Chapter 13

WHEN THE NAVY HORNED IN

One thing about this yacht-cruisin' act is how close a line you get on the people you're shut up with. Why, this cross-mated bunch of ours hadn't been out in the _Agnes_ more'n three days before I could have told you the life hist'ry of 'most everyone in the party.

I knew that the late Mr. Mumford had been a noble soul who wore full face lambrequins and was fussy about his food. From the picture Mrs. Mumford showed Vee and me, I judged he must have looked like an upstate banker; but come to get down to cases, she admits he was in the coal and lumber business over in Montclair, New Jersey.

About J. Dudley Simms I dug up all kinds of information. He'd been brought up by an old uncle who'd made a million or so runnin' an ale brewery and who had a merry little dream that he was educatin' J. Dudley to be a minister. If he'd lasted a couple of years longer, too, it would have been the Rev. J. Dudley Simms for a fact; but when uncle cashed in, Dudley left the divinity school abrupt and forgot ever to go back.

I even discovered that Professor Leonidas Barr, the fish expert and Old Hickory's cribbage partner, had once worked in a shoe store and could still guess the size of a young lady's foot by lookin' at her hands. But when it came to collectin' any new dope about Captain Killam, he's still Rupert the Mysterious.

Durin' them long days when we went churnin' steady and monotonous down towards the hook end of Florida, with nothin' happenin' but sleep and meals, 'most everybody sort of drifted together and got folksy. Not Rupert, though. He don't forget for a minute that he's conductin' a dark and desperate hunt for pirate gold, and he don't seem contented unless he's workin' at it every hour of the day.

Course, after he's pulled that break of tacklin' J. Dudley for a mutiny plotter, Old Hickory shuts down on his sleuthin' around the decks, so he takes it out in gazin' suspicious at the horizon through a pair of field glasses he always wears strapped to him. Don't seem to cheer him up any, either, to have me ask him frivolous questions.

"Can you spot any movie shows or hot-dog wagons out there, Cap'n?" I asks.

He just glares peevish and declines to answer.

"What you lookin' for, anyway?" I goes on.

"Nothing I care to discuss with you, I think," says he.

"Bing-g-g," says I. "Right on the wrist!"

And then all of a sudden Mrs. Mumford gets hipped with the idea that Rupert is sort of bein' neglected. Well, trust her. She's been a sunshine worker and a social uplifter all her life. And no sooner does she get sympathizin' with Rupert than she starts plannin' ways of chirkin' him up.

"The poor dear Captain!" she gurgles gushy. "He seems so lonely and sad. Who knows what his past has been, how many dangers he has faced, what ordeals he has been through? If someone could only get him to talk about them, it might help."

"Why not tackle him, then?" says I. "Nobody could do it better than you."

"Oh, really now!" protests Mrs. Mumford, duckin' her chin kittenish. "I--I couldn't do it alone. Perhaps, though, if you young people would--"

"Oh, we will; won't we, Torchy?" says Vee.

I nods. Inside of half an hour, too, we had towed Rupert into a corner beside the widow and had him surrounded.

"Tell me, Captain," says Mrs. Mumford impulsive, "have you not led a most romantic life?"

Rupert rolls his eyes at her quick, then steadies 'em down and blinks solemn. Kind of weird, starey eyes, them buttermilk blue panes of his are.

"I--I don't say much about it, as a rule," says he, droppin' his eyelids modest.

"There!" exclaims Mrs. Mumford. "I just knew it was so. One daring adventure after another, I suppose, with no thought of fear."

"Oh, I've been afraid plenty of times," says Rupert, "but somehow I-- Well, I've gone on."

"Isn't he splendid?" asks Mrs. Mumford, turnin' to us. "Just like a hero in a book! But we would like to know from the very beginning. As a boy, now?"

"There wasn't much," protests Rupert. "You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois. Father ran a general store. I had to help in it--sold shingle nails, molasses, mower teeth, overalls. How I hated that! But there was the creek and the muck pond. I had an old boat. I played smuggler and pirate. I used to love to read pirate books. I wanted to go to sea."

"So you ran away and became a sailor," adds Mrs. Mumford, clappin' her hands enthusiastic.

"I planned to lots of times," says Rupert, "but father made me go through the academy. Then afterwards I had to teach school--in a rough district. Once some big boys tried to throw me into a snowdrift. We had a terrible fight."

"It must have been awful," says Mrs. Mumford. "Those big, brutal boys! I can just see them. Did--did you kill any of them?"

"I hit one on the nose quite hard," says Rupert. "Then, of course, I had to give up teaching. I meant to start off for sea that winter, but father was taken sick. Lungs, you know. So we sold out the store and bought a place down in Florida, an orange grove. It was on the west coast, near the Gulf.

"That's where I learned to sail. And after father died I took my share of what he left us and bought a cruising boat. I didn't like working on the grove--messing around with smelly fertilizer, sawing off dead limbs, doing all that silly spraying. And my brother Jim could do it so much better. So I fished and took out winter tourists on excursions: things like that. Summers I'd go cruising down the coast. I would be gone for weeks at a time. I've been out in some fearful storms, too.

"I got to know a lot of strange characters who live on those west coast keys. They're bad, some of them--kill you for a few dollars. Others are real friendly, like the old fellow who told me about the buried treasure. He was almost dead of fever when I found him in his little palmetto shack. I got medicine for him, stayed until he was well. That's why he told me about the gold."

"Think of that!" says Mrs. Mumford. "He had been a pirate himself, hadn't he?"

"Well, hardly," says Rupert. "A tinsmith, I think he told me. He was a tough old citizen, though--an atheist or something like that. Very profane. Used chewing tobacco."

Mrs. Mumford shudders. "And you were alone with such a desperado, on a desert island!" she gasps, rollin' her eyes.

"Oh, I can generally look out for myself," says Rupert, tappin' his hip pocket.

He was fairly beamin', Rupert was, for Mrs. Mumford was not only lettin' him write his own ticket, but was biddin' his stock above par. And all the rest of the day he swells around chesty, starin' out at the ocean as important as if he owned it all.

"At last," says I, "we know the romance of Rupert."

"I hope it doesn't keep me awake nights," says Vee.

"Look at the bold, bad ex-school teacher," says I. "Wonder what blood-curdlin' mind plays he's indulgin' in now? There! He's unlimberin' the glasses again."

It must have been about four o'clock, for I remember hearin' eight bells strike and remarkin' to Vee what a silly way that was to keep track of time. We was watchin' Rupert go through his Columbus-discoverin'-Staten-Island motions, and I was workin' up some josh to hand him, when he comes rushin' back to the wireless room. No, we didn't stretch our ears intentional, and if we sidled up under the cabin window it must have been because there was a couple of deck chairs spread out convenient.

"Isn't that some kind of warship off there?" Captain Killam is demandin' of Meyers.

"Wait," says the operator, fittin' on his tin ear. "He's just calling." Then, after listenin' a while, he announces: "He wants to know who we are."

"Don't answer," orders Killam.

"Oh, all right," says Meyers, and goes on listenin'. Pretty soon, though, he gives out another bulletin.

"It's the United States gunboat _Petrel_, and he's demanding who and what. Real snappy this time. Guess I'd better flash it to him, eh?"

"No, no!" says Rupert. "It's no business of his. This is a private yacht bound for a home port. Let him whistle."

It struck me at the time as a nutty thing to do, but of course I'm no judge. I had a hunch that Rupert was registerin' importance and showin' how he was boss of the expedition--something he hadn't a chance to get over before. It ain't long, though, before Meyers begins talkin' like he was uneasy.

"He wants to know," says he, "if our wireless is out of commission, and if it is why we don't run up a signal."

"Bah!" says Rupert. "These naval officers are too nosey. It'll do this one good if we take no notice of him."

"All the same," insists Meyers, "I think Mr. Ellins and the Captain ought to know what's going on."

"Oh, very well," says Rupert. "I'll call them down and we'll talk it over."

Course, we had to clear out then, for it's a secret confab of the whole executive committee that develops, includin' Auntie. But we got a full report later. It seems Rupert was skittish about havin' naval officers snoopin' around the yacht. For one thing, he don't want 'em to find out that this is a treasure-huntin' cruise, on account of the government's bein' apt to hog part of the swag. Then, there's all them guns stowed away below. He explains how this _Petrel_ is a slow old tub that he don't believe could overhaul the _Agnes_ before dark. So why not make a run for it?

The reg'lar yacht captain was dead against anything like that. He wouldn't advise monkeyin' with the United States Navy, if they was askin' him. Better chuck the guns overboard. As for Old Hickory, he was sort of on the fence.

Who do you guess it was, though, that stood out for makin' the nervy getaway? Auntie. Uh-huh! All this panicky talk by Meyers and the yacht captain only warmed up her sportin' blood. What right, she wanted to know, had a snippy little gunboat to hold up a private party of perfectly good New Yorkers and ask 'em where they was goin'? Humph! What was the government, anyway? Just a lot of cheap officeholders who spent their time bothering our best people about customs duties and income taxes. For her part, she didn't care a snap about the navy. If the _Agnes_ could get away, why not breeze ahead?

I expect that proposition must have appealed to Old Hickory, for he swung to her side at the last, and that's the way it was settled. They decided to make no bones about what was up. Mr. Ellins calls us together and makes a little speech, sayin' if anybody don't like the prospect he's sorry, but it can't be helped.

Then the crew gets busy. Black smoke begins pourin' out of the stack and the engines are tuned up to top speed. All the awnin's are taken in and every flag pulled down. The _Agnes_ proceeds to hump herself, too.

"Twelve knots," reports Old Hickory, inspectin' the patent log. "The Captain thinks he can get fourteen out of her. The _Petrel's_ best is sixteen."

"At least, we have a good start," says Auntie, gazin' off where a thin smudge shows on the sky line. "And before they can get near enough to shoot they can't see us. I suppose they'd be just impudent enough to shoot if they could?"

"Oh, yes," says Old Hickory. "We're outlaws now, you know."

"Who cares?" says Auntie, shruggin' her shoulders.

Say, I wasn't so much surprised at Mr. Ellins. He's spent most of his life slippin' things over on the government. Auntie, though! A steady, solemn old girl with her pedigree printed in the Social Register. You wouldn't have thought it of her.

"Some plunger, Auntie, eh?" says I to Vee. "She don't seem to care what happens."

"I never knew she could be so reckless," says Vee. "Getting us chased by a warship! Isn't that rather dangerous, Torchy?"

"I shouldn't call it the mildest outdoor sport there was," says I.

"And the casual way she talks of our being shot at--as if they'd fire tennis balls!" goes on Vee.

"I didn't care for that part of the conversation myself," says I. "I'm no hero, like Rupert. If there's any shootin' takes place, I'm goin' to get nervous. I feel it comin' on."

"You don't think Auntie and Mr. Ellins would let it go that far, do you?" asks Vee.

"It would be just like Auntie to fire back," says I. "What's a navy more or less to her, when she gets her jaw set?"

"I--I wish I hadn't come on this old yacht," says Vee.

"If I could row you ashore," says I, "I wouldn't mind stayin' to keep you company. Look! That smoke off there's gettin' nearer."

If Auntie and Old Hickory was pinin' for thrills, it looked like they was due to get their wish. Just what would happen in case the _Agnes_ was run down nobody seemed to know. The only thing our two old sports was interested in just then was this free-for-all race.

Anyway, we had a fine evenin' for it. The ocean was as smooth as a full bathtub, and all tinted up in pinks and purples, like one of Belasco's back drops. Off over the bow to the right--excuse me, to the starboard--a big, ruddy sun was droppin' slow and touchin' up the top of a fluffy pile of cottony clouds back of us, that looked like they was balanced right on the edge of things. Bang in the middle of that peaceful background, though, was this smear of black smoke, and you didn't have to be any marine dill pickle to tell it was headed our way.

We groups ourselves on the after deck and watches. Everybody that could annexes a pair of field glasses; but, even with that help, about all you could see was some white foam piled up against a gray bow. Now and then Rupert announces that she's gainin' on us, and Old Hickory nods his head.

"Only an hour until sunset, though," Auntie remarks.

"I suppose," suggests Rupert, "we could change our course after dark and slip into Miami Bay."

"No," says Old Hickory, waggin' his head stubborn. "We will hold our course right down through Florida Straits. We ought to make Key West by morning, if we're not over-hauled."

"If!" I whispers to Vee.

Dinner was announced, but for once there's no grand rush below. Mr. Ellins orders a hand-out meal to be passed around, and we fills up on sandwiches while keepin' watch on that black smudge, which is creepin' closer and closer. Don't take long for it to get dark down in this part of the country after the sun is doused, but the stars shine mighty bright. On the water, too, it seems so much lighter.

Then the _Petrel_ turns on a couple of search-lights. Course, we was 'way out of range, but somehow it seemed like them swingin' streaks of light was goin' to reach out and pick us up any minute. For an hour or so we watched 'em feelin' for us, gettin' a bit nearer, reachin' and swingin', with the _Agnes_ strainin' herself to slip away, but losin' a little of her lead every minute.

Must have been near ten o'clock when Rupert announces cheerful: "By George! She's falling behind. Those searchlights are getting dimmer."

"I believe you're right," says Old Hickory.

Half an hour more and there was no doubt about it.

"Humph!" says Auntie. "I was sure we could do it."

And Mr. Ellins is so tickled that he orders up a couple of bottles of his best fizz, so all hands can drink to the U. S. Navy.

"Long may it wave," says J. Dudley Simms, "and may it always stick to its new motto--Safety First."

He got quite a hand on that, and then everybody turned in happy. As I went to sleep the _Agnes_ was still joggin' along at her best gait, and it was comfortin' to know that our wrathy naval friends had been left hopelessly behind.

I expect I must have been poundin' my ear real industrious for five or six hours when I hears this distant _boom_, and comes up in my berth as sudden as if someone had pulled the string. Sunshine was streamin' in through the porthole, and I was just wonderin' if I'd slept right through the breakfast gong when _boom_! it came again. There's a rush of feet on deck, some panicky remarks from the man up in the bow, a quick clangin' of the engine-room bells, and then I feels the propellers reversed.

"Good night!" says I. "Pinched on the high seas!"

I didn't waste much time except to throw on a few clothes; but, at that, I finds Auntie scrabblin' out ahead of me and Captain Killam already on deck. She's a picturesque old girl, Auntie, in a lavender and white kimono and a boudoir cap to match; and Rupert, in blue trousers and a pajama top, hardly looks like a triple-plated hero.

"Nabbed!" gasps Rupert, starin' over the rail, at a gray gunboat that's just roundin' in towards us. It's the _Petrel_, sure enough.

"The idea!" says Auntie. "They were shooting at us, too, weren't they? Of all things!"

Then up pads Old Hickory in a low-necked silk dressin'-gown, with his gray hair all rumpled and a heavy crop of white stubble on his solid set jaws.

"Huh!" says he, takin' a glance at the _Petrel_.

That's about all there is to be said, too. For it was odd how little any of us felt like bein' chatty. We just stood around quiet and watched the businesslike motions on the _Petrel_ as she stops about a block off and proceeds to drop a boat into the water.

Projectin' prominent from one of her steel bay windows is a wicked-lookin' gun about the size of a young water main, and behind it a lot of jackies squintin' at us earnest. And you know how still it seems on a boat when the engines quit. I almost jumps when someone whispers in my ear. It's Vee.

"Now I hope Auntie's satisfied," says she.

"There's no tellin' about her," says I.

Anyway, she wasn't fannin' herself, or sniffin' smellin' salts. I'd noticed her hail a deck steward, and the next I knew she was spoonin' away at half a grapefruit, as calm as you please. Mr. Ellins is indulgin' in a dry smoke. Only Mrs. Mumford, when she finally appears, does justice to the situation. She rolls her eyes, breathes hard, and clutches her crochet bag desperate.

The _Petrel_ people were takin' their time about things. After they got the boat in they had to let down some side stairs, and then the sailors waited with their oars ready until an officer in a fresh laundered white uniform gets in and gives the signal to shove off. Our Captain has the companionway stairs rigged, too, and there ain't a word passed until the naval gent comes aboard. He's rather a youngish party, with a round, good-natured face, and he seems kind of amused as he sizes up our bunch in their early mornin' costumes.

"Pardon me," says he, touchin' his cap, "but who is in charge of this yacht?"

"I suppose I am," says Old Hickory.

"Not a bit more than I," puts in Auntie. "And I want to tell you right now, young man, that I consider your action in shooting off those guns at us was--"

"I presume you recognize the United States Navy, madam?" breaks in the officer.

"Not necessarily," snaps Auntie. "I don't in the least see why we should, I'm sure."

"Certainly we do," corrects Old Hickory. "But, as Mrs. Hemmingway observes, we dislike to be shot at."

"Even though you couldn't hit us," adds Auntie.

The officer grins.

"Oh, our gunners aren't as bad as that," says he. "We were merely shooting across your bows, you know. I am Lieutenant Commander Faulhaber, and it is part of my duty to overhaul and inspect any suspicious acting craft."

"Why didn't you do it last night, then?" demands Auntie.

"Because we blew out a cylinder gasket," says he. "The _Petrel_ isn't a new boat, by any means, and hardly in first-class shape. But we managed to patch her up, you see."

"Humph!" says Auntie.

Honest, I was almost sorry for that naval gent before she got through with him, for she sure did state her opinion, free and forcible, of his holdin' us up this way. He stands and takes it, too, until she's all through.

"Sorry you feel that way about it," says he, "but I shall be obliged to make a thorough search of this boat, nevertheless. Also I shall require an explanation as to why you disregarded my wireless orders. Unless you can satisfy me that--"

It's about there this cheery hail comes from J. Dudley Simms, who is just appearin' from his stateroom, all dolled up complete in white flannels.

"By Jove!" he sings out. "If it isn't Folly. How are you, old man?"

The lieutenant commander swings around with a pleased look.

"Why--er--that you, Dud, old chap? Say, what are you these days? Blockade runner, smuggler, or what?"

"You're warm, Folly, you're warm!" says Dudley. "Hunting for buried treasure, that's our game--pirate gold--all that sort of thing."

And say, in less than two shakes he's given the whole snap away, in spite of Old Hickory scowlin' and Auntie glarin' like she meant to murder him with her grapefruit spoon.

But the news don't seem to impress Lieutenant Commander Faulhaber very serious.

"Not really?" says he, chucklin'. "Oh? Then that's the reason for all this mystery? Treasure hunting! Well, well!" And he grins more expansive than ever as he takes another look around.

Next he's introduced proper to everybody, and inside of ten minutes we're all sitting down to breakfast together, while J. Dudley explains how him and Folly has been lifelong chums.

So we didn't get pinched, after all.

"Although," says the lieutenant commander, as he starts back towards the _Petrel_, "I suppose I ought to fine you for exceeding the speed limit."

The _Agnes_ has got under way again, and we'd stopped wavin' good-by to the jackies, when I catches a glimpse of a head bein' poked cautious out from under the canvas cover of one of our lifeboats. Nudgin' Vee to look, I steps up to Mr. Ellins, who's talkin' with Auntie and Mrs. Mumford, and points out my discovery. By that time the head has been followed by a pair of shoulders.

Old Hickory just narrows his eyes and stares.

"Why!" gasps Mrs. Mumford, "it--it's Captain Killam!"

"Yep!" says I. "Rupert the Reckless. Only this trip he seems to be playin' it safe, eh?"

"In hiding!" says Auntie. "All the time, too!"

"Huh!" grunts Old Hickory, watchin' Killam crawl out and slip around a corner. But say, Mr. Ellins can make that "Huh!" of his mean a lot. He knows when he's been buffaloed, take it from me. My guess is that Rupert's stock is in for a bad slump. I'd quote him about thirty off and no bids.