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

On a certain afternoon in the latter part of the month of June, the little fishing village of Southport, on Grand Island in Samoset Bay, was awakened from its customary nap by the familiar whistle of the steamboat from up the river. Southport, opening a sleepy eye at the sound, made deliberate preparation to receive its daily visitor, knowing that the steamer was as yet some distance up the island, and not even in sight, for behind the bluff around which the steamer must eventually come the town lay straggling irregularly along the shore of a deeply indented cove.

A few loungers about the village grocery-store seemed roused to a renewed interest in life, removed their pipes, and, with evident satisfaction at this relief from island monotony, sauntered lazily down to the wharf. The storekeeper and the freight-agent, as became men burdened with the present responsibility of seeing that the steamer was offered all possible assistance in making its landing, bustled about with importance.

Soon a wagon or two from down the island came rattling into the village, while from the hotel, a quarter of a mile distant, a number of guests appeared on the veranda, curious to scrutinize such new arrivals as might appear. From the summer cottages here and there flags were hastily run up, and from one a salute was fired; all of which might be taken to indicate that the coming of the steamer was the event of the day at Southport – as, indeed, it was.

Now another whistle sounded shrilly from just behind the bluff, and the next moment the little steamer shoved its bow from out a jagged screen of rock, while the chorused exclamation, “Thar she is!” from the assembled villagers announced that they were fully awake to the situation.

Among the crowd gathered on the wharf, three boys, between whom there existed sufficient family resemblance to indicate that they were brothers, scanned eagerly the faces of the passengers as the steamer came slowly to the landing. The eldest of the three, a boy of about sixteen years, turned at length to the other two, and remarked, in a tone of disappointment:

“They are not aboard. I can’t see a sign of them. Something must have kept them.”

“Unless,” said one of the others, “they are hiding somewhere to surprise us.”

“It’s impossible,” said the first boy, “for any one to hide away when he gets in sight of this island. No, if they were aboard we should have seen them the minute the steamer turned the bluff, waving to us and yelling at the top of their lungs. There’s something in the air here that makes one feel like tearing around and making a noise.”

“Especially at night, when the cottagers are asleep,” said the third boy.

“Besides,” continued the eldest, “their canoe is not aboard, and you would not catch Tom Harris and Bob White coming down here for the summer without it, when they spend half their time in it on the river at home and are as expert at handling it as Indians, – and yet, they wrote that they would be here to-day.”

It was evident the boys they were looking for were not aboard. The little steamer, after a violent demonstration of puffing and snorting, during which it made apparently several desperate attempts to rush headlong on the rocks, but was checked with a hasty scrambling of paddle-wheels, and was bawled at by captain and mates, was finally subdued and made fast to the wharf by the deck-hands. The passengers disembarked, and the same lusty, brown-armed crew, with a series of rushes, as though they feared their captive might at any moment break its bonds and make a dash for liberty, proceeded to unload the freight and baggage. Trucks laden with leaning towers of baggage were trundled noisily ashore and overturned upon the wharf.

In the midst of the bustle and commotion the group of three boys was joined by another boy, who had just come from the hotel.

“Hulloa, there!” said the new boy. “Where’s Tom and Bob?”

“They are not aboard, Henry,” said the eldest boy of the group.

The new arrival gave a whistle of surprise.

“How do you feel this afternoon, Henry?” asked the second of the brothers.

“Oh, very poorly – very miserable. In fact, I don’t seem to get any better.”

This lugubrious reply, strange to say, did not evoke the sympathy which a listener might have expected. The boys burst into roars of laughter.

“Poor Henry Burns!” exclaimed the eldest boy, giving the self-declared invalid a blow on the chest that would have meant the annihilation of weak lungs. “He will never be any better.”

“And he may be a great deal worse,” said the second boy, slapping the other on the back so hard that the dust flew under the blow.

“Won’t the boys like him, though?” asked the third and youngest boy, – “that is, if they ever come.”

Henry Burns received these sallies with the utmost unconcern. If he enjoyed the effect which his remarks had produced, it was denoted only by a twinkle in his eyes. He was rather a slender, pale-complexioned youth, of fourteen years. A physiognomist might have found in his features an unusual degree of coolness and self-control, united with an abnormal fondness for mischief; but Henry Burns would have passed with the ordinary person as a frail boy, fonder of books than of sports.

Just then the captain of the steamer put his head out of the pilot-house and called to the eldest of the brothers:

“I’ve got a note for you, George Warren. A young chap who said he was on his way here in a canoe came aboard at Millville and asked me to give it to you; and there was another young chap in a canoe alongside who asked me to say they’d be here to-night.”

“Hooray!” cried George Warren, opening and reading the note. “It’s the boys, sure enough. They started at four o’clock this morning in the canoe, and will be here to-night. Much obliged, Captain Chase.”

“Not a bit,” responded the captain. “But let me tell you boys something. You needn’t look for these ’ere young chaps to-night, because they won’t get here. What’s more,” added the captain, as he surveyed the water and sky with the air of one defying the elements to withhold a secret from him, “if they try to cross the bay to-night you needn’t look for them at all. The bay is nothing too smooth now; but wait till the tide turns and the wind in those clouds off to the east is let loose! There’s going to be fun out there, and that before many hours, too.”

With this dismally prophetic remark the captain gave orders to cast off the lines, and the steamer was soon on its way down the bay.

The three brothers, George, Arthur, and Joe Warren, and Henry Burns left the wharf and were walking in the direction of the hotel, when a remark from the latter stopped them short.

“Did it occur to any of you,” asked Henry Burns, speaking in a slightly drawling tone, “that we shall never have a better opportunity to play a practical joke on your friends than we have to-day – ?”

“What friends?” exclaimed George Warren, indignantly.

“I thought you said Tom Harris and Bob White were coming down the river to-day in a canoe,” said Henry Burns, in the most innocent manner.

“And so they are. And you think we would play a joke on them the first day they arrive, do you? I believe you would get up in the night, Henry Burns, to play a joke on your own grandmother. No, sirree, count me out of that,” said George Warren. “It will be time enough to play jokes on them after they get here. I don’t believe in treating friends in that way.”

“Rather a mean thing to do, I think,” said Arthur Warren.

“I’m out of it,” said Joe.