CHAPTER V
UNCLE ARAD HAS RECOURSE TO LEGAL FORCE
IN the several oceans of our great globe there are many floating wrecks, abandoned for various causes by their crews, which may float on and on, without rudder or sail, for months, and even years. Especially is this true of the North Atlantic Ocean, where, during the past five years, nearly a thousand “derelicts,” as these floating wrecks are called, were reported.
The Hydrographic Office at Washington prints a monthly chart on which all the derelicts reported by incoming vessels are plainly marked, even their position in the water being designated by a little picture of the wreck.
By this method of “keeping run” of the wrecks, it has been found that some float thousands of miles before they finally reach their ultimate port—Davy Jones’ locker.
The average life of these water logged hulks is, however, but thirty days; otherwise the danger from collision with them would be enormous and the loss of life great. Many of those vessels which have left port within the past few years and never again been heard from, were doubtless victims of collisions with some of these derelicts.
Several more or less severe accidents have been caused by them, and so numerous have they become that, within the past few months, several vessels belonging to our navy have gone “derelict cruising”—blowing up and sinking the most dangerous wrecks afloat in the North Atlantic.
At the time of the Silver Swan’s reported loss, however, it was everybody’s business to destroy the vessels, and therefore nobody’s. At any time, however, the hull of the brig, reported by the steamship Montevideo as floating off Cuba, might be run into and sunk by some other vessel, such collisions being not at all uncommon.
Brandon Tarr realized that there was but a small chance of the Silver Swan being recovered, owing to these circumstances; yet he would not have been a Tarr had he not been willing to take the chance and do all he could to secure what he was quite convinced was a valuable treasure.
Derelicts had been recovered and towed into port for their salvage alone, and the Silver Swan was, he knew, richly laden. It might also be possible to repair the hull of the brig, for she was a well built craft, and if she had withstood the shock of being ground on the reef so well, she might even yet be made to serve for several years.
These thoughts flitted through the mind of the boy as he slowly crossed the wet fields toward the farm house.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning—Uncle Arad or no Uncle Arad,” he decided. “It won’t do to leave the old fellow alone, so I’ll step down after dinner and speak to Mrs. Hemingway about coming up here. He will have to have her any way within a few days, so it won’t much matter.”
He didn’t really know how to broach the subject to the old man, for he felt assured that his great uncle would raise manifold objections to his departure. He had lived at the farm four years now and Uncle Arad had come to depend on him in many ways.
They had eaten dinner—a most miserable meal—and Don was washing the dishes before he spoke.
“Uncle Arad,” he said, trying to talk in a most matter of fact way, “now that father is—is gone and I have nothing to look forward to, I believe I’ll strike out for myself. I’m past sixteen and big enough and old enough to look out for myself. I think I shall get along faster by being out in the world and brushing against folks, and I reckon I’ll go to New York.”
Uncle Arad fairly wilted into his seat, and stared at Don in utter surprise.
“Go to New York?” he gasped.
“That’s what I said.”
“Go to New York—jest when yer gittin’ of some account ter me?”
“Oh, I’ve been of some account to you for some time, and any way father always paid my board before last fall, you know,” said Don cheerfully.
Uncle Arad snorted angrily, and his eyes began to flash fire.
“Paid your board!” he exclaimed. “I dunno what put that inter your head.”
“Father put it there, that’s who,” declared Don hotly.
“I never give him no receipts for board money,” cried the old man. “You can’t show a one!”
“I don’t suppose you did,” returned Don, with scorn. “You never give receipts for anything if you can help it. If you’d given receipts to your own brother as you ought, you wouldn’t be in possession of this farm now.”
“I wouldn’t, hey?” cried the old man, goaded to desperation by this remark, which he knew only too well to be true. “You little upstart you! Ye’ll go ter New York, whether ’r no, will ye?”
He arose in his wrath and shook his bony fist in Don’s face. The youth looked down upon him scornfully, for the man would have been no match for him at all.
“Now don’t have a fit,” he said calmly. “I’m going to step ’round to Mrs. Hemingway’s after dinner, and get her to come up here and look after you. You’ll need her any way, in a few days.”
“It won’t matter! it won’t matter!” shrieked Uncle Arad, exasperated by the boy’s coolness. “It won’t matter, I s’pose, when I hev ter pay three dollars—three dollars, mind ye—fur a hull week’s extry work!”
He fairly stamped about the room in his fury.
“It don’t matter, eh, when I’ll have ter hire a man ter take your place? Be you crazy, Brandon Tarr?”
“Guess not,” responded Don, wiping the last dish and hanging up the towel to dry. “You must think me crazy, however. Do you s’pose I’d stayed here this season without wages?”
“Wages!” again shrieked the old man, to whom the thought of paying out a penny was positive pain, “Wages! an’ you a beggar—yes, sir, a beggar!—’pendent upon my bounty, as it were.”
Don smiled at this.
“I’m a pretty sturdy beggar, as they used to call ’em in the old days,” he said.
“Wal, any way, I’m your guardeen, an’ I’ll see if you’re goin’ jest when you like.”
Don laughed outright now.
“My guardian!” he responded. “I’d like to know why I should have any guardian. I’ve no property, goodness knows. And as you said about the board receipts, where are your papers giving you any legal control over me?”
The old man was utterly taken aback at this and sat down again, glowering at his nephew angrily, while the latter put on his hat and coat and departed on his errand to Mrs. Hemingway’s.
But Arad Tarr was not the man to see either money or its equivalent slipping his grasp without strenuous efforts to retain it. His nephew represented to him just so much hard cash saved, for if Brandon went away Uncle Arad realized that the hiring of an extra hand would be an absolute necessity.
Therefore, the boy had not been gone long before the old man decided on a line of action. He struggled into his own coat, locked up the house, and harnessed a horse to a dilapidated light wagon. He was too careful of his good vehicles to take anything but this out on such a nasty day.
“That boy is a-gettin’ too upstartish!” he declared, climbing into the wagon and chirruping to the horse. “He’s jest like Anson an’ Horace. There was no livin’ with them, an’ now he’s got this fool notion inter his head erbout goin’ away!
“But I’ll git that aout o’ him,” he added, with emphasis. “If I hain’t got no legal right ter his services, I will have, now I tell ye! Arter all I’ve done fur him an’ fur his shif’less, no ’count pa, I ain’t goin’ ter let go o’ him till he comes of age—mos’ five years yet.”
He shook his head slowly at that thought. Five years of Brandon’s services on the farm would be worth all of twenty-five hundred dollars!
He clucked to the horse and drove on the faster at that. Suppose the boy should take it into his head to go before he obtained the papers which he was sure he could have made out? The idea was quite agonizing.
“I reckon Squire Holt kin fix it up for me in short order,” he muttered, as he urged his horse into a faster trot. “I’ll show that boy ’t he ain’t his own master, by no means!”