Chapter 1

INTRODUCES A GASOLINE LAUNCH, FOUR BOYS, AND A DOG

“She’s a pu-pu-pu-pu——!”

“Quite so, Tommy,” said Dan soothingly, “but don’t excite yourself.”

“——pu-pu-peach!”

“Oh, all right!” laughed Nelson. “I thought you were trying to call her a puppy. What do you think of her, Bob?”

“Best ever,” answered Bob promptly and quietly.

They were standing, the four of them—“to say nothing of the dog,” which in this case was a wide-awake wire-haired terrier—on the edge of a wharf overlooking a small slip in which, in spite of the fact that it was the last week in June and many of the winter tenants had been hauled out and placed in commission, a dozen or more boats lay huddled. There were many kinds of pleasure craft there, from an eighty-foot yawl, still housed over, to a tiny sixteen-foot launch which rejoiced in the somewhat inappropriate name of Formidable. Beyond the slip was another wharf, a marine railway, masts and spars, and, finally, the distant rise of Beacon Hill, crowned with the glittering, golden dome of the State House. To their right, beyond the end of the jutting wharf, Boston Harbor lay blue and inviting in the morning sunlight. From the boat yard came the sound of mallet and caulking iron, and the steady puff-puff, puff-puff of the machine-shop exhaust. Nearer at hand a graceful sloop was being hurriedly overhauled, and the slap-slap of the paint brush and the rasp of the scraper were mingled. The air was pleasantly redolent of fresh paint and new wood—oak and cedar and pine—and the salty breath of the ocean. And to the four boys all these things appealed strongly, since they were on the verge of a summer cruise and were beginning to feel quite nautical.

The object of their enthusiasm lay below them at the edge of the wharf—a handsome gasoline cruising launch, bright with freshly polished brass work, gleaming with new varnish, and immaculate in scarcely dry paint. She was thirty-six feet long over all, nine feet in extreme breadth, and had a draught of three feet. A hunting cabin began five feet from the bow, and extended eighteen feet to the beginning of the cockpit. The sides of the cabin were mahogany and the roof was covered with canvas. A shining brass hand rail ran around the edge of the roof, a brass steering wheel protruded through it at the sternmost end, and toward the bow a search light stood like a gleaming sentinel above a small whistle. Between wheel and search light rested, inverted and securely lashed to the roof, a ten-foot cedar tender. The cockpit was nine feet long, and, like the deck fore and aft, was floored with narrow strips of white pine which, since the scrapers had just left it, looked, under its new coat of varnish, as white and clean as a kitchen table. There were iron stanchions to support an awning which, when in place, extended from well forward of the steering wheel to the stern of the cockpit, where a curved seat, with a locker beneath it, ran across the end. (“There are some wicker chairs that go in the cockpit,” Nelson was explaining, “but we won’t need more than a couple of them.”) Below the water-line the boat was painted green. Above that the hull was aglisten with white to the upper strake save where a slender gold line started at the bow and terminated at the graceful canoe stern just short of the gold letters which spelled the boat’s name.

“Vagabond,” said Dan. “That’s a dandy name.”

“Mighty appropriate for a boat that you’re in,” added Bob unkindly. “Come on, Nel; I’m dying to see inside of her.”

“All right. Here’s the ladder over here.”

“What’s the matter with jumping?” asked Tom.

“Remember your weight, Tommy,” counseled Dan.

They followed Nelson to the ladder, Dan bearing the terrier, whose name was Barry, and scrambled into the cockpit.

“I don’t see that we need any chairs,” said Dan. “This seat here will hold three of us easily.”

“Oh, we’ve got to have some place for Tommy to take his naps,” answered Nelson as he produced a key, unlocked a padlock, and pushed back a hatch.

“Hope you choke!” muttered Tom good-naturedly.

Nelson opened the folding doors and led the way down three steps into the engine room. This compartment, like that beyond, was well lighted by oval port lights above the level of the deck. On the left, a narrow seat ran along the side. Here were the tool box and the batteries, and a frame of piping was made to pull out and form a berth when required. In the center was the engine—a three-cylinder fifteen horse-power New Century, looking to the uninitiated eyes of Dan and Bob and Tom very complicated. On the starboard side was, first of all, a cupboard well filled with dishes and cooking utensils; next, an ice box; then a very capable-looking stove and sink, and, against the forward partition, a well-fitted lavatory. The floor was covered with linoleum of black and white squares, and the woodwork was of mahogany and white pine. A brass ship’s clock pointed to twelve minutes after nine, and two brass lamps promised to afford plenty of light.

A swinging door admitted to the forward cabin, or, as Nelson called it, the stateroom. Here there were four berths, which in the daytime occupied but little room, but at night could be pulled out to make comfortable if not overwide couches. Dan observed Nelson’s demonstration of the extension feature with an anxious face.

“That’s all very well,” he said, “for you and Bob and me, maybe, but you don’t suppose for a minute, do you, that Tommy could get into one of those?”

And Tom, who, after all and in spite of his friends’ frequent jokes, was not enormously large, promptly charged Dan and bore him backward on to the berth which Nelson had drawn out. As thirty inches afforded insufficient space whereon to pummel each other, they promptly rolled off to the nice crimson carpet, and had to be parted by the others, much to the regret of Barry, who was enjoying the fracas hugely and taking a hand whenever opportunity offered. The disturbance over, the four sat themselves down and looked admiringly about them. There was a locker under each berth, numerous ingenious little shelves above, and several clothes hooks against the partition. At the extreme forward end of the stateroom there was a handsome mahogany chiffonier built in between the two forward berths.

“Well, I call this pretty swell!” said Dan.

“You bet!” said Tom. “I had no idea it was like this. I thought maybe we slept in hammocks. Say, Nel, your father is a trump to let us have her.”

“That’s so,” Bob assented. “But, seems to me, he’s taking big risks. Supposing something happened to her?”

“Well, don’t you talk that way at the house,” laughed Nelson. “I had trouble enough to get dad to consent. I had to tell him that you were a regular old salt.”

“You shouldn’t lie to your father,” said Dan severely.

“I didn’t. Bob has sailed a lot—haven’t you, Bob?”

“I can sail a boat all right,” answered Bob, “but I don’t know one end of an engine from the other.”

“You won’t have to,” Nelson assured him. “I’ll look after that and you can be navigating officer.”

“Whatever that is,” murmured Dan parenthetically.

“Who’s going to cook?” asked Tom.

“You are,” said Bob.

“Heaven help us all!” cried Dan.

“Huh! I’ll bet I can cook better than you can,” Tom replied indignantly.

“Get out! I’ll bet you can’t tell why is a fried egg!”

“Oh, you dry up! What’s he going to do, fellows?”

“Me?” said Dan. “I’m going to be lookout, and sit on the bow and yell ‘Sail ho!’ and ‘There she blows!’”

“Let’s have an election,” suggested Bob. “I nominate Nel for Captain.”

“Make it Admiral,” amended Dan.

“All in favor of Nel for Captain will say——”

“Aye!” cried Dan and Tom.

“You’re elected, Nel.”

Nelson bowed impressively, hand on heart, and Barry barked loudly.

“Then Bob’s first mate,” said Nelson, “and you can be second, Dan. Tom’s going to be cook and purser.”

“How about Barry?” asked Bob.

“He’s the Sea Dog,” said Dan. “But look here, fellows; if we’re really going to get off to-morrow, we’d better be moving. What’s the programme for this afternoon, Nelson?”

“Buy supplies and get them down here. We’ll get dad to tell us what we need. It’s almost twelve o’clock, and we’d better light out now.”

“All right,” answered Dan, “but I hate to go. I’m afraid the boat may not be here when we get back. Don’t you think I’d better stay here and watch her?”

They passed out into the engine room, and Bob stopped to look at the engine curiously.

“Where’s the gasoline?” he asked.

“In a tank at the bow,” Nelson answered. “Here’s the supply pipe here.”

“And what’s that thing?”

“Vaporizer. The gasoline enters here and the air here—see?”

“Then what happens?”

“Why, they mix into vapor, which passes up through this pipe to the cylinders.”

“Oh!” said Bob. “Well, it sounds all right, but I don’t see how that makes the boat go. If I were you I’d stick a mast on her and have some sort of a sail.”

“Oh, if the engine gives out,” laughed Nelson, “we’ll put Tommy overboard and let him tow us!”

“I mean to learn all about this thing,” said Bob resolutely with a final look at the engine. “How fast did you say she can go, Nel?”

“She’s supposed to make eleven and a half miles an hour, but she’s done better than that.”

“That doesn’t sound very fast,” said Tom.

“It’s fast enough for cruising,” answered Nelson. “Are we all out? Where’s Barry?” He put his head back into the engine room. “Barry, where are you? Oh, I see; sniffing around the ice chest, eh? Well, you’d better wait until to-morrow, if you want anything to eat out of there. Come on!”

Nelson locked the doors and the four boys climbed back to the wharf, pausing for a parting look at the Vagabond ere they turned toward home.

Possibly you have met these boys before, either at Camp Chicora two summers before, when they came together for the first time and gained the title of the Big Four, or a year later, when in a walking trip on Long Island they met with numerous adventures, pleasant and unpleasant, all of which helped to cement still closer the bonds of friendship, and when they secured an addition to their party in the shape of a wire-haired terrier. If Bob and Nelson and Tom and Dan are already old acquaintances, I advise you to skip the next few paragraphs, wherein, for the benefit of new friends, I am going to introduce my heroes all over again.

First of all—if only because he is the oldest—there is Robert Hethington. I call him Robert, though nobody else does, as a mark of respect. He is seventeen years of age, and a full-fledged freshman at Erskine College; and if that doesn’t call for respect, I’d like to know what does! Bob—there! I’ve forgotten already; but never mind—Bob comes from Portland, Maine. He is a very good-looking chap, tall, broad-shouldered, and healthy. He has nice black eyes, somewhat curly black hair, and is at once quiet and capable.

Then there is Nelson Tilford, of Boston. He, too, is booked for Erskine in the autumn. In fact, they all are, with the possible exception of Tom. (Tom has just taken the examinations, in spite of the fact that he has only finished his third year at Hillton Academy, and has yet to hear the result.) Nelson is fairly tall, slimly built, lithe and muscular. He isn’t nearly so well-behaved as his thoughtful, sober countenance promises. He is sixteen years old, and has just finished at Hillton.

The third member of the quartette is Dan Speede, of New York. Dan has decidedly red hair, the bluest of blue eyes, and is somewhat heavily built. Dan, as the mischievous twinkle in his eyes suggests, is fond of fun—any kind of fun. He is generally on the lookout for it, and generally finds it. Dan is sixteen, and has just finished, not too brilliantly, I fear, his senior year at St. Eustace Academy.

And last, but not least, there is Tom—otherwise Tommy—Ferris. Tom lives in Chicago (but Dan declares that that is his misfortune and not his fault) and is sixteen years old—almost; so nearly sixteen that he gives his age as that when Dan isn’t by to correct him. Tom is inclined toward stoutness; also laziness. But he’s a nice boy, just the same, with gray eyes, light hair, and a cheerful, good-natured disposition which the other members of the party are inclined to take advantage of.

There you have them all—the Big Four. But I am forgetting the little fifth, which Dan wouldn’t approve of at all. The fifth is Barry. I suppose that his last name, since he is Dan’s property, is Speede—Barry Speede in full. Barry is an aristocratic member of the fox terrier family, a one-time prize winner. As to age, he is about two and a half years old; as to looks, he is eminently attractive; as to disposition, he is undoubtedly as well if not better off than any other member of the party. In short, he is a nice, jolly, faithful, and fairly well-behaved little dog, and Dan wouldn’t part with him for any sum of money that has ever been mentioned.

Last summer the four had made up their several minds that this summer they would again be together, and when Nelson announced in May that his father had at last consented to lend them his launch for a cruise along the coast, the manner of doing so was settled. And so, when school was over, Bob and Dan and Tom had joined Nelson at his home in Boston, prepared for the biggest kind of a good time.