"By the way, Stumpy," continued the skipper, as they walked up the steep path towards the road, "you said I might be able to do something to help your mother out of her trouble. If I can, I"m sure I should be glad to do so."
"I don"t know that I will say anything about it now. Your case is rather worse than mine, if anything, and you have enough to think of without bothering your head with my mother"s troubles," replied Stumpy.
"Of course I can"t raise any money to help her out; but if I can do anything else, nothing would please me more."
"If you have any friends, you ought to use them for your father."
"What do you mean by friends? I haven"t any friends."
"Yes, you have; but I don"t know that you have the cheek to call upon them. I suppose it will do no harm to tell you what I was thinking about, Le," added Stumpy, when they reached the road, and halted there.
"Your boat is called the Rosabel. You gave her that name."
"Of course I did. What has that to do with this matter?" demanded Leopold, puzzled by the roundabout manner in which his friend approached his subject.
"You named the boat after somebody," continued Stumpy, with something like a chuckle in his tones.
"I named her after Miss Rosabel Hamilton, whose father has been one of the best customers of the hotel. Perhaps I had my weather eye open when I christened the sloop."
"Certainly you had," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stumpy.
"But it was only to please the family, and induce them to stay longer at the hotel."
"Perhaps it was," added Stumpy, placing a wicked emphasis on the first word.
"O, I know it was!" protested Leopold.
"But I used to think you were rather sweet on Miss Rosabel, when I was in the boat with you."
"Nonsense, Stumpy!" replied Leopold; and if there had been light enough, perhaps his companion might have distinguished a slight blush upon his brown face. "I never thought of such a thing. Why, her father has been a member of Congress, and they say he is worth millions."
"I don"t care anything about Congress or the millions; you would have jumped overboard and drowned yourself for the girl at any minute."
"Perhaps I would; I don"t know. She"s a nice girl," mused Leopold.
"That"s not all, either."
"Well, what else?"
"If Rosabel didn"t like you better than she did the town pump, I don"t guess any more," chuckled Stumpy.
"I think she did like me, just as she would any fellow that did his best to make her comfortable and happy."
"More than that."
"I don"t believe it. But what has all this to do with your mother"s case, or my father"s?"
"I won"t mix things any longer. Her father is as rich as mud. I was going to ask you if you wouldn"t write to Mr. Hamilton, and ask him to take the mortgage on my mother"s house."
Leopold did not like the idea, but he promised to consider it.
"If I were you, Le, I should mention my father"s case to him," added Stumpy.
But Leopold did not like this idea any better than the other; and they separated.
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE FOG.
Leopold parted with his friend opposite the Sea Cliff House. He entered the office, where his father was busy in conversation with one of the guests. Luckily the landlord, satisfied with the safety of his son, did not ask him where he had been; for his absence on the water was too common an event to excite any remark, and Leopold went to bed as soon as he had shown himself to his mother, and told her that the squall had not harmed him. It is one thing to go to bed, and quite another to sleep.
Leopold was tired enough to need rest, yet his future action in regard to the hidden treasure did not allow him to do anything but think, think, think, till he heard the church clock strike twelve. That was the last he heard that night. But with all his thinking, his opinion was just the same as before. The money did not belong to him, and it did belong to somebody else. He could not escape these two conclusions, and whether his father failed or not, he could see no way by which he could honestly bring the twelve hundred dollars in gold to his aid.
Coming events pressed so heavily upon the minds of his father and Stumpy, that neither of them had questioned him very closely in regard to his business on the beach in the storm and the darkness. As he had thus far escaped without telling any direct lies, he decided to keep his own secret for the present; but he intended, the very next time he went to Rockland, to visit the owners of the Waldo, and inquire about the pa.s.senger who had perished in the wreck of the brig. Very likely this man had a wife and children, a father, or brothers and sisters, who needed this money. His wife and little children might at that moment be suffering for the want of it. It belonged to them, and they ought to have it. Even if his father failed, and lost all he had, Leopold felt that it would be better for him to do his whole duty. The secret was with himself alone, and there was no one to applaud his n.o.ble decision; nay, if he had told his friends and neighbors, and perhaps even his father, they would probably have laughed at him, called him a fool, declared that he was more nice than wise, and insisted that it was his duty to save the Sea Cliff House from the avaricious grasp of Squire Moses Wormbury.
In spite of his n.o.ble conclusion, he was still terribly worried about the financial troubles of his father. The Rosabel was well worth two hundred dollars, and she was almost the only piece of property in the family which was not covered by a mortgage. It was early in the season, when a boat is more salable than later in the year; and before he went to sleep, Leopold had decided to run over to Rockland the next day, if possible, and endeavor to find a purchaser for her, even at three fourths of her value. It would be a happy moment for him if he could put one hundred and fifty dollars into his father"s hands, and thus enable him to make up his interest money. There must be some one in Rockland who wanted a boat, and who would be willing to pay him this price for so fast and stiff a craft as the Rosabel. With this pleasant antic.i.p.ation in his mind, Leopold went to sleep.
He usually got up between four and five o"clock in the morning; but he did not wake till he heard his father"s voice in his chamber. He had been so tired after the hard work he had done on the beach, and lying awake till after midnight, he had overslept himself.
"Come, Leopold; it is after seven o"clock," said Mr. Bennington, in the rather sad and gloomy tones which the misery of his financial trials had imposed upon him.
"Seven o"clock!" exclaimed Leopold, leaping from the bed. "I didn"t go to sleep till after midnight, and that"s the reason I didn"t wake up."
"You needn"t get up if you don"t feel able to do so," added the landlord.
"O, I"m able enough," protested Leopold, half dressed by this time.
"I should like to have you go down and see if you can get some fish for dinner," added his father.
"All right. I will get some, if there is any in the sea," answered the young man, as he finished his primitive toilet.
In fifteen minutes more, he had eaten his breakfast, and was descending the steep path to the river, where the Rosabel was moored. The weather was cloudy, and out at sea it looked as if the fog would roll in, within a short time, as it often did during the spring and summer. Indeed, the one bane of this coast, as a pleasure resort, is the prevalence of dense and frequently long-continued fog. Sometimes it shrouds the sh.o.r.es for several days at a time; and it has been known to last for weeks. It is cold, penetrating, and disagreeable to the denizen of the city, seeking ease and comfort in a summer home.
When the sloop pa.s.sed Light House Point, Leopold saw that the dense fog had settled down upon the bay, and had probably been there all night.
But he did not bother his head about the fog, for he knew the sound which the waves made upon every portion of the sh.o.r.e. As one skilled in music knows the note he hears, Leopold identified the swash or the roar of the sea when it beat upon the rocks and the beaches in the vicinity.
By these sounds he knew where he was, and he had a boat-compa.s.s on board of the Rosabel, which enabled him to lay his course, whenever he obtained his bearings.
Before the sloop had gone a quarter of a mile she was buried in the fog, and Leopold could see nothing but the little circle of water of which the Rosabel was the centre. With the compa.s.s on the floor of the standing-room, he headed the sloop for the ledges, outside of which he expected to find plenty of cod and haddock. The wind was rather light, but it was sufficient to give the Rosabel a good headway, and in half an hour he recognized the roar of the billows upon the ledges. Going near enough to them to bring the white spray of the breaking waves within the narrow circle of his observation, he let off his main sheet, and headed the sloop directly out to sea.
The best fishing ground at this season was about two miles from the ledges; and with the wind free, Leopold calculated that he had made this distance in half an hour. He had cleared away his cable, and had his anchor ready to throw overboard, when the hoa.r.s.e croaking of a fog-horn attracted his attention. The sound came from the seaward side of him, and from a point not far distant.
The Rosabel was provided with one of those delectable musical instruments, whose familiar notes came to her skipper"s ears. It was rather a necessity to have one, in order to avoid collisions; besides, it is fun for boys to make the most unearthly noises which mortal ear ever listened to.
Leopold blew his fog-horn, and it was answered by a repet.i.tion of the sound to seaward. The craft, whatever it was, from which the music came, was much nearer than when the skipper of the Rosabel first heard the signal. This satisfied him that she was headed to the north-east, and was nearly close-hauled, for the wind was about east; in other words, the craft from which the melody of the fog horn came was standing from the sea directly towards the ledges off High Rock.
Leopold blew his horn again and again, and the responses came nearer and nearer every time. The craft was evidently bound up the bay, or into the Rockhaven river. If she was going to Rockland, or up the bay, she was very much out of her course. If she was going into the river, she was more likely to strike upon the ledge than to hit her port.