The Adventure Club Afloat

by Ralph Henry Barbour

  CHAPTER XXIII

  SALVAGE

  Mr. Anthony T. Hyatt, attorney-at-law, leaned smilingly back in aswivel-chair, matched ten pudgy fingers together and smiled expansivelyat his clients. There was a great deal of Mr. Hyatt, and much of it laydirectly behind his clasped hands. He had a large, round face in thecentre of which a small, sharp nose surmounted a wide mouth and wasflanked by a pair of pale brown eyes at once innocent and shrewd. Stevecounted three chins and was not certain there wasn't another tucked awaybehind the collar of the huge shirt. Mr. Hyatt had a deep and mellowvoice, and his words rolled and rumbled out like the reverberations of agood-natured thunder storm. From the windows of the bright, breeze-sweptoffice the boys could look far out to sea, and it was possible that thefaintly nautical atmosphere that appertained both to the office and itsoccupant was due to the sight and smell of the salt water. While Stevetold his story the lawyer's expression slowly changed from jovialamusement to surprise, and when the narrative was ended he drew himselfponderously from the chair and rolled to a window.

  "You say you've got her tied up to Sawyer's Wharf, eh?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I want to know! Well! Well! Where'd you say you came across her?" Stevetold him again. "And you brought her in yourself, eh?"

  "The lot of us did. Now what we want to know is what claim have we gotagainst the owners, Mr. Hyatt?"

  The lawyer heaved himself back to his chair and lowered himself into itwith what the boys thought was a most reckless disregard of thearticle's capacity and strength. But the chair only creaked dismally."Of course you do! Of course you do!" he rumbled smilingly. "Buts'posing I was to tell you you hadn't any claim at all on 'em?"

  "What! No claim at all?" exclaimed Steve.

  The man laughed and shook. "I only said s'posing," he protested. Heweaved his fingers together again over his ample stomach. "As a matterof law, young gentlemen, you have an excellent claim, a steel-bound,double-riveted claim. Whether it's against the owners or some insurancecompany is what you'll have to find out first. Most likely that ship andcargo were insured. As to just what amount you are entitled to, the lawdoesn't state. That's a matter generally agreed on between the salvorsand the owners. When no agreement can be reached the case goes to theAdmiralty Court."

  "Oh," said Steve. "The first thing to do--"

  "I guess the first thing to do is find out who the owners are and seewhat they have to say. If they make you a fair offer, well and good.Now, do you want me to take this case for you?"

  "Why, yes, sir, I think so," replied Steve, glancing inquiringly at theothers, who nodded assent. "How much--that is, what--"

  "What would I charge you for my services?" boomed the lawyer. "Nothingat all, boys, unless you get a settlement. If we don't have to go tocourt you may pay me a hundred dollars. If we do, we'll make anotherarrangement later. That satisfactory?"

  "Yes, indeed," answered Steve heartily, and the rest murmured agreement."How long will it take to find out, sir?"

  "I'll have the owner's name in half an hour. Then I'll send them a wire.You drop in tomorrow at this time and I dare say I'll have something totell you. I'll have a look at the boat this afternoon and get an idea ofher value as a bottom. Then we'll get someone to give an estimate on hercargo. Would you be willing to pay ten dollars for an appraisement?"

  "Yes, sir, if that's advisable."

  "Well, I think it is. We'd better know what we've got, eh? All right,gentlemen. You leave it to me. Where are you stopping?"

  "We're staying aboard our boats, sir, the _Adventurer_ and the _FollowMe_."

  "I want to know! Regular mariners, ain't ye? Well! Well! Guess you'rehaving a fine time, too, eh?"

  "Yes, sir, we've had a pretty good time. About--about how much do youthink we ought to get for the boat, Mr. Hyatt?"

  "Including cargo? Well, now, I don't know, Mister--What did you say yourname is?"

  "Stephen Chapman."

  "Mr. Stephen Chapman, eh?" The lawyer wrote it on a scrap of paper andthrust it carelessly into a pigeon-hole of the old walnut desk. "Well,there ought to be a tidy sum coming to you, sir; yes, sir, a tidy sum.Lumber is fetching money just now, and you tell me the _Catspaw_ isloaded high."

  "Yes, sir, she's loaded up to her rails. Do you suppose we'll get athousand dollars?"

  "A thousand dollars, eh?" Mr. Hyatt beamed broadly and nodded until allhis chins in sight shook. "Yes, you might look for a thousand dollars,boys. It isn't sense to get your expectations too high, but I guess youcan safely bank on a thousand. Oh, yes, a thousand isn't unreasonable.Well, you drop around tomorrow and maybe there'll be something toreport. I'll get right to work, gentlemen. Good afternoon!"

  "Funny old whale, isn't he?" commented Joe when they were once more onthe street. "Suppose he knows what he's talking about?"

  "Why not?" asked Wink. "He struck me as being rather a canny customer."

  "Well, he said a thousand dollars," replied Joe. "That's a lot of money,isn't it, for an old schooner like the _Catspaw_?"

  "It isn't much for the schooner and the cargo, too," said Steve. "I'mwondering if it oughtn't to be a lot more; say fifteen hundred. You see,a schooner like that costs quite a lot of money when it's new. And then,as Mr. Hyatt said, lumber is high right now, and there's a pile of it onboard."

  "A thousand will suit me all right," said Joe. "A twelfth of a thousandis--is--"

  "A thirteenth you mean," corrected Steve. "Don't forget Neil."

  "And don't count your chickens until they're hatched," Wink advised."It's unlucky, Joe."

  They found the other members of the expedition in various states of comainduced by a hearty dinner and lack of sleep, but they were all wideawake when Steve announced the result of the visit to the lawyer.

  "Gee!" exclaimed "Brownie." "A thousand dollars! He's fooling, isn't he?Why, I thought we'd get maybe three hundred!"

  "A thousand isn't a cent too much," said Perry. "Come to think of it,fellows, I earned that much myself!"

  "Just a minute, fellows," said Steve, interrupting the jeers thatgreeted Perry's statement. "What are we going to do with the money whenwe get it?"

  There was a moment of silence. Then Tom Corwin inquired: "Do with it?How do you mean, do with it, Steve? I thought it would be divided up prorata."

  "Of course," agreed Cas and Ossie in unison.

  "Wait a minute," said Phil. "Steve's got something on his mind. Let'shear it."

  Steve swung himself to the porch rail and faced the half-circle of boys."It's just an idea," he began, "and if you don't like it you've only gotto say so. As I look at it, fellows, this club has been a good deal of asuccess. If we haven't had any whopping big adventures, we've had somemild ones--"

  "Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!" muttered Han. "What do you calladventures?"

  Steve smiled and went on, "At any rate, we've had a whole lot of fun. Atleast, I have." He looked about him inquiringly.

  "You bet we have!" answered Joe heartily, and the rest echoed him.

  "Of course, we got the club up just for this Summer, I suppose, but Idon't see any reason why we shouldn't make it a--a permanent affair."

  "Bully!" exclaimed Perry. "Second the motion!"

  "Sit down!" growled Wink.

  "There's next Summer coming, fellows. We could do something like thisagain if we wanted to. We needn't make a trip in motor-boats, but wecould do something just as good. Well, now, why not take this moneywhen we get it and stow it away in the Club treasury instead of spendingit? Then we'd have enough to do almost anything we liked next year. Ifwe each got our seventy-seven dollars, or whatever the shares might be,we'd have it spent in a month and never know where it got to. But if weput it in the bank at interest we'd--we'd have something. If you don'tlike the scheme, just say so. I'm willing to do whatever the rest of yousay, only I thought--"

  "It's a corking idea," declared Harry Corwin enthusiastically. "You'redead right, Steve, too. Seventy-seven dollars would last about two weekswith me. Why hang it, I'v
e had it spent ten times already, and each timefor some fool thing I didn't really want! I say, let's keep the Clubgoing, fellows, and put the money in the treasury. And let Phil depositit in a bank. At four per cent, or whatever it is banks pay you, itwould come to nearly--nearly thirty dollars by next Summer. And thirtydollars would buy us gasoline for a month!"

  "Right you are," agreed Wink. "We'll make a real club of it."

  "How about the rest of you?" asked Steve.

  The others were all in favour, although Perry couldn't quite smother asigh of regret for the cash in hand he had dreamed of, and therefollowed an enthusiastic discussion of plans for next Summer, and BertAlley echoed the sentiment of all when he remarked regretfully that nextSummer was an awfully long way off! Ossie made the suggestion that itmight be a good plan to reimburse the members from the salvage money forwhat sums they had expended on the present cruise, explaining, however,that he wasn't particular on his own account. The question was arguedand finally decided in the negative. As Phil put it, what they had spentwould have been spent in any case, whether they had gone on the cruiseor stayed at home, and they had all received full value for theircontributions. Still planning, they went back to the boats and spent therest of the afternoon in cleaning them up inside and out, for both the_Adventurer_ and the _Follow Me_ had been sadly neglected for the pastforty-eight hours.

  Being persons of wealth, they supped ashore and went to a moving pictureshow, and afterwards, since no one had had his full allowance of sleepfor the past two nights, "hit the hay," in Perry's phraseology, in shortorder and slept like so many logs until sun-up.

  "I wish," remarked Han at breakfast the next morning, "that we werejust starting out instead of going home."

  "Me too," agreed Perry. "It'll be all over in two or three days, andI'll have to go back to school again. I suppose," he added sadly, "Ishan't see any of you fellows again until next Summer; no one but Ossie,that is."

  "You don't have to look at me if you don't want to," said Ossie,reaching backward into the galley for the coffee-pot. "I'm notparticular."

  "You'll see us before Summer," replied Steve. "I've been thinking."

  "So that's it," murmured Joe. "I thought maybe you just--um--hadn'tslept well."

  "If we're going to keep the Club together," continued Steve, treatingthe interruption disdainfully, "we've got to keep in touch with eachother. Suppose now we have a meeting about Christmas time, duringvacation."

  "Good scheme!" applauded Phil.

  "I think so. My idea is to keep out about thirty dollars of that money,or take it out later, I suppose, and have a feed somewhere, a sort ofAnnual Banquet of the Adventure Club of America, not Incorporated. Wecould hold a business meeting first and then feed our faces and talkover this Summer's fun and have a jolly old time. What do you say! Passthe sugar, Han."

  "They offer you--" Mr. Hyatt leaned forward in theprotesting chair]

  They said many things, but they were all in praise of the idea, andlater the _Follow Me's_ contingent was quite as enthusiastic, and Steve,in his official capacity of Number One, finally found a calendar andsolemnly announced that Saturday, the twenty-third day of December, wasthe date, that the hour was six o'clock, post meredian, and that theplace would be decided on later. After which they all went ashore andpassed the time until dinner in various ways. And at a little before twoSteve, Joe and Wink once more climbed the narrow stairway to LawyerHyatt's office.

  "I have here," said Mr. Hyatt, when they had seated themselves andgreetings had been exchanged and the weather duly and thoroughlydisposed of, "a telegram from Barrows and Leland, of Norfolk, Virginia,agents for the owners of the schooner _Catspaw_. In it they make anoffer of settlement of your claim, subject, of course, to the facts andconditions being as stated in my telegram to them."

  He paused impressively and the boys shuffled their feet in silentexpectancy.

  "Hm. Now I'm not going to advise you to accept their offer and I'm notgoing to advise you not to," he rumbled. "Only, I do say this,gentlemen. If you take your case to the Admiralty Court it will cost youa good deal of money and you won't get a final judgment for a long time.Of course, you might, in the end, get a better figure. I'd almost bewilling to guarantee that you would. But you want to remember that thecosts of a trial aren't small and that they might eat a big hole in thedifference between the present offer and the court's award."

  "What--what do they offer us?" asked Steve as the lawyer paused to clearhis throat.

  "There's no doubt that the value of the _Catspaw_ and her cargo is asight more than these fellows offer us," resumed Mr. Hyatt, quite asthough he had not heard the question. "But there's the old adage about abird on toast being worth more than a bird on the telegraph wire." Hechuckled deeply. "And, of course, no owner ever thinks of paying thefull value of salvaged property. Nor does the court expect him to.Something like an equable division is what they try to award."

  "Yes, sir," murmured Steve nervously. "Yes, sir. Would you mind--"

  "You said something yesterday about a thousand dollars, and I told youyou might expect that much, didn't I?"

  Steve nodded silently.

  "Well--" The lawyer took up a sheet of creased yellow paper from thedesk and ran his eyes along the message thereon. "Well, I've got to tellyou they don't offer you a thousand, boys."

  "Oh!" murmured Steve.

  "Don't they?" gasped Joe weakly.

  "Then what--" began Wink dejectedly.

  "They offer you--" Mr. Hyatt leaned forward in the protesting chair andheld the telegram toward Steve--"they offer you four thousand, sevenhundred and sixty-one dollars, young gentlemen."

  * * * * *

  Isn't this a good place to end our story? I might tell how they wiredthe good news to Neil, and how they set forth that afternoon for NewYork, and how, after a jolly but uneventful trip, the two boats partedcompany off Bay Shore, and how the _Adventurer_, having done her best todeserve the name she bore, at last sidled up to a slip in the yachtbasin and discharged her crew. And I might depict the awed delight withwhich, two days later, Steve, Joe and Phil gazed upon a narrow strip ofgreen paper bearing the wonderful legend "Four Thousand Seven HundredSixty-one Dollars." But we set out in search of adventures, and we havereached the last of them, and so the chronicle should end. And since itbegan with a remark from Perry let us end it so. Perry's closing remarkwas made from the platform of the train for Philadelphia.

  "Good-bye, you fellows," said Perry, smiling widely to show that hedidn't mind leaving the others the least bit in the world. "We had acorking good time, didn't we? But just let me tell you something. Itisn't a patch on the fun we're going to have on the next trip of theAdventure Club!"