Captain Sam did not see fit, however, though a constable, sworn to do his duty, as the others had suggested, to explain that he had seen the _Spray_ for the last hour or more, and that he had been conscious all along of the precious time they were losing. But a sharp observer might have detected him chuckling down deep in his throat as the colonel and the squire stormed and raged.

"Well, what are we going to do?" cried Squire Brackett. "We're losing valuable time here. That little boat eats fast into the wind, they say, and we have got to get started pretty quick if we expect to overhaul her between now and dark.

"Come! What do you say, Cap'n Sam? You know the boats in the harbour better than I do. Whose is the best one to go after them with?"

"Wa-al," drawled Cap'n Sam, "if I do say it, I suppose the _Nancy Jane_ is about as good as any in a long thrash to windward,-if she does belong to me. She's big and she's roomy, and there's a comfortable cabin in her for you and the colonel-for I suppose you'll want to go along."

"Go along!" exclaimed Colonel Witham. "I should say we did-eh, squire?

When these 'ere warrants are served I want to be there to see it done, and so does the squire, I reckon."

"That's what I do," responded Squire Brackett. "We'll go along with you, sure enough."

"Then you want to be getting some grub aboard right away," said Captain Sam, with a fine show of energy and haste, "while I break the news to my wife. She'll put me up a bite to last a day or two. You can't tell, you know, when you start off on one of these 'ere cruises, where you'll end up nor how long you'll be out,-so you want to come prepared to stay."

And then, as the colonel and the squire hurried off down the road, he turned back for a moment to Mrs. Warren, who stood weeping, and said, with rough good-heartedness:

"Now, don't you go to taking on, Mrs. Warren. There's some mistake here.

Depend upon it. I've known them youngsters ever since they was no bigger'n short lobsters, and I know they ain't got nothing bad enough in 'em to go to setting a hotel afire.

"P'r'aps there might have been some little accident," he added, more conservatively. "Accidents always is happening, you know, and we're all of us liable to 'em. I've got to do my duty, Mrs. Warren, bein' as I am a constable of this town, sworn to obey my orders as I get 'em, signed and sealed from the court; but I'm goin' to stand by them boys, all the same.

"So you just go and get your husband down here, quick as ever you can,-and we'll settle this 'ere difficulty pretty soon, I reckon.

"And see here," he said, in conclusion, "if Mr. Warren gets here by to-morrow noon, that'll be time enough. And that gives you a chance to take the boat up to-day if you hurry, and bring Mr. Warren back with you.

I'll sorter guarantee we don't fetch up here again till to-morrow afternoon, so don't you worry." And with a sly twinkle in his gray eyes the captain took his leave, and rolled along lazily toward his home.

He was still eating a hearty breakfast when the colonel and the squire burst in upon him, hot with impatience. But the captain was provokingly deliberate, and finished a few more huge slices of bread and a biscuit or two, and two cups of coffee and a few of his wife's doughnuts, before he would budge an inch.

"The boys can't escape," he said, by way of a.s.surance to the impatient pair. "They can't go across the Atlantic in a little sardine-box like that, if it has got a mast and a bowsprit and a cabin to it. We're bound to fetch up with them quick enough. Have a cup of coffee, colonel!

Squire, sit down and drink a cup of coffee! Mrs. Curtis knows how to make it, if anybody does."

But the colonel and the squire refused impatiently, and by dint of nagging and voluble persuasion they got Captain Sam started, and the three went down to the sh.o.r.e.

The news had spread abroad by this time,-thanks to the colonel and the squire,-and quite a number of villagers and cottagers had gathered to see them off.

What they said was not complimentary to the worthy two, for the boys, in spite of their pranks, were universally liked, and the whole village had not done with praising them for their bravery at the fire.

"Why don't you go and arrest Jack Harvey and his crew?" cried one of the villagers. "Looks mighty queer to have them clear out, every one of them, the morning of the blaze. Dan French, he saw them standing out by his point early that morning while the fire was blazing its hardest. Reckon that looks a sight queerer than it does to wait a whole day."

"Well! Well! I guess they had a hand in it," cried Colonel Witham, as he stepped into the yacht's tender. "We'll hunt them up, too, later on. They are all mixed up in it, I've no doubt. Wait till we get the boys we are after now, and we'll make them confess the whole thing."

It certainly did look suspicious, this flight from both camps and from the Warren cottage, just after the fire; and the villagers, however well disposed they might be in the boys' favour, or however much inclined to show leniency, could not explain it away.

"They must have been up to some of their pranks," they said to one another, "and somehow got the hotel on fire. Colonel Witham must be right,-and, besides, Squire Brackett says he's got the proof. He must know something bad, or he would not be so certain."

And to this conclusion, reluctant as they might be to come to it, there fitted, in startling corroboration, the coincidence of their being the first to discover the fire,-the first to give the alarm.

And the villagers sympathized all the more, for this conclusion, with Mrs. Warren, as she took the boat for home that morning, bravely keeping back her tears, and receiving courageously their kindly a.s.surances, though her heart was breaking.

The _Nancy Jane_ was a heavy fishing-boat, of the centreboard type, big and beamy and shallow of build, able to "carry sail" in the worst of weather, but not so marvellously fast as one might have been led to believe by the recommendation of her owner. However, it was quite true that she could overhaul the _Spray_-only give her time enough, and provided no accident should happen.

"She's got a bit of water in her," said Captain Sam. "So make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen, make yourselves comfortable, while I pump her out. She'll sail faster and point up better with the water out of her, and we'll all be more comfortable."

And the colonel and the squire made themselves anything but comfortable, fretting and fuming at the delay.

The captain took it leisurely, however, yanked the pump for ten minutes or more, to the accompaniment of short puffs of his pipe, and then p.r.o.nounced her dry as "Dry Ledge at low tide."

The colonel and the squire were neither of them sailors; so they could only wait on Captain Sam's pleasure. He finally made sail on the _Nancy Jane_, got up anchor, brought her "full and by," and they began the long zigzag chase down the bay in the teeth of the wind.

The breeze freshened as they drew out of the shelter of the island sh.o.r.e, and down between the nearer islands Captain Sam could see the line of breeze show black upon the water.

"Looks like a right smart blow by afternoon," he said.

Colonel Witham looked up apprehensively.

"It doesn't get dangerous, does it?" he asked.

Captain Sam laughed dryly.

"Guess you're not much on sailing, colonel, are you?" he asked, by way of reply. "Bless you! We don't get a dangerous blow in the bay once in a summer. No, you need not worry about that. There's no danger; but I wouldn't wonder if we had a bit of a chop-sea when the wind freshens."

The colonel looked more at ease.

"No," he said, "I'm no sailor. I manage to make the voyage down the river to the island, but that is as much seagoing as I have ever wanted, and this will be my first real ocean experience."

"Not what you'd hardly call an ocean experience, either," said Captain Sam, grinning from ear to ear. "No," and he said the words over to himself as though they afforded him no end of amus.e.m.e.nt, "a slat to windward from the point to Gull Island ain't just what one would call an ocean experience, though it does shake a body up now and then in a blow."

Dinner-hour came, and they had the _Spray_ well in sight, some miles ahead and pitching hard.

"We'll eat a snack," said Captain Sam, who was never so happy and hearty as when he had his hand on the wheel of the _Nancy Jane_. "Colonel, have one of Mrs. Curtis's fresh doughnuts, just fried this morning, make you feel like a schoolboy."

But the colonel, pale of face, declined.

"I-I don't seem to feel very hungry just this moment," he stammered.

"Late breakfast, you know. Er-by the way, is it going to blow much harder, do you think?"

"No great shakes," responded the captain. "Guess there may be another capful or two of wind in them 'ere light clouds out yonder. It may freshen a bit, but that's all right. That's just what we want. The harder it blows the more the _Spray_ will pitch and get knocked back. It's the kind of a breeze that the _Nancy Jane_ likes, plenty of wind and a rough sea. The wind is bound to go down by sunset. It's the way these southerlies act."

"By sundown!" groaned the colonel. "That's hours yet, and I'm sure we'll tip clear over if this boat leans much more."

"Built to sail on her beam," explained Captain Sam. But at this moment the _Nancy Jane's_ bow snipped off the whitecap of a roller somewhat larger than its predecessor, and the spray flew in, drenching the colonel from head to foot.

He yelled with terror. "We're upsetting, sure!" he cried. "Let's turn her about, Captain Sam, while there is time, and start again when it's lighter."

"Nonsense!" said Captain Sam, with a grin. "You're a bit shaken up, but you'll feel better by and by. Just go into the cabin and lie down a little while. That may make you feel better."

Perhaps it had been so many years since Captain Sam had experienced the awful misery of seasickness that he did not realize that the worst thing the colonel could do was to go down into the dark, damp, musty-smelling cabin of the old fishing-sloop. Perhaps he really did think that the colonel would feel better for it. But whatever his motive was, it had a sudden and deadly effect on Colonel Witham. Indeed, he had scarcely stuck his head into the stuffy cabin, had certainly no more than gotten fully within, before he staggered out again, with an agonized expression on his face, and sank, limp and shivering, to a seat, with his head over the rail.

"Oh! Oh!" he groaned. "I think I'm going to die. I'm awfully sick; never felt so bad in all my life. Can't you put me ash.o.r.e, Captain Sam-anywhere, anywhere? I don't care where, even if it is a deserted island. I'd wait there a week if I could only get on sh.o.r.e." And the colonel groaned and shivered.