Ruel Smith - The Rival Campers Afloat - or, The Prize Yacht Viking

“Yes, but think how small our expenses need be if we are careful,” urged Henry Burns. “We live right aboard here all the time, you know.”

“Yes,” answered Harvey, “but it all counts up more than you think, especially when one is short of money. You can’t run a big boat like this all summer without expense. It’s a rope here and a block there, and a spare anchor we need, and a lot of little things all the time. I know how it was on the Surprise .”

Their conversation was interrupted at this point by a voice close alongside. The canoe had glided quietly up, and the next moment Tom and Bob were descending into the cabin.

“My, but you chaps have elegant quarters down here,” exclaimed Tom. “We envy you your summer aboard here, don’t we, Bob?”

Henry Burns and Harvey, somewhat taken aback, made no reply, and looked embarrassed.

“Why, what’s up?” asked Tom, observing something was wrong. “No more trouble, I hope.”

Harvey explained the situation.

“That need not be so bad,” said Tom. “It doesn’t cost but little to live here. We spend scarcely anything, do we, Bob? We can lend you something to help you through. You don’t want to think of giving up the summer.”

“I dare say I could stick it out all right,” said Harvey, “if I was just camping once more. That doesn’t cost much. It is this boat that bothers me. We can’t run it for nothing.”

“Well, then,” exclaimed Henry Burns, vigorously, with more demonstrativeness than was usual with him, “I’ll tell you what we will do. We’ll make the boat work. We will make it pay its own way, and pay us something besides. We’ll fit out and go down among the islands fishing, and take our fish over to Stoneland and sell them, the same as the fishermen do. There won’t be a fortune in it, with a boat no bigger than this, but it will support us, and more too, after paying all expenses.”

“Henry,” cried Harvey, gratefully, “you’re a brick! I thought of that once, and I’d have proposed it if this had been the old Surprise ; but I didn’t know as you would be willing to do it with this boat. It dirties a craft up so.”

“That doesn’t hurt a boat any,” said Henry Burns. “The fishermen down around Wilton’s Harbour take out sailing parties all summer, and their boats are always handsome and clean, and they don’t smell fishy. And the men always use them for fishing in the fall and spring, when the fishing is at its best. It simply means that we have got to take out all the nice fittings from the cabin, stow them away somewhere on shore, fit out with some tackle, and go ahead. At the end of the summer we will overhaul the Viking from deck to keelson, take out every piece of ballast in her, clean it and dry it and put it back, and paint the yacht over after we wash everything inside and out. She will be just as fine as she was before.”

“That’s great!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “You can do it all right, too. I wish we had a boat. We’d go along with you, wouldn’t we, Bob?”

“I’d like nothing better,” answered Bob.

“Then come along with us,” said Harvey. “We really need two more to handle this boat properly. You can fit yourselves out with fishing-tackle, and we’ll all share in the catch.”

“Hooray! we’ll do it,” cried Bob. “But we don’t want a share of the catch. We will be glad enough to go for the fun of it.”

“Yes, but this is part business,” said Henry Burns. “You must have some share in every trip you make with us. How will two-thirds for us and a third for you do, as we own the boat?”

“That is more than fair,” replied Tom.

“Then it’s a bargain, eh, Jack?” said Henry; and, as the other gave hearty assent, he added, “We’ll go about it right away to-morrow, if the weather is good.”

When George Warren heard of the plan the next day, however, he was not equally elated. “It’s the thing to do, I guess,” he said, but added, “It’s going to keep you away from Southport; that is the only drawback.”

“No, only part of the time,” said Henry Burns. “We are not going to try to get rich, only to support ourselves. We shall be back and forth all summer. We’ll have some fun here, too.”

Then the boys went and hunted up Captain Sam Curtis.

“Yes, you can do it all right,” said Captain Sam, when he had heard of the plan. “But it’s rough work. You can count on that. You want to get right out to big Loon Island – you know, with the little one, Duck Island, alongside. There’s where the cod are, out along them reefs; and you can set a couple of short trawls for hake. May get some runs of mackerel, too, later. I’ll get you a couple of second-hand pieces of trawl cheap. They’ll do all right for one season. But it ain’t just like bay-sailing all the time, you know, though you may not get caught. When it’s rough, it’s rough, though.

“And there’s one thing you’ve got to look out for,” added Captain Sam. “Of course the men around this coast will be fair to you and won’t bother. But there’s a rough crowd that comes up from the eastward. They may not take kindly to a pack of boys coming in on the fishing-grounds. Just keep your weather eye out; that’s all.”

The boys went about their preparations eagerly. Already they had begun removing the fine fittings from the cabin of the Viking , carrying them up to the Warren cottage, and putting the yacht in condition for rougher usage. They worked hard all day. At night, however, an unexpected event occurred, which delayed their fishing-trip until the next week.

George Warren came down to the shore that evening with another letter for Jack Harvey, much to the latter’s amazement.

“Hang it!” he exclaimed, as George Warren handed the letter over. “They say troubles never come singly. I wonder if here’s more. I hope things are no worse at home – Hello, it isn’t from Boston. It’s from Benton. Who can have written me from there?”

He tore open the envelope hastily. The letter, badly written in an uncouth scrawl, read thus:

“Dear Jack: – You remember you told us fellows last year that we could come down to the island again this year and live in the tent, the same as we did before you got the boat, and you would see that we got along all right. Me and George Baker have got the money to pay our fares on the boat, and Tim and Allan will work part of their passage. Dan Davis, who’s on the boat, told us you was down there. So we’ll be along pretty soon if you don’t write and stop us.

“So long,

“Joe Hinman.”

“Well, here’s a mess,” said Harvey, ruefully, and looking sorely puzzled. “I’d clean forgotten that promise I made to the crew last year, that they could come down, and I’d take care of them. You see, I thought I was going to have plenty of money; but I don’t know just what to do now. Would you write and tell them not to come?”

“No, let them come,” said Henry Burns. “They’ll get along somehow. We will help them out, and they’ll have your tent to live in.”

“All right,” said Harvey. “I hate to disappoint them. They don’t get much fun at home. I’ll send them word to come, as long as you are willing.”

So it happened that a few days later there disembarked from the river steamer a grinning quartette of boys. The youngest, Tim Reardon by name, was barefoot; and the others, namely, Joe Hinman, George Baker, and Allan Harding, were not vastly the better off in the matter of dress. This was Harvey’s “crew,” who had sailed the bay with him for several years, in the yacht Surprise , and had camped with him on a point that formed one of the boundaries of a little cove, some three-quarters of a mile down the island from where Tom and Bob were encamped.