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                                  The
                          Rival Campers Afloat
                       Or, THE PRIZE YACHT VIKING


                                   By
                           Ruel Perley Smith
                     Author of "The Rival Campers"

                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                            LOUIS D. GOWING

                                 BOSTON
                          L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
                                  1906


                          _Copyright_, _1906_
                        By L. C. Page & Company
                             (INCORPORATED)

                         _All rights reserved_


                     First Impression, August, 1906


                            _COLONIAL PRESS
            Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
                           Boston. U. S. A._




                                CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
  I. Down the River                                                    1
  II. The Collision                                                   15
  III. A Rescue Unrewarded                                            28
  IV. Squire Brackett Discomfited                                     39
  V. Harvey Gets Bad News                                             56
  VI. Out to the Fishing-grounds                                      73
  VII. Near the Reefs                                                 91
  VIII. Little Tim a Strategist                                      108
  IX. Harry Brackett Plays a Joke                                    126
  X. Mr. Carleton Arrives                                            143
  XI. Squire Brackett Is Puzzled                                     160
  XII. The Surprise Sets Sail Again                                  180
  XIII. Stormy Weather                                               192
  XIV. The Man in the Cabin                                          206
  XV. Mr. Carleton Goes Away                                         224
  XVI. Searching the Viking                                          239
  XVII. A Rainy Night                                                259
  XVIII. Two Secrets Discovered                                      278
  XIX. The Loss of the Viking                                        298
  XX. Fleeing in the Night                                           318
  XXI. A Timely Arrival                                              336




                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE
  The Crew of the Viking Meet Skipper Martel (_Frontispiece_)         98
  "The boom brought up with a smashing blow against the Viking's
          starboard quarter"                                          25
  "'Nonsense,' roared the infuriated Squire. 'He can sail a boat as
          good as you can'"                                           54
  "'Here, that's our boat,' cried Joe. 'You've got no right to
          touch it'"                                                 112
  "'Just tell them that you heard me say I was going back to
          Boston'"                                                   236
  "'Get out of here,' exclaimed Mr. Carleton, sharply"               335




                           THE RIVAL CAMPERS
                                 AFLOAT




                               CHAPTER I.
                             DOWN THE RIVER


It was a pleasant afternoon in the early part of the month of June. The
Samoset River, winding down prettily through hills and sloping farm lands
to the bay of the same name, gleamed in the sunlight, now with a polished
surface like ebony in some sheltered inlet, or again sparkling with
innumerable points of light where its surface was whipped up into tiny
waves by a brisk moving wind.

There had been rain for a few days before, and the weather was now
clearing, with a smart westerly breeze that had come up in the morning,
but was swinging in slightly to the southward. The great white
cloud-banks had mostly passed on, and these were succeeded at present by
swiftly moving clumps of smaller and lighter clouds, that drifted easily
across the sky, like the sails below them over the surface of the water.

There were not a few of these sails upon the river, some set to the
breeze and some furled; some of the craft going up with the tide toward
the distant city of Benton, the head of vessel navigation; some breasting
the tide and working their way down toward Samoset Bay; other and larger
craft, with sails snugly furled, tagging along sluggishly at the heels of
blustering little tugs,--each evidently much impressed with the
importance of its mission,--and so going on and out to the open sea,
where they would sail down the coast with their own great wings spread.

The river was, indeed, a picture of life and animation. It was a river
with work to do, but it did it cheerfully and with a good spirit. Far up
above the city of Benton, it had brought the great log rafts down through
miles of forest and farm land. Above and below the city, for miles, it
had run bravely through sluice and mill-race, and turned the great wheels
for the mills that sawed the forest stuff into lumber. And now, freed
from all bounds and the restraint of dams and sluiceways, and no longer
choked with its burden of logs, it was pleased to float the ships, loaded
deep with the sawed lumber, down and away to other cities.

There was many a craft going down the river that afternoon. Here and
there along the way was a big three or four masted schooner, loaded with
ice or lumber, and bound for Baltimore or Savannah. Or, it might be, one
would take notice of a trim Italian bark, carrying box-shooks, to be
converted later into boxes for lemons and oranges. Then, farther
southward, a schooner that had brought its catch to the Benton market,
and was now working out again to the fishing-grounds among the islands of
the bay.

Less frequently plied the river steamers that ran to and from the summer
resorts in Samoset Bay; or, once a day, coming or going, the larger
steamers that ran between Benton and Boston.

Amid all these, at a point some twenty miles down the river from Benton,
there sailed a craft that was, clearly, not of this busy, hard-working
fraternity of ships. It was a handsome little vessel, of nearly forty
feet length, very shapely of hull and shining of spars; with a glint of
brass-work here and there; its clean, white sides presenting a polished
surface to the sunbeams; its rigging new and well set up, and a handsome
new pennant flung to the breeze from its topmast.

The captain of many a coaster eyed her sharply as she passed; and, now
and then, one would let his own vessel veer half a point off its course,
while he took his pipe from his mouth and remarked, "There's a clean
craft. Looks like she might go some." And then, probably, as he brought
his own vessel back to its course, concluded with the usual salt-water
man's comment, "Amateur sailors, I reckon. Humph!"

That remark, if made on this particular occasion, would have been
apparently justifiable. If one might judge by their age, the skippers of
this trim yacht should certainly have been classed as amateurs. There
were two of them. The larger, a youth of about sixteen or seventeen years
of age, held the wheel and tended the main-sheet. The other, evidently a
year or two younger, sat ready to tend the jib-sheets on either side as
they tacked, shifting his seat accordingly. The yacht was beating down
the river against the last of a flood-tide.

"We're doing finely, Henry," said the elder boy, as he glanced admiringly
at the set of the mainsail, and then made a general proud survey of the
craft from stem to stern and from cabin to topmast. "She does walk along
like a lady and no mistake. She beats the _Surprise_--poor old boat! My,
but I often think of that good little yacht I owned, sunk down there in
the thoroughfare. We had lots of fun in her. But this one certainly more
than takes her place."

"Who would ever have thought," he continued, "when we saw the strange men
sail into the harbour last year, with this yacht, that she would turn out
to be a stolen craft, and that she would one day be put up for sale, and
that old Mrs. Newcome would buy her for us? It's like a story in a book."

"It's better than any story I ever read, Jack," responded the other boy.
"It's a story with a stroke of luck at the end of it--and that's better
than some of them turn out. But say, don't you think you better let me
take my trick at the wheel? You know you are going to teach me how to
sail her. I don't expect to make much of a fist of it, at the start; but
I've picked up quite a little bit of yacht seamanship from my sailing
with the Warren boys."

"That's so," conceded the other. "You must have got a pretty good notion
of how to sail a boat, by watching them. Here, take the wheel. But you'll
find that practice in real sailing, and just having it in your head from
watching others, are two different things. However, you'll learn fast. I
never knew any one who had any sort of courage, and any natural liking
toward boat-sailing, but what he could pick it up fast, if he kept his
eyes open.

"The first thing to do, to learn to sail a boat, is to take hold in
moderate weather and work her yourself. And the next thing, is to talk to
the fishermen and the yachtsmen, and listen when they get to spinning
yarns and arguing. You can get a lot of information in that way that you
can use, yourself, later on."

The younger boy took the wheel, while the other sat up alongside,
directing his movements. But first he took the main-sheet and threw off
several turns, where he had had it belayed on the cleat back of the
wheel, and fastened it merely with a slip-knot, that could be loosed with
a single smart pull on the free end.

"We won't sail with the sheet fast until you have had a few weeks at it,
Henry," he said. "There are more boats upset from sheets fast at the
wrong time, or from main-sheets with kinks in them, that won't run free
when a squall hits, than from almost any other cause. And the river is a
lot worse in that way than the open bay, for the flaws come quicker and
sharper off these high banks."

Henry Bums, with the wheel in hand and an eye to the luff of the sail, as
of one not wholly inexperienced, made no reply to the other's somewhat
patronizing manner; but a quiet smile played about the corners of his
mouth. If he had any notion that the other's extreme care was not
altogether needed, he betrayed no sign of impatience, but took it in good
part. Perhaps he realized that common failing of every yachtsman, to
think that there is nobody else in all the world that can sail a boat
quite as well as himself.

He knew, too, that Jack Harvey had, indeed, had by far a larger
experience in sailing than he, though he had spent much of his time upon
the water.

In any event, his handling of the boat now evidently satisfied the
critical watchfulness of Jack Harvey; for that youth presently exclaimed,
"That's it. Oh, you are going to make a skipper, all right. You take hold
with confidence, too, and that's a good part of the trick."

At this point in their sailing, however, the yacht _Viking_ seemed to
have attracted somewhat more than the casual attention of an observer
from shore. A little less than a quarter of a mile down the river, on a
wharf that jutted some distance out from the bank, so that the river as
it ran swerved swiftly by its spiling, a man stood waving to them.

"Hello," said Henry Burns, espying the figure on the wharf, "there's a
tribute to the beauty of the _Viking_. Somebody probably thinks this is
the president's yacht and is saluting us."

"Well, he means us, sure enough," replied Jack Harvey, "and no joke,
either. He's really waving. He wants to hail us."

The man had his hat in hand and was, indeed, waving it to them
vigorously.

They had been standing across the river in an opposite direction to the
wharf; but now, as Jack Harvey cast off the leeward jib-sheets, Henry
Burns put the helm over, and the yacht swung gracefully and swiftly up
into the wind and headed off on the tack inshore. Jack Harvey let the
jibs flutter for a moment, until the yacht had come about, and Henry
Burns had begun to check her from falling off the wind, by reversing the
wheel. Then he quickly trimmed in on the sheets, and the jibs began to
draw.

"Most beginners," he said, "trim the jib in flat on the other side the
minute they cast off the leeward sheet. But that delays her in coming
about."

Again the quiet smile on the face of Henry Burns, but he merely answered,
"That's so."

They stood down abreast the wharf and brought her up, with sails
fluttering. Jack Harvey, looking up from the side to the figure above on
the wharf, called out, "Hello, were you waving to us?"

"Why, yes," responded the man, "I was. Are you going down the river far?"

"Bound down to Southport," said Harvey.

"Good!" exclaimed the stranger, and added, confidently, "I'll go along
with you part way, if you don't mind. I'm on my way to Burton's Landing,
five miles below, and the steamboat doesn't come along for three hours
yet. I cannot get a carriage and I don't want to walk. You don't mind
giving me a lift, do you? That's a beautiful boat of yours, by the way."

The man had an air of easy assurance; and, besides, the request was one
that any yachtsman would willingly grant.

"Why, certainly," replied Harvey, "we'll take you, eh, Henry?"

"Pleased to do it," responded Henry Burns.

They worked the yacht up alongside the wharf, and the stranger, grasping
a stay, swung himself off and leaped down on to the deck. Then he pushed
the boat's head off with a vigorous shove and advanced, smilingly, with
hand extended, to greet the boys. The _Viking_ gathered headway and was
once more going down-stream.

The stranger was a rather tall, well-built man, light on his feet, and
handled himself as though he were no novice aboard a boat. He descended
into the cockpit and shook hands with Jack Harvey and Henry Burns.

His voice, as he bade them good afternoon, was singularly full and deep,
and seemed to issue almost oddly from behind a heavy, blond moustache. As
Henry Burns expressed it afterward, it reminded him of a ventriloquist he
had seen once with a travelling show, because the man's lips seemed
hardly to move, and the muscles of his face scarcely changed as he spoke.
His eyes, of a clear but cold blue, lighted up, however, in a pleasant
way, as he thanked them.

He wore a suit of navy blue, and a yachting-cap on his head.

"This is the greatest luck in the world for me," he said. "You see, I
want to catch the train that will take me down to Bellport, and I can get
it at the Landing below. This fine craft of yours will take me--"

He stopped with strange abruptness. If the attention of Jack Harvey and
Henry Burns had, by chance, been directed more closely to him, and less
upon the handling of their yacht, they might have observed a surprised
and puzzled look come over his face. They might have observed him
half-start up from his seat, like a man that had suddenly come, all
unwittingly, upon a thing he had not expected to see.

But the two boys, intent upon their sailing, noticed only that the man
had left a sentence half-finished. They turned upon him inquiringly.

"What were you going to say?" asked Henry Burns.

The man settled back in his seat, reached a hand calmly into an inner
coat-pocket, and drew forth a cigar-case.

"I dare say you don't smoke," he said, offering it to them. "No, well, I
didn't think so. You're a little bit young for that. Let me see, what was
I saying?--oh, yes, I was about to remark that this boat would take me
down to the Landing on time. She does walk along prettily, and no
mistake."

With which, he lighted the cigar and began puffing enjoyably. But his
eyes darted here and there, quickly, sharply, over the boat. Through a
cloud of cigar smoke, he was scrutinizing it from one end to the other.

"You handle her well," he said. "Had her long?"

"Why, no," replied Harvey. "The fact is, though we have had other
boats--that is, I have--and we have handled others, this is our first
sail in this one. You see, we got her in an odd way, last season--just at
the close of the season, in fact; and she was not in shape for sailing
then. So we had to lay her up for the winter. This is really the first
trying out we have given her."

"Indeed, most interesting," replied the stranger, arising from his seat
and advancing toward the cabin bulkhead, where he stood, apparently
gazing off across the river. Then, as he returned to his seat again, he
added, "That's rather an elaborate ornamenting of brass around the
companionway."

"Isn't it, though!" exclaimed Harvey, proudly. "You don't see them much
handsomer than that often, eh?"

"Why, no, now you speak of it," replied the man. "You don't, and that's a
fact.

"In fact," he added, stealing a sidelong glance at the two boys, "it's
the only one just like it that I ever saw.

"Pretty shore along here, isn't it?" he remarked a few moments later, as
they stood in near to where the spruces came down close to the water's
edge, with the ledges showing below. "What's that you were saying about
coming by the boat oddly? She looks to me as though your folks must have
paid a good price for her."

"Why, that's the odd part of it," answered Harvey. "The fact is, our
folks didn't pay for