Dab Kinzer: A Story of a Growing Boy by William O. Stoddard (good books to read for women TXT) 📗

many anxious people there may have been in that region that night, a little after supper; but there was no doubt of the state of mind in at least three family circles.

Good Mrs. Foster could not endure to stay at home and talk about the matter; and her husband and Annie were very willing to go over to the Kinzers' with her, and listen to the encouraging views of Dabney's stout-hearted and sensible mother.

They were welcomed heartily; and the conversation began, so to speak, right in the middle.

"Oh, Mrs. Kinzer! do you think they are in any danger?"

"I hope not. I don't see why there need be, unless they try to return across the bay against this wind."

"But don't you think they'll try? Do you mean they won't be home to-night?" exclaimed Mr. Foster himself.

"I sincerely hope not," said the widow calmly. "I should hardly feel like trusting Dabney out in the boat again, if he should do so foolish a thing."

"But where can he stay?"

"At anchor somewhere, or on the island; almost anywhere but tacking all night on the bay. He'd be really safer out at sea than trying to get home."

"Out at sea!"

There was something really dreadful in the very idea of it; and Annie Foster turned pale enough when she thought of the gay little yacht, and her brother out on the broad Atlantic in it, with no better crew than Dab Kinzer and Dick Lee. Samantha and her sisters were hardly as steady about it as their mother; but they were careful to conceal their misgivings from their neighbors, which was very kindly indeed in the circumstances.

There was little use in trying to think or talk of any thing else beside the boys, however, with the sound of the "high wind" in the trees out by the roadside; and a very anxious circle was that, up to the late hour at which the members of it separated for the night.

But there were other troubled hearts in that vicinity. Old Bill Lee himself had been out fishing all day, with very poor luck; but he forgot all about that, when he learned, on reaching the shore, that Dick and his white friends had not returned. He even pulled back to the mouth of the inlet, to see if the gathering darkness would give him any signs of his boy. He did not know it; but while he was gone Dick's mother, after discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which had been the pride of her absent son. She had never admired them half so much before, but they seemed now to need a red necktie to set them off; and so the gorgeous result of Dick's fishing and trading came out of its hiding-place, and was arranged on the white coverlet of her own bed, with the rest of his best garments.

"Jus' de t'ing for a handsome young feller like Dick," she muttered to herself.

"Wot for'd an ole woman like me want to put on any sech fool finery? He's de bestest boy in de worl', he is. Dat is, onless dar ain't not'in' happened to 'im."

Her husband brought her home no news when he came, and Dick's good qualities were likely to be seen in a strong light for a while longer.

But if the folk on shore were uneasy about "The Swallow" and her crew, how was it with the latter themselves, as the darkness closed around them, out there upon the tossing water?

Very cool and self-possessed indeed had been Captain Dab Kinzer; and he had encouraged the others to go on with their blue-fishing, even when it was pretty tough work to keep "The Swallow" from "scudding" at once before the wind. He was anxious, also, not to get too far from shore; for there was no telling what sort of weather might be coming. It was curious, moreover, what very remarkable luck they had; or rather, Ford and Dick, for Dab would not leave the tiller for a moment. Splendid fellows were those blue-fish, and hard work it was to pull in the heaviest of them. That was just the sort of weather they bite best in; but it is not often that such young fishermen venture to take advantage of it. No, nor the old ones either; for only the stanchest old "salts" of Montauk or New London would have felt altogether at home in "The Swallow" that afternoon.

"I guess I wouldn't fish any more," said Dab at last. "You've caught ten times as many now as we ever thought of catching. Some of them are whoppers too."

"Biggest fishing ever I did," said Ford, as if that meant a great deal.

"Or mos' anybody else, out dis yer way," added Dick. "I isn't 'shamed to show dem fish anywhar."

"No more I ain't," said Dab; "but you're getting too tired, and so am I. We must have a good hearty lunch, and put 'The Swallow' before the wind for a while. I daren't risk any more of these cross seas. We might get pitched over any minute. They're rising."

"Dat's so," said Dick. "And I's awful hungry, I is."

"The Swallow" was well enough provisioned for a short cruise, not to mention the bluefish, and there was water enough on board for several days if they should happen to need it; but there was little danger of that, unless the wind should continue to be altogether against them.

It was blowing hard when the boys finished their dinner, but no harder than it had already blown several times that day; and "The Swallow" seemed to be putting forth her very best qualities as a "sea-boat."

There was no immediate danger apparently; but there was one "symptom" which Dab discerned, as he glanced around the horizon, which gave him more anxiety than either the stiff breeze or the rough sea.

The coming darkness?

No; for stars and lighthouses can be seen at night, and steering by them is easy enough.

Nights are pretty dark things, sometimes, as most people know; but the darkest thing to be met with at sea, whether by night or by day, is a fog, and Dabney saw signs of one coming. Rain, too, might come with it, but that would be of small account.

"Boys," he said, "do you know we're out of sight of land?"

"Oh, no, we're not!" replied Ford confidently. "Look yonder."

"That isn't land, Ford. That's only a fog-bank, and we shall be all in the dark in ten minutes. The wind is changing, too, and I hardly know where we are."

"Look at your compass."

"That tells me the wind is changing a little, and it's going down; but I wouldn't dare to run towards the shore in a fog, and at night."

"Why not?"

"Why? Don't you remember those breakers? Would you like to be blown through them, and not see where you were going?"

"Well, no," said Ford: "I rather guess I wouldn't."

"Jes' you let Capt'in Kinzer handle dis yer boat," almost crustily interposed Dick Lee. "He's de on'y feller on board dat un'erstands nagivation."

"Shouldn't wonder if you're right," said Ford good-humoredly. "At all events, I sha'n't interfere. But, Dab, what do you mean to do about it?"

"Swing a lantern at the mast-head, and sail right along. You and Dick get a nap, by and by, if you can. I won't try to sleep till daylight."

"Sleep? Catch me sleeping!"

"You must; and so must Dick, when the time comes. It won't do for us to all get worn out together. If we did, who'd handle the boat?"

Ford's respect for Dabney Kinzer was growing hourly. Here was this overgrown gawk of a green country boy, just out of his roundabouts, who had never spent more than a day at a time in the great city, and never lived in any kind of a boarding-house; in fact, here was a fellow who had had no advantages whatever,—coming out as a sort of hero.

Ford looked at him hard, as he stood there with the tiller in his hand, but he could not quite understand it, Dab was so quiet and matter-of-course about it all; and, as for that youngster himself, he had no idea that he was behaving any better than any other boy could, should, and would have behaved in those very peculiar circumstances.

However that might be, the gay and buoyant little "Swallow," with her signal lantern swinging at her mast-head, was soon dancing away through the deepening darkness and the fog; and her steady-nerved young commander was congratulating himself that there seemed to be a good deal less of wind and sea, even if there was more of mist.

"I couldn't expect to have every thing to suit me," he said to himself. "And now I hope we sha'n't run down anybody. Hullo! Isn't that a red light, through the fog, yonder?"

CHAPTER XII. HOW THE GAME OF "FOLLOW MY LEADER" CAN BE PLAYED AT SEA.

There was yet another gathering of human beings on the wind-swept surface of the Atlantic that evening, to whose minds the minutes and hours were going by with no small burden of anxiety to carry.

Not an anxiety, perhaps, as great as that of the three families over there on the shore of the bay, or even of the three boys tossing along through the fog in their bubble of a yacht; but the officers, and not a few of the passengers and crew, of the great iron-builded ocean-steamer were any thing but easy about the way their affairs were looking. It would have been so much more agreeable if they could have looked at them at all.

Had they no pilot on board?

To be sure they had, for he had come on board in the usual way, as they drew near their intended port; but they had somehow seemed to bring that fog along with them, and the captain had a half-defined suspicion that neither the pilot nor he himself knew exactly where they now were. That is a bad condition for a great ship to be in at any time, and especially when it was drawing so near a coast which calls for good seamanship and skilful pilotage in the best of weather.

The captain would not for any thing have confessed his doubt to the pilot, nor the pilot his to the captain; and that was where the real danger lay, after all. If they could only have choked down their pride, and permitted themselves to talk of their possible peril, it would very likely have disappeared. That is, they could at least have decided to stop the vessel till they were rid of their doubt.

The steamer was French, and her captain a French naval officer; and it is possible he and the pilot did not understand each other any too well.

It was a matter of course that the speed of the ship should be somewhat lessened, under such circumstances; but it would have been a good deal wiser not to have gone on at all. Not to speak of the shore they were nearing, they might be sure they were not the only craft steaming or sailing over those busy waters; and vessels have sometimes been known to run against one another in a fog as thick as that. Something could be done by way of precaution in that direction, and lanterns with bright colors were freely swung out; but the fog was likely to diminish their usefulness somewhat. They took away a little of the gloom; but none of the passengers were in a mood to go to bed, with the end of their voyage so near, and they all seemed disposed to discuss the fog, if not the general question of mists and their discomforts. All of them but one, and he a boy.

A boy of about Dab Kinzer's age, slender and delicate-looking, with curly light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a complexion which would have been fair, but for the traces it bore of a hotter climate than that of either France or America. He seemed to be all alone, and to be feeling very lonely that night; and he was leaning over the rail, peering out into the mist, humming to himself a sweet, wild air in a strange but exceedingly musical tongue.

Very strange. Very musical.

Perhaps no such words had ever before gone out over that part of the Atlantic; for Frank Harley was a missionary's son, "going home to