CHAPTER IV.

"Whoop! Bully!" That shout came from the wreckers, within fifty yards, just as Pete got the hook of the Captain's "gaff" into the gills of the bass, and Kroom himself hoisted the prize on board. Every ounce of their suspicion was gone in a moment, and the cat-boat tacked away; but just then Sam said, in a very low voice:

"There's that white thing, if it's a life-preserver. It's got stuck again."

In the other boat there was trouble. All the men noticed the _Elephant_ with her extra passenger, now that she was near enough; and suddenly the man at the helm stood up and said:

"Captain Kroom did go to the wreck. I saw that big feller that's with him. He was on the _Goshawk_ when the tug left her. We'd better watch Kroom and see if he's gropplin' on his own account. We can't do or say a thing unless we can pick up what was thrown over."

"Thrue for ye," replied the man next him. "Thin the inlet's the place to wait for thim. We can luk into his boat, sure."

"I'll tell you what, boys," said the steersman, "those fellers threw over more'll we know of. They'll come back for every pound of it, but we can beat 'em."

It looked as if their view of the matter was just as Captain Kroom had said. They had not the slightest idea but what it was entirely honest to do what they were attempting. Does not anything that drifts ashore belong to the land it is stranded on?

It is true that the laws of most countries and the rights of other men are against the wreckers, but they have a strong belief in a kind of "storm law." It is a law that reaches out into the sea sometimes, and covers anything which may be found floating around. It certainly takes in all that can be fished up from the bottom.

That is the general idea of the men who are known as wreckers. The cat-boat with these four men in it ran on into the inlet for quite a distance while they were talking about Kroom and the _Goshawk_ and the tug-boats.

The place at which they had anchored was very near the bay side of the long sandbar island whose front was toward the ocean. Here they were entirely hidden, but at the same time they were unable to keep any watch upon the _Elephant_ and the possible doings of her crew. This was not exactly what they intended, and before long the steersman arose and remarked to his mates:

"This won't do. You'd better put me ashore. I'll go over to the ocean beach and keep an eye on 'em. Glad I brought my glass along. 'Tisn't only old Kroom. Some o' the tug-boat fellers may have come back."

A pretty spirited debate followed, and all the while the weakfish and flounders were biting freely. They therefore were having pretty good luck in their ordinary character of fishermen.

In spite of that, however, they all seemed to feel very much as did their steersman, and the entire four at last decided to go ashore on the bar and walk over to watch Kroom. They left their boat, pulled all the way out of water, at the bay end of the inlet, and there was not another craft of any kind in sight when they began to trudge across the sand.

In the _Elephant_, slowly sailing along from its place of danger too near the surf, the course of affairs had been very interesting to its crew.

"Pete," said Sam, at the moment when the wrecker boat tacked away and the big sea-bass lay floundering fiercely on the bottom, "that's the largest fish I ever saw caught."

"Biggest kind!" responded Pete. "You or I couldn't have done anything with him. They generally catch 'em off shore, with a bass-rod and a reel. Tire 'em out, you know, before they try to pull 'em in. It's science!"

Sam had heard of such things, and it made a proud boy of him to find himself right in among what seemed to him the greatest fishing in all the world--unless, he thought, it might be fishing for sharks or whales. Captain Kroom himself had been a whaler, and Pete had been out shark-fishing. Sam was beginning to feel a good deal of respect for Pete, and he whispered to him:

"Why don't you try on that blue suit? It's as dry as a bone. See if it fits."

Captain Pickering must have heard him, for he said at once: "That's it, boy; put it on. What you need most is a new rig."

"Sam pulled it up," he said. "It's one of his fish."

"Fisherman's luck," laughed Captain Kroom, with a very deep, hearty laugh. "It's your share. Put it on."

Pete had eyed that suit until he knew every seam and button of it. Hour after hour during the cruise of the _Elephant_ he had grown better and better acquainted with the strange idea that it was to be his own. He had hardly told himself how much more it must have cost than had any clothes he had ever owned before. "Guess I'll wait till I get home," he said.

"No, you don't," thundered Captain Kroom; "I want to see how you look in it. Put it on!"

Pete was pretty well accustomed to obeying the Captain, and not to do so now would have been something like mutiny on shipboard. He turned very red in the face, and he put on the trousers wrong side out the first trial, but then he got them right, and the blue shirt and the jacket followed.

"They fit him!" exclaimed Sam. "Make him look like another fellow."

So they all said, and it made little difference that Pete was still barefooted or that his straw hat turned up in front. It was an out-and-out sailor rig, and it had taken only a twinkling, or perhaps two or three twinklings, to get it on.

Meantime the _Elephant_ had tacked to and fro, and Captain Kroom and Sam had kept their trolling-lines out. As for Captain Pickering, he had again opened his valise, and was now at work with his double-barrelled spy-glass, as Sam called it.

"Kroom," he remarked, "keep on fishing. Those chaps are in the inlet, out of sight, just now. One more tack and we can stretch on across the channel, not far from that buoy."

They all knew that he meant the bit of white float, the life-preserver, that was continually appearing and disappearing among the waves to the eastward.

"Now!" exclaimed Captain Kroom; but at that instant Sam shouted,

"Oh! Guess it's a bluefish!"

"Just the thing!" replied Kroom. "Pull! While you're getting him in we'll try for that float. It isn't a hundred yards away."

At that moment, unknown to the crew of the _Elephant_, the four wreckers were plodding along across the dry hot sand of the bar-island, eager to reach the seaward beach, from which they might discover what was going on inside of the tossing, foaming lines of the surf.

The life-preserver was nothing but a long India-rubber-cloth bag of wind, bent around in a ring. It was meant to be worn under the arms of a person in the water. There it was, bobbing to and fro on the water, but not getting along very well. The tide was strong, but there was a hitch as of something that dragged on the bottom.

"Got it!" exclaimed Pickering, as the _Elephant_ swung around close to the float. "I'll fetch it up as quick as I can! Oh!"

He had not caught it, for it bobbed away from him as if it were dodging.

"Gaffed!" said Captain Kroom the next instant. "That's it, Pete. Now hold hard. Don't let it get away."

"I won't!" almost gasped Pete, tugging with all his might. "Can't you tack, Captain?"

The _Elephant_ seemed to swing on her own account, so perfectly was she handled by the old sailor, but Pickering now had hold of the handle of the gaff, and it was not likely to get away from him.

"In she comes!" he said, but he was now grasping a rope that was knotted hard to the life-preserver.

"I'll let the boat kite along," said Kroom. "Don't let anybody see you pull that in."

He was keeping the sail of the _Elephant_ full spread toward the bar and the inlet. That was why a man with a spy-glass, who came running down the beach and began to look, shouted back to some other men:

"There she comes! They're only trolling. They haven't stopped for anything. But the sail kind o' hides 'em."

The _Elephant_ had not paused, to speak of, but behind her sail Captain Pickering was lifting something over her gun-wale.

"Conscience!" he exclaimed. "This here is part of my luggage that I thought went on the tug this morning. I saw all the rest of it stowed away safe enough, but I'd ha' lost this."

"Some o' the tug crews are the worst kind o' wreckers," remarked Captain Kroom. "We've beat 'em this time, unless there were some more life-preservers out."

"Guess not," said Pickering. "There isn't much in this that would be hurt by salt water. It's had a soak, that's all."

It was not so large a valise as the other, but it seemed as heavy. It was just the thing to keep a life-preserver under in deep water, and to let a strong current drag it along into shallows.

"Don't open it till you get ashore," suggested Kroom. "I'm heading the boat for the inlet. Cast off the float."

Pickering had already done that; but as the _Elephant_ bowed her head and swung away, the life-preserver, although robbed of its precious drag, seemed to be following her.

"Pete," said Sam, "look! I can see those fellows."

"They've come over the bar to watch what we're doing," growled Kroom. "Pickering, now's our time to run through into the bay. I've an idea in my head. Can't you hide those things?"

Off came Pickering's coat, and down it went over the two valises, side by side. Next to them lay the handsome shapes of the bass and the two bluefish, and one more was added to these by Sam himself before they had sailed a hundred yards.

Only four fish, but they made a pretty good appearance. At all events, there was not a sign of recaptured wreckage on board the _Elephant_. Her crew and passengers could not hear the wreckers saying to each other: "Kroom's giving it up. He's off for home. We can go back now."

"Boys," it was the steersman, after a long squint through his glass, "I can see our float! She's coming. Let's go for the boat. Now's our time."

Perhaps so; but they had lost a great deal of time, and the _Elephant_ was already in the inlet, running well, when they started back.

"Wish there was more wind," said Pickering, impatiently. "Their boat's over there somewhere."

"That's what I'm after," replied Kroom; "and I reckon we'll get there first."

That might depend a great deal on the strength of the breeze, and even more on the crookedness of the channel. Account had also to be taken of the fact that no man can do his fastest walking in yielding sea-sand.

"There it is!" said Pete. "Captain, they hauled their boat a'most out o' water."

"They can shove it in again quick enough," replied Kroom. "I don't know exactly what to do or say. The fact is, they're a prime good lot of fellows--hard-working, sober, peaceable. All of 'em go to meeting."

"Well, Kroom," said Pickering, "I knew a real partiklar feller once, and they said he'd been a pirate. I didn't quite believe it of him."

"Here we come!" responded Kroom, as the _Elephant_ glided somewhat lazily around a sandy curve. "Jump ashore, Pete! Get there!"

Sam had already noticed how remarkably quick his long-shore comrade could be in his movements, but he was surprised now at the sudden elastic bound which took Pete out of the _Elephant_ as she almost grazed the bank on that side of the inlet. Then away he went toward the wrecker boat, and his bare feet were the correct thing for sand-walking, or wading.

At that very moment the four bay fishermen came in sight, toiling along breathlessly under the hot sun, and the foremost of them shouted: "Hullo, Kroom! Want to see ye!"

"Come on!" roared Kroom. "We'll wait for ye! H'ist yourselves along. Plenty o' time!"

Pete was now at the hauled-out boat and was peering over into her, but he had not uttered a sound. He was thinking very fast indeed. "We've got 'em!" he said to himself. "What rascals they are! Who'd ha' thought it of 'em! This is what it means to be wrecked among wild savages. Take everything you have. But then they murder a fellow, and old Kroom says some of 'em eat him. Now I wonder what they'll say when they find they're caught?"

He did not have to wait long before he found out. Here came the _Elephant_, her sail slipping down as she ran her nose into the sand. Out stepped Captain Pickering, and at the same moment the four bay fishermen came in a hurry to the opposite side of the cat-boat.

"My quadrant!" shouted Captain Pickering. "Those two English guns of mine, and Captain Sanders's spare chronometer! It beats all!"

"Yours, are they?" loudly responded the steersman of the cat-boat. "Well, if I ain't glad to see ye! And old Kroom, too! I was wonderin' how we'd get 'em back to their owners."

"What?" thundered Captain Kroom. "Just say that over again!"

"Why, Captain," replied the fisherman, "them there insurance fellers are straight enough, but the tug-boat men are no better than so many river thieves. Reg'lar wreckers! We couldn't do a thing while they were around. Some of the _Goshawk_'s crew were just as bad."

"Ye'd not belave me," put in another of the fishermen, "but it's so. They're all foreigners, ivery mon av thim. Not an American among thim. The dirthy spalpanes! It's bad enough for a mon to foind himself wrecked, widout bein' ploondered. We got away these things from the toog-boat min, but they threw over stuff and buoyed it to coom and get it. We was gropplin' for it the day. I hope ye're no wrecker, Captain Kroom. They say most o' thim owld sailors'll sthrip ony wreck."

The bronzed face of Captain Kroom was furious with indignation for a moment, and then he burst into a very deep-chested roar of laughter.

"Sam," whispered Pete, "think of their taking him and you and me for wreckers."

"They'll have to give up all those things, though," whispered back Sam.

The bay fishermen had no thought of doing anything else. They listened with keen interest to the account of the spar buoy, that had been set adrift without their knowledge. They seemed entirely satisfied with the capture of the life-preserver. In return, they told all they knew of the ways of the tug-boat men, and Pat Malone again and again asserted that "those chaps are all sorts, from iverywhere, and not wan American."

Captain Pickering was ready to pay the four very honest fishermen liberally for the time they had spent in watching the thieves and in grappling. It was quite dark, however, before the _Elephant_ again had her crew on board.

"Biggest day I ever had," said Sam to Pete. "Let's come again, right away."

"Bully!" said Pete. "We'll come out with Captain Kroom."

"Come along, boys," put in the Captain. "We'll fish all summer. Glad there's more breeze to carry us home. Pickering, it's just as I told you. Our bay fishermen are honest. They' wouldn't cheat you in the weight of a flounder."

The moon came up, as if the new fresh breeze had brought it, and the homeward sail across the bay did great credit to the qualities of the _Elephant_. Nevertheless there was much tacking to and fro, while Pete and Sam listened to the two old sailors. There was really hardly anything for them to do but to exchange yarns about their voyages in the splendid clipper-ships which were now being driven from the seas by that terrible fellow, Steam.

"Pete," said Sam, as they stepped out at last upon the wharf, "ain't I glad I came."

"I'm glad you did," replied Pete; "but the Captain's going to take us out again, any day."

THE END.

A LOYAL TRAITOR.

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

BY JAMES BARNES.