over him, the others followed.

What they saw was a tableau, with Henry Burns as exhibitor. He had drawn aside the heavy portière with one hand, and stood pointing into the room with the other.

There, seated before the fireplace, were two boys so much like Tom and Bob, whom they had given up for lost, that their own mothers, had they been there, would have wept for joy at the sight of them. And then, what with the Warren boys pounding them and hugging them, like young bears, to make sure they were flesh and blood, and not the ghosts of Tom and Bob, and with the cheers that fairly made the old rafters ring, and the happiness of Mrs. Warren, who was always willing to adopt every boy from far and near who was a friend of one of her boys, – what with all this, there was altogether a scene that would have done any one’s heart good, and might have shamed the storm outside, if it had been any other kind of a storm than a pitiless southeaster.

Then, though the hour was getting late, they all sat about the big fireplace, and Tom narrated the story of the shipwreck.

But, just as he began, young Joe said, with mock gravity:

“We haven’t introduced Henry Burns to the boys yet. Henry, this is Tom Harris, and this is Bob White.”