Read Ebook: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 22. October 1878. by Various

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Ebook has 972 lines and 87097 words, and 20 pages

CHAPTER

The Bungalow Boys on the Great Lakes

A LAKE HURON "HUMMER."

"Looks as if it might be blowing up for nasty weather, Tom."

"I've been thinking the same thing for some time," he said presently. "If Alpena wasn't so far behind us, I'd turn back now."

"We can't be more than three miles off shore. Why not head in toward it?"

The elder Dacre boy shook his head.

"Don't know the coast," he said; "and it's a treacherous one."

The sky, cloudless but a short time before, was now heavily overcast. To the northwest, black, angry-looking clouds were banked in castellated masses. Their ragged edges would have shown a trained eye that, as sailors say, "there was wind behind them."

"What are we going to do?" asked Jack presently, after an interval in which both brothers rather anxiously inspected the signs of "dirty weather."

"How are your engines working?" was Tom's way of answering with another question.

"Splendidly; as they have done ever since we left New York. I'm not anxious about them."

"I guess you're right. But I can see here and now that our camping cruise isn't going to be all fun. These Lake Huron storms have a bad reputation. When we were down off Florida, old Captain Pangloss said that they were as bad as anything he had encountered, even in the China seas."

"They sure did," agreed the younger Dacre. "The weather looked like this off Hatteras, before the time we beat out Dampier and Captain Walstein in the search for the sunken treasure-ship."

"The papers said that they were supposed to have made their way to Canada. But nobody knows for certain."

While he spoke, the sea was growing more and more turbulent.

"I'll go below and rouse up Sandy and Professor Podsnap. We want to have everything secure and snug in the cabin before the storm hits us."

Jack found the professor and Sandy deep in a game of chess. One, at least, of the players, namely Sandy, was not sorry to have the game broken up. The professor had his hand poised above his bishop, and was about to make a move that would speedily have checkmated the Scotch youth, when Jack burst into the cabin.

To save his angular form from an ignominious tumble, he clutched at the cloth on the cabin table. As might have been expected, it did not prove a substantial support. Before either of the boys could interfere, the professor was in a heap on the floor, struggling blindly to extricate himself from the folds of the drapery which enveloped him. Struggling to check their laughter, the boys rescued him. But their subdued mirth broke into a loud shout as they beheld the professor's countenance. A bottle of ink had been standing on the table, and its contents were now spilled in black rivulets all over the professor's face. His bony features fairly streamed with the black fluid, while his spectacles hung suspended from one ear, in a most undignified manner.

He gazed about him in a bewildered fashion, as he scrambled to his feet. He made such a comical sight that the boys, in spite of their respect for his learning and age, could no longer check their merriment at the ludicrous figure, and they laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, only stopping to gasp out apologies and then go off into more paroxysms of mirth.

"The sea--as someone has observed--is no respecter of persons," observed the professor, wiping the ink in long smudges with his pocket handkerchief.

"Of parsons, sir?" inquired Sandy.

"Of persons," said the professor solemnly.

"Which reminds me," said Jack, controlling his laughter and rapidly describing to the professor and Sandy the condition of things outside. They at once set to work securing everything movable. The professor didn't even take time to clean his face.

Even in the short time he had been below, the weather had noticeably roughened. It was almost dark.

"What time is it?" inquired Jack, as he gained Tom's side. The other drew out his watch.

"Only a little after five. But it's getting as dark as if it were three hours later."

"It certainly is. We are in for a hummer, all right."

"Don't make any mistake about that."

The rising wind began to scream about the laboring craft. Whitecaps flecked the lead-colored waves. The sky was overshadowed by a dark canopy of clouds.

Across the tempest-lashed waters, Tom, by straining his eyes, could manage to make out a dark point of land.

"That ought to be Dead Fish Point," he observed to Jack. "But I couldn't be sure unless I saw the light."

"What kind of a light is it?" asked Jack.

"White and red, in one-minute flashes, I looked it up on the chart before we left Thunder Bay."

"Yes. The men visited the light just as an increased force of lighthouse keepers had been put on, owing to the number of wrecks that have happened recently from the operations of this gang. They were driven off. But they had a swift tug and escaped. The authorities have been looking for them since."

"If the newspapers are right, it is the same outfit that has been operating on all the Great Lakes."

"Yes. It's a new and up-to-date method of piracy, as the police claim. The gang engaged in it wrecks vessels by means of changing or extinguishing lights, and then raids the cargo. It is dastardly business!"

"Well, I should say so!"

At this point the professor and Sandy came on deck.

"Hoot mon!" exclaimed the Scotch youth, "it's as dark as an unco' dark tunnel."

"It resembles midnight," put in the professor, who had, by this time, removed the traces of his encounter with the ink bottle.

"D'ye ken if it'ull get wurss?" asked Sandy presently.

"It will get worse before it gets better," was Tom's pithy rejoinder.

And now, what had promised to be a tame voyage, suddenly became fraught with excitement.

"Hold hard, everybody!" cried Tom suddenly.

"Here she comes!" yelled Jack, as the howling wind rushed down on them as if it would rend them apart.

This was the beginning of a storm which endured through the night, and which was to have a curious influence on the strange events which lay in the Bungalow Boys' future.

LOST OVERBOARD!

"This is the worst yet!"

"I never saw anything like it though in his appearance and manner he was as free as possible from that discontented uneasiness with which an underbred person alone carries a burden. His duties were punctually fulfilled and his parish-work always in order, yet he went out a good deal and stayed at large houses, where he was much in request for his marvellous powers of telling stories. This he did systematically, having a notebook to help his memory as to what anecdotes he had told and to whom, so that he never repeated himself to the same audience. Besides stories which he told dramatically, and with a professional air that made it evident that to seem inattentive would be an offence, he had theories which he would bring out in a startling way, supporting them by quotations apparently very learned, and practically, for the sort of audience he had, irrefutable: one was on the subject of the ark, which he averred to be still buried in the eternal snows of Mount Ararat, and discoverable by any one with will and money to bring it to light. As to the question of which of the disputed peaks was the Ararat of the Bible he said nothing. This brilliant man had a passion for roses and gardening in general, and his rectory garden was a wonder even among clerical gardens, which, as a rule, are the most delightful and homelike of all English gardens.

The southern part of Warwickshire, adjoining Gloucestershire, or rather a wedge of that shire advancing into Worcestershire, is the most rich, agriculturally speaking, and besides its apple-orchards is famous for its dairy and grazing systems, while the northern part, once a forest, is still full of heaths, moors and woods. There is not much to say about its farms, unless technically, nor the appearance of the farm-buildings, the modern ones being generally of brick and more substantial than beautiful. Country-seats have a likeness to each other, and a way of surrounding themselves with the same kind of garden scenery, so that unless where the whole face of Nature has some strongly-marked features, such as mountains or moors, the houses of the local gentry do not impart a special individuality to a neighborhood; but in a mild and blooming way one may say that Warwickshire has a fair share of pretty country-houses and attractive parsonages. Still, the beauty of the southern and midland counties is altogether a beauty of detail and cultivation, of historical association and architectural contrast; not that which in the north and east depends much upon the beholder's sympathy with Nature unadorned--wild stretches of seashore and pathless moors, mountain-defiles and wooded tarns. Wales and Cornwall, again, have the stamp of a race whose surroundings have taught them shrewdness and perseverance, and their scenery is such that in many places, though the eye misses trees, it hardly regrets them. In the midland counties, on the other hand, take the trees away and the landscape would be scarcely beautiful at all, though the land might be equally rich, undulating and productive. Half the special beauty of England depends on her greenery, her hedges, her trees and her gardens, in which the houses and cottages take the place of birds' nests.

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