But out on the bay, with all her white sails set to catch the morning breeze, the yacht _Spray_ was beating down toward a distant goal among the islands. And aboard her were six boys, whose hearts were heavy and whose faces were drawn with an ever present anxiety. For a time they cast apprehensive looks back at the disappearing village, but as the morning wore on and no pursuing sail appeared, they became more cheerful; and to forget so far as they could the real cause of their flight, they talked hopefully of the fish they expected to catch and the swimming and other sport along the white sands of the island beaches.

But although no familiar craft as yet followed where they sailed, there was, far in the lead of them and some miles down along the island, a yacht they all knew, and in whose mission, had they but known it, their deepest interests, their very fate, in fact, lay.

Jack Harvey had lost little time in reaching his camp. While he ran the fire blazed brighter and brighter, sending an angry glare over the waters of the bay and lighting up the country around. Looking back now and then, he could see men and women running about in the light of the fire, and the frantic, though unavailing, efforts of the village fire department to stay the flames.

"Seems funny," he muttered to himself, "to be running away from a fire, and the greatest fire we ever had on this island at that. I never did such a thing before, but I guess there'll be something more exciting ahead than a fire before we get through."

Harvey found his camp deserted, as he had expected. Not a sign of life showed about the place.

"They're all up to the fire," said Harvey; "but I'll bring them soon enough, though I reckon they'll be mad at first to have to leave when the fire is just at its best."

And he began ransacking the camp, rolling up blankets, tying them into compact bundles and hurrying down to the sh.o.r.e with them, where he deposited them in a rowboat.

He made a pile of the rude dishes that the camp afforded, a saucepan, a fry-pan, tin dippers, and a few tin plates, tying them all together in a bundle and rattling them all down to the sh.o.r.e in great haste.

Finally he got a boatload of the stuff, and, jumping in, sculled the little craft out to the _Surprise_. Leaping aboard, he rushed down into the cabin, threw open a locker, drew forth a big tin horn, which he raised to his lips, and blew four loud, long blasts in succession.

"The hurry signal will surprise them, I reckon," he exclaimed; "but they've always answered it before, and I guess they'll come,-even from a fire." And Harvey began stowing the stuff away aboard the yacht. Then he proceeded to untie the stops in the mainsail, and was thus engaged when a voice hailed him from the sh.o.r.e.

"Halloo, Jack!" came the call. "What's the matter? Why aren't you up to the fire? What's up?"

"Wait a minute," answered Harvey. "I'm coming ash.o.r.e. Are the others on the way?"

"Yes," answered the boy on sh.o.r.e, who proved to be Joe Hinman; "but they don't like it a bit. It's a shame to lose this fire, Jack. Why, you ought to see Colonel Witham. He's the craziest man I ever saw, running around and begging everybody he sees to rush into the blaze and save his old office furniture."

"Well, Joe," said Harvey, as he stepped out of the small boat on to the beach, beside the other, "we've got some work cut out for us that beats watching a fire all to pieces. I'll tell you all about it, but there isn't one half-minute to lose now. Believe me, you fellows won't regret it,-h.e.l.lo, here are the others!"

The three other members of the crew, George Baker, Allan Harding, and Tim Reardon, burst out of the woods into the clearing, gasping from running, and amazed beyond expression that Harvey should have called them from the fire.

"Fellows," said Harvey, "I'll tell you the whole story just as soon as we get aboard and up sail. This is the greatest thing we ever did in all our lives; but it's the minutes that count now, and we have got to get under way the quickest we ever did yet."

And then, as the boys hesitated, and Joe Hinman ventured the question, with something of suspicion in his tone that he could not all conceal, "Why, Jack, there's no trouble, is there-no trouble-about the fire?" it suddenly dawned on Harvey that this sudden departure did have a queer look to it, and that he was, indeed, open to their suspicion.

"Yes," he cried, "there is trouble, and it's about this fire; but it isn't our trouble. The trouble is for the man that set it,-and we are going to make it for him. We're going to catch him. Now will you hurry?"

"Will we?" exclaimed George Baker. "Just watch us!"

And every boy made a dash for the camp to secure anything he might need on a cruise down the bay.

Harvey and Joe Hinman seized two big jugs and made off for the spring, whence they returned quickly. Then the entire crew piling into the small boat, they were soon aboard the _Surprise_.

The anchor was up in a twinkling. The sails were never spread in such time. Almost as quickly as it takes to tell it, the yacht _Surprise_ was under way, and with Harvey at the wheel was standing out of the little harbour.

Then, as they left the glare of the fire upon the waters astern, but still flaming like a giant beacon against the sky, Harvey, with his crew about him, narrated his extraordinary adventure with the strange man, and a.s.serted his conviction that the man was none other than the same Chambers who had fled from the island not long before.

"That is a fast boat, and we can never catch her in plain sailing," said Allan Harding. "She is full half again as big as we, and she would sail around us a dozen times and then walk away from us without half-trying."

"I know that," said Harvey, "and that is just why I am so anxious to catch up with him before he gets out of the western bay into the open sea. If we don't get him in the bay we shall lose him. Now let's overhaul everything, and be sure that something doesn't break just as we come to the pinch."

There was little to be done, however, on that score; for, however carelessly they lived ash.o.r.e, they had the true yachtsman's spirit aboard the _Surprise_, and kept her shipshape. Then they set the club and jib topsails, for there was not much air stirring, and they drew the tender up close astern, so it would drag as little as possible.

"We have one advantage," said Harvey. "We can depend upon it, he knows enough not to try the open bay and sail down toward the Gull Islands. The first part of the way is clear sailing enough, but when you get down just off the islands you come to the shallows, and a man has to follow the marks to get clear and safely out to sea. And then, too, the alarm is going to be sent out just as soon as a boat from the village can get over to the mainland. They won't lose any time about that,-and Chambers is sharp enough to know it. He knows the whole bay down below there will be alive with boats, just as soon as they get the news wired down to them.

"Depend upon it, Chambers will try to fool them. I think he will come through the Thoroughfare at this eastern end of Grand Island, which he must have studied out on the charts. He will not dare to try the Thoroughfare to-night, however, and if we can only beat down to somewhere below the Thoroughfare to-night we shall be well to windward of him in the morning, and he will think we are a boat coming in from outside, while he will still be beating into the wind, if it holds from the south'ard, the way it is blowing now."

"That's right," said Joe Hinman. "He cannot make the pa.s.sage out through the Thoroughfare in the night, unless he knows the way better than I think he does. It is a bad run in the dark, even for a man that was born around here. We have done it only once or twice ourselves."

"You fellows turn in now, all but Tim," said Harvey, "and get some sleep.

We two can run her for awhile. I'll call you, Joe, in about an hour or two, to handle her while I get forty winks, but, mind, everybody will be called sharp the minute we clear Tom's Island, for no knowing what we shall see then at any minute. Chambers will lie up in Seal Cove for an hour or two, I reckon, if he has got down that far. I only wish I was sure of it. We'd go ash.o.r.e and take a run across the island and catch him napping-

"By the way, George," exclaimed Harvey, "how do you feel? It's mighty lucky you happened to be taken with that colic in the night, just at the right time, and that I started out to rouse up old Sanborn to get some ginger for you. All this would never have happened if it hadn't been for you."

"Why, I'm all right," answered George Baker. "I could hardly walk when we first saw the fire, but I just made up my mind I wasn't going to miss it, and so I started out. When the sparks began to fly I forgot all about the pain, and I hadn't thought of it since. It's all gone now, anyway."

Two hours later they were nearing the southern end of Grand Island and coming in sight of a chain, or cl.u.s.ter, of smaller islands, through which an obscure and little used pa.s.sage ran from the western bay to the outer sea. Jack Harvey had sent young Tim into the cabin to s.n.a.t.c.h a wink of sleep, and Joe had come up, heavy and dull.

"I'll go without my sleep this once," said Harvey. "Here, Joe, hold her a minute. I'll get a bit of rest right here on deck, with one eye open."

It was growing light fast now, and they strained their eyes for a sail.

"I guess we are in time," said Harvey, as they came abreast of Tom's Island. "He is not in sight. We'll head out to sea a bit more, and cut into the Thoroughfare farther down, for the tide will be high in an hour, and we can cross Pine Island Bar. Then, if he has taken the channel on the other side of Tom's Island, we can still head him off,-unless he went through in the night."

And Harvey, having relinquished the tiller to Joe, stretched himself out at full length on the seat to rest.

Thus they sailed for a short cut into the Thoroughfare at a point where they could command the farther of the two channels.

And, as they sailed, so sailed another and a larger sloop, beating its way out to sea through the farther channel. A man, powerfully built, and with a hard, desperate look in his eyes, sat at the wheel,-and he was all alone. The yacht cut a clean path through the smooth waters of the Thoroughfare, and, as the man looked at the coast-line along which he was pa.s.sing rapidly, he muttered: "It's a clear pa.s.sage; a safe run to sea.

And, once there, who's to say I was ever in these waters? I said I'd have revenge on this town for what I've lost, if it took all summer, and I've done it. The blaze did me good as it lit the sky. Twenty minutes more and I'll be clear of this, and good-bye to this coast for ever."

But even as he said it a smaller sloop turned the head of an island half a mile ahead, and came down the Thoroughfare, running off the wind.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PURSUIT

Great was the rage of Colonel Witham and Squire Brackett when they discovered that the boys had escaped.

"But it will be only so much the worse for them in the end," said the squire. "The fact of their running away is a confession of guilt, and will count hard against them when we once get them into court.

"Colonel," he continued, gazing off on to the bay, "I believe that's them now, about two miles down along the sh.o.r.e. Cap'n Sam, you're a sure judge of a sail. Isn't that the _Spray_ beating down along the island, just off Billy Jones's beach?"

Captain Sam took a most deliberate observation, turned a chew of tobacco twice in his cheek, and then remarked, laconically:

"That's the _Spray_, sure's a gun. There is no mistaking the queer set of that gaff-topsail. It always was a bad fit, and it sticks out just as crooked like, two miles away, as it does close on. Y-a-a-s, there's the youngsters, and no mistake."