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
“Yes,” answered Bob. “We expected to find you all blown into the sea.
What was the matter over at your camp?”
“Why, between you and me,” replied Harvey, eying them cautiously as he
spoke, “I think some one of the crew did it, as a joke. They’re up to
that sort of thing, you know. They’d just as lieve do it as not, any one
of them. Like as not that young Tim Reardon did it, because I make him
lug water, and don’t let up on him when he has lazy spells. To tell you
the truth, we had a little powder stored away in a hole under a tree, and
I guess one of them touched it off.”
Harvey tried to speak carelessly; but there was an angry light in his
eyes and an expression around his mouth which would not be concealed, and
which boded no good for somebody, and this was not lost on Tom and Bob.
“Come up to the camp, won’t you?” asked Tom. Harvey first declined, as
though it had not been his intention to stop, and then accepted, and the
three went toward the tent. On the way there Tom found a chance to say to
Bob, “I guess Henry Burns was right, wasn’t he, Bob?” And Bob answered,
“Yes.”
“Snug quarters you have here,” said Harvey, as they entered the tent.
“Tight and dry,—and bunks, too. We can’t beat these accommodations aboard
the _Surprise_. And here’s camp-chairs, like a steam-yacht or a cottage.
You’ll be having pictures on the walls next, and a carpet on the
floor,—and then you won’t allow each other to have mud on your boots.”
Harvey was still watching them sharply as he spoke, and may have made the
last remark with a purpose, inasmuch as the boots of both Tom and Bob
were begrimed and smeared with the clay from the bank near Harvey’s camp,
and their clothes, for that matter, were muddy in spots.
“Sure enough,” answered Tom, “we have things as shipshape as we can.
We’ve got a camp-kit here that can’t be beaten on the island. Maybe you
would be interested to have a look at it.” So saying, Tom deliberately
unlocked the big packing-case and threw back the cover.
“There,” cried Tom, pointing to the box that had been stolen, “what do
you think of that?”
Harvey drew back quickly, and looked as though he were about to strike
Tom a blow, while his face flushed angrily. Bob sprang quickly from his
seat on one of the bunks, and he and Tom stood confronting Harvey. If the
latter had intended to strike a blow, he changed his mind and did not do
it. Instead, he gave a half-laugh and said:
“That’s what I came up to see you about. The fact is, I have known you
fellows blew up our cave ever since I saw your face”—looking at Tom—“at
the door of our tent last night. Then I found, too, where your canoe had
landed on the edge of the shore, and just where that big scratch was
made. The paint is on the rocks yet. Now I don’t think you fellows used
me square, though I know you did it because you thought we stole your
box—”
“Which you did,” interrupted Tom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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