A SIGNAL OF DISTRESS

The Hunkydory was loaded to the point of inconvenience when, about noon, she set sail again. For it was the purpose of the boys to make their way to Quasi quickly now, stopping only long enough here and there to replenish their supply of game and fish, and they wanted to be free to stay as long as they pleased at Quasi, when at last they should reach that place, without being compelled to hurry away in search of supplies. Accordingly they bought at Beaufort all the hard bread, coffee and other such things that they could in any wise induce the dory to make room for.

“Never mind, Dory dear,” Cal said to the boat as he squeezed in a dozen cans of condensed milk for which it was hard to find a place. “Never mind, Dory dear; with four such appetites as ours to help you out, your load will rapidly grow lighter, and when we get to Quasi we’ll relieve you of it altogether.”

It was planned to establish a comfortable little camp at Quasi, to hunt and fish at will, to rest when that seemed the best thing to do, and to indulge in that limitless talk which intelligent boys rejoice in when freed for a time from all obligation to do anything else. In short, a considerable period of camping at Quasi had come to be regarded as the main purpose of the voyage. With their guns and their fishing tackle, the boys had no concern for their meat supply, but, as Cal said:

“We can’t expect to flush coveys of ship biscuit or catch coffee on tight lines, so we must take as much as we can of that sort of provender.”

About two o’clock on the afternoon of the third day of their voyage from Beaufort the boat was lazily edging her way through an almost perfectly smooth sea, with just a sufficient suggestion of breeze to give her steerage way. Tom was at the tiller, with next to nothing to do there. Larry and Dick were dozing in the shadow of the mainsail, while Cal, after his custom, was watching the porpoises at play and the gulls circling about overhead and everything else that could be watched whether there was any apparent reason for watching it or not.

Presently he turned to Tom and, indicating his meaning by an inclination of the head toward a peninsula five or six miles away, which had just come into view as the boat cleared a marsh island, said:

“That’s it.”

“What’s it? and what is it?” asked Tom, too indolent now to disentangle his sentences.

“Quasi,” said Cal.

“Where?”

“Over the port bow. Change your course a little to starboard—there’s a mud bank just under water ahead and we must sail round it.”

“Quasi at last!” exclaimed Tom gleefully, as he pushed the helm to port and hauled in the sheet a trifle in order to spill none of the all too scanty breeze.

Instantly Dick and Larry were wide awake, and for a time conversation quickened as Cal pointed out the salient features of the land ahead.

“How far away do you reckon it, Cal?” asked Dick.

“About five miles.”

“Is it clear water? Can we lay a straight course?”

“Yes, after we clear this mud bank. A little more to starboard, Tom, or you’ll go aground.”

“We ought to make it by nightfall then,” said Larry—“unless this plaything of a breeze fails us entirely.”

“We’ll make it sooner than that,” said Dick, standing up and steadying himself by the mast. “Look, Cal. There’s business in that.”

Dick had seen white caps coming in between two islands ahead, and had rightly judged that in her present position the dory was temporarily blanketed by a great island that lay between it and the sea.

“I don’t need to stand up,” answered Cal, “and it’s hot. I saw the sea running in ahead. I’d have suggested a resort to the oars if I hadn’t. As it is, we’ll toy with this infantile zephyr for half an hour more. By that time we’ll clear the land here and set our caps on a little tighter or have them carried away. That’s a stiff blow out there, and by the way, we’re catching the ragged edges of it already. A little more to starboard, Tom, and jibe the boom over.”

“It’ll be windward work all the way,” said Larry, as he looked out ahead.

“So much the better,” said Cal, who found something to rejoice in in every situation. “It’ll blow the ‘hot’ off us before we make Quasi, and besides, there’s nothing like sailing on the wind if the wind happens to be stiff enough.”

“It’ll be stiff enough presently,” said Larry; then after looking about for a moment, he added: “I only hope we sha’n’t ship enough water to dampen down our clothes. The dory is very heavily loaded.”

“Don’t worry,” said Dick. “She’s built to carry a heavy load in a rough sea and a high wind. In fact, she points up better and foots better, carries herself better every way when she has a load on than when she hasn’t.”

“H’m!” muttered Cal, going to the helm where Tom was manifesting some distrust of his own skill in the freshening wind and the “lumpy” seaway they were beginning to meet. “I’ve known men to think they were like the Hunkydory in that.”

“Diagram it, Cal,” said Larry.

“Oh, I’ve seen men who thought they could do things better with a ‘load on’ than without. Trim ship! I’m going to take the other tack.”

Then, as the boat heeled over to starboard, her rail fairly making the water boil, Cal completed his sentence. “But they were mistaken.”

“It’s different with boats,” Dick answered; “and besides, the dory’s ‘load’ is of quite another sort.”

Sailing on the wind with a skittish boat of the dory type is about as exhilarating a thing, when the wind pipes high and the sea surges white with foam, as can be imagined. In order that the pleasure of it might not all be his, Cal presently surrendered the tiller to Dick, who in his turn gave it over to Larry after his own pulses were set a-tingle. Larry offered Tom his turn, but Tom modestly refused, doubting the sufficiency of his skill for such work as this.

“The tools to those who can use them, is sound philosophy, I think,” he said in refusing. “Besides, I don’t want to be responsible if we turn turtle before we reach Quasi, after all our trouble.”

After half an hour or so of speedy windward work the Hunkydory drew near enough to Quasi for Cal to study details of the shore line somewhat. Lying in the bow, just under the jib, he was silently but diligently engaged in scrutinizing every feature he could make out in a shore that lay half a mile or a trifle more away. The others asked him questions now and then, but he made no answer. Under his general instructions the dory was skirting along the shore, making short legs, so as to maintain her half mile distance until Cal should find the place he was looking for as a landing.

Presently he turned and spoke to Dick, who was now at the tiller again.

“Run in a quarter of a mile, Dick, and bring us nearer shore,” he said.

Dick obeyed, while Cal seemed to be studying something on shore with more than ordinary interest. Presently he said:

“There’s something wrong over there. As soon as we round the point ahead, Dick, you’ll have fairly sheltered water and sloping sands. Beach her there.”

“What is it, Cal? What’s the matter? Why do you say there’s something wrong?” These questions were promptly hurled at Cal’s head by his companions.

“Look!” he answered. “Do you see the little flag up there on top of the bluff? It is flying union down—a signal of distress. But I can’t make out anybody there. Can any of you?”

All eyes were strained now, but no living thing could be seen anywhere along the shore. Tom ventured a suggestion:

“The flag is badly faded and a good deal whipped out, as if it had been flying there for a long time. Perhaps the people who put it up have all died since.”

“No, they haven’t,” answered Cal.

“Why, do you see anybody?”

“No. But I see a little curling smoke that probably rises from a half burned-out camp-fire.”

“It’s all right then?” half asked, half declared Tom.

“You forget the flag flying union down, Tom. That isn’t suggestive of all-rightness. Bring her around quick, Dick, and beach her there just under the bluff!”

Half a minute more and the dory lay with her head well up on the sloping sand. The boys all leaped ashore except Larry, who busied himself housing the mast and sails and making things snug. The rest scrambled up the bluff, which was an earth bank about twenty feet high and protected at its base by a closely welded oyster bank.