Part 10

The wind began droning like a monster pipe-organ through the wood. The thunder of the surf sent its solemn cadence to their ears from the seaward side of Storm Island. Night was shutting down threateningly and pregnant with the possibility of coming disaster.

They were comfortable enough under the break of the hill. If worse came to worse, they could clip aboard the _Spoondrift_ and take shelter in her cabin. She was not likely to pitch much here in the cove, with the wind in its present quarter.

Red took Peewee in his arms, despite that infant's strenuous objections, and sang to him:

"Rock-a-bye, baby, on the tree top! When the wind blows the cradle will rock."

"I'll bounce a rock off your top story--that's the sort of a rock I'll give you!" threatened Hicks. "What do you think you're doing, nursing a first-form kid?"

The evening promised to be tempestuous, both in the tent and out. The atmospheric pressure has something to do with the brittleness of human temper at such times. Midkiff and Cloudman got into a wrangle that Kingdon had to settle with some abruptness, and Hicks had a chip on his shoulder most of the time. After a while, getting tired of it, Rex called sharply:

"Stop the fussing. I have something serious to say. This tent isn't right. I haven't been satisfied with its position since it was raised. It isn't properly sheltered from the wind, and we're going to have some wind to-night, my husky lads. Come on, let's move it before it gets any darker."

"Move it!"

"It should be at least twenty yards over here to the east," insisted Rex. "No time like the present. Give a hand." He began to pull up stakes.

"You're crazy, Rex," Midkiff said.

"Let the tent alone!" cried Cloudman.

"Ain't to-morrow another day?" queried Peewee shrilly, almost in tears. "I don't want to work any more to-night."

"This tent is going to be moved to-night," asserted the leader of the party.

"You're foolish, Rex," Midkiff again said.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded Peewee. "I don't see----"

"You don't have to," Kingdon said with sharpness. "Come, now! Think I'm going to do this all alone? Want to get it set up again before the rain comes."

"I won't do it!" Phillips protested. "It's foolishness. You're using the steel fist without any reason."

Midkiff yielded. "Rex is within his rights. He's captain. If he says it's moving day, why move we must. But to-morrow we'll see about this."

"You'll have to show us why and what-for to-morrow, then," said Cloudman morosely. "I can obey orders as well as the next one. But these are tyrannical. I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. This will need a lot of explaining to satisfy _me_."

It was a grouchy bunch that tackled the job. Before starting for the summer camp Rex had been unanimously chosen captain, and they had agreed to obey every order given by him. This, of course, was quite necessary aboard the _Spoondrift_. Discipline had become somewhat lax ashore, but Kingdon still had the right to command, if he wished to enforce it.

It was necessary to get out the lanterns before they were through, and ere the job was finished it had begun to rain.

Some of their "dunnage" got damp, and when Hicks got into his nightshirt the bottom of it was sopping wet. He almost frothed at the mouth beneath the chaffing of the others.

The rainfall began and continued without the roll of thunder or the flash of lightning. It was a tempest, nevertheless. Harder and harder the rain drummed on the canvas roof. The torrential downpour would have drowned conversation had the boys attempted it.

Their five cots were arranged just as they had been before, but somehow they did not now seem so comfortable. Peewee growled about his nightshirt, and Cloudman snickered. In the dark the little fellow tried to smash his tormentor with his own hard, hay-stuffed pillow. When he got hold of it again the pillow was wet.

"The water's leaking in under the tent, King!" snarled Peewee. "You got us in a nice mess!"

"In the morning you shall take a pick and shovel, honey, and dig a nice trench all around."

"I'll see you hanged first!" bawled the rebel.

"Go to sleep and forget it," advised Red.

They all got to sleep finally. But it was not yet morning when they were awakened again by Peewee, who seemed to be having a nightmare.

"That blamed infant!" Midkiff was saying with shocking emphasis. "I never did see such a pestiferous insect."

Hicks was squealing: "Stop it! Stop! 'Tain't time to get up. That's only the first bell. Slop any more of that water on me, and I won't leave you enough to wash your face in!"

"Somebody please hit him on the head with the hatchet," urged Phillips.

"Ouch!" bawled the now thoroughly awakened Peewee. "I'm all afloat."

"What d'ye mean--afloat?" demanded Kingdon, sitting up.

"Water's dripping ri-right into my ear," wailed Hicks.

"Ahoy! She's sprung a leak! Man the lifeboats!" came from Red Phillips. "All hands to the pumps."

Then they heard something which at first they thought was the rain increasing. It seemed to be rushing down the hill upon them in a regular flood. Then, with a rumble and roar that seemed to rock the earth itself, an avalanche fell upon the plateau.

Kingdon sprang up, seized the lantern that was burning low, turned up the wick, and got outside as quickly as possible. Midkiff was at his heels. In bare feet, they slopped through the two-inch flood that ran all around the tent. The rain was pouring steadily down. Through the darkness and the downpour they saw, just about where the tent had formerly stood, a bulky object around which the rain smoked.

"Mercy, Rex! What is it?" Midkiff gasped.

"The bowlder," Kingdon said in a muffled, almost choky voice.

"Bowlder?"

"It overhung the camp. I--I was afraid of it. That's why I had the tent shifted."

"Good boy!" Midkiff patted his shoulder. "Your hunch saved us."

Both recovered themselves as the others rushed out of the tent. No boy cares to reveal, even to his closest friend, the deeper feelings of his nature, and Rex and Midkiff said nothing more about appreciating the wisdom that had saved them all from disaster.

"Look at that rock!" gasped little Hicks, staring and shivering. "Rex, you kept us from being smashed by making us move."

"It--it was lucky, Rex, that you made us do that," admitted Cloudman.

"You're a wonder!" Red exploded. "If we'd been there we'd been driven three feet under ground. They'd never had to bother to bury us."

Midkiff pointed to the east. "It's almost daybreak. No more sleep."

"I should say not!" Cloudman agreed.

"The rain washed the rock free and sent it down the hill," decided Phillips. "I can understand that, all right. But why did it fall just now? Of course, there's nothing fishy about it, Rex?"

"I couldn't say. A fish might have done it, but he'd had a stiff climb up to where that rock was."

"After that I'm sorry that _you_ moved! There's nobody would have done such a thing, anyway."

"Even that scaley Injun wasn't on the island," Applejack added.

"I don't believe our beloved Horace, or any of his bunch, would have strolled out in such a rain," Red went on carelessly.

"Hush!" chided Kingdon. "Evil to him who evil thinks."

"It's knocked all the think out of me," said Cloudman, grinning in a sickly way.

All five felt a seriousness that they feared to display. Boys are prone to consider any show of deeper feeling unmanly.

They started to dress, and found that the most of their garments were more or less wet. As for putting on shoes and socks, that was foolish. The driest place they could find was the cabin of the catboat, and as it was almost high water they easily got aboard. When the oilstove was lighted, Cloudman started to fry soft clams and bacon for breakfast.

"Talk about paradise!" sighed Red, stretching and crowding Peewee into a space about as wide as a knife-edge. "This is it."

"It distinctly is _not_ it," denied Hicks. "A sardine in a can feels lonesome, 'side of _me_. Move over, and let a fellow breathe."

Kingdon had not come aboard to stop. Getting into his oilskins, he climbed the hill above the camp alone. He was in a pretty serious mood. The bowlder had sheared the sod off the hillside for its entire course. The water was running in a brown flood down the path of the avalanche.

Where the bowlder had been set was a hole all of two feet deep, and full of water. The drainage from above, pouring down the hill, seemed to have excavated the earth from all around the station of the bowlder. It might be that the huge rock was merely washed out of its bed by the rain and started in its plunge down the hill.

Kingdon looked farther up the hill. Through the still falling drizzle he mounted the slope a few yards and found the sapling that he had before noted. It had been brought out of the woods and apparently had been put to criminal use. The smaller stone, still in position as a fulcrum, pointed to one answer to the problem. The leverage of that green stick might easily have started the bowlder to rolling. The rain had merely helped cover the fact.

In Rex Kingdon's mind a thought took form: "An enemy hath done this!"

*CHAPTER XXV.*

*THE EIGHT-OARED SHELL.*

The sun broke gloriously through the clouds, and it became a lovely morning. The Walcott Hall boys began finally to feel more cheerful. They spread out their belongings to dry in the sun, and Peewee actually took spade and pick and went to work on the shallow trench and drains that should surround every tent, no matter how good the natural drainage is.

While he was sweating and grunting over his work, he looked off on the water, and promptly called:

"See the ca-noe! Do you see the ca-noe? What is the ca-noe doing?"

"That Indian and Kirby are just getting back from Blackport," said Phillips, after glancing in the same direction.

"They must have started mighty early," Midkiff said. "They've had to beat up the sound against a stiff breeze."

Kingdon said nothing, but he watched the two in the canoe make a landing. The light craft was heavily laden. He was quite sure it had made no quick passage from Blackport Channel; and at sunrise the weather had not cleared.

With an idea in his head that he did not mention to the others, Kingdon wandered away by himself for a tramp along shore, strolling westerly. His chums had expressed their wonderment regarding the rolling of the bowlder, all through breakfast and afterward; but they suspected nothing. They were quite satisfied that it had been set in motion by the heavy rain.

Storm Island was several miles long, and it was no inconsiderable walk to the western point of it. As he came within half a mile or so of the high clay bank under which he believed he had seen the small boat take shelter the previous afternoon, he looked sharply as he went along for signs of a landing on the beach.

He found the place for which he was searching. The canoe had been lifted out and carried into a narrow, sandy and well-drained gulley. It had been overturned, and its cargo sheltered beneath it. The marks of two human beings who had crouched under the overturned boat were likewise plainly visible.

Presently he went back to his friends, and found that the boys from the other camp, with the exception of the Indian, had come to see what the bowlder and debris on the plateau meant. They had spied the heap soon after the canoe arrived. Horace, of course, was reserved in his observations, as usual. Ben Comas was silent. Pudge was openly congratulatory that nobody was hurt. Kirby did the most talking.

"Wonder our fellows here didn't hear it," he remarked.

"It ought to have been heard in Blackport," Kingdon said grimly.

"You chaps must have slept like the dead, over there at the camp," said Kirby. "I'm sure I should have heard it if I'd been there."

"Perhaps I did hear it," drawled Pence, "but thought it was only Pudge snoring."

Kingdon continued cheerful and talkative while the visitors remained. He did not appear to, but he made friendly advances to Kirby.

"You had a bad night, didn't you?" he questioned. "I guess I saw you and Bootleg making the Clay Head just before the storm burst."

"Wha-at?" cried Kirby. "We didn't either! We stayed at Blackport all night."

"Where'd you stay?" Kingdon asked curiously, with raised eyebrows.

"On--on the wharf. A feller let us sleep on some bags in a fish-shed. If you saw anybody land here last evening, it wasn't us."

He was so voluble and eager to deny it that he attracted Horace's attention. "What's the matter with you, Harry?" the black-eyed fellow drawled. "Having a fit? I heard you say you slept in the fish-house, which is believable; for both you and Joe Bootleg seem to carry a rather fishy odor about you this morning. It wouldn't have been a crime if you _had_ reached the Clay Head last night, and were afraid to sail the rest of the way up here." He laughed his unflattering laugh.

Kingdon wondered. He had left the rusted hatchet he had found in the woods stuck in a rotting log in plain view. Pudge came across it.

"My goodness!" said the fat boy, growing red in the face. "I feared that had been lost. Do you know, Hicks, I don't remember bringing that hatchet back after I borrowed it. We found ours the next day."

"Don't ask _me_," Peewee said carelessly. "I don't know a thing about it."

"I found it," Kingdon put in quietly, watching Pudge now.

"Did you?" asked the plump lad. "Where?"

"Where it was lost," returned the other laughing. "Don't need to worry about it. But you fellows don't want to cut green wood on the island. If one of the Manatee wardens should come over here and find out that you had----"

"Why, I never!" declared Pudge.

Again Horace intervened. "What's all the row?" he queried, strolling up to the group at the log.

"I found a good sized stick cut, up there in the woods," Kingdon told him. "This hatchet that Pudge borrowed of us lay beside the raw stump. That'll never do, you know--cutting well grown saplings is a crime in the eyes of the lumber company."

"You never said a word about it before, King," Hicks observed. "Thought we all understood there was to be no green wood cut."

"We do," Horace said, his eyes narrowing.

"I never did it!" Pudge exclaimed again.

"I'll ask Joe. He's the only one that's likely to have used the hatchet," Horace said grimly. "You know how these Indians look at things, Kingdon. To such fellows a rule is only made to break."

"I wonder," thought Kingdon, "if that isn't pretty nearly the attitude of everybody else?"

To tell the truth, he was puzzled. Joe Bootleg, Kirby, Pudge, even Horace Pence himself, was under suspicion in Rex's mind. As for Ben Comas, sour as the chap appeared, somehow Kingdon did not consider him in any way connected with the affairs of the sapling-lever or the bowlder that had rolled down the hill.

It was much too wet that day to get in any baseball practice, but the following afternoon the two parties of campers met on the field. Pence and his followers seemed rather more friendly than before. The two parties of boys mingled and spent an hour in a lively scrub game. Kingdon learned on this occasion that Horace was something of a batter.

"Over the fence and out, boy," the backstop said, grinning at Pence cheerfully. "Some wallop that. We've a real field at the Hall, and that fly would have gone pretty near to the lake. Old Jerry Lane never did better when he got a real clout at the sphere, eh, Red?"

"Lane couldn't do as well," Phillips agreed, with honesty, though still rather niggardly of praise regarding any of Horace Pence's achievements.

"Lane was our 'baby grand,'" laughed Kingdon. "He was some large person. Only trouble with Jerry was, his wits were in his feet and his feet were awfully slow. He ran bases like cold molasses. I bet Pudge could beat him. Made a fair football center, though."

"You fellows at Walcott Hall go in for almost every kind of sport there is, I guess," observed Horace, almost as though he were interested.

"From tiddledywinks to button-button," Kingdon chuckled. "You should see our gym. There's few prep. schools can beat it, and some of the colleges have to lift their bonnets to Walcott Hall. Old Til loves clean sport himself, and some of the teachers aren't bad at tennis, golf, tatting, embroidery--even football. We've got a prof. of math, who is a regular shark at baseball. Used to coach for some southern college, I believe. Cloud can tell you. Cloud's known Yadkin since he was in pinafores. Cloud, I mean."

"Look here," drawled Horace Pence, his black eyes twinkling, "don't you ever study at that school of yours?"

"Study!" exploded Phillips. "Man, they drive you like a dynamo at that institute of erudition."

"But the dynamo's hooked up to plenty of fun, too," Kingdon hastened to say, favoring the clumsy Red with a frown. "Of course, we have to keep up in the lessons, without too many conditions."

"Textbooks make me sick," yawned Horace. "I could almost like the sport end of it at Belding; but having to get lessons, and face the sour visage of an unappreciative faculty--not for me!"

"Why waste your time with that fellow, King?" complained Red, as they walked down to the camp together. "He's neither fish, fowl, nor good red herring. Thinks he's too old for school, whereas he doesn't know any more than little Peewee."

Suddenly they both saw something in the cove below that brought a cry of surprise to their lips. Along beside the _Spoondrift_ another craft was just drifting in, its snowy sail rumpled on the deck.

"Pirates!" shouted Red to the boys behind them.

"That's the _Nothing To It_," Kingdon added, striking into a trot.

The five Walcott Hall youths came scampering down to the shore just as Yansey and his friends carried a line aboard the _Spoondrift_. The Blackport boys hailed the campers vociferously.

"Where's the rest of your band, Kingdon?" Yansey asked, after the greetings were over. "I see you've got two camps. We didn't know which one to anchor off of, but this was nearest."

"The other fellows--Pence and his crowd--like that location best," Rex returned easily. "We eat in two squads, anyway. By and by we'll all go over there. I want you to know Horace."

"Another of your Walcott Hall crowd?"

"Er--not yet," Kingdon admitted with a quiet smile.

The skipper of the _Nothing To It_ agreed. "We haven't got to hurry. There's a moon to-night, and we'll sail home by light of her. We're allowed to stay out late since we've put on long pants."

Midkiff cooked a chowder. Cloudman fried fish and made biscuit. The Walcott Hall boys made great inroads on their choicest canned goods store, to balance the spread the Blackport Boat Club boys had previously given them.

Kingdon found time to sound Yansey regarding the discarded eight-oared shell at the boat-builder's.

"No, he hasn't sold it for us yet. Not much chance of that till next spring when the rowing season opens."

"Give you ten dollars for the use of it this summer," Kingdon offered.

"What for?"

"Well, we don't want to eat it."

"You haven't the men to fill it."

"Yes, I have. Fancy I can lick 'em into shape so as to give you Blackporters a practice race. I've offered ten dollars,----"

"Ten nothing!" cried the skipper of the _Nothing To It_. "If you really think you can get up a crew----"

"Wait till you see us cutting circles round you," laughed Kingdon.

"I'll never live long enough to see that," said Yansey. "You can have the old skiff."

"For ten dollars?"

"For ten kicks! We won't take your money. You look like a square chap to me, Kingdon. You're welcome to the use of our old boat. Perhaps you _might_ beat some of the other crews in August."

"We're going to break our backs to beat you Blackport fellows, I warn you," said Rex seriously.

"I admire your nerve!" chuckled Yansey. "But don't expect me to furnish liniment for your broken backs."

*CHAPTER XXVI.*

*PENCE DEFENDS KIRBY.*

They went over to the other camp immediately after supper. It was still twilight, and the other campers saw them coming in good season. But the only one of Horace Pence's comrades that got away was Joe Bootleg. He did not linger to meet the fellows from Blackport.

"These are the chaps we can get that shell from, Horace," Kingdon explained, after the brief introductions. "Fact is, they sort of dare us to get into it and show 'em how much we don't know about rowing."

"Perhaps we can surprise them by showing what we do know about it," laughed Pence.

"No wonder you don't wear hats over here on Storm Island," said Yansey. "None made big enough for your heads."

"Can that fat chap row?" demanded another of the Blackport boys.

"Course I can," spoke up Pudge resentfully. "I'm not so heavy as I look." If there was one form of exercise the fat youth did not shy at it was rowing.

"It's lucky you're not as heavy as you look to be below the ears," drawled Yansey. "You'll make ballast, all right. Five and three are eight, and there's little nubbin for cox. Didn't see him at first."

"I suppose not," sneered Hicks, who nearly always took offense when his physical proportions came into question. "There's a whole lot of things you Blackporters have never seen."

"I suppose we'll have our eyes opened when you fellows get to rowing," laughed the skipper of the _Nothing To It_.

"Quite likely," Phillips chimed in. "Give us two weeks of good weather and we'll show you something in the line of rowing that'll make you blink."

He said this chaffingly, although he was enthused with the spirit of confidence. Even Midkiff showed interest. Cloudman was the only green hand. He had never given much thought to any sport but baseball.

Before they returned to the cove where the catboats lay, Kingdon said to Horace Pence: "Come on over with me in the _Spoondrift_ to-morrow, and we'll get the shell."

"You mean to try it?"

"Try what?" asked Rex.

"To beat those fellows at their own game. All these long-shore chaps can row."

"It won't hurt us if they beat us," Kingdon returned. "It'll give us something to do for excitement, anyhow."

"I don't know that I can get our fellows to agree," Horace said slowly. It was the first speech Kingdon had ever heard him make that did not reek of self-confidence.

"You've got influence enough for that," Phillips told him. "Get 'em interested, and we'll keep 'em interested."

"I'll try," Pence promised.

Pence strolled over to the Walcott Hall camp in the morning, soon after breakfast, and signified his readiness to sail for Blackport.

When the _Spoondrift_ was out of the cove and headed down the sound under her engine, the breeze being light, Phillips, the third member of the party, asked:

"All your fellows like the idea of rowing? How about Comas?"

"Didn't have any trouble with Ben, for a wonder," Pence answered with a lift of his lip. "Ben kind of likes himself in a boat, anyway. But Harry----"

"That's Kirby?" Kingdon put in carelessly, as Pence hesitated.

"He's always been a shark on boating," the black-eyed chap stated. "I fairly had to tease him to agree to this scheme. I don't know what's got into him. Didn't act like himself at all. Almost as sour as Joe Bootleg."

Pence said this more as a soliloquy than in open answer to Kingdon's question. As mentioned before, Horace was no great talker.