It was soon evident that the manuvre had deceived the Folly, and had been successful. Through the darkness, it had not been perceived by the pursuer that the quarry had separated and taken different courses.

Resting on their oars, at a word from Haley, the three watched. The schooner, almost ghost-like in the shades of night, swept along past the creek, following the other vessel, which showed only a faint white blurr far ahead.

Hamilton Haley motioned for the two to turn back, while his small eyes twinkled; and he said, smiling grimly, "She's got the right name, sure.

The Folly, eh? Well, she won't catch us, nor she won't catch Bill. Come, shake it up there with those oars! Ain't yer learned to row yet?"

Within a half hour, the Brandt was stealing out of the mouth of the creek and heading for the opposite sh.o.r.e. The river was broad here, but the wind was free and they were soon across.

And now began the work for which they had come; for which they had risked capture at the hands of the police boat; and for which they would now risk the penalty of imprisonment, or, as it might appear, even death, itself.

It was very dark, the density of the clouds increasing as the night wore on; and the sh.o.r.e showed a vague, dark smear as they turned and went up the river. But it was all clear to Hamilton Haley. Born in a little settlement farther up the river, it was an open book to him by night or day. There was not an eddy, a cross-current, a deepening or a shoaling of all its waters for fifty miles that he could not have told you, offhand.

A blur on the landscape defined itself to his eye as with the clearness of sunlight, bred of familiarity and long experience. He knew when to stand in close to sh.o.r.e; where to make a detour to avoid the long wharves that made out from the warehouses. He knew where seed oysters had been planted, by the owners that planned to tong for them when they should have grown to sufficient size. He knew when the beds had been planted, and which to leave untouched, and which would afford fat dredging.

There were no long waits between the winding here, as in many of the places down the bay. When the dredge went down, it was filled almost instantly. It was wind in and wind again, and the oysters, big and small, went into the hold almost as fast as they came aboard.

Harvey and his companions, drenched to the skin with perspiration, sore and lame, toiled on, driven by the threats of Jim Adams. There was no waiting for rest-only once in the night, when the cook brought out a pail of coffee, to keep them up to their work.

There was a ruthless, brutal disregard of the rights and precautions of the owners of the beds. Stakes and branches of brush, that had been carefully stuck down to mark the boundaries of this and that planter, were over-ridden and torn away. The Brandt was reaping a rich harvest, dodging in and out from sh.o.r.e here and there, making up for the time lost in the reefs off Hooper Island.

The hours pa.s.sed, and a steamer, delayed by freight on its trip from Baltimore, pa.s.sed along up the river. To Harvey, toiling away at the winch, in a sheltered sweep of the sh.o.r.e, this boat presented a strange and mysterious picture. Its lights, gleaming through the mists and the blackness, made a pretty spectacle. Its white wake looked like a scar on the dusky bosom of the water. It seemed, with its life and noise aboard, like a living thing.

A little way up the river, the steamboat drew in to a pier at the end of a long wharf. Harvey saw the doors of the warehouse on the sh.o.r.e and of the one on the pier open, and emit a glow of light from several lanterns; and, through the mingled lights and shadows, figures pa.s.sed vaguely to and fro. Wagons rattled up along the country road, and the cries of the negro stevedores added to the noise.

All work had been stopped aboard the Brandt, and Harvey stood and watched the landing made by the steamer. The sounds told of business and of home life; pa.s.sengers going ash.o.r.e; once, the voices of young folks in laughter. Harvey gazed, with eyes that moistened.

Hamilton Haley, also, gazed, but with an earnestness of a different nature. He had not meant to be here, at the pa.s.sing of the steamer. He had planned differently, but the steamer had been late and-well, the dredging at that moment when he had heard the distant whistle had been particularly fruitful, and he had waited and taken the chance. Now he wondered if that one sweep of the steamer's search-light, as it pa.s.sed, had found him out. Had he been espied by the watchful eye of the captain, keen for river poachers? At all events, he would lose no time in getting away from the place, once the steamer had gone.

The steamer went on its way, and Haley pointed his vessel up river after it. A mile above, he resumed his unlawful dredging.

The captain of the river steamer, bound for the port of Benedict, some fifty miles up from the mouth of the river, and already having lost much time, had urged the engineer to force all speed between the landings. The steamer's funnel belched forth clouds of black smoke and sparks, as the craft churned its way noisily along. But the captain, eager as he was to end his long run, had something else on his mind; and the search-light now shot its shaft far ahead up river, now darted to the left or right, lighting up the banks and hidden places, so that objects along sh.o.r.e seemed to leap forth of a sudden as if surprised into life.

Then, as they sailed, and the search-light pointed a long ray far up the river, like a giant finger, the glare fell on a white object flitting down stream like the ghost of a vessel. The rays of the light were thrown full upon it, and the schooner Folly was revealed, returning from its unsuccessful pursuit of the poacher.

A single bell jingled in the engine-room, and the steamer slowed down; then, as the schooner came close, another bell, and the steamer lay motionless in the river.

The captain leaned far out of the pilot-house, as the schooner came within hailing distance.

"There's a fellow poaching just below Forrest's," he called. "I saw him with the light, as I came up. I'm sure he was dredging. You may pick him up on the way down. I couldn't see who he was, though."

The captain of the Folly uttered an exclamation of disgust.

"It's one of the two I chased, coming up, I guess," he replied. "That's the way they work it. The other fellow dodged me, too, up the river here, somewhere. I suppose he's turned and gone down again by this time. I tell you we can't do much with one vessel against that crowd. Much obliged, captain; I'll have an eye out going down."

Some time after midnight, the bug-eye Brandt, poaching near the mouth of a small creek, was doing great harvesting. It was easy work; for the oysters, planted with care, came up clean and fat, and free from waste sh.e.l.ls. The crew sweated at the winders. Jim Adams, alternating between one and the other winch, kept the tired men up to their work. Hamilton Haley, losing somewhat of caution with the richness of the yield, and a.s.sisting in the stowing away of the ill-gotten harvest, had relaxed a little of his usual vigilance.

It was nearly fatal to him. Out of the blackness of the river bank, there poured suddenly a thin stream of fire, and immediately another. A rifle bullet pa.s.sed so close to Haley's head that for an instant it dazed him.

The bullet chipped a piece out of the main boom and went, zing, across the river. The other bullet struck the hull of the bug-eye and bedded itself in the oysters, near the deck. At the same time, a volley of imprecations came from the thicket on sh.o.r.e, from the angry owners of the oyster bed.

And now a strange coincidence added to the excitement and to the peril of Haley and his craft. Almost immediately following the firing from sh.o.r.e, there came another shot from the direction of up the river. Captain Hamilton Haley, taken all by surprise, and giving one quick, frightened glance to where the third shot had come from, beheld, to his consternation, the vague outlines of the schooner Folly bearing down upon him at full speed.

Haley was all things bad; but he had his merits as a sailor, and he had the qualities of command that should have won him success in better employment. Now he showed what he was made of. Darting across the deck, he seized Jack Harvey by the shoulder, spun him around and sent him flying toward the wheel.

"Grab that wheel," he cried. "Keep her straight down stream."

Harvey sprang aft.

"Jim," cried Haley, in the next breath, "get the boys on to the sheets, there-quick, for your life, or we're good for doing time. Trim her! Trim her! We've got to jump her, if we ever did. Curse that Folly!"

The next moment, Haley was among the crew with a bound, knocking them like ten-pins away from the winders, and bidding them jump for the fore and main sheets, if they valued their lives. s.n.a.t.c.hing a sheath-knife from his belt, Haley darted for the nearest dredge-line. With an exclamation of rage at the loss he was inflicting upon himself, he cut it with a single slash, leaving the dredge behind in two fathoms of water.

In a moment, he was at the other side. Another stroke of the keen knife and the second dredge-line was severed.

As the bug-eye, cleared of the weight of the heavy dredges, gathered headway, the sheets were hauled in, under the command and with the a.s.sistance of the mate. The craft heeled to the breeze and sped away.

And for all this, but for the loyalty of Jack Harvey toward a friend, Captain Hamilton Haley would have lost his vessel and his freedom. A bit of heroism had been done that he knew naught of-never would know.

When Tom Edwards, in the first excitement, had seen his friend, Harvey, dart aft, he had slipped away in the confusion, and followed. With him, the idea ever was that, come what would, they should stick together-and so they had sworn. Jack Harvey found Tom Edwards by his side, as he sprang to the wheel and, obeying orders, held the vessel on its course down the river.

The next instant, the thought of freedom flashed again into Harvey's mind.

"Tom," he said, "strip off that slicker as quick as ever you can. I'm ready. I'll swing her into the wind when you say the word. Then we'll jump and swim for it. That's the Folly. She'll pick us up, and catch Haley, too. We've got to jump the second I swing her, though, or Haley'll shoot us both. We've got only a minute. Say when you're ready."

Tom Edwards, the vision of freedom opening before his eyes in one brief instant, gave a groan of dismay and disappointment.

"I can't do it, Jack, old boy," he said. "I can't swim ten strokes without my heart hammering like a threshing-machine. You go, and I'll stay. You can tell them what's doing aboard here, and they'll hunt Haley down and get me."

Harvey shook his head, while he ground his teeth with chagrin.

"No, no," he said. "I won't go, if you can't. They'd kill you if I got away, and they didn't get caught. We'll try it another time. Get out of here, forward, now, quick. If Haley catches you up here, you'll get hurt."

Jack Harvey stood resolutely at the wheel, and held the bug-eye to her course. He saw, with some hope, the Folly creep up through the night upon the fleeing Brandt. He heard the commands for them to come to, and surrender. Bullets whizzed past him, from the sh.o.r.e and from the pursuing schooner. They went through the canvas of the bug-eye and did no other harm.

He saw, next, with a great sinking of heart, the fast craft upon whose deck he stood gather headway rapidly and eat its way through the night, gaining on its pursuer. The wind came sharp in flaws from the bank. The Brandt heeled over till the deck was awash. Hamilton Haley, springing to the wheel and displacing Harvey, uttered a cry of exultation.

"Get along for'ard; you've done well, boy," was his way of bestowing praise.

The Folly fell astern, and the chase was lost.

That was a night never to be forgotten by Jack Harvey; the sudden flush of hope; its swift vanishing, amid the thin fire of rifles; the cries of disappointed men, and the quick flaws of wind upon the sails. There was a thrill-even if one laden with disappointed hopes-in the rapid flight of the poacher, Brandt, and its wild course down the river, past the black, shadowy sh.o.r.es.

Dazed and disheartened, however, with the pa.s.sing of the hours, Jack Harvey and his comrade, by whom he had stuck manfully, turned in, at the word, and laid their weary bodies down in the forecastle bunks. The bug-eye, laden with its spoils, sailed away out of the Patuxent, heading across the bay for the shelter of the Eastern Maryland sh.o.r.e.

Doomed to disappointment, then. Doomed to disappointment even more bitter, on a day soon succeeding.

The Brandt was in luck at last. A few days of dredging along Hoopers, and, by the early part of December, she was fully laden. There were a thousand and more bushels of good oysters in her hold. The time for the ending of the first trip was nigh.

Jack Harvey slapped his friend, Edwards, on the shoulder.

"We've stuck it out, old chap," he said, "and we're alive to tell the tale, in spite of Haley. We'll get back inside of the month. There's one thing that that scoundrel, Jenkins, didn't lie about. Hooray! Why, you're a better man than when you came aboard, Tom Edwards. You're stronger, if we have had awful grub."

"All the same, I'll make it hot for old Haley, when I get ash.o.r.e,"