Chapter 5 ALL ABOARD

Blue waves lapped idly against the sides of a little, white palace that had risen out of the waves of the bay overnight. One side lay close along a quiet shore. Overhead the leaves of a willow tree stirred in the wind, and the birds twittered in its branches. The rosy flush was just fading out of the sky. Dawn had come only a short time before, and the wind, the waves and the birds were the only things stirring so early in the morning. There was not a sound or a movement aboard the odd vessel that was moored to the shore.

Along the shore sped the slender figure of a girl. It was a part of the morning. Her blue frock was the color of the sky and her auburn hair had been touched by the sun, and on her radiant face lay the glory of youth.

Of course, it was Madge! She did not stop when she first spied her houseboat between the branches of the willow tree. She gave a little gasp, and ran on faster than ever. A moment later she came alongside her boat, which was only about three feet from the shore. Madge had not practised running and jumping in the gymnasium at school and on the old farm in Virginia for nothing. She gave one flying leap and landed on the deck of her houseboat. Then she stood perfectly still, a little song of gratitude welling from the depth of her happy heart.

"Perhaps it was not fair in me to have run away from Eleanor," she mused. "But then Nellie is such a sleepy-head, she never would have wished to get up so early. And I did want to see the boat alone, just for a moment. I am not going to look into the cabin, though. I am going to wait for the other girls--"

A stone went whizzing by Madge's ear at this moment, causing her soliloquy to come to an abrupt end.

She glanced toward the shore. A small boy stood grinning at her, with his hands tucked into a pair of trousers so much too long for him they had to be turned up from the ankles to the knees.

"Hello," he remarked cheerfully, eyeing Madge owlishly.

"Hello yourself," returned Madge. "Do you usually begin the day by throwing stones at peaceful strangers?"

"Yes'm," the small boy responded calmly. "Where'd you and that come from?"

"I came from my home in Virginia, and if by 'that' you mean my boat, it is a 'Ship of Dreams' and was towed up here from Baltimore yesterday afternoon. What do you think of it?"

"She isn't a dream, she's a peach," was the prompt retort.

"I'm glad you like her," smiled Madge in a winning fashion that caused the lad to smile in return. "Why are you up so early in the morning?"

"Driving home the cows," was the laconic answer.

"I don't see any cows," teased Madge. "Wait a minute. I have something for you to do. Would you like to earn a quarter? If you would, then come back here about nine o'clock. We are going to load our boat with some furniture and provisions, and we would like to have you help us."

"All right, I'll be here," promised the boy, and ran off into the bushes with a derisive grin which Madge did not see.

A few moments later Madge went back to Eleanor to have breakfast at the little boarding house where she and her cousin had spent the night. Miss Jones, Lillian and Phil had not yet arrived, but they were expected by the early train that came from Baltimore. The little village from which they intended to go aboard their houseboat was only about half an hour's ride from the city, and was situated on one of the quiet inlets of the bay.

Fifteen minutes before the train was due Eleanor and Madge were impatiently waiting at the station. The newcomers were so surrounded by bags, suit cases and mysterious packages that it took all the men about the depot to land them safely on the platform. Madge gave the order to the expressman to bring all their luggage to the houseboat landing near the willow tree. Then the party started out to find the boat, without losing a minute by the way.

Madge slipped her arm through that of Miss Jones and walked beside her dutifully, though she secretly longed to be with her chums. Lillian, Phil and Eleanor joined hands and ran ahead, without being in the least degree affected by the idea that they were no longer children. Madge, however, was the only one who knew the way. She hurried Miss Jones along until that young woman was almost out of breath. When they were within a short distance of the place where she had found her boat waiting for her in the early morning, she could bear it no longer. With a murmured excuse she broke away from Miss Jones and started on a run toward the willow tree. Her three chums were close behind her. The branches of the willow tree seemed more impenetrable in the bright sunlight. It was not so easy to see through them. Madge ran straight past the tree, then uttered a shrill cry. She stopped short, her cheeks turning first red, then white.

"What is it?" cried Phil, springing to her friend's side.

Madge pointed dumbly toward the water.

"Tell us!" said Eleanor, running up to Madge and lightly grasping her arm.

"Our houseboat is gone!" gasped Madge. "It was right there, tied to that very post along the shore early this morning! The man who brought it down from Baltimore left a note for me describing the landing place. He said he had to go back to Baltimore, but that he would come here this afternoon to tow us. Now the boat has gone! O, girls, what shall we do?"

The girls stared at the water in silence. Disappointment rendered them speechless for the moment. "Let us look up and down the shore," suggested Phil comfortingly. "I suppose it is just barely possible that the rope broke away from the stake, and the boat has floated off somewhere."

The four girls ran up and down the bank, straining their eyes in anxious glances out over the wide stretch of water. There was no houseboat in sight. It had vanished as completely as though it had really been a "Ship of Dreams."

"Perhaps you have made a mistake in the place, Madge," was the chaperon's first remark as she joined the excited party.

Madge compressed her red lips. Miss Jones was so provoking. She was utterly without tact. But now that she was to be one of the party it would be wrong to say a single impolite thing to their chaperon the whole six weeks of their holiday, no matter how provoking or tactless she might he. Madge sighed impatiently, then turned to the teacher.

"No, I am not mistaken, Miss Jones. I can't be. You see, I came to this very spot this morning and went aboard our boat. Then I have the man's description of the landing place. I think we had better go back to the village and see if we can get some men who know the shore along here to come to help us look out for our boat. There is no use in having our furniture brought here if we haven't any houseboat," finished Madge, her voice trembling.

"Come along, then; I will go back with you," volunteered Phil. "Miss Jones, you sit under the tree. Lillian, you and Nellie keep a sharp look-out. If any one comes along in a boat, ask him about ours."

"Do you think our boat has gone forever, Phil?" asked Madge dejectedly as the two companions walked wearily back over the road they had traveled so gayly a short time before.

"I don't know," replied Phil. "I should say it depended entirely upon who had taken the trouble to spirit it away."

While the two girls stood gazing moodily out over the bay a hard, green apple landed with a thump on top of Madge's uncovered head. Madge and Phil looked up simultaneously. There in a gnarled old apple tree directly above them appeared the grinning face of the small boy whose acquaintance Madge had made earlier in the morning.

"Lost your boat, ain't you?" he asked cheerfully.

Madge nodded and walked on. She was not anxious to renew conversation with the mischievous youngster.

Phil, however, was seized with an inspiration. "Have you been about this place very long?" she inquired casually.

"Yep," the boy returned.

"Then, perhaps, you know what has become of our boat," suggested Phil.

"Yep," answered the voice from the tree, "I know all about it."

"Then tell us this minute what has become of it!" ordered Madge. "I knew the moment I saw you that you were the very imp of mischief. Tell us where our boat is at once."

"I won't tell," the urchin spoke firmly.

"You shall," declared Madge, her eyes flashing.

"I'd like to see you make me tell," dared the boy. "A girl can't climb a tree." The grin on his impish face widened.

"I'll show you that a girl can climb a tree, young man," exclaimed Madge hotly, making her way toward the tree. "I have climbed a good many more trees than you have ever climbed in your life."

"Listen to me, Madge," admonished Phil, laughing at her friend, "you can't have a fight with a small boy in the top of a tree or shake him out of it. Don't allow him to tease you. Let's go on into the village and get a policeman. Then, if the boy really knows anything about the disappearance of our houseboat, the policeman will make him tell us." Phil tried to make her voice sound as threatening as possible when she mentioned the word "policeman."

"I won't be here when you git back," was the imp's cheerful response.

Madge and Phil paid no further heed to him. They went on toward the town. A few yards farther on they heard the patter of bare feet. "Can't you wait a minute?" a voice pleaded. "I was only teasing you. If you promise you won't give me away, I'll tell you what became of your old boat. My pa took it."

"Your pa?" cried Madge in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"When I told Pa I'd seen a new-fangled kind of a boat hitched to our post, where we most generally ties up our own boat, he said you hadn't no right to be there. So he just hitched up our mule and he come down here and untied your boat and dragged it up shore. I run after him until I got too tired. Then I come back here to tell you," ended the boy.

"Where is your father?" Phil asked quietly. Madge's eyes were flashing dangerously, her temper was rising.

"He's cutting hay," the boy returned. "I'll show you the field and then I'll run."

Lillian and Eleanor had now joined the two girls to find out what was delaying them. Miss Jones still waited, disconsolate, under the willow tree. The four girls started out behind the one small boy, who answered to the name of Bill Jenkins, Jr. It was evident that Bill Jenkins, Sr., was the name of the boat-thief.

"What shall we say and do when we find the man?" asked Eleanor anxiously. "I suppose we had no right to tie our boat up at his landing place without asking permission."

Madge shook her head angrily. "Right or no right, I shall certainly tell him my opinion of him," she said tensely.

"You must not make the man angry, Madge," argued gentle Eleanor, who knew Madge's fiery, temper and stood in awe of it. "Perhaps, when he sees we are girls, he will be sorry he took our boat away and will bring it back for us."

"Let us go and see him at once," was Madge's sole response.

After all, it was Eleanor's gentleness that won the day! She told the farmer, whom they found in the hay field, the whole story of the houseboat, and how they hoped to spend their holiday aboard it.

"I declare, I'm real sorry I moved your houseboat," he apologized. "If I'd 'a' known the pretty toy boat belonged to a parcel of young girls like you, I'd never have laid hands on it. You kin stay along my shore all summer if you like. But no one asked my permission to tie the boat to my post. And soon as I seen it, I just thought the boat belonged to some rich society folks who thought they owned the airth. I hid the boat up the bay a piece. But don't you fret. I'll go git it and tote it back in no time."

"I am so sorry," explained Madge prettily, ashamed of her bad temper and how near she had come to displaying it. "I thought, of course, the engineer who towed our boat out here from Baltimore had asked your permission before he made a landing. I suppose he was in such a hurry to get back to the city that he neglected it."

While the girls and their chaperon waited for the return of their houseboat they ate an early luncheon out of the hampers that Phil and Lillian had brought from their homes to provision the travelers for the day.

The houseboat finally did appear, much as the girls had pictured her. She was painted white, with a line of green showing just above the water. The four rooms in the cabin, which was set well toward the stern, opened into each other, and each room had a small door and window facing on the deck. The two bedrooms had six berths set along the walls. One room was intended for the kitchen and the fourth, which was the largest, was to serve as the dining room, sitting room, work and play room for the houseboat party on rainy days, when it was impossible for them to be out on deck.

While the men were unloading the barrels and boxes on the boat the girls ran in and out the doors of their cabin rooms like the figures in a pantomime, bumping into each other and stumbling over things. Miss Jones at last sent Eleanor and Lillian to the kitchen to drive nails along the wall and to hang up their limited display of kitchen utensils, while Phil and Madge helped with the unpacking. There was one steamer chair, bought in honor of the chaperon, and a great many sofa cushions, borrowed from their rooms at school, to be used as deck furniture. A barrel of apples, a barrel of potatoes and two Virginia hams were donations from the farm in Virginia. Mrs. Seldon, Lillian's mother, had also sent a store of pickles and preserves.

Phil, too, had brought a big box from home, while Madge's own purchases for the houseboat included a small table, five chairs, besides the necessary china and some of the bedding. The rest of the outfit the girls managed to secure from their own homes.

Miss Jones, Phil and Madge were industriously turning the berths into beds when a sharp scream from Lillian, who was working in the kitchen, filled them with terror. Miss Jones arrived first at the kitchen door, with her heart in her mouth. Had some horrible disaster overtaken them, just as they were about to start on their adventures? There stood the two girls, Lillian and Eleanor, their faces, instead of showing fright, apparently shining with delight. The men who had been setting up the little stove, which they had bought for a trifling sum after all, had disappeared. The girls were now in full possession of their domain.

"What is it, children? What has happened?" implored Miss Jones, with a white, scared face. Lillian pointed ahead of her, but only the kitchen stove was to be seen. Madge and Phil, who had followed close behind their chaperon, were equally mystified.

But hark! What was the noise they heard all at once? A gentle crackling, a roar, a burst of flame, and a puff of smoke up through the long stove pipe! The pipe went through a hole cut in the side of the wall. "A fire, a fire!" exclaimed Lillian joyously, wondering why the others looked so startled.

There was really a fire burning in the stove of the houseboat kitchen! And as a fire is a first sign to the pioneer that he is at last at home, so the little company felt themselves to be the original girl pioneers in houseboat adventures, and felt the same thrill of peace and pleasure.

Madge seized the shining new tea-kettle and filled it with water from the big bucket that rested on a shelf just outside the kitchen door.

"Madge, put the kettle on,

Madge, put the kettle on,

We'll all take tea,"

She sang in a sweet, high, rapturous voice.

Toot, toot, toot! a motor boat whistle sounded out on the water. The four girls rushed on deck to call a greeting to the engineer who was to tow their houseboat down the bay, until it found an anchorage in a cove in the bay near a stream of clear water.

Four weary but happy girls sat out on deck on cushions as the engineer made fast to their boat preparatory to starting. The chaperon was installed in the solitary grandeur of their one steamer chair.

There was a heavy tug at the great rope that bound the houseboat to the little motor tug. The motor boat moved out into the bay, and with almost no perceptible motion and no noise, except the gentle ripple of the water purling against the sides of the craft, the houseboat followed it. The longed-for vacation on the water had begun.