  The next morning, when Sandy and Jerry awoke, the storm that had lashed Cliffport had vanished as if it, too, had been a bad dream. Cliffport’s Main Street, which fronted the bay, was washed clean, and sparkled in the bright morning light. The bay waters themselves even looked cleaner than before, freshly laundered blue and white, with silver points of sunlight sprinkled over their peaceful surface. It was, in short, a perfect sailing day, and the boys could hardly wait to get down to the boat yard to see if the sloop had ridden the storm at anchor. They dressed hurriedly in their sailing clothes—blue jeans, sneakers and sweat shirts—and bolted breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. Then, sea bags slung over their shoulders, they raced down the street to the Cliffport Boat Yard, rounded the corner of the main shed and, at the head of the gangway, came to a stop. Sandy felt a sick, sinking feeling as he scanned the mooring area, searching vainly for a sight of his sloop. But where she had ridden at anchor the night before, there was only a patch of calm blue water. It hardly seemed possible that she wasn’t there. The storm, on this bright, sunny morning, seemed never to have happened. Other boats rode peacefully at their moorings, apparently untouched by the night’s wild work. Life in the boat yard and on the bay went on as if nothing had occurred. But Sandy felt as if it were the end of the world. Slowly and silently, the boys walked down the gangway to where their dinghy lay like a turtle, unharmed. They anxiously scanned the bay on all sides, searching for a mast that might be theirs, but to no avail. Then Jerry straightened up and clapped Sandy on the shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no use standing here moping. The only thing to do now is to take out the dinghy and start to hunt.” They launched the dinghy, put out the stubby oars, and rowed away from the float. “Where do we look first?” Sandy asked. “We’ll just go the way the wind went,” Jerry said. “Luckily, the storm came from the mainland and blew out to sea. That means there’s a good chance that the boat didn’t pile up on the shore. Of course, there are a lot of islands out there, and plenty of rocks, but there’s a lot more open water. With any luck we’ll find her floating safe and sound, somewhere out in the bay. I don’t think she could have gone too far dragging that anchor.” They headed down the channel, taking occasional side excursions around some of the small islands whenever they saw, on the other side, a mast that could be theirs. But none of the boats they found was the right one. The hot sun made rowing even the light cockleshell of the dinghy unpleasant work. Sandy paused at the oars and pushed back his cowlick, then wiped his perspiring brow. He was beginning to fear that he would never again see his trim new sloop—unless he was to see it lying shattered on one of these rocky islands. Then, with dogged determination, he picked up his oars once more and bent his back to the task of rowing. Once or twice they asked passing sailors if they had seen an unattended sloop out of the mooring areas, but though everyone offered sympathy and promised to help if they happened to see it, none had any information to offer. The morning wore on slowly as Sandy and Jerry pulled farther and farther away from the mainland, exploring every possible hiding place the bay had to offer. By noon, Sandy’s spirits were at low ebb, and he was beginning to wonder how he would tell his Uncle Russ the bad news. Then, almost tipping the unsteady dinghy, Jerry half rose from his seat and pointed. “Look!” he shouted. “Over there! I think that’s her! And will you look at where she drifted to!” Sandy dropped the oars and turned to look at the small white sloop with the green decks that lay quietly bobbing at anchor just outside the entrance of the cove where, yesterday, they had been welcomed by a gun! “Of all places to drift to,” he gasped. “It’s a darn good thing she didn’t drift inside his cove, or she might be shot full of holes by now!” Then, with a lighter heart than he had felt all morning, Sandy picked up the oars and sent the dinghy fairly flying to the side of the trim sloop. “From now on,” he said, “sleeping bags and air mattresses or not, we’re sleeping on board until we get a permanent mooring for this boat near home!” Relieved and happy, Sandy climbed on board as Jerry tied the dinghy to the stern. “I’ll go below to get the sails out,” Sandy said, “while you unship the boom and get the rigging ready.” He opened the hatch cover and slid back the doors, then stepped down into the little cabin. As he started forward to the sail lockers, he had a sudden, odd feeling that something was wrong, something out of place; a strange notion that he had seen, out of the corner of his eye, something that was not what it should have been. Pausing to look around, he saw what had bothered him. Clamped to the bulkhead over the port bunk was a large, oddly shaped brass pistol, like the kind he had always imagined the old-time pirates carried. He had never seen anything like it before—and he was almost positive that it had not been there yesterday! “Jerry!” he called, sticking his head out of the hatch. “Come here! I want you to see something and tell me what you think.” As Jerry poked his head into the cabin, Sandy gestured at the brass pistol. “Was that thing here yesterday, or have we gotten into somebody else’s boat?” Jerry brought his dark brows together in a frown and scratched his crew-cut head. “I don’t think it was here. I probably would have noticed it. But maybe we just didn’t see it. We were so busy with other things.” “But why would Uncle Russ have left a pistol on board?” Sandy asked, puzzled. “He probably wouldn’t have,” Jerry said. “But he might have left one of these. That’s a flare gun, not a regular pistol at all. You use it as a signal of distress. It shoots a rocket. Still ... I don’t remember seeing it. And I know that your uncle didn’t mention leaving one.” “Well, I don’t know whether he did or not,” Sandy said, “but we’d better make sure this is our boat before we go sailing it off. If it belongs to that guy on the island, we could get into some pretty bad trouble if we took it by mistake!” As they looked for some identifying marks, an idea suddenly occurred to Sandy. “Maybe this isn’t our boat, but one just like it, and maybe the man with the gun was expecting it with somebody else on board! That might explain his actions!” “That makes sense,” Jerry said. “And in that case, we’d better find out fast if it’s ours. Look—our boat didn’t have any name on it, and most boats do. If this has a name, we’ll know.” He hurried to the stern to see, and then to the bow, where some boat owners fasten name plates, but none was to be seen. “That doesn’t prove anything, though,” Sandy said. “But I have an idea. Let’s look in the food locker. I remember pretty well what was in there yesterday, and I doubt if two boats would have the identical food supplies. One look should tell us.” He reached above the galley stove and slid back the doors of the locker, then stepped backward as if he had been hit. “It’s sure not our boat,” Sandy said in hushed tones, for in the locker there was no food at all. Instead, where food should have been, was what appeared to be a fortune in fresh, green money! |
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