The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry BurnsSmith, Ruel Perley
General
The Rival Campers; Or, The Adventures of Henry Burns
Smith, Ruel Perley
Boats and boating -- Juvenile fiction; Camping -- Juvenile fiction
“No, it isn’t, Bob, but it soon will be. I’ve found the box, Bob.
Harvey’s got it, and I know where it is hidden,—down near his camp in a
cave.”
Bob shivered, for Tom had pulled the blanket off the bed, and the moist
sea air penetrated the tent. He dressed, stupidly, for he was not fully
rid of his drowsiness.
The boys went down to the beach, and Bob washed his face in the salt
water.
“I’m all right now, Tom, old fellow,” he said, “but, honest, Tom, I feel
ugly enough at being waked up, not at you, though, to just enjoy a fight
with those fellows.”
“There’s little prospect of that, if we are careful,” answered Tom. “What
we want to do is to show them we are smart enough to get the box back,
and, perhaps, play them a trick of our own.”
Then they carried the canoe down to the shore, launched it, and set off.
It was about one o’clock in the morning. They paddled away from the tent
and down along the shore, noiselessly as Indians. Past the village and
past the cottages, and not a sign of life anywhere, not even a wisp of
smoke from a chimney. The canoe glided swiftly along, making the only
ripples there were on the glassy surface of the bay.
As they came to the beach near Harvey’s camp, they landed, and Tom crept
up over the bank to reconnoitre. He came back presently, reporting that
the crew were all sound asleep, and everything quiet around the camp.
Then they paddled quickly by the end of the bluff and along the bold
shore beyond, picking their way carefully among the reefs, as they could
not have done in these unknown waters with any other craft than the
buoyant canoe.
They disembarked at the clump of cedars, and made the canoe fast to the
trunk of one that overhung the water. Tom took from the bow of the canoe
a lantern, and they scrambled up the bank. Throwing aside the boughs,
they disclosed the trap-door, which they lifted up. Tom lit the lantern
and they entered the cave.
They found it much larger than the opening indicated. It was excavated
from the hard clay of which the bank was composed, and, though not high
enough for them to stand quite erect, it was about eight feet long and
five feet wide.
It was filled with stuff of all sorts. There were spare topsails
and staysails,—possibly from coasters that had anchored in the
harbour,—sets of oars from ships’ boats, several boxes of canned goods,
that the grocer of the village had hunted for far and wide, coils of
rope, two shotguns, carefully wrapped in pieces of flannel and well
oiled, to prevent the rust from eating them, four lanterns, two axes and
a hatchet, and odds and ends of all descriptions useful in and about a
camp or a yacht.
The roof of the cave was shored up with boards, supported by joists. In
one corner of the cave was the box for which they sought, broken into,
and with the gorgeous cake gone; but that was all. The rest of the
contents were untouched.
They took the box, carried it down to the shore and placed it in the
canoe. Tom started to return to the cave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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