CHAPTER XXVI. MYSTERIES.

All that day, against head winds and tides, Captain Briggs' schooner clawed her way around Staten Island. Nightfall found her making her way up the staked channel in Raritan Bay with a fair breeze, and the bibulous skipper was in good humor. He even condescended to joke and laugh with Ned, who stood glumly by the wheel, watching the clumsy handling of the broad-beamed old craft.

Ned had indulged in much speculation concerning Captain Briggs and his craft since he had become what he felt was virtually a prisoner on board her. He was puzzled to make out the vessel's mission. Captain Briggs waxed more and more mysterious as the contents of the bottle and the sun together grew lower. From time[Pg 208] to time he threw out hints, which only served the purpose of further mystification.

The Dreadnought Boy began to think that he was on board a smuggler. It was the only conclusion he could reach, although he was actually miles beside the mark in his guess.

As it grew dusk, the schooner was brought up opposite a sandy, desolate-looking stretch of ground on the Jersey shore. It was a brush-grown point with here and there steep, reddish-colored miniature cliffs, where landslides had occurred in the sandy earth.

On the summit of the point a tall, white semaphore, like some grotesque skeleton, spread its arms against the sky. A chill wind blew off shore. Ned felt that he had reached the last spot in civilization, even though off in the distance on the Staten Island shore the smoke from the factory chimneys of Tottenville could be seen like a dark and sooty pall.

Ned was wondering whether they were going[Pg 209] to anchor there, when his unspoken question was answered by the rattle of the schooner's hawser as the rusty mud-hook dropped into the yellow, turbid tide.

"Well, of all queer cruises, this is the queerest," mused Ned, as he leaned against the rail and watched Captain Briggs bringing his craft to an anchorage.

He could not forbear smiling at the captain's importance as he issued his orders. A rear admiral on his own quarter-deck could not have been a bit more pompous or consequential.

At last all was arranged to Captain Briggs' satisfaction, and the schooner, under bare poles, swung at anchor.

"What's coming now?" wondered Ned, as he saw the captain come sidling toward him like a red-nosed crab, if such a thing can be imagined.

He was not left long in doubt. The captain eyed him with an oddly embarrassed air for a few seconds and then he spoke.

[Pg 210]

"Seeing as how I'm looking to get a bit of money out of you, mate," he said at length, with a sidewise squint out of his red-rimmed eyes, "maybe what I'm agoin' to do ain't just right. But," and here the captain strengthened his resolution with a draft out of his bottle, "but," he resumed, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, "what's got to be has got to be, ain't it?"

"Certainly," said Ned, with a smile at the captain's rather obvious logic.

"And that bein' the case, it will be, I reckon?" pursued the captain with the air of one propounding a profound question.

Again Ned agreed. This time he signified his entire understanding of the captain's views by a nod of his head.

"Well," resumed the skipper, "it's got to be that you've got to go below, and——"

"Go below?" repeated Ned indignantly. "See here, Captain Briggs, don't you think you're carrying this thing a little far?"

[Pg 211]

"I dunno as I am, and if I am, why, then, I dunno as it's any of your clamjamfried business," retorted the captain. "You wasn't asked to come on board this here fine vessel, was yer?"

"Certainly not, and as you know I'm more grateful than I can say to you for saving my life. But when——"

The captain shut Ned off with a wave of his hand.

"Least said, soonest mended," he remarked. "You an' me 'ull have our talk 'bout that later on. Cap'n Briggs, he gets paid fer his salvage, be it human or 'totherwise. The p'int is this, you've got to go below."

"But what is your object in confining me in that stuffy cabin?" objected Ned. "Let me stay on deck and I'll pledge you my word that I wouldn't have a chance to escape from you,—that is, if you persist in your insane idea that I have wealthy relatives who will pay handsomely for my ransom."

[Pg 212]

"'Tain't ransom, it's a man's rights," objected Captain Briggs; "but as I said before, tain't no manner o' use wasting of words. Below I want yer to go, and below you will go."

"If I refuse?"

"Wa'al," insinuated Captain Briggs, with a glance at his crew, who, as if they had been warned in advance, stood watching the scene, "wa'al, I op-pine t'wouldn't be just healthy like fer you to refuse. There's a heap of persuasion in a handspike and plenty of good argument in a capstan bar."

"What, you would dare to use violence on me? Maybe two can play at that game."

Ned's eyes flashed; his fists clenched. Yet he knew that he must control his temper with this pig-headed old mariner.

"I'll use violence, or anything else I please, to hev my orders carried out," flared out Captain Briggs. "Now then, are you going below peaceable or do we hev ter make yer?"

[Pg 213]

"Why are you so anxious to have me out of the way?" asked Ned. "What sort of nefarious business are you in?"

"Ain't in no 'farious business," bellowed the captain. "I'm an honest man, I am. But I'm on secret business,—business of the navy, ef you must know. Business fer the Blue fleet, as they calls it, ef you must know. Now will you go below?"

"Very well, if I must, I must," muttered Ned, with feigned reluctance, for at that instant he would not have left Captain Briggs' shabby little schooner for a king's ransom.

"Business for the Blue fleet." Could it be that Fate, by ways devious for even that uncertain goddess, had led his feet into the arcanum of the Blue fleet's secrets?

As Ned descended the cabin stairs into the malodorous little cabin, he determined to find out before he was many hours older the exact meaning of Captain Briggs' remark.