Chapter IV: Part 4

"To be real modest," Yansey grinned, "there's nothing to it for the other eights. We've got the race cinched already."

"Modesty adorns you," Kingdon told him. "I can see that. Also, why you chose that name for your catboat, too."

"Right! There's nothing to it!" proclaimed the optimistic Yansey. "We've got a new shell, and we keep her greased. Wait till you see us out practicing some day. I'm stroke."

"What did you do with your old shell?" Kingdon asked, reflectively.

"It's for sale over yonder at the boat builder's. Good boat, too, though battered some. Come and see our new one."

Kingdon went, and said nothing more about the thought that had become fixed in his mind regarding the eight-oared shell race.

The Walcott Hall boys had a good time at the boat club; but they were delayed in getting away, and when the _Spoondrift_ ran down toward the Channel it was plain the wind had come around into the north and was blowing strongly. The sea outside was streaked with foam over the caps of the jumping waves.

"Guess your old wind's changed, all right," grumbled Peewee.

"We won't have to beat up against it _all_ the way back to the island," Rex responded with cheerfulness. "Keep up hope, infant. All is not lost."

"I don't want to lose everything," said Cloudman as the cat began to pitch in the choppy sea. "That apple pie was too good to waste."

"Stop that talk!" groaned Peewee, his hand upon his stomach.

Cloudman really suffered from seasickness before they got out into open sea. There the waves were less choppy, and the _Spoondrift_ rode them like a seafowl. It was easier on all hands.

But the wind increased in strength, and to beat up into the sound--which was all a-streak with foam and very blusterous to look upon--was really more of an undertaking than Kingdon cared to tackle.

"We can do it all right. She's safe enough," Rex said to Midkiff. "But it will make rough going, Jawn--awful rough. These lubbers will be set on their ears."

"Never mind them. They'll feel better after it's all over."

"Unfeeling words, old boy. That's a narrow breach into our little cove where the camp is. Believe I'll go t'other side of the island."

"To the seaward side?"

"Right. The island will break the wind. I noticed one good anchorage, at least, over there. We can make it easily with the wind like this."

"You're the doctor," said Midkiff. "I suppose you know what you are about once in a blue moon."

"Your confidence in me almost brings the tears to my eyes. Shake a reef out of that sail, Jawn. We're going to run down wind for a long lap."

With this change in the sailing of the _Spoondrift_, Applejack and Peewee felt greatly relieved. With the wind practically astern, the catboat was less acrobatic in her motions. But when the high eastern point of the island began to draw in on their port quarter, the other fellows wanted to know where they were bound.

"What're you aiming to do, King?" asked Red Phillips. "Sail us clear over to Spain? You're heading that way."

"Get out your Spanish phrase book, and learn to speak the language with a pleasant accent," advised Kingdon, "if you think we're likely to reach that coast. Forewarned is forearmed."

"What do you mean, 'four-armed'?" grinned Red. "Think I am an _anthropoidean quadrumanous_ animal? Isn't that a good one? I learned it by heart after Old Yad suggested I might be one on occasion."

"I'd have had him arrested," Cloudman said, weakly. "Didn't know Yad could talk so mean to a fellow."

It was growing late when the catboat swung into the smoother patch of ocean south of the island. On their left, the surf roared far up the rocks and narrow beaches, and the swell, forerunning a storm, was quite apparent. The boat sailed on more even keel.

Kingdon pointed her for the sheltered gulf that indented the island coastline, which he had noticed when they battled with the squall the day they had reached Storm Island.

"We'll have to stay aboard all night, I suppose?" Cloudman groaned. "Oh, boy! _Terra firma_ for mine as soon as possible!"

"We might as well stay on the boat," Midkiff said. "No knowing what those other fellows have done to our camp."

"Cheerful, aren't you, Jawn?" chuckled Kingdon.

At that moment Peewee Hicks seemed suddenly to have a brainstorm. He had crept forward and was standing, hanging to a stay, looking off at the tumbling sea east of the island. Now he began to dance and yell.

"Come down out of that!" ordered Red Phillips. "What are you--going crazy? That's no place to be fox-trotting."

"Look there! See 'em! There's going to be a mess now."

"What do you mean?" questioned Red, climbing gingerly upon the deck to get a glimpse of what Peewee evidently saw.

The bulging sail shut out Rex Kingdon's vision. He called to know the cause of the disturbance. Red Phillips turned a perfectly pallid countenance to the stern, shouting:

"Canoes! Blown off shore, I guess. Two fellows in each, Rex. What will we do about it?"

*CHAPTER XVIII.*

*"THE HAPPY FAMILY."*

"It's that Horrors kid and his chums," Cloudman cried. "They're in for it, I reckon!"

"They're _out_ for it, you mean," Midkiff said.

"What can we do?" wailed the dancing Peewee. "They're trying to paddle back to the island."

"Right into the eye of the wind," said Phillips, who now had a good view of the two canoes.

"They'll be drowned!" declared little Hicks.

"Easy there, Midget," Kingdon requested. "Don't weep yet. Steady, you fellows. I'm going to wear ship. Give me the course, Red."

"You're sure not going to run down to them, Kingdon?" questioned Cloudman.

It looked dangerous to him. Even Midkiff said:

"Better look before you leap, Rex."

"Pshaw! As our Blackport friend says, 'There's nothing to it!' We can reach 'em all right--without shipping a capful of water."

"Yes," Midkiff muttered. "But can we get back to the island again?"

Kingdon did not answer that question. He knew he had a sound craft under him. A catboat of merely the _Spoondrift's_ length has run many a mile out to sea and lived through an offshore gale; but it wasn't a chance he fancied, and Kingdon fully felt the responsibility of taking the risk. Nevertheless, he could not think of letting those other fellows drown.

Drown they might unless they received immediate aid. Under the lift of the boom, Rex caught a glimpse of the two canoes. One fellow in each was paddling madly while his companion was bailing out the water shipped from the curling top of every wave.

It was a bad outlook for Horace Pence and his friends. Undoubtedly they had been fishing off the eastern point of Storm Island when the wind shifted. If that was so, then for nearly two hours the boys had been battling to get back to safety.

"Careless goats," Kingdon said to Midkiff, who stood beside him. "They ought never to have brought such dinky craft out here. Canoes are all right in the sound when it's quiet; but to try to manage a canoe out here, with the surf running the way it does on this south shore of Storm Island, is craziness."

"Guess they know all that now," grunted Midkiff.

"True for you, Jawn. Stand by to give them a hand. Save the canoes if you can. I've got to run her in between the two, and you and Red will each have to handle one of the cockleshells."

"Cockleshells. Now you've said a bushel, Rex," Midkiff rejoined. "Those fellows ought to be at home sailing chips on a puddle."

"They're putting up a plucky fight, just the same," Kingdon said, peering ahead. "Take your place. Speak to Red. Stand by the sheet to lower!" he bellowed.

"Aye, aye, skipper!" Phillips shouted back.

"Come aft here, Peewee, and help Cloudman pull 'em over the side. Keep your wits about you, Applejack."

"Oh, thank ye!" grunted the boy from the West. "I didn't spill them back there in that choppy channel."

Carried on by her own momentum, the _Spoondrift_ shot in between the two canoes. The struggling boys paddling at the moment--Pence in one canoe and Pudge MacComber in the other--might have ceased their work, seeing the catboat so near, had not Kingdon shouted:

"Keep it up, you fellows! Stick to the paddle. We've got to snake those other fellows inboard first."

Cloudman and Peewee each seized their man, while Red and Midkiff, lying precariously themselves on the decked over portion of the catboat, got a grip on the gunwales of the canoes.

Ben Comas and Kirby were hauled into the cockpit; but each canoe shipped so much water it began to sink.

Pudge was frankly crying; but he tried to balance his boat and use the paddle on the starboard side. Pence's countenance wore its usual sneering smile. His black eyes flashed and his glance did not quail in the least.

"Awfully decent of you, Kingdon," he shouted. "Try to save the canoes, if you can."

"Scramble aboard!" commanded the skipper of the _Spoondrift_. "Never mind the canoes."

But Midkiff and Phillips did their part nobly. They hung onto the sinking craft until Horace Pence and Harry Kirby could aid in dragging both upon the deck of the catboat.

"Lash 'em there," commanded Kingdon. "Give us more sail. We've got to make headway against this breeze."

He had brought the _Spoondrift_ into the eye of the wind and, when a reef was shaken out, the sail got the breeze on such a slant that she staggered and rolled like a drunken man.

"Oh, Rex!" squealed the frightened Peewee. "You'll have us turned turtle!"

"Don't worry, infant," responded Kingdon. "You couldn't tip this old girl over. She's as safe as a house."

The plunging of the catboat made them all hang on for dear life. Pudge had stopped crying, and he showed a courage far superior to that of his cousin. Deathly pale, Ben Comas was accusing Horace of having dragged them all into this perilous adventure.

That Pence had elements of the right stuff in him was proved by what he said in return: "You keep that to yourself, Comas, or I'll chuck you over the side. Thank Kingdon and his friends--as I do. We'd all been by-low in a few moments if it weren't for them."

"Huh!" grunted Ben. "What chance have we now?"

"If we are to drown we'll go down with these fellows who have done their best to save us," Pence put in curtly. "Don't forget that. Let's be decent--or, as decent as we can be--if we really have got to drown."

Kingdon smiled at the black-browed fellow.

"You're improving, Horrors," he said. "But we're not going to be swamped. We'll pull through all right."

"You'll never get us safely around to the other side of the island with the wind this way," Kirby shouted.

"Am not going to try," retorted Kingdon, shrugging his shoulders. "But we'll be all right--in time."

"Yes we will!" sneered Ben Comas.

"Drop that, or I'll punch you!" threatened Horace Pence, edging over toward the coward.

"Nice crowd, aren't they?" said Red Phillips, happening to be near Kingdon. "They must get along fine together in that camp up there. Regular happy family, such as you see in the sideshows--what?"

Kingdon laughed and shook the damp hair out of his eyes, for the spray had wet them all pretty thoroughly. Their oilskins had saved the Walcott Hall boys; but the canoeists were saturated above their waists.

"I'd feel better if I co-could get dry," chattered Pudge.

"So say we all of us, Fatty," Cloudman told him. "But no use trying to light the oilstove below. Might set the cabin afire."

"Don't take any favors from 'em, Pudge," ordered Ben in his nastiest way.

"Why don't you get out and walk," demanded Peewee hotly, "if you don't want to accept any favors? You're a fine chap--I don't think."

"Close up, infant," commanded Kingdon, hearing this. "Try to be hospitable."

"Hospitable!" muttered Hicks. "They've been so nice to us--stealing that permit and trying to get us put off the island----"

Horace Pence actually grinned at this. "You must have put it all over Enos Quibb," he said in his drawling way. "How did you do it? Gratitude for saving him from a watery grave, no doubt?"

"If he showed gratitude, it's more than somebody else," snapped Midkiff, boiling over.

"You're the fellow they call Grouch, aren't you?" Horace asked, still smiling. "Name seems to fit."

Kingdon interfered before the slow Midkiff could get back at his tormentor.

"Let them rave, Midkiff," the skipper said. "They got the best of us the other day. We have to admit it. But the affair isn't over yet."

"We got the permit just the same," laughed Horace openly.

"We'd ought to take it away from them," put in Red Phillips, inclined to feel as Midkiff did.

"Remember they are our guests," drawled Kingdon. "Hands off. We must put them ashore in safety. After that----"

If the truth were told at that moment, Rex would gladly have gone to a clinch with the sneering Pence. There was something about the crass ingratitude of the cheeky fellow that made it hard for Kingdon to restrain himself. Pence and his crew were unbeaten cubs.

But Rex gave his first, and very earnest attention to the sailing of the _Spoondrift_. She staggered along for an hour, making very heavy weather, and very short legs in her tacking, but finally, the eastern head of Storm Island began to break the wind.

"We're pulling out of it," Red shrieked in Kingdon's ear, for the roar of the nearby surf was now almost deafening.

"By the way," Rex asked of Kirby, "where's your Indian friend?"

"He didn't come out with us."

"Oh! I fancied he might have been drowned. That would have been a sad calamity. I think he has it in for me."

"Maybe he has," Ben said, overhearing this conversation. "But he doesn't dislike you any more than the rest of us do."

"Aw, Ben!" said Pudge MacComber, "I'm sure _I'm_ grateful to Mr. Kingdon and his friends. He may not believe it----"

"Oh, I do," Rex interrupted, sweetly. "But don't lay it on too thick. I begin to feel slight symptoms of _mal de mere_. A little of the kind of gratitude you fellows feel goes a long way with me."

*CHAPTER XIX.*

*MORE OF MR. QUIBB.*

"Lower away!" shouted Rex, as he put the nose of the _Spoondrift_ into the passage between the two charging files of breakers. In a moment, it seemed, the catboat drifted on the heaving but quiet bosom of the small cove.

Rex Kingdon dealt in melodrama; no doubt of that. He liked to do things to startle his comrades. But they were not always chance things done on the spur of the moment. More often he shrewdly molded circumstances to lead up to his most startling successes. He had had both his friends and "The Happy Family," as Red had named their guests, speculating during these last few minutes. It had looked as though the old _Spoondrift_ could not possibly be brought into this haven in safety.

"By George!" Horace Pence unwillingly said. "You're some pilot, you are!"

"Me!" Rex returned lightly. "If I'd sailed with Columbus, we'd landed at New York, not at a little picayune island down in the West Indies."

"Well, we'll be getting our canoes over and going ashore, I guess," Horace said in rather an embarrassed tone for him.

"So long," returned Kingdon carelessly. "Come up and give me another look at that fast ball of yours to-morrow."

"Perhaps," said the black-eyed fellow, non-committally.

The four went ashore. The Walcott Hall boys saw Joe Bootleg meet them at the edge of the water with a lantern. He had evidently been aware of their peril, and from the headland had watched the _Spoondrift_ making her anchorage.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," muttered Red Phillips.

"All but the fat chap," Peewee observed. "He isn't such a bad sort."

"Most onery crowd of coyotes I ever saw," Cloudman acclaimed with force.

"Forget it!" advised Rex, with more tartness than he usually displayed. "Not worth talking about."

"Those chaps from the other camp have really gotten under his hide at last," Peewee whispered to Red.

They spent the night in some comfort. The summer wind-storm blew itself out before midnight, and in the morning they were able to sail around to the little cove below their camp. Nothing had been disturbed there. They found the tent-fly laced down as they had left it.

Kingdon insisted on taking his two pitchers to the top of the island for practice in the afternoon. Neither Horace Pence nor any of his chums appeared. The Walcott Hall boys caught only distant glimpses of the other campers-out during the day.

The morning following Kingdon was too busy with Midkiff, tinkering with the engine of the _Spoondrift_, to bother about the rival campers. The other Walcott Hall boys went fishing off the rocks in the still water, and caught a mess of cunners that made a nice change from the usual cod, or flounders.

"Never knew there were so many kinds of fish," Cloudman admitted. "Always thought, till I came East, that fish was just _fish_. All tasted the same. But even those squirmy eels taste better than Texas venison."

"What's Texas venison?" questioned Phillips.

"Jackrabbits," Applejack replied, grinning.

"Fellers in N'York, they tell me, pay a dollar a pair for them. They kill 'em in big drives in Texas, and use flivvers instead of ponies to run 'em. Then they cold storage the jacks and push 'em up to the Eastern market. All they are worth in Texas is a bad word; and a dollar a pair in the effete East. Some dish, jackrabbit stew--if a feller has good teeth."

Pudge MacComber came over to the Walcott Hall camp about dark, to borrow a hatchet. He seemed rather embarrassed about asking for it, his cousin's insistence evidently having been all that brought him.

"We've mislaid ours somewhere," he confessed. "We've got to cut some more firewood and a few tent pegs. The wind, the other day, pretty near blew our tents away."

"You're welcome to the hatchet," Kingdon said. "Thought you had a fellow with you who knew all about camping--and was cookee, too?"

"That Injun," Cloudman put in.

"He's a good deal of a frost," admitted Pudge. "He's lazy. Won't work any more than he can help. And his cooking!" The fat youth sighed, shaking his head mournfully. "I know I'm going to reduce all right if we stay on Storm Island. I do all the work and haven't had a square meal once since we landed."

"You're looking bad. I noticed that when you came along," Red Phillips said with commiseration. "You tottered. I bet you've lost half a pound."

"Oh, you can laugh----"

"No laughing matter," said the lean Cloudman, "to lose flesh. I lost some once, and it made me lopsided. Got thrown from my pony and scraped off some thigh meat against a rock, on one leg. Walked with a list to starboard, as you mariners would say, for a couple of weeks."

"I wouldn't care to lose flesh that way," Pudge said. "When I'm not fat I don't feel so well. I begin to get weak and all run down----"

"So that you don't cast a shadow, I s'pose?" suggested Peewee.

"Oh, I guess I always cast more of a shadow than you do, little feller," Pudge told him, to the amusement of the others.

"But if you get thin, I suppose you are afraid of losing your right proportions," Kingdon chimed in gravely. "You know, a fellow hates to lose his shape."

"According to what kind of a shape he's got," muttered Peewee.

"Why, the rules for perfect pulchritude are easily remembered," the curly-haired youth said with serious mien. "You know, 'Twice around the thumb, once around the wrist; twice around the wrist, once around the neck; twice around the neck, once around the waist'----"

"And in this fellow's case twice around the waist, once around the 'big top' at a circus, I s'pose?" put in Red. "Just about."

"Oh," said Pudge, mildly, "you fellows can poke fun if you like. I don't mind. I'm used to it anyway. I'd rather be fat than uncomfortable. Besides, after what you fellers did for us the other day----"

"Now don't get maudlin," begged Kingdon quickly. "The least said the soonest mended. We had to save you from a watery grave! We're not proud of it."

This rather closed Pudge up, and he mournfully went away. Midkiff said with scorn:

"They must be having a nice time over at that camp! They don't open their tent-flies before nine o'clock. Sleep away the best of the day. Then they lay around and squabble most of the time, I s'pose."

"Don't let their behavior worry you, Grouch," Red advised. "You haven't got to play father confessor to that bunch."

"I'd like to give 'em penance, all right," growled Midkiff. "What they need is a rattling good shaking up. Being half an ace from drowning the other afternoon wasn't enough."

It looked, the next forenoon, as though the "shaking up" was about to come to the first party of campers on Storm Island. Kingdon and his mates had got the engine of the catboat into running order, and were just about to try her out, when the sound of another motor approaching brought them all up standing. Motor crafts, thus far, had not been very plentiful in the sound.

"See who's coming to be in our midst again," invited Peewee. "It's the jolly constable."

"Now we're in for it!" predicted Midkiff, looking solemnly at Rex.

The latter seemed the least disturbed of any of them. Indeed, he smiled quietly and went about preparing for the trial of the catboat.

"Is he coming here?" queried Cloudman after a minute.

"Not first, I guess," said Red, who was likewise pretty solemn. "But he'll be here all right. He's going over to take another squint at that permit, I s'pose. If you had only let us get that paper away from those fellows, Rex----"

"Never mind the ifs and ands, Red," said Rex. "Let's go over there and see what happens."

"He's got something in reserve," declared Peewee.

"I believe he has," muttered Red.

Kingdon went about his business, without further word. In a minute or two their own engine was going, and soon the _Spoondrift_ moved easily out of the cove. By that time Enos Quibb's motorboat was almost at the landing where the two canoes lay.

The Walcott Hall boys could see that the fellows at the other camp had been rounded up by the excitable Pudge. They were all at the landing when Enos Quibb shut off his engine and stepped forward to make fast a line. Joe Bootleg remained in the background; but even he, it seemed, was more than usually interested.

The boys aboard the catboat could not hear what first was said by the constable, but they heard Horace Pence laugh his sneering, musical laugh, and reply:

"You're going to have some job proving that, aren't you, Mr. Quibb? We have the permit----"

"Then, by gum," the excited constable shouted, "you stole it! That's what you did. You ain't got no right to it."

"You'd better try to prove that, Enos," Horace said, still laughing.

"I'm a-goin' to," cried Quibb. "I'm a-goin' to take you fellers--all of ye--over to Squire Lowder's, an' let him decide this business. No school of tomcods like yeou, is goin' to fool Enos Quibb right along. No, sir!"

*CHAPTER XX.*

*KINGDON'S SURPRISING MOVE.*

The catboat's engine was suddenly shut off, and then there was no sound from the water to break the silence that had fallen on the group ashore. Before anybody aboard the _Spoondrift_ could speak, Kingdon gestured for silence.

"All right," muttered Red. "I'm willing to get it from here."

Down from the bank above the mooring place came the voice of Horace Pence, cool as ever. Kingdon, who had begun to consider the fellow's bad qualities as uppermost, again felt a thrill of admiration for him.

"Now, Quibb, you know very well you can't do that," Horace was saying soothingly, but with restrained laughter in his voice. "Why bother to try and frighten us?"

"I'll show you----"

"You'll show us nothing but warrants for our arrest," retorted Pence. "You know that's the best you can do--summons us to court. If you think we have been trespassing here, that's your limit. You can't scare us a little bit."

"Oh, I can't, hey?" blustered Enos.

"No. Remember we have shown you the permit from the Manatee Lumber Company."

"I know all about that," said Enos, his lean jaws seeming to bite off the tart words. "But 'tain't yours. You stole it--or somethin'. I know you ain't that Kingdon feller, now. That's flat."

"You know a lot," said Pence. But, before speaking, he had hesitated just an instant. His black eyes had glanced downward and marked the catboat under the bank, and the listening party in her. For that instant, indeed, his gaze fell on Rex Kingdon's face. The latter had smiled suddenly.

"You know a lot," repeated Horace Pence.

"I got you foul, young feller," said Enos, evidently happy to say so. His pale eyes gleamed; his freckled face was roseate; he showed all the venom of the shallow mind and vindictive nature. "You pack up--all five of ye--an' git off Storm Island. I'm giving you a chance, when I might have got warrants and pulled ye."

"Say not so!" begged Pence. "You wouldn't really arrest us, Mr. Quibb?"

"Wouldn't I?" returned the constable. "I wish I'd gone to Squire Lowder fust-off and got the warrants. No use doing sech fellers a decent turn. I dunno but I could get ye for false pretenses, takin' another feller's name the way you did."

"I didn't take the name!" cooed Pence. "You gave it to me."

"You showed me that permit, and acted like it was yourn."

"And isn't it?" chuckled the black-eyed fellow.

"Not by a long chalk!" cried Enos. "I know who Rex Kingdon is now." He turned and pointed to the catboat. "There he is--that curly-haired chap that thinks himself almost as funny as you be. I l'arned who he was t'other day when he was over to Blackport gettin' fixin's for that engine. I heard Val Spear--he's treasurer of the Manatee Company--call him Rex Kingdon right on the street. You ain't him, an' you ain't got no right to that permit."

For the instant Horace Pence seemed to have no reply ready, although he was quite at ease. His friends were flustered and terrified.

"There! What did I tell you?" the Walcott Hall boys heard Ben Comas say.

"Nice mess you've got us into," whined Pudge.

"The game's up," said Kirby, rather stolidly.

Kingdon made a sign to his friends, and they gathered close about him in the stern of the catboat, which was drifting in nearer to the shore.

"Fellows, I'm about to play the trump," he said, his eyes laughing but his lips grave. "Are you with me?"

"What do you mean, Rex?" demanded Midkiff suspiciously.

But Phillips said promptly: "We're always with you, Blue-Eyes. Go to it."

"It's some foolishness," began Midkiff again. But Peewee whispered:

"Put on the muffler, Grouch, and let him have his way. King's always good fun, no matter what he does."

"What's on your mind, Rex?" asked Cloudman, his curiosity also aroused.

"Yes, what are you going to do, pitch in and help Enos clean up the bunch?" asked Red, hopefulness in his tone. "That would have my approval."

"I'll give you another guess," laughed Rex. "I've a plan that beats thrashing that crowd, much as they deserve it."

"Unfold it to us," urged Midkiff, still in doubt, "if it's anything sensible."

"Bide a wee," restrained Rex. "You've got to back me up. No balking."

"Confound it!" exclaimed Cloudman, "you haven't told us your scheme."

"No time to discuss it," said Kingdon. "You've got to take my plan on trust."

"Now I know it's something foolish," declared John Midkiff.

The nose of the catboat rubbed against the beach, and Rex was the first one ashore. "Follow your resourceful leader," he called, laughing over his shoulder at the gloomy face of Midkiff. "Bring a line ashore, Jawn, and moor the old girl. We don't want to lose her, now that we've just got the engine to working like a chawm."

Cool as ever, he led the way up the bank. For the last few moments the Walcott Hall boys had given no attention to what was being said or done on the island, but now they saw that Enos had stepped back a pace, and had his little black billy in his hand. He was threatening:

"You fellers pull up them stakes and begin packin' your stuff, or I'll crack a few heads. I know what I'm doin'. Squire Lowder'll stand back of me."

Kingdon came up to the constable, with a good natured smile, and laid a soothing hand upon his shoulder.

"Why all the disturbance, Mr. Squibb?" he asked. "Don't get overheated on this sweet and pleasant day----"

"And this bunch of fellows is a sweet and pleasant crowd, I s'pose, Mr. Kingdon?" snapped Enos. "And my name's Quibb, not Squibb, if you please."

"Sure, Mr. Fibb. My mistake," said Rex. "What's doing?"

"You know well enough," said the angry Enos. "You helped fool me, too----"

"Never!" groaned Kingdon. "You know, Mr. Constable, you are a man who can't be fooled by a parcel of boys. You said so."

"Aw--well. I wasn't _sure_. This chap had that permit from the Manatee Company."

"Of course," said Kingdon easily. "It didn't matter who showed you the paper--as long as we had it and you saw it?"

Midkiff uttered a grunt that was almost an ejaculation of pain. "I knew it!" he growled.

Mr. Quibb was not the most startled by Kingdon's query, however; Horace Pence almost leaped forward to stare into the smiling visage of the leader of the Walcott Hall boys.

"What d'ye mean?" snarled the constable. "That these fellers----"

"Certainly, Quibb," Kingdon replied, quite seriously despite his good-humored look. "You know, it says nothing in the permit about the number of my party. Those other fellows are my friends; at least, I call them so. See the love-light in their eyes when they look at me?"

Unable to fathom the bantering lad, Quibb looked a good deal like a fish out of its element, his mouth open and eyes staring.

"Come hither, Mr. Constable," Rex said, drawing the man beyond earshot of the others. "Let me bare my heart to you."

"You can't bluff me!"

"Oh, I wouldn't think of trying it! This is no bluff. I'm going to spill the truth, and nothing but the truth, into your copious ear. Those fellows did not belong to my party--originally."

"There!" exclaimed the constable, swelling again. "That's what I knowed. They stole that permit."

"At least, they _have_ it," agreed Kingdon. "But that is not the point. The permit is issued to 'Rex Kingdon and friends,' but it doesn't say how many friends. And so, Mr. Cribb----"

"Quibb!" ejaculated the constable.

"Oh, pardon me!" pleaded Rex. "I'm dreadfully forgetful of names, but I always remember faces--like yours. Now, I want you to be a good fellow. You'd be almost lovable, really, if you would let your natural kindness of heart have full play. Say or do nothing to sour the milk of human kindness that lies----"

"What do you want me to do?" broke in the constable, nettled yet impressed by Kingdon's airy manner.

"Remember that black-eyed chap jumped into the drink to snatch you from a watery grave the other day. Be grateful. Let us alone to fight our own jolly battles. I claim them as my friends now, and therefore you really have no right to drive them away. What do you say----"

"I say you're the sassiest set of boys I ever see. But it's a fact you got me out of a pickle," acknowledged the freckled-face constable, putting away his billy.

"All's well that ends well," quoth Kingdon briskly. "If anybody asks you, you can tell 'em we've got two camps over here for reasons of our own. It's nobody's business as long as you are satisfied."

"Sure not. I know I'm right now," said the constable, nodding his head. "I heard Val Spear speak to you as though he knowed you well."

"Thank you so much!" cried Rex, seizing Enos by the hand and almost wringing his arm off with enthusiasm. "I knew you were naturally a broad-minded and generous man. Must you hurry away so soon? I hate to see you go, but--good day, good day."

The two parties of boys stood waiting and silent until the man had got aboard his motorboat and started it chugging away from Storm Island.

*CHAPTER XXI.*

*REVENGE.*

"What's the game?" finally asked Horace Pence, when he was sure the constable was out of hearing.

"Game? No game at all, I assure you," Kingdon answered gravely. "Don't lend yourself to suspicion, as many do, old chap. By the way, hand over that permit now, Horrors. It's served its purpose in your hands, I am sure."

Pence produced the paper without a moment's indecision. But he said:

"I'd rather you didn't think I swiped it out of your jacket pocket, Kingdon. I fancy it must have slipped out when you threw off your jacket that day to play ball. Joe Bootleg found it in the grass, afterward, and brought it to me."

Kingdon looked straight into the black eyes of Horace as he accepted the permit in its envelope. "I believe you," he said simply, putting it into his pocket.

Suddenly the coarse voice of Ben Comas broke in:

"All very fine, but I take it we go, just the same, Horrors. 'Twould have been better if we had got off the island before all this foolishness happened."

Kingdon laughed at him cheerfully. "Not at all necessary. I don't see why you should leave, now that things are so comfortable and pleasant all around."

"What's that?" demanded Pence, plainly startled.

"The island's a cramped place, I know," Kingdon responded, with a careless wave of his hand. "But it's been more than a little fun rowing with you fellows. It puts quite a tang into the taste of it all. Hate to see you chaps move out when there's no necessity for it."

"Listen to that!" ejaculated Red Phillips from the rear.

"So you like a row?" Pence asked Kingdon, having recovered his self-possession.

"It's better than monotony, though there might be other ways of passing the time." Saying which, Rex turned his back on Pence and his party and started for the waterside. "Come on, fellows," he suggested to his comrades, "let's run across to that fishweir over yonder. I see they're going to haul the trap."

The five Walcott Hall boys silently boarded the catboat, while Pence and his comrades watched them, equally silent. When the _Spoondrift_ was well away from the mooring place of the two canoes, Harry Kirby said:

"What have you got to say about that, Horrors? I don't understand that Kingdon at all, do you?"

Pence did not reply at once. Ben's harsh voice broke in:

"You fellows make me tired! He's got some scheme to come back at us, of course. Why shouldn't he? We ought to get out of here."

"Where'll we go?" complained Pudge MacComber, apprehending work before him.

"Don't ask me." Harry Kirby groaned. "Wish we'd never come."

"We wouldn't if it hadn't been for this crazy Horrors."

"All you can do is growl," flared Kirby, who was Pence's strongest admirer.

"Give that Kingdon and his crew half a show, and they'll get us into hot water of some kind," Ben fumed.

"Listen," commanded the black-eyed chap, whose influence over his mates was by no means dissipated. "I want to know why we should get out of here at all?"

"But, Horrors," Ben said, "you know they'll do something mean to us."

"You're judging them by what you'd do yourself."

"Didn't they take our canoes in the first place?"

"But they didn't keep them," said Horrors. "That Kingdon is as square a chap as I ever saw."

"What's that?" exclaimed Kirby. "Have you fallen in love with him?"

"Well, I can't say I hate him just because he is ready to fight, as long as he fights fair."

"I could lick him, easy," boasted Kirby.

"A lot you could! Ask Joe, here, whether Rex Kingdon's got a hard fist."

The Indian lad's countenance denoted his feelings on this point. Although he did not speak, his expression was a threat that none of the others quite understood.

"Look here," insisted Pence argumentatively, "let's settle this. Why should we leave Storm Island?"

"For one reason," said Kirby, "because Kingdon can get us put off any time he feels like it."

"Will he feel like it?"

"Why won't he?" asked Ben Comas.

"He says," returned Pence, "that he likes to have us here to row with, and why shouldn't we accommodate him? He hasn't got so much the better of us. We've had just as much fun out of it as he and his crowd have."

"Quibb will be coming around again," prophesied Kirby.

"Don't you believe it. Kingdon has settled that. He'll keep away from Storm Island. We'll take Rex Kingdon at his word. He says he likes to fuss with us. Let's give him all the sport in that line he wants."

Joe Bootleg's gloomy face caught the attention of the black-eyed lad. "You going to stay here, Mr. Pence?" the Indian asked.

"That's my intention, Chief."

"Them fellers stay?" demanded Joe, pointing off at the catboat.

"Sure."

The Indian turned and started into the woods. He carried the camp hatchet that had been borrowed from the Walcott Hall boys.

"Where you going, Joe?" asked Ben, as Horace gave the fellow no further attention.

"Chop more firewood," grunted Joe Bootleg.

But he clutched the hatchet handle with a grimness that might have startled the others had they seen his face. The fire of revengeful determination burned hotly in Joe Bootleg's heart.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

*THE BOULDER ON THE HILLSIDE.*

The _Spoondrift_ and her crew came back from the fishweir with several varieties of edible fish that the pondmen had given the boys. They had a feast that night at the camp, and even Cloudman admitted that, for once, it was a "square meal."

Midkiff, unlike the others, could not easily forgive Rex and the others for letting Horace Pence and his friends off so easy.

"You're piling up trouble for yourself and us," he told Kingdon. "Fellows like those over at that camp would cut your tugs and let the horse run away any time you weren't looking--and think 'twas fun."

"We'll be looking," laughed Kingdon.

"Yes, we will! That Indian, for instance, could be planning something against us right now, and we wouldn't know it, would we? He's a wicked-looking chap, and he hasn't forgotten how you mauled him around that night in the dark."

"Nor have I forgotten how he mauled me," said Rex, with some feeling. "My dainty little foot is tender yet. But maybe my upper deck is loaded with a grand scheme to get even." He finished with a soft laugh.

"Yes it is!" scoffed the gloomy one, with scorn. "I know about the kind of plans you have in your mind."

Midkiff really admired Kingdon's whole-hearted and friendly way of settling the matter of the permit and the remaining on the island of the other campers. Nobody but Rex, it seemed to him, could have done just that--and done it so well. Furthermore, he had not lingered around to receive any expressions of gratitude, or to make the chaps with Pence feel uncomfortable. He had taken his own friends away at once, leaving the surprised and shame-faced crowd to recover from the jolt his action had given them.

Midkiff was sure he couldn't have done such a thing himself. Indeed, he wouldn't have done it under any circumstances. Heaping coals of fire on the heads of his enemies was not John's way of settling any dispute. He could fight, or he could argue; but it was not in him to be a generous--indeed a prodigally generous--enemy. Besides, he did not believe that it would improve Pence and his friends. He considered them beneath contempt and incapable of holding a generous sentiment for an instant.

Kingdon suddenly laughed at him again. "I'm glad I haven't your suspicious nature, Jawn," he drawled, shrugging his well-built shoulders.

They went up to the open field in the middle of the island the next forenoon, and before long Pence and his three white companions strolled into view. If Ben, Pudge and Kirby felt any embarrassment, and showed it, not so Horace Pence. He was his usual careless and cheerful self.

Kingdon left it to Pence to make advances, and presently Horace wanted to try his arm. Kingdon caught for him, never uttering a word of encouragement or criticism all the time the black-eyed chap was working, although Pence was using all the speed at his command.

"I say," called Horace at last, "what d'you think of them?"

"You don't want to know what I think, do you?" Kingdon asked quietly.

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't," returned the heated Pence.

"I think you're likely to throw your arm out of joint, if you keep on," was Kingdon's frank response. "I'd take care if I were you. You don't put the ball over; you let it fly anywhere, as long as you put steam behind it."

Pence was unable to hide his chagrin. He flung the ball as far as he could across the field, and sullenly started back for his camp. But he slipped on his sweater as he went. He had remembered Kingdon's advice of the week before.

"He got what he asked for, and didn't like it," Peewee snickered.

"Shows his bringing up!" muttered Cloudman.

"Regular Chesterfield for manners!" chuckled Red Phillips.

Midkiff, too disgusted to speak at all, looked his contempt.

They forgot that it took training of the right kind for a young fellow to get into the habit of controlling his temper. Kingdon might have been intentionally aggravating, for he went off whistling in the other direction, and alone. One could seldom tell whether Rex was perturbed or not. At least, on this particular occasion he showed no apparent feeling for Horace Pence.

None of the others followed Rex at the moment, and he slipped into the woods alone while his mates were picking up the bats and recovering other articles. He did not care to be questioned just then. Nevertheless he was smiling. He was wise enough to appreciate how Horace Pence felt.

Going whistling down the aisles of the wood, but bearing off the usual route to their camp, Kingdon suddenly came upon something that stopped him.

"Hul-_lo!_" he murmured, startled if not surprised. "Who's been chopping down trees?"

The spot was almost directly above their camp. The steep hillside fell away to the small plateau on which the Walcott Hall boys had set up their tent. Below that was the cove, with its pebbly, narrow, crescent beach, and the catboat courtesying to the swell of the water. Kingdon could get a glimpse of her stick through the trees.

Here, just before him, a goodly sapling had been cut off near the ground. That, in itself, was an infringement of the rules laid down by the Manatee Company. Rex had been warned against cutting wood of this kind for any purpose whatsoever on Storm Island.

"Now, who did this?" muttered the lad again. "Surely none of our fellows."

His quick eye saw something in the grass, and he hastened to pick it up. A hatchet, with one side of the blade rusted.

"Our extra hatchet! The one that MacComber fellow borrowed. I'm sure he didn't return it!"

He went on a little way and saw where the sapling, all of four inches through at its butt, lay half hidden in the rank weeds and grass. It seemed that the stick had been cut wantonly, after which the marauder had tried to hide it.

"I'm sure none of our fellows would have done such a thing. Here's the hatchet," Kingdon told himself.

He went on a little farther, and came to the opening above the camp. The forest trees seemed to withdraw on either side and leave a small, wedge-shaped pasture on the hillside, with the thin edge of the wedge up-hill. Down the slope, not two hundred yards away, was the tent.

Kingdon's gaze swept the opening in the forest, studying every detail of the narrow landscape. Suspicion had been bred in his mind. It was more, an intuition that all was not right.

He walked slowly down the hill, observing several outthrust rocks and one rounded bowlder directly in his path. Apparently a dog had tried to dig a woodchuck out from under the upper edge of that bowlder.

Kingdon passed on. Then he turned, startled, and went back to the gray rock. The thought had flashed through his mind that there were no dogs on Storm Island!

At least, he had neither seen nor heard a dog since his party had arrived. A dog had not dug under that bowlder, nor would a groundhog have left so much loose soil at the mouth of his burrow.

Kingdon stopped and studied the situation. There was a small rock lying just above the bowlder and about two feet from its uphill edge. This smaller stone had recently been placed there.

He walked back to the felled sapling at the edge of the wood. Its butt, freshly cut from the stump, should be white. Instead it was crusted with earth.

Rex returned down the hill again, and stood for a minute by the great gray bowlder, testing one hand upon it, thinking. His gaze scrutinized minutely every foot of the slope below him. Presently, his face frowning and thoughtful, he sought the path by which he and his mates usually descended the hillside, and arrived at the camp before the others.

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

*A THREATENING SKY.*

Rex had brought the camp hatchet and placed it where everybody could see it. None of his fellow-campers spoke of its return. They were all hungry, and they hurried through dinner, took a nap, and then made for the sound while the tide was up.

There was a good diving place just east of their cove, and within a few rods of the spot where the other fellows moored their canoes. When the Walcott Hall boys arrived at the bathing place the four white youths from the other camp were already in the water. Joe Bootleg seemed to have a constitutional objection to water for bathing purposes.

With a driftwood plank they had found, Midkiff and Phillips rigged a diving-board. The rocks which weighted its shoreward end sometimes slipped off and "dumped" the diver ingloriously into the deep hole under the bank, but that merely added to the sport.

Peewee hailed Pudge MacComber, with whom he had struck up something of a doubtful friendship, and soon four of the other fellows were at the spot where the Walcott Hall boys bathed.

Pence, a fine swimmer, dove like a shark and stayed under water longer than anybody in the crowd, save Kingdon himself. The two raced informally from the diving hole to the canoes and back again, and it seemed that Pence had a wee bit the better of it.

"You do that Australian crawl fine," Kingdon told the black-eyed chap frankly.

"That's one thing I do all winter. There's a corking pool in our town gym., and I don't often miss a day."

"Swimming and rowing are as good all round training stuff as a fellow can do," Kingdon said. "Gives you wind and what Downs, our coach, calls stamina. You handle a paddle like a veteran, Pence. How are you with the oar?"

"So-so," Horace replied languidly. "Had good crews at Belding where I went for a year. I made Number Two eight."

"Belding?" ejaculated Kingdon. "Did you go to Belding?"

"I went and then I came away again," laughed Pence with that unpleasant curl of his lip. "Didn't stay long."

"Why not?"

"I rather think my absence was requested because of something regarding a calf being led into chapel and tied in the pulpit. Had a kind of a weak-voiced chaplain and the calf helped him out in bellowing."

"Boys will be boys," Kingdon said sadly, "and calves will be calves. Sometimes it's hard for the faculty to tell 'em apart."

Pence's eyes twinkled with appreciation. "At least, they didn't make the mistake of rusticating the calf instead of me."

"After that?" quizzed Rex.

"After what?"

"Belding wasn't your last school? Where do you go now?"

"I've finished school. Nothing to it," yawned Pence.

"That reminds me," Kingdon said quickly. "Those fellows sailing the _Nothing To It_ claim to be the fastest crew in these parts in eight-oared shell."

"_Nothing To It_?" echoed Pence.

Rex told him about the Blackport Boat Club fellows and their boasting. "I'd dearly love to get hold of that old boat of theirs, train a bit, and see how bad they could trim us in a race."

"But you five fellows can't handle an eight-oared shell," the black-eyed youth said.

"No. But we five, with your four, could. Even Pudge would do as ballast. Have to work in Hicks as cox."

Pence stared and laughed shortly. "You're a queer fellow," he said. "Anybody'd think we were bosom friends of yours.'

"Bosom enemies," responded Kingdon. "What's the odds, enemies or friends? We might work up a good crew and have a little fun with that _Nothing To It_ crowd."

"You must have sport on the brain, Kingdon," drawled Horace.

"Sure. Clean sport. There's nothing like it. I can have a fine time with the worst enemy I've got, if he only plays the game--_any_ game--fair."

"Suppose you've got plenty of deadly enemies?" was the other's rejoinder.

"Got one, I fancy, right in your crowd," Kingdon said, with rather a meaning inflection to his voice.

Horace stared at him. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about Ben Comas."

"I don't. It's your Indian chum, Joe Bootleg."

"Joe? Tut, tut! He's as tame as----"

"As a tarantula," finished Kingdon, laughing again.

"I'll have an eye on him," said Pence, rather sneeringly smiling once more. "But you don't expect a fellow like him to play any game fair?"

"Not so's you'd notice it," Kingdon cheerfully returned. "But you other fellows, now--take for instance yourself, Horrors."

The other straightened up on the rock where they were sitting in the sun, at a distance from the other fellows, and looked with hard eyes at Rex. "What do you mean?" he questioned. "I don't just get you."

"Consider your pitching," Kingdon said coolly. "It's crude."

"Crude?"

"Very."

"Say, I've got some reputation as a pitcher around home."

Rex repressed a laugh. "Others before you have been Walter Johnsons around home, but have lost their reputations as soon as they got away anywhere."

"What's the matter with my pitching, anyhow?"

"I've told you that you lack control, but you need experience and training in other things. Speed is a great thing, I'll admit, when a pitcher mixes it with brains."

"Perhaps I've got as many brains as your friends Midkiff and Cloudman," flared Horace. "I suppose you think them Mathewsons?"

"They're steady and dependable, at least."

"Plugging horses!" snapped Pence. "No real stuff."

"I've seen fellows who didn't succeed though everybody thought they had the 'real stuff,' and I've seen 'plugging horses' who climbed steadily and surely to the top. Brilliancy is sometimes nothing but a flash in the pan."

"Is that so?" demanded the heated Horace. "I don't suppose I'd make any showing at all on the diamond of that fancy prep. school of yours?"

"Oh, you're baseball material; no doubt of that," answered Kingdon carelessly. "I figure Stanley Downs would place you about on the Number Three scrub."

"_In_-deed?" exploded Horace.

"Yes. We're weak in our pitching staff, too. I could use a southpaw like you, even if you came in as a freshman, with the school nine this fall."

Kingdon said it in such a matter-of-fact way that the other stared at him for a full minute before demanding: "What's this you're driving at? What's the big idea?"

"I might use a fellow like you on the pitching staff of the Walcott Hall nine, if he was amenable to discipline and I could work with him this summer."

"You go fish!" jeered Pence, rising suddenly to cast himself into the sea and swam away.

"Now, let that idea rattle about in that dome of yours, Horrors," chuckled Rex, also rising. "We'll see what comes of it."

That evening, while supper was cooking, Rex strolled up the hill over-looking the camp. He glanced at the bowlder, and again found the stick that had been cut and hidden at the edge of the wood. Apparently no one had been there since he made his previous examination.