Books: The Voyage of the Hoppergrass

E >> Edmund Lester Pearson >> The Voyage of the Hoppergrass

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"You betcher struck the wrong house,--you're right there, fast
enough," said a little man, who was hopping up and down in his
excitement. He was the only one of them who was not holding one of
us. He had short, paint-brush whiskers, and I remembered him as
the man in the shanty,--the one whom Mr. Daddles called "black-
hearted Gregory the Gauger."

"You ought to be ashamed of yerself," said he, "leadin' boys into
crime!"

"Do you mean me?" asked Mr. Daddles.

"Yas--I mean you,--in the white pants," he replied, looking with
great scorn at Mr. Daddles's duck trousers, "I've heard how you
perfessional crooks git boys to climb up on water spouts an' let
yer in. I seen yer jest after yer passed my place, an' I knowed
what yer was up to."

"Well, you are quite wrong,--you're way off," said Mr. Daddles,
very seriously. "I don't suppose it will do any good, but it will
save you people from making yourselves ridiculous. It's all true,
--what I told you. I thought we were getting into Mr. Peabody's
house, and he IS my uncle. See here,--do you think we LOOK like
burglars?"

"Can't tell what yer look like," said a man, "'we caught yer in--"

"In partiseps criminy," said Gregory the Gauger, "that's what it
was. An' whatever you look like, you'll look different tomorrer
mornin'. I don't cal'late you know anything about breakin' an'
enterin' Dr. Bigelow's last night?"

"No, we don't. We weren't here last night."

"Course not, course not. Nor about bustin' into the Ellis place
last Sat'day night?"

"No, nor about that either."

"Course not!"

The men who were holding Ed Mason had been seized with the idea of
searching him. So they made Ed turn out his pockets in the hope of
finding some stolen goods. They examined the jack-knife, cork-
stopper with three fish-hooks in it, and lead sinker which they
found, and argued whether this was plunder from the house or not.
Then they started to search the rest of us, and we all had to
empty our pockets. Not until they came to the pound-cake, in Jimmy
Toppan's pocket, did they find anything of consequence, and as he
admitted that he had taken that from the house, they felt that
they had made a real discovery. They handed it over to the
pitchfork man.

"Here, Eb," said Gregory the Gauger, "yer want to keep this--it's
everdence."

At this moment one of the policemen put his head out the window,
and Eb promptly dropped the cake, and grabbed the policeman by the
shoulder, remarking: "I thought there was another one on ye!"

Then he tried to drag the policeman out of the window by force.
The policeman planted his feet firmly, and, as he weighed about
three hundred pounds, he successfully resisted all efforts to drag
him.

"What in thunder you tryin' to do?" he asked in a high, squeaky
voice.

"TRYIN' TO DO? I'll show ye,--resistin' a officer! Here, Justin,
give us a hand here, won't ye?"

In the meantime the policeman was blowing a whistle to summon his
mate. Eb stooped down again, and he and the policeman looked in
each other's faces,--their noses only half an inch apart. Eb had
seen the brass buttons.

"Be you a officer?"

"You'll find out whether I am or not!" said the furious policeman,
standing up and blowing his whistle again.

"Then watcher doin' here?"

"I'm here mindin' my own business,--I was sent here to look after
this house--orders of the Chief. Who in thunder are you?"

"This here's the Kunsterble," said Gregory the Gauger, nodding his
head toward Eb, "an' we've ketched the burglars. Here they be!"

The policeman blinked at us, and once more blew his whistle. At
last the other policeman came, looking about half awake. He was
the one who had been snoring so loud.

"What's all this ruction about?" he asked in a very cross tone.
The big policeman said something to him in a low voice, and they
both stepped out on the veranda. The first thing that the sleepy
policeman started to do was to cuff all of us boys. But Mr.
Daddles spoke up sharply, threatening to get him into trouble for
it, and even Eb protected us.

"No call to do that, Mister," he said, "we'll see to gettin' these
young fellers put where they belong for tonight. Tomorrer we'll
hold Court, an' find out what's what."

Everyone began to talk at once. It came out that the policemen had
been sent there from the town on the mainland, at the request of
Mr. Littlefield, who owned the house. He had gone away the day
before, and as there had been two burglaries in Bailey's Harbor,
or its vicinity, he did not like to leave his place unprotected.
Eb and Gregory the Gauger wished to enter the house, "an' go over
it to see if it's all right." The policemen refused to allow them
to enter,--probably because they did not wish it to be seen how
they had been keeping watch.

This made Eb very angry. He seemed to feel that the dignity of his
office, "Kunsterble of this here island," was not getting its
proper respect. But I think that the uniforms and brass buttons of
the policemen rather frightened him. The only sign of his high
station was a badge, pinned to his suspenders. The two policemen
ended the discussion by going inside the house once more,--"to
make up their lost sleep" suggested Mr. Daddles. They retired
within and shut the window.

Then Eb and the rest of them started to march us back to the
village. The news of our capture had spread and there must have
been twenty or thirty men and boys waiting for us at the front
gate. Some of them had lanterns, and two or three had shot-guns or
rifles.

"We left Bailey's Harbor very modestly," Mr. Daddles remarked,
"but our return is certainly impressive."

"You better keep your mouth shut, young feller," said one of the
men, "committin' burglary aint no joke."

"That's right, that's right," said Gregory the Gauger, who was
flitting about from one to the other of us, "an' whatever may be
said against yer, may be used in yer favor, too,--better remember
that."

The constable was still more indignant because the crowd nocked
around us.

"Clear outer here! Clear outer here!" he shouted two or three
times. But they only laughed at him. Then we set out over the
dusty road. First came Eb, with two other men leading Mr. Daddles,
then Jimmy and Ed Mason, each securely held, while I was at the
end of the procession, gripped by the arm and collar by a tall
man, who never uttered a word. At our heels and doing their best
to step on MY heels whenever they could, came a mob of boys and
men.

When we got back to the Harbor, it had quite changed its
appearance. From being a dark and deserted place it was now rather
lively. There were lights in most of the houses and people waiting
in the street.

On our way out of the village, an hour or two before, we had
noticed a tent at the edge of the inlet, just above Gregory's hut.
The people in the tent had turned out now,--they were three young
men, who seemed to have been camping there. They had hung a
lighted Japanese lantern over the door of the tent, and one of the
campers was playing on a banjo.

The constable halted the whole procession, and ordered one of his
assistants to put the banjo-player under arrest.

"I won't have it!" he shouted, "he's disturbin' the peace!"

Everyone laughed at this,--there was so much noise in the street
that the banjo could hardly be heard. But a man went across the
road, took the player by the arm, and told him that he must come
along. The banjo-player seemed to be perfectly dumb-founded; his
friends gathered round, argued, threatened, and finally laughed,
and tried to treat the whole thing as a joke. Eb was stubborn, and
the man joined our parade, with his banjo under his arm.

The police-station and jail were both in a new building half way
up the hill. Into this we were hurried, and the doors were shut.

"Keep 'em all out!" shouted the constable, "keep 'em all out,
except members of the possy!"

The "possy" seemed to consist of Eb himself, the men who were
guarding us,--five or six of them--and Gregory the Gauger. I
never found out just what office he held, but he was clearly the
most important man of the lot,--except Eb. The constable leaned
his pitchfork against the wall, lighted one or two lamps, sat down
behind a desk and put on a pair of spectacles. Then he jerked his
head, as if to beckon, toward the banjo-player.

"Name?" said he, picking up a pen.

"My name is Warren Sprague," said the man.

"Occupation?"

"I suppose you would call me a student."

"Don't yer know that yer was disturbin' the peace--"

"Contrary to statoot," put in Gregory the Gauger.

"Shut up, Mose!" said the constable.

"I thought that the peace was pretty well disturbed already," said
the banjo-player,-"there was so much noise in the street that it
woke us all up. I couldn't sleep,--none of us could sleep, and I
didn't see any harm in playing a tune. Whose peace could I
disturb?"

"Looky here, young feller, it won't do yer any good to get flip!"

"I'm not going to get flip."

"Don't yer know that it's agin the law to play on a moosical
instrument after eleven P. M.?"

"No, sir, I didn't know it. Are you going to have me executed for
it? Because if you are, I hope that you'll let me consult a
spiritual adviser, first."

"You're too fresh, young feller. I might have let yer off--"

"With a reppermand," put in Gregory.

"Mose, you shut your head!" said the constable.

Then he turned again to the prisoner.

"I mighta let yer off, but now I'm goin' to keep yer right here in
the lockup, an' consider the case tomorrer mornin'. Take him
below, Justin." Justin was the fat man, with the fan-like ears. He
stepped forward.

"Number six?" he asked the constable.

"Yup. Put him in number six."

Justin took the prisoner by the arm, took the banjo in his other
hand, and together they started down stairs. They passed in front
of us to reach the stairs, and as they did so, the young man
turned to Mr. Daddles with a smile:

"If you ever get out alive, remember me to my friends, out there.
Tell 'em I passed away, thinking of them."

"Silence in the Court!" cried Gregory.

The constable was now in a fury.

"If he locks up a man for banjo-playing--" murmured Mr. Daddles,--

"He'll have us burned at the stake," suggested Jimmy Toppan.

I had been feeling very unhappy ever since we arrived in the
police-station. It looked to me as if we were in a pretty bad fix.
The constable was so savage toward everybody it didn't seem
possible that he would believe that we had broken into the house
by mistake. Also, I was so tired that I was ready to drop. We had
been up since four o'clock that morning, and it was now after
midnight. It seemed to be years since we had left the
"Hoppergrass," and during the last few hours we had walked over a
dozen miles.

"Now," said the constable, "we'll make short work of you. Names?"

He really seemed to be less indignant with us, than with the
banjo-player. Burglary was a smaller offence in his eyes than
"disturbin' the peace,"--with a banjo.

He soon had the names of Edward Mason, James Rogers Toppan, and
Samuel Edwards added to his list.

"Name?" he snapped to Mr. Daddles.

"Richard Hendricks."

"Why!" exclaimed Ed Mason, "I thought your name was Daddles!"

"Hear that? hear that?" put in Gregory the Gauger, "that's his
Elias!"

"No, it's not an alias,--in the sense that you mean. It's a
nickname. There is no use in going through this again. What I told
you in the first place is all true,--and we'll prove it to you in
the morning. I know, or used to know, a number of people here. I
know Mr. Littlefield, my uncle's neighbor, but if he's gone away,
that won't do any good. But I know an old lady down the street
here, who lets rooms, and sells sweet-peas, and painted shells,
and things. Isn't there such a woman?"

"What's her name? S'pose there is,--what of it?"

"I can't recall her name now. She could tell you who I am. But if
you're determined to lock us up until the morning you might as
well do it. We're all tired out, and we've got to sleep somewhere.
I warn you that you're making a mistake and that we're not the
burglars you are looking for. We came in here this afternoon in a
boat, as I told you."

"I told you they come in a boat," said a man.

"What was the name of the boat?" asked the constable.

"The Hoppergrass."

"The--what's-that-you-say?"

"Hoppergrass."

"I never heard of no such boat."

Mr. Daddles was silent.

"Where's the boat, now?"

"I don't know,--she sailed away."

The constable laughed.

"You needn't think you can play it over me, with any such story as
that, young feller."

Justin had now returned from down stairs, and the constable
ordered him and another man to conduct us all below.

"Put 'em in number four an' five."

"Number four an' five it is!"

So we descended the stairs. Below, there was a brick-lined
corridor, with three cells on each side. At the end a kerosene
lamp hung in a bracket on the wall. This was the only light.

"Hullo!" said a cheerful voice, "how long did you get? Life-
sentence?"

It was the man who called himself Sprague. His banjo stood against
the wall just outside his cell, and under the lamp.

"No," said Mr. Daddles, "we're awaiting our trial in the morning,
the same as you."

"What was your crime, anyway? Whistling?"

Justin shook his head at the man in the cell.

"You fellers better look out,--all on ye," said he. "Eb's pretty
mad. An' he's got a bad temper when he gets riled, I tell you. An'
folks are all stirred up about this burglin' business."

He looked at us doubtfully, and shook his head again. The other
man--he was the tall, silent one, who had led me along the road-
opened the last cell on the right and told Ed Mason and me to go
in. Mr. Daddles and Jimmy were put in a cell across the corridor.
The tall man vanished upstairs, leaving us all locked in. Justin
was turning down the light.

"Look here, old sport," said the banjo-player, "just let me have
that, will you?"

He pointed toward the banjo. Justin's jaw dropped, and he raised
his hands in horror.

"Let yer have that? Holy Cats! Why, Eb would skin me alive--an'
you too--if you was to play on that thing down here!"

"I don't want to play on it," replied the man, "but the strings
will get damp, and break, out there. Just let me have it in here,
--that's a good fellow. I can let the strings down a bit. No good
spoiling 'em. I won't play a note on it. Honest Injun!"

"Sure about it?" asked Justin.

"Sure. Honest, I won't."

"Well, all right, then. Mind what yer promised, now!"

He took a key down from a hook under the lamp, unlocked the cell
door, and passed in the banjo. After locking the door with great
care, and replacing the key on its hook, he bade us all good
night, and went upstairs.

"Burglary? Is that what the Czar has run you in for?" This from
the stranger with the banjo.

"That is the crime with which we are charged."

"Well, I must say you disappoint me. I had always hoped for
something better in the way of burglars. I hope you won't be
offended but really, you know, you don't look DESPERATE enough."

"It's our first offence," said Mr. Daddles.

"That's what I thought," said the stranger heartily, "but I didn't
like to say so,--for fear of hurting your feelings. Cheer up,--
you'll improve as time goes on."

"Have you been here long?" I asked.

"Came in yesterday,--or day before yesterday, rather. We were in
that black sloop,--perhaps you noticed her? You were in the white
cat-boat, weren't you? We saw you when you came in."

"Did you see her go out?"

We all asked this eagerly.

"No,--has she gone out? We were on board our boat all the
afternoon,--down in the cabin, I guess. Wish I'd stayed there. But
we had the tent,--one of the fellows likes to sleep on shore, and
so we all stayed. Say, this is a little bit of Russia, isn't it?
Eb could give the Czar points. This is a new police-station, and
he thought it ought not get rusty."

"Find your quarters comfortable over there?" asked Mr. Daddles
across the corridor.

"Great!" said Ed Mason. He had already taken off his coat, rolled
it up for a pillow, and lain down on one of the wooden benches in
our cell. I was preparing to do the same. Upstairs we heard the
front door slam, as Justin, and the last of the "possy," left the
police-station.

"S-s-s-t!"

This came from the banjo-player's cell.

"Watch this, boys!"

I looked out the barred door of our cell, and so did Mr. Daddles
and Jimmy from theirs, on the other side of the corridor. The
banjo-player, holding his instrument by the head, was poking the
neck of it through his door. Very carefully he managed it, and I
soon saw what he was after. The big key, hanging on the wall under
the lamp, was just within his reach. With the utmost care he
inserted one of the keys of the banjo in the ring of the cell key,
and drew it off the hook. Then holding the banjo very delicately
he pulled it slowly inside the cell, until he had the key in his
hands. Then he grinned out at us.

"Talk about Baron Trenck and Monte Cristo!" he said.

In a second more he had put one hand through the bars of his cell,
put the key into the lock and let himself out.

"What's the matter with this,--hey, what? Another chapter in
Celebrated Escapes!"

Then he tip-toed back into his cell, and shut the door again.

"It won't do to go upstairs too soon. I'll give 'em time to get
home. Then I'll get the keys to your cells,--never shall it be
said of Despard D'Auvigny that he deserted his friends in
misfortune! A regular jail-delivery,--what? The destruction of
the Bastille was nothing to this! And we'll carry Eb's head on a
pike."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Daddles, "I never thought of that! Do you
suppose the keys to our cells are upstairs? I thought you were the
only one to get anything by this,--I was resolving always to carry
a banjo with me."

"Why, I guess they'll be upstairs,--I can't for the life of me see
why this was left down here. But I don't care,--I've no fault to
find with the arrangement. Now, we'll have to wait awhile."

We all sat down and waited for about ten minutes. Then the banjo-
man, saying "the hour has came!" opened his door again, and stole
softly upstairs. Half way up he turned and came back for a match.
Mr. Daddles gave him one, and he vanished with it. He was gone a
long while, and we began to be in despair, thinking that he
couldn't find the keys, or perhaps that he had gone away without
troubling himself any more about us.

At last however, we heard him once more on the stairs. He came
down, on tip-toe, holding up two keys. He was smiling gleefully.

"They were in Eb's desk and all tagged and numbered."

In a moment or two we were all out in the corridor. Our new friend
locked all the cell doors, and hung up his key on its hook.

"It shall be an unsolved mystery to them all. They shall puzzle
themselves bald-headed over it," he whispered.

Upstairs we stopped long enough to return the keys to Eb's desk.
Our friend still had his precious banjo under his arm. We had to
go cautiously in the dark, as we dared to light only one match,
and that we kept covered as well as we could. There was a window
at the rear of the building, and unlike the window in the corridor
below, it was not barred.

Mr. Daddles and I looked out. There were no lights to be seen, and
no people about. We raised the window very cautiously, an inch at
a time.

"Country police have their disadvantages," whispered Mr. Daddles,
"but they have this virtue: they go home at night, and let the
jail take care of itself. In the city, we should have had to pick
our way through the slumbering forms of innumerable cops."

We listened at the window. Bailey's Harbor, after its great
excitement over the captured burglars, had gone home, and gone to
sleep. Everything was quiet as a graveyard. We could hear the
slapping of the water against the timbers of the wharf, and
somewhere, a rooster, disturbed by the moonlight, crowed once. It
was a dim and sleepy sound, and it was not repeated. The fog had
nearly gone; the moon shone clear.

One by one, and as quiet as mice, we crawled through the window,
and dropped to the earth below.

CHAPTER VII

BUT WE DECIDE TO GO

Mr. Daddles stood on a ledge of the building a moment, and quietly
pulled down the window.

"It wasn't locked," he muttered, "so there'll be nothing to show
how we got out."

We were in a little yard at the rear of the jail. There was a
large empty building,--a barn, or a boat-builder's work-shop, on
the next lot. It cast a deep shadow over one side of the yard, and
we kept in this shadow, as we stole toward the fence. A short
alley ran down the hill on the other side of this fence. In a
moment or two we were tip-toeing through the alley. It seemed to
me that I had been going on tip-toe for hours,--I wondered if I
would forget how to walk in the usual way.

Everything was quiet; we met no one, and heard nothing. Turning up
the street we kept on, silently, until we reached the open space
near the water. There was the tent, white and still in the
moonlight. We looked in at the flap of the tent,--two dim forms
lay wrapped in blankets, breathing heavily, and both sound asleep.

"Look at 'em!" said the banjo-man, in a low tone, "sleeping like
babes, while _I_ was languishing in jail."

"Wake up!" he said, in a slightly louder voice, prodding the
nearest one with his banjo.

"Ub-ber-ubber-er-bubber-yah!" remarked the man, sitting bolt
upright, and looking about him, as if he had been attacked by wild
animals.

"That's all right," said Sprague, "it's only me. Don't get
excited. Keep quiet,--don't bubber any more. We're hunted
criminals, with a price upon our heads. Prices, I should say."

The other man stirred slightly, and rolled over.

"Hullo! That you? Rescued from a county jail?"

"Rescued nothing!" replied Sprague, "I might have died in jail of
old age before you would have done anything. Got out by our own
valor and ingenuity. Tunneled through fifteen feet of living rock.
Now, get up, and be quiet about it,--the hounds of the law are on
our trail, and we must leave these shores quick."

The second man arose swiftly, and began folding his blankets. The
other one, however,--the one who had wakened uttering gibberish--
crossed his hands over his knees, and said: "I don't know about
this!"

"No," said Sprague, "of course you don't. We'll discuss it on the
boat,--you shall argue it out to your heart's content. Come out of
the tent, now'. We're going to get under way, and quit this place
just as soon as we can,--and that's in about two shakes."

The second man had come out of the tent, bringing his blankets
with him. Mr. Daddles and all the rest of us set to work pulling
up the tent stakes. But the other man sat there, shaking his head.

"I think you're making a mistake," said he; "of course that
constable was very arbitrary in his manner, but he IS the
constable, just the same. I inquired and found that he is. The
arrest was perfectly legal. You had much better stay in jail until
morning, and submit to a fine which would probably be merely
nominal. As it is, you are becoming a fugitive from justice--"

"That's right, and I'm going to fuge just as quick as I can. Come
out from under the tent, Lord Chief Justice, or you'll get a blow
on the cocoanut that will damage that legal mind of yours. These
are my friends and fellow-criminals, the alleged burglars. ... All
right there? Everything clear? ... I fear they are innocent,
however, just as I am guilty,--of banjo-playing."

"No, but listen a minute--"

At this moment the other man snatched down the tent pole and the
whole thing fell on the "Lord Chief Justice," leaving him
floundering under waves of canvas, and tangles of rope. "Never
mind him," said Sprague, "two of you hustle down and push off the
boat,--it will take us three trips to get the tent and everything
on board."

Jimmy Toppan and one of the other men (the second one to wake up,
--they called him "Pete") hurried down to the water's edge. The
"Lord Chief Justice" (whom they called "Chief," for short) crawled
out from under the canvas, and we began to fold up the tent. It
was a small one, and they had nothing in it except their blankets
and some cushions and pillows from the yacht.

The Chief, still muttering and complaining, was sent out on the
first trip, with Jimmy Toppan and Ed Mason. He and Jimmy were
commanded to get up the sails, while Ed brought back the boat.
This time he carried the tent, and then came back for the pillows,
blankets and cushions. All this took more or less time,--fifteen
or twenty minutes, perhaps. Mr. Daddles and Sprague kept their
eyes on the little street nearby, to make sure that we were not
observed.

Just as Mr. Daddles and I were getting into the boat, someone
spoke from the shadow of a building.

"Aha!" said a voice.

Then a man stepped out into the moonlight, and advanced a little
toward us.

"Leavin' kinder sudden, aint yer?"

It was Gregory the Gauger. He walked still nearer. Then he
recognized Mr. Daddles and me.

"What's this? What's this?" he snapped, "got out, didger? Thought
yer was escapin', didger? Consider yerselves under arrest. I
apprehend yer in the name of the Commonwealth. Stay right where
yer be. I'll go an' get Eb."

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