Instinctively, Harvey reached down and put his hand into the water. Its coldness fairly stung him, hardened as he had become, with work at the dredges. He stood, shivering, with the cold of the night intensified by his excitement. It seemed as though no human being could live to get to sh.o.r.e in that water. But the man kept on.
"He must be a fish," muttered Harvey. "I hope he sticks it out, but how can he?"
The stars twinkling coldly overhead gave little light upon the water. But the figure moving slowly away was discernible some distance. Harvey watched it until the tiny black speck where the man"s cap showed faded away and was lost to view. Harvey"s teeth was chattering. His eyes smarted and watered with the strain of peering through the darkness. He longed to call out, to know if the swimmer still lived. But he turned and crept back to his bunk, giving the news to Tom Edwards, who shivered at the very thought of it.
"Poor chap, he"ll never get to sh.o.r.e," he murmured. "But he"ll die game."
Up in the big house that overlooked the Drum Point lighthouse, in a chamber room, a young man of about thirty sat reading before a fire. A clock ticking in one corner indicated the time of night as half-past eleven. The man paused in his reading, yawned and stretched comfortably, arose and stepped to a window facing the harbour.
"What a glorious night!" he said.
He stepped back and sat down again.
A strange thing, unseen by him, had happened down at the sh.o.r.e toward which he had looked. Something moved, like a great fish, in the water, a rod out from the land. It sank once almost out of sight, then thrashed the water and struggled in desperately. A man, feeling the solid earth under his feet, stepped out upon the sh.o.r.e and staggered as though about to fall; caught himself; then fell; but arose and walked unsteadily in the direction of the light from the window.
The young man who was reading suddenly sprang up from his chair and listened. There was a m.u.f.fled rapping at the door below. The man threw up the window and put his head out.
"Who"s that? What do you want?" he called.
A reply, unintelligible, came up to him. He closed the window and turned toward the door of the chamber.
"It"s the same old story," he said, with a touch of indignation in his voice. "Some poor chap from the dredging fleet, I suppose-beaten up, half starved, and trying to get back to Baltimore."
He descended the stairs, lighted a lamp and went to the door. When the lamp-light fell upon the figure that stood before him, he started back, thunderstruck. A man, drenched to the skin, ghastly pale, shivering, almost speechless, his tangled, dripping hair falling about his eyes, stood there. He stretched forth an arm, appealingly, and almost fell.
The man with the lamp caught him with one arm and a.s.sisted him within; half dragged him out into an old-fashioned kitchen, where the man slumped all in a heap before the fire. The man of the house, setting down the lamp on a table, went to the closet and brought out a cup; filled it with coffee from a pot that set back on the stove, knelt by the stranger"s side and, rousing him up, held the cup to his lips and made him drink.
The man shivered, sat up a little and uttered the one word, "Swim."
The other uttered an exclamation of anger.
"It"s a shame! A cruel shame to treat men so they"d rather die than lead the life they do aboard the dredgers," he cried. "How far did you swim?"
The man shook his head, indicating he did not understand.
"Well, no matter," said the other, compa.s.sionately. "I"ll fix you up. But you"ve just come through, and that"s all. You"re pretty near being a dead man."
An hour later, the stranger, wrapped in warm blankets, his ragged garments drying by the fire, dozed, while the man of the house stood, watching him.
"Well, he"s all right now," he said. "I"ll turn in and let him sleep there for the night."
But the man suddenly moved, sat up on one elbow and then struggled into a sitting position. He fumbled at his head and said something in a foreign tongue. He gesticulated, and pointed down toward the sh.o.r.e.
The young man laughed.
"Well, I declare if you aren"t worrying about a cap," he cried. "I know what you mean-lost your cap, eh? Well, you ought to thank your stars you didn"t lose your life. We"ll get the cap to-morrow, if it"s down by the sh.o.r.e. To-morrow, see?"
The man repeated the word "to-morrow," and shook his head as vigorously as he could. "No to-morrow," he repeated. And he struggled to his feet.
Wrapping the blanket about him, he started doggedly toward the door.
"Well, confound you for an obstinate mule!" exclaimed the young man. "I don"t wonder you got ash.o.r.e, with all that stubbornness. Go lie down again. Hang it, if you"re so worried as all that about your old cap, I"ll go look for it."
Half angry, half amused, he took down a lantern from a hook, lighted it, and went out into the darkness. In a few minutes, he reappeared. In his hand he held a bedraggled, shabby fur cap, that bore more resemblance to a drowned cat than any article of wear.
"There"s your cap, you mule!" he exclaimed, and threw the wet object down upon the floor.
To his surprise, the man caught it up eagerly and, turning it inside out, felt within the lining. He uttered a little cry of disappointment as he drew forth a piece of wet, torn paper. He dropped it on the floor and drew out two other pieces. Then he shrugged his shoulders and looked up at his rescuer, helplessly.
The young man stooped and picked up the pieces of paper.
"Aha! I see," he said. "There was a method in your stubbornness after all. Let"s look."
He held up the pieces of paper and turned them in his hand. He took them to the table and placed them on an earthen platter, with the torn edges joining. Then he whistled with surprise. The paper, wet and torn, still bore, blurred and barely readable, written words. He made out the message:
"I am trapped aboard the bug-eye Z. B. Brandt by Capt. Haley. Send word to Benton.
"Jack Har-"
The remainder of the last name had been torn away. They searched for it, but it was not to be found.
"Whew!" exclaimed the young man. "Another case of shanghaiing. Well, there"s enough to work on. I"ll have to look into it, though I suppose it"s not much use. When a man gets out there, it"s hard finding him. I"ll save the paper, though, and dry it out."
And then he added, eying the stranger with a different expression, "You"re a good sort, after all. You"re a true blue comrade to somebody.
Hang it! I wish you could talk the United States language."
CHAPTER XII ESCAPE AT LAST
The old Warren homestead, alight with many lamps from parlour to kitchen, presented a cheery and genial aspect to whoever might be pa.s.sing by along the road, on the night of December 24. The shades, half drawn in the front room, revealed the glow of a big hearth fire, reddening the light of the lamps, and adding its cheer and welcome to the general atmosphere of comfort within. From the kitchen there came the sound of banjos tinkling, and the laughter from a merry company of coloured servants, the Christmas eve guests of Jim and Mammy Stevens. The whole house, in fact, was keeping holiday.
But if the appearance, viewed from the exterior, was one of brightness and Christmas warmth, it was doubly so within. The large room, that fronted on the bay and commanded a view from its windows of Drum Point lighthouse and a sweep of the river, was a comfortably furnished, old-fashioned affair; with quaint, polished furniture; mirrors that reflected the dancing fire-light; a polished oak floor that shone almost as bright as the mirrors; and, in one corner, a tall clock, that ticked away in dignified and respectable fashion, as befitting a servant that had belonged to the Warren family for a hundred years, and had descended, as a precious heirloom, from father to son.
From the upper panelling of the walls there hung, in festoons, some trailing vines, ornamented with bright berries, gathered from the woods back on the farm; and sprigs of holly also decorated the mirrors and a few portraits of one-time members of the household.
Edward Warren, stretched comfortably before the fire in a big chair, gazed about the room approvingly, and then at his younger companions.
"Well," he exclaimed, heartily, "you"ve saved me from spending a dull Christmas, sure enough. What with the folks away, I don"t know what I"d have done without you. Say, can"t you young fellows give us a song? We don"t want to let them make all the noise out in the kitchen."
"Go ahead on Old Black Joe, Henry," said George Warren. "We"ll all join in."
So Henry Burns led off on the plantation melody, and the brothers joined in with a will. Edward Warren came in with a fine ba.s.s effect, and altogether they did Old Black Joe in a way that almost made the faces in the oil paintings on the wall smile.
Then, on the second verse, the banjos in the kitchen, and a guitar that had been added to the group, took up the refrain, and all the darkey melody in that part of the house concentrated itself on the same tune. So that the old house fairly rang from one end to the other with the plantation music, and the sounds floated off on the crisp night air far and around.
In the midst of which, it was suddenly discovered by the others that young Joe had disappeared from the front room, and a hurried search was begun for the missing youth. It resulted in his discovery, in a pantry off the dining-room, gloating over the contents of the Christmas box that had been sent from home to the brothers. From this young Joe had abstracted a generous slice of nut cake, which was rapidly disappearing down his throat.