Dave Porter in the South Seas or, The Strange Cruise of the Stormy Petrel

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

THE BOYS OF OAK HALL

"Hello, Dave; where are you bound?"

"For the river, Phil. I am going out for a row. Want to come along?"

"That suits me," answered Phil Lawrence, throwing down the astronomy he had been studying. "But I can't stay out late," he added, reaching for his cap. "Got two examples in algebra to do. Have you finished up?"

"Yes," answered Dave Porter. "They are not so hard."

"And your Latin?"

"That's done, too."

Phil Lawrence eyed the boy before him admiringly. "Dave, I don't see how you manage it. You're always on deck for fun, and yet you scarcely miss a lesson. Let me into the secret, won't you?"

"That's right, Dave; pull the cover off clean and clear," came from a youth who had just entered the school dormitory. "If I can get lessons without studying——"

"Oh, Roger, you know better than that," burst out Dave Porter, with a smile. "Of course I have to study—just the same as anybody. But when I study, I study, and when I play, I play. I've found out that it doesn't pay to mix the two up—it is best to buckle your mind down to the thing on hand and to nothing else."

"That's the talk," came from a boy resting on one of the beds. "It puts me in mind of a story I once heard about a fellow who fell from the roof of a house to the ground——"

"There goes Shadow again!" cried Roger Morr. "Shadow, will you ever get done telling chestnuts?"

"This isn't a chestnut, and I haven't told it over twice in my life. The man fell to the ground past an open window. As he was going down, he grabbed another man at the window by the hair. The hair—it was a wig—came off. 'Say,' yells the man at the window. 'Leave me alone. If you want to fall, 'tend to business, and fall!'" And a smile passed around among the assembled schoolboys.

"Perhaps Roger would like to come along," continued Dave. "I was going out for a row, and Phil said he would go, too," he explained.

"That suits me," answered Roger Morr. "It will give us an appetite for supper."

"What about you, Shadow?" and Dave turned to the youth on the bed.

Maurice Hamilton shook his head slightly. "Not to-day. I am going to take a nap, if I can get it. Remember, I was up half the night."

"So he was," affirmed Phil Lawrence. "But he hasn't said what it was about."

"Not much," growled the boy called Shadow. He was very tall and very thin, hence the nickname. Turning over, he pretended to go to sleep.

"There is something wrong about Shadow," said Dave as he and his two companions left the school building and hurried for the river at the back of the grounds. "He has not been himself at all to-day."

"I think he has had something to do with that bully, Gus Plum," said Phil. "I saw them together two days ago, and both were talking earnestly. I don't know exactly what it was about. But I know Shadow has been very much disturbed ever since."

"Well, the best he can do is to leave Plum alone," returned Dave, decidedly. "I can tell you, fellows, that chap is not to be trusted; you know that as well as I do."

"Of course we know it," said Roger Morr....