CHAPTER II.

THE RIDDLE FROM UNDER THE WATER.

The _Elephant_ rocked and pitched a great deal while Captain Kroom was fishing up that valise with his long boat-hook.

Pete was all the while hard at work with the oars, and he was conducting himself like a prime seaman. That is, he obeyed with scrupulous exactness all the orders he received from the veteran commander of his ship. For him, indeed, Pete evidently had a tremendous amount of respect. Much of it belonged to his belief that the old sailor knew all there was to know about whatever might be on the sea or in it.

"Sam," he said, "let that bundle alone a minute, and see if you can h'ist the sail."

"He can't h'ist a sail," growled the Captain. "He's a landlubber."

Sam's pride was up in an instant, and he caught hold of the ropes. He did know a little about them already, and he had the good luck to pull correctly. Up went the sail, just as the valise came over the side. The bundle already lay on the bottom, and it had taken all the strength Sam had to get it there.

It was not so large a bundle, to be sure, but lifting it in had been somewhat like carrying two pails of water, for it was what the Captain called "waterlogged."

Not so with the valise. It was larger than the bundle, and it must have been very heavy; but it did not seem to weigh much in the strong hands of old Kroom.

"Here we go!" he shouted. "I'll just tack around till I get a hitch on that spar. It's just what I want for a new mast to the _Tiger_!"

"That's his sail-boat," said Pete to Sam. "She isn't so fast as some, but she can go right out to sea. She's decked over."

"She's as safe as a pilot-boat," added the Captain. "But the feller left his key in the lock. I won't open it now. This here stuff wasn't any part of a raft. It was just a tangle. Those knots wasn't ever tied by a sailor." He seemed to read knots and ropes and sails and spars as if they carried tokens as clear to him as print. "Sam," he said, "haul that rope a little. Now I can bring her about. We'll have that spar."

So he did, in a few minutes; but the _Elephant_ was not likely to sail any too fast with that thing towing astern. Pete had been eying the bundle curiously, and the moment he was permitted to pull in his oars he exclaimed:

"Now let's have it open. I say, Captain, it's covered with tarpaulin!"

"That didn't keep it from soaking," replied Kroom. "Cut it. Bless my soul! What on earth is that?"

The two boys had worked together in untying and opening the bundle, and now all its contents suddenly sprawled around the bottom of the boat.

"Best lot of fishing-tackle ever I saw," said Pete. "And if it isn't a full suit of blue!"

"Hope it'll fit you," said the Captain.

"Looks as if it might. Sam's got one on him. But I don't need any more tackle than I've got at home, unless it is some hooks and sinkers."

"Pete," said Sam, "spread 'em out to dry. Then you can see if they fit."

The fact was that Pete was the only member of the _Elephant_'s crew of three who stood in need of new clothing. The suit he had on consisted mainly of a pair of baggy trousers and a tow shirt. It did not keep him from being a pretty good looking fellow, however, and his own feelings about it did not hurt him.

"Guess they won't make a dude of me," he remarked, as he spread the soaked blue suit out forward, where the wind and sun could get at it. "It's a kind of sailor rig, anyhow."

"It'll shrink to your size," said the Captain. "'Twasn't made for a big fellow."

The _Elephant_ was now before the wind, and was tugging spitefully against the rope which bound her to the spar behind her. Now that the bundle had given up all that was in it, the next point of interest was the valise.

Once more the Captain remarked, "His key is in it."

Then he hesitated, and stared down at the key as if reading something.

"Rusty," he said. "But it doesn't take long for iron to rust in salt water. You can't judge by that."

"Captain Kroom," exclaimed Sam, "there used to be a name on this end of it, but it's kind of washed out."

"No," replied Kroom; "it's just so on this other end. It wasn't washed out; it was rubbed out. This 'ere thing's been stole."

He said it almost solemnly, and the boys felt a kind of thrill. There had been excitement enough in the idea of a wreck, and now the Captain had put in thieves also.

"Pirates?" suggested Pete. "Could they have plundered the ship?"

"No, sir!" roared the Captain. "All the pirates are dead long ago. This means wrecks and wreckers over on the south beach somewhere. Come on, boys. I'll cast off the spar. We're going across the bay. I'm no thief. I'm going to see if I can't find an owner for this valise. Ready!"

The spar was left to drift ashore as best it might, only that the Captain said he would go after it some time.

The _Elephant_ was once more free, but her nose was pointed now toward the long low bar of sand, the narrow, tree-less island, which separated the bay from the ocean.

"He's going to run for the inlet," said Pete to Sam. "There's good fishing there, whether he finds any wreck or not."

"We're going too fast to troll," said the Captain. "No use. Besides, we want to get there as soon as we can. If there's anything I hate, it's a wrecker. I didn't think so once, but the first time I was wrecked myself I guess I learned something."

Sam had been staring curiously at the valise, and wishing that the Captain would think it right to open it, but now he turned to look at the old sailor himself. It was a good deal to be out in a boat with a man who had been wrecked. He did not really mean to say anything, but a question came up to his lips, and asked, almost without his help, "Were you wrecked 'mong savages?"

"Yes, sir, I was," growled the Captain, angrily. "We went ashore on the coast of Cornwall, in England, and the folks there believe everything that's stranded belongs to them. They didn't leave us a thing."

"They didn't hurt you, did they?" said Sam.

"I don't know but what they would, some of them, if it hadn't been for the coast police that came," said Kroom. "They kep' the crowd off, so we saved what we had on; and then they marched us away and put every man of us in jail, where the civilized Englishmen could feed us."

"That was awful!" said Pete; but he had already turned over the wet clothing once, and it was drying fast. He pulled out the wrinkles too.

"'Tisn't rotted," remarked the Captain, "or you'd ha' pulled it to pieces. I ain't worried about your having of 'em. Nor the tackle. All I want to get at is if there's been a wreck. Yes, sir, when I was wrecked in China, we saved all our chists--but then a Chinee can't wear anything we can. Perhaps they didn't want 'em. They treated us first rate."

He had been fumbling with the rusty key with one hand while he steered with the other, and now the boys heard a click.

"There!" muttered the Captain. "The lock wasn't sp'iled. I'll unstrap it."

Sam and Pete leaned forward to watch, but the soaked straps did not pull out easily, and they had to wait.

"How they do stick!" said Pete. "Captain, I can do it. It takes both hands."

The _Elephant_ careened just then in a way to compel its sailing-master to use both of his own hands in bringing it before the wind again.

"Pitch in, Pete," he said. "Just as like as not it'll tell where it came from."

Sam let his friend work at the wet straps, while he continued to study the name at his end of the valise.

"'Tisn't a long one," he remarked; but at that moment Captain Kroom almost let go of the tiller-ropes, for the valise sprang open.

"Packed and jammed!" exclaimed Pete. "Hullo! What's this?"

"Hand me that log!" shouted the Captain, and Sam looked around the boat for loose timber. Not any kind of log was to be seen; the floating spar was long since out of sight; but Pete at once picked up and handed to Kroom a broad, thin, paper-covered blank book which lay in the middle of the valise.

"Bless my soul!" said Captain Kroom. "This 'ere's the log of the good ship _Narragansett_, of New Haven, and her captain's name is Pickering. The last entry in it is only a week old. Yes, sir, boys! He made it after the gale struck 'em! Before she was wrecked. This 'ere's awful! She must ha' gone all to pieces! Now for the inlet! Hurrah!"

His voice sounded excited, but he sat as steady as a post, and seemed to be giving all his attention to the management of the _Elephant_.

"Sam," he said, "you and Pete read some more of that log. Don't you fetch a thing in the valise. There are his barkers and his chronometer and lots o' papers. But that there alligator-skin valise was water-tight. It came across the bar at the inlet with the tide. There's current enough there then to whisk in a cannon."

Sam was a landsman, but he listened eagerly to all the Captain had to say about the ways of the coast and about the coming and going of ships. None of it seemed to be at all new to Pete; but then he had been born and brought up within sight of salt water, and he had heard Kroom talk many a time before.

The _Elephant_ put her nose through or over the waves as if she were in a hurry, and all the while her crew were getting more accustomed to the presence of the valise. Sam studied its contents, all he could see of them, and he was learning something.

"That's the chronometer," he thought. "It's a big watch in a mahogany box. That's a splendid compass. Those pistols are what the Captain calls 'barkers.'"

"You see," remarked Kroom, as if answering him, "as soon as the commander of a ship knows he's going to be wrecked, it's his duty to save those things. He must save his log and his papers, if he can't save anything else. Captain Pickering got 'em together, and then somebody beat him out of them. Now it's my duty to get 'em to the owner of the ship. No trouble about that, but we must learn all we can first. Sam, if you've read anything, read it out. It's the worst kind of writing."

That was what Sam had found, and he had had some doubt as to how much it was right for him to read. Now, however, he was getting more courageous. It seemed so much more honest than merely fishing up things and keeping them. He read, therefore, a line or so at a time, picking it out; but it required an interpreter, for all the sentences were short and jerky.

"Stop there!" said Captain Kroom. "I'll fix it up. Never mind his latitudes and longitudes. She was a three-master, and she was in the China trade, and she was getting near home when the hurricane struck her. We had the heel of that gale all along shore last week. Blew down trees and upset things. I'll bet you the _Narragansett_ went to pieces. Hurrah! There's the inlet. Hand me that log. I'll just shut it up. Now, boys, I'll show you what a boat of this kind can do."

"Don't you be afraid, Sam," said Pete, encouragingly. "It'll be awful rough outside the bar, but he knows. We're going right through."

Sam did not exactly feel afraid, but he was disposed to keep a tight hold upon the gunwale of the _Elephant_. There was really a great deal of her, he was beginning to see, and pretty soon she was gliding along over the smooth water of the inlet. It was a channel, not straight by any means, that was nowhere over a hundred yards wide. On either side were only long ranges of low sand hills and marshes. The bay was behind them, and right ahead, Sam could not guess how far away, he could hear a booming sound, that came, he knew, from the great Atlantic billows which came rolling in to thunder and die along the shore.

"Bully breeze!" shouted Pete. "Out we go! Hurrah! Look at the surf!"

Sam was staring very earnestly indeed at the long lines of foaming water that were springing into the air, curling over and tossing to and fro in shattered masses of froth and blue. He knew that there was danger in them, and he felt queer concerning what might be coming next.

The Captain, however, was sitting as steadily as usual. Sam had seen him take something out of the valise before closing it, but he had not dared to ask any questions. He was almost afraid of Captain Kroom, and even now, as he looked at him, he was thinking:

"I wish I knew how many times he's been wrecked, and where. He must have seen the most awful kind of things."

It had been a black leather case, and now the Captain opened it, taking out a thing that Sam recognized at once.

"It's what they call an opera-glass," he said to himself, but he was wrong.

It was a binocular marine telescope of the finest kind, very much like the glasses which generals use on a battlefield to study the battle with. The Captain was now searching the lines of breakers and the open sea outside of them, and he suddenly lowered his glass to roar:

"Thereaway, boys! Just a few points southerly. Stuck on the outer bar. Hull half out of water. Not a stick standing. Two tug-boats there already, and a steamer. We've got her! Hurrah!"

He kindly held out the glass to Pete, and steadied the boat while the 'longshore boy took a long squint in the direction indicated.

"I've found her!" exclaimed Pete. "But maybe 'tisn't the _Narragansett_."

"You bet it is," said the Captain. "There didn't two ships o' that kind come ashore at the same time. There aren't many of 'em left nowadays, anyhow--more's the pity! The steamers have run 'em out. But I'll tell you what, boys, there's more real sailin' to be had in an old-fashioned clipper-ship than there is in all the steamers afloat. If there's anything I hate, it's a steamer."

Pete passed the glass along to Sam, but it was almost a full minute before he could find anything but waves to look at. "There she is," he said at last. "I see her, if that's her. Kind of speck." He was getting used to the glass now, and pretty quickly he was as excited as either Pete or the Captain, but he asked, anxiously, "How are we to get there?"

The line of breakers seemed to be in the way, and they looked impassable. Such a boat as the _Elephant_, or almost any other, would be a mere cork in the grasp of those tremendous rollers.

"They would jump us twenty feet into the air," thought Sam. "It's awful! I don't care whether he gets his old valise or not."

Pete, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking mainly of his share in the management of the _Elephant_, but as she swung away upon another tack, he remarked to Sam: "See that surf? Well, right in there, if they can get near enough to throw a line, the sporting fishermen strike the biggest bass you ever saw. Takes half an hour to pull one in sometimes."

That was a kind of fun of which Sam knew nothing, but he replied: "We'll come again and try it on. But where are we going now?"

"You'll see in a minute," said Pete.

It was many minutes, instead of only one, before Sam had any clear idea of what Captain Kroom was up to. The _Elephant_ appeared to be running along the seaward line of the sand-bar, between that and the breakers. Then to the left Sam saw a break in the surf--a streak of pretty smooth water with foaming "boilers" on both sides of it. Into that streak the old sailor steered the three-cornered boat.

Oh, how she did dance, and how Sam did hold on! But he did not utter a sound, and the next thing he knew the mere cockle-shell under him was sailing along well enough, safely enough, over the long regular swells, not at all boisterous or dangerous, of the great ocean that was three thousand miles wide.

"I didn't believe he could do it," thought Sam. "We may get to the _Narragansett_, but how on earth are we to get back again?"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A LOYAL TRAITOR.[1]

[1] Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 888.

A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.

BY JAMES BARNES.