CHAPTER XVI.--JUDD MAKES AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

An hour or so after Budd had sailed away from Fox Island to meet Mr. Wilson at the village and go on the prearranged trip, Judd got into the yawl and started down the bay to visit the fish-pounds. Some impulse came to him, as he rowed along, to first visit (though it was contrary to their usual way of doing) the pound over on the shore of Conanicut Island. Just before reaching it he happened to glance up the bay, and saw the Sea Witch tacking down toward him.

"Budd will get down along here before I leave the pound," he remarked to himself, "and I'll hail him and find out what time he expects to get back to-night."

Then he rowed leisurely on to the pound and began his work. It was no easy job to handle the seine alone; and for those readers who are not familiar with this fish-trap, so common to the New England coast, we will accompany Judd in his task.

It is low tide, and thus the very best time for the work, as the net is now fully exposed to view, and can therefore be the more readily examined for any breaks, and all foreign substances that have collected in its meshes can be the more easily discovered and removed. The various times of day, then, at which the young firm have heretofore been represented as visiting the pounds were not a mere matter of choice on their part, but were the times that the ebbing tide had made it best to do so, and it is the same reason that has brought Judd here just at this hour.

He rows in to the first stake, just a few feet below low-water mark, where his leader begins. Slowly along this he works his way toward the pound, five hundred feet off shore. He sees that every stake is still firm, and that the net is stretched tautly between the posts; that the sinkers are still holding its lower edge down to the bottom of the bay, and that its upper edge is properly attached to the top of each stake.

Here and there he pulls away a bunch of seaweed, or some floating log or plank that the tide has brought up against the net, and which, if allowed to remain there, might under a heavy sea do great damage to the leader. By and by he has reached the great circular pound or trap, which, like a tremendous basin, rounds out each way from his lead-line; and now the hard work begins. Round and round the basin he goes, pulling here and pulling there, all the while drawing the great purse into a smaller circumference, and nearer to the surface. The splashing and boiling water within, here and there the flash of a fin, and then a tremendous surge to the right or the left, as the case may be, tell of the fish imprisoned in the seine.

More than once Judd wishes for his partner's strong arm to help him; more than once the struggling mass of fish pull back into the deep all the slack seine, compelling the lad to do his work over again; but at last he is successful, and the fish are bagged into a corner of the net, and held there so firmly that there is no possible escape. The scoop-net is now brought into play, and rapidly the fish are dipped up and emptied down into the bottom of the yawl. When the last one has been removed the great purse-net is again lowered into the water, and the openings at each side of the leader, wide at the outer edge, but extremely narrow at the inner, are properly adjusted, and the work for that day is over--unless, indeed, some huge rent in the meshes of the seine compel it to be loosened from its stakes and carried ashore for extensive repairs.

This time there is no rent, and Judd has about got the net into its place, when, glancing up, he sees that the next tack of the Sea Witch will bring her down near him. Adjusting the net here and there, he waits for her approach. Ten minutes later she is evidently as near to him as she is coming, for her tiller is thrown about, and slowly she swings around for the next tack. He raises his hands to his mouth, like a trumpet, and is about to utter a prolonged whoop, to attract Budd's attention; but no sound issues from his lips. Instead, he drops his hands, catches hold of the net, pulls his yawl rapidly around to the leader, and then works along it toward the shore.

Why is this sudden change? Because, as the sail of the Sea Witch swung slowly around for the reverse tack, he saw Budd was not on board. Nor was this all. In three of those passengers he recognized Bagsley and his two companions when at Fox Island eight or ten days before, and like a flash it comes to him that Budd is a prisoner, and the robbers are running away with the sloop.

As he works his way to the shore he watches the sloop furtively, to be sure that his action has not awakened any suspicion on the part of the men in her; but he knows there is little danger of this, for though he recognizes them, they are not likely to think that he, who is at work so innocently there by that fish-trap, is the other owner of the boat, and has already divined their purpose.

Not too fast, so as not to specially attract their attention, he goes along the leader, stopping just an instant now and then in mere pretense to adjust the netting. But the moment their tack has taken the sloop so far across the bay that his movements cannot be readily discerned, he suddenly becomes the very embodiment of activity and purpose.

Two or three vigorous pulls send the yawl inshore, where it is promptly secured beyond the reach of a rising tide, for Judd has no idea just when he will come to claim it again. Even the fish are forgotten as the boy runs rapidly up the west slope of the island to the nearest farm-house; and he gives a cry of joy, as he reaches it, to find the farmer, with whom he is slightly acquainted, just driving his horse and wagon out of the yard.

"Are you going down to Jamestown Ferry, Mr. Niles?" he eagerly asks.

"Yes, jump in," replies the kind-hearted farmer.

Judd waits for no second invitation, but springing into the wagon, he points off to the west bay, saying:

"Do you see that sloop over under the west shore, Mr. Niles?"

"Yes," replies he, "and it looks like yours."

"It is; and a gang of fellows are running off with her, and I wish you would get me to the ferry about as quick as you can. I want to get over to Newport, hire a tug, and head them off before they reach Beaver Tail, if possible. I'll pay you whatever you ask for driving me down there," was Judd's surprising statement.

The interest of the farmer was at once awakened.

"Sho', now, you don't say so!" he exclaimed. "Lor'! I'll get you there for the next boat over to the city, and won't ask you anything, either. I just hope you'll get them;" and the farmer plied his whip to the horse with a force that sent him tearing down the island at a rate that must have been a source of astonishment to the usually sedate animal.

He kept his promise, too, and drove on to the ferry wharf just in time for Judd to jump on the already moving boat as she left on her half-past three o'clock trip. At four o'clock, therefore, he was in the city, and running up to Thames Street, he hurried around to the wharf of the Providence and Newport Steamboat Company, where he had noticed that a tug with her steam up was lying.

As he turned off from the street onto the passageway leading to the wharf he saw just ahead of him Mr. Avery, the constable. Quickening his pace to a run, Judd overtook him.

"Mr. Avery," he exclaimed, "where are you going?"

"Home on the next boat," replied Mr. Avery, shaking hands with the lad, "and while I was waiting for the boat I walked around here. But did you wish to see me for anything special?"

Drawing him to one side, Judd in a low voice told him of the discovery he had made, and what he had come to the city for.

"Now," he said, "I want you to come along with me, if we can agree as to the division of the reward."

"Budd, you say, is in their clutches, and he certainly deserves one share; you ought to have a second for your discovery; and I a third, for going with you, chartering the tug, running a risk of the capture, and assuming the legal responsibility of the arrest. How does that strike you?" asked Mr. Avery, with the tones of a man who wanted to do the fair thing.

"Agreed; and we have no time to lose," responded Judd. "There is a tug right below here with her steam up."

Two minutes later the officer and lad stood on the dock looking down into a neat and trim tug, named the Thetis.

"Ho! ho!" exclaimed Mr. Avery as he read her name. "I know her captain, and I wonder where he is."

"Right here, Avery," exclaimed a voice behind them. "What do you wish?"

They turned to see a great six-footer coming toward them, and as he reached the dock he went on:

"I thought it was you, Avery, as I came down the street behind you. How are you all at home?"

"Very well, Captain Bradley," replied Mr. Avery.

Then he introduced Judd, and proceeded to state his business.

The stalwart captain pulled his beard vigorously as the officer told his story, and then he said, heartily:

"I'm your man, Avery. Steam is up, and we can be off in five minutes. If we don't catch the rascals you are to give me twenty dollars; if we do, make it one hundred."

Mr. Avery, after consulting with Judd, agreed to this, and then he suggested putting on a number of extra men.

"Well, of course I will, if you want them," said the captain; "but I have three men beside myself, and I'm good for any two of those rascals. You and the boy make six in all. We have two guns and two revolvers on board, and if you will wait five minutes I'll borrow a couple more;" and as Mr. Avery nodded his approval, he disappeared around the corner of an adjacent building.

In the specified time he returned with revolvers and a Winchester rifle.

"I happened to think that this," holding out the rifle, "was up here in an office, and brought it along also," he exclaimed. "It may come handy if we have to back off and take the robbers at long range."

But while this large collection of deadly weapons may have been wise it was hardly necessary, as the sequel will prove.

It was not far from half-past four o'clock when the tug left the wharf. She steamed rapidly around the lighthouse, and down by Fort Adams to the mouth the of bay.

Mr. Avery and Judd stood on her bow, looking eagerly off toward the great expanse of ocean opening up to their view. Both were confident that if the burglars had ever intended to go over to Block Island their plan would be changed on discovering that Budd knew them. The question of greatest moment to them, then, was, had the Sea Witch, on leaving the bay, gone to the east or to the west? for they were sure she had already had time enough to reach the open sea. Their hope was, and to this end the tug was pushed rapidly forward, that they might reach Beaver Tail before the sloop had entirely disappeared.

"Do you suppose they have carried Budd off as a prisoner?" asked Judd of Mr. Avery as they stood there together.

He asked the question with much anxiety, for there had been a growing fear at his heart that a worse calamity might have befallen his chum.

"It depends largely upon how he came to fall into their hands," said Mr. Avery, slowly. "If they have watched for him, and purposely enticed him away, the probabilities are that he is on board the sloop, and that they will dispose of him in such a way that he cannot be traced. By your tale, this Bagsley is equal to so serious a crime. On the other hand, if that Wilson hired him ignorantly, and not until they reached the island, where his companions were, was it known who he really was, then I am inclined to think they have left him on the island, but bound in such a way that he cannot escape until rescued by his friends. This would give them ample time to get out of the way with their booty before he could give an alarm, and is probably the thing they have done. But we cannot really tell until we overhaul them.

"If I were asked to give my idea of the burglars' plans from beginning to end," the officer went on with a smile, "it would be about this: Wilson, and the other robber you did not know, have been the forerunners of the other men, and have doubtless hung about the village for some time, locating the store and planning for the robbery. Bagsley and his gang came to Fox Island intending to make that a rendezvous until their confederates notified them everything was ready; but finding that was inhabited, they went to Hope Island and robbed Mr. Johnson's house of all that they needed to make a camping outfit, and have been all the time on Patience Island, waiting for their allies' message. When it came, they dropped over to the village, gutted the store, and returned with one of their confederates to Patience Island, while the other, Wilson, remained behind to see what effect the robbery had on the community, and what efforts were put forth to find the criminals. If, in his judgment, it seemed best to leave the neighborhood, he was to hire a boat to take them as a camping-party over to Block Island, where they would have quietly separated and sought places of safety.

"When Wilson appeared, however, bringing a lad who knew one of their number, they were forced to plan differently, and so they ran away with the sloop, intending doubtless to go to some quiet nook up or down the coast, scuttle her, and then disappear without leaving a clew as to the direction they had gone. But here we are, rounding out into the ocean; and now where is your boat?"

Anxiously Judd scanned the surface of the water to the westward. Numerous sails of all sizes were discernible as far as Point Judith, but not one of them, he was sure, could be the Sea Witch. If the burglars had gone in that direction they had already disappeared around the distant point. But to have sailed that way would have been against a strong southwest wind, necessitating constant tacking, and as fast a sailer as the sloop was, Judd was confident she had not had time enough to accomplish that feat. He therefore turned at once, and hopefully, to scan the eastern horizon. His look was but for a moment; then he exclaimed, triumphantly:

"There she is, Mr. Avery."

He pointed out a small sloop about two miles away, which was sailing due east.

"Has the captain a glass?" he then asked; "though without one I am quite positive she is the sloop," he added, quickly.

A glass was brought him, and adjusting it to his eye, he looked long and anxiously at the retreating boat.

"One, two, three, four," he counted, slowly. "Ah! yes, there is the fifth man 'way forward; and the color and rig of the vessel make it sure she is the Sea Witch."

Captain Bradley stood beside him, and at his words gave the requisite orders for the course of the tug to be changed. Fresh fuel was thrown on her fires, and with full steam on she bounded off toward the distant sloop at a high rate of speed.