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The Border Boys Along the St. Lawrence
CHAPTER I
THROUGH THE RAPIDS
“Steady, Ralph, old fellow, the Galoups are right ahead.”
“All right,” responded Ralph Stetson from his position at the steering wheel of the swift motor boat the River Swallow, “I saw them ten minutes ago, Hardware. Just give Persimmons down below a hail and tell him to slow up a bit. They’re wild waters and we don’t want to go through them too fast.”
Harry Ware, who (from the fact that his initials were H. D. Ware) was known to his chums by the nickname Ralph Stetson had just used, hastened to the speaking tube connecting the bridge of the River Swallow with the engine room, in which Percy Simmons, another of Ralph’s chums, was tending the twin racing engines with assiduous care.
“Slow down a bit, Persimmons,” he yelled, “we’re just about to hit up the Gallops.”
“Whoop! Hurray for the Glues!” floated back up the tube, as Persimmons abbreviated the name of the famous rapids into the form by which they were locally known. “Hold tight, everybody. Zing! Zang! Zabella!”
The rapids the boys were approaching had been well named by the early French settlers along the St. Lawrence the Galoups, or, in plain English, the Gallops, or, again, to give them their local name, the Glues.
For two miles or more near the American side of the river the white-capped, racing waters tore along at thirty miles or so an hour. The great rocks that lay concealed under the tumbling foam-covered waters caused the river to boil and swirl like a hundred witches’ caldrons.
To an experienced skipper, however, the Galoups held no particular terrors. All that was needful was familiarity with the intricacies of their currents and whirlpools and they could be “run” in perfect safety. During the three months that the Border Boys had been the guests of Mr. Stetson at his summer home on Dexter Island, some miles below, they had gained the necessary skill to negotiate the racing, tumbling Glues. Aside from the fact that he had ordered the engines of his father’s fast craft, the River Swallow, slowed down as they approached the place, and that his hands gripped the steering wheel more tightly, Ralph Stetson, only son of King Pin Stetson, the Railroad Magnate, felt no particular qualms as the whitecaps of the rollicking Glues appeared out of the darkness ahead.
The River Swallow was a narrow, sharp-stemmed motor boat which had more than once successfully defended her title of the fastest craft on the St. Lawrence. She was about sixty feet in length, painted a gleaming, lustrous black, with luxuriously fitted cabins and engines of the finest type obtainable, which drove her twin propellers at twelve hundred revolutions a minute. No wonder the boys, who, since their sojourn on the island, had become adepts at handling her, enjoyed their positions as captain and crew of the craft.
One of the two paid hands, who berthed forward, came up to Ralph just as the latter reached out for the simple mechanism which controlled the powerful search-light mounted near the steering wheel.
The boy had decided to use the rays of the great lamp in picking out his course. In one or two places big rocks bristled menacingly out of the boiling rapids, and if the craft should happen to strike one of them, even with a glancing blow, a terrible accident would be almost certain to result. But with his search-light to act as a night-raking eye, Ralph felt small fear of anything of the sort occurring.
The man who came up to Ralph, just as a sharp click sounded and the bright scimitar of electric light, its power increased by reflectors, slashed the night, was a rather remarkable looking man to be an ordinary paid hand on a wealthy man’s pleasure boat.
Fully six feet in height, powerfully built and erect, he had at first glance a look of refinement and intelligence that did not, somehow, appear to blend well with the somewhat inferior position he occupied. It is true that it was honest, clean employment, of which no decent man need have been ashamed, but Ralph felt every time he looked at him that Roger Malvin – such was the name the man gave – might have secured some more suitable occupation.
Yet the first favorable impression that Malvin gave did not, for some reason, survive closer acquaintanceship. Underlying his air of frank intelligence was something else that Ralph had not so far been able to understand. There was something almost sneaking and furtive about Malvin at times. But Ralph, loath at any time to distrust any of those with whom he was thrown in contact, decided that probably this was a mere peculiarity of manner with no foundation behind it.
The other paid hand seemed a less complex person. Olaf Hansen was a short, rather insignificant looking little Norwegian, with light blue eyes, a ruddy complexion and a shock of yellow hair. He appeared to be rather under the sway of Malvin, who, before the boys had arrived, had had command of the River Swallow. Whether or not Malvin held any grudge against them for assuming charge of the boat and depriving him of the easy berth he had enjoyed, Ralph was not able to determine; but once or twice he had noticed little things about the man which more than half inclined him to the belief that such was the case. If this were actually so, Malvin had so far adopted no active measures of reprisal and obeyed orders with alacrity and willingness, just as he might have done had he always “berthed forward” in the cramped quarters assigned to the crew of the River Swallow.
“Want a hand to get through the Gallops, sir?” he asked respectfully as he came to Ralph’s side.
“No, thank you, Malvin,” was the rejoinder. “I guess by this time I’m enough of a skipper to take her through without any trouble.”
“The river’s fallen a little and they are pretty bad to-night,” hazarded Malvin. “I thought if I took the wheel – ”
He laid a hand on the spokes as he said this.
“Be good enough not to do that again,” said Ralph, rather sternly, as he spun the wheel, thus shaking off the man’s grip. “You made me swerve from my course quite a bit, and that isn’t safe right here, as you know.”
He looked sharply at the man as he spoke. The River Swallow had been up to Piquetville after supplies, groceries, and so forth, for use on the island. Malvin and the other hand had been given leave to go uptown while the boys marketed. For an instant a suspicion flashed across Ralph’s mind that Malvin had been intemperate during his “shore leave.” But a minute later he decided that it was only his imagination. Still, he did not like the way in which the man had deliberately tried to wrest the wheel from him. It savored of insubordination, something which he had never noticed in Malvin’s conduct hitherto.
“You can tend the search-light, Malvin,” he ordered sharply. “Try to pick up Big Nigger rock. Our course lies to starboard of that. Then we’ll pass the Needles on the port. After that it’s a clear run. The current will carry us through without much help from the engines.”
“Very well, sir,” said Malvin respectfully, taking up his position by Ralph’s side, one hand on the mechanism of the search-light.
Suddenly the even tenor of the River Swallow’s course was changed. It was apparent that a force superior even to her powerful engines had hold of the craft. Her light fabric shook as if in the grip of a giant’s fingers. She wallowed, swerved and plunged in the swift waters, throwing spray high over her bow as she entered the grasp of the Gallops.
Ralph thrilled. There was something that made the blood race through his veins as fast as the rapids themselves in the swift, sweeping dash through the treacherous channel. Once in the grip of the Gallops, there was no turning back. The task of bringing the River Swallow safely through lay in his hands and in his hands alone. On his nerve and skill everything depended during the next two miles.
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