Tom Slade on Overlook Mountain

Hervey Wanders Into the Story and Out Again

Poor Tom; of all the ridiculous errands to be on, that one of tramping down to Catskill Landing was the most ridiculous. Because Tom was a poor young fellow, and was no more able to buy the boat than Hervey Willetts (one of the young scouts of camp) was able to give an accurate and rational account of it.

It was really Hervey who started this whole thing, Hervey Willetts who started so many things. In his purposeless wanderings he had roamed to Catskill Landing one day and (as usual) had not returned for dinner.

“Why didn’t you come back for dinner?” asked the young assistant, rather annoyed.

“Slady, Catskill Landing is thirteen miles and you can’t hear the dinner horn that far. Besides, thirteen is an unlucky number.”

“We’ll have to get a radio if we want you to come home for dinner,” said Tom. “We’ll have to broadcast the dinner call.”

“Slady, don’t talk about radios, don’t mention the name; you ought to see the radio on that boat—the big cabin cruiser that’s for sale. I’d like to buy that boat, Slady, it’s a pipperino!” Probably he would have bought it and sailed away to South Africa in it quite alone, but for one trifling reason. The price of the boat was two thousand dollars, and Hervey had exactly two nickels.

“A pretty big pipperino, hey?” asked Tom.

“Oh, about seventy-five feet—well, maybe fifty, say. If I had that boat, Slady, I’d beat it for Japan and I’d come back by way of the Suez Canal. Two thousand bucks, that’s cheap for that boat, Slady. If I had two thousand bucks I’d buy that boat in a minute.

“You would, huh?”

“You tell ’em I would. It’s got everything in it, Slady, bunks, cook stove, compass, everything. Why I’d give a couple of hundred bucks just for that compass alone, I would.”

It is hard to say why Hervey would have paid such a price for a compass since he never cared in which direction he went and when you are climbing a tree or a telegraph pole, you need no compass to inform you that you are going up.

“Why, that rich man must want to give it away, Slady,” Hervey continued. “Two thousand bucks! Why it’s worth about, oh about ten or fifteen thousand anyway—maybe twenty. It’s a regular ocean liner. There’s a ladder up the side and everything; you just grab it and—”

“Oh, you swam out to it?” Tom asked. “It’s anchored off shore?”

“You can just kindly mention that I did. I swam out to it and all around it and everywhere. There’s a no trespassing sign; you just grab hold of that and pull yourself right up, easy as pie.”

“I see.”

“Maybe a lot of us could club together and buy it, hey?” said Hervey.

Tom smiled. If the scouts at Temple Camp could have scared up twenty dollars among them they would have been lucky. “We might club together and buy the anchor,” Tom laughed.

“Don’t miss it, Slady; go down and look it over. You can crawl right in through one of the port-holes—I did; it’s a cinch. Any dinner left?”

“You’d better go and ask Chocolate Drop,” said Tom.

With a stick which he always carried, Hervey removed his outlandish rimless hat, cut full of holes, and revolving it upon the end of the stick sauntered up toward the cooking shack singing,

“Oh the life of a scout is good, so good; He always does just what he should, I would. Big trees he can climb, And he’s always on time; The life of a scout is good.”

The Boat

It was odd how the memorable series of adventures which befell Tom was thus started by that blithesome visitor at camp, whom they called the wandering minstrel. He set fire to Tom’s imagination in the same careless fashion that characterized all his artless, irresponsible acts, and ambled away again leaving poor Tom to his fate.

Tom went down to Catskill Landing to look at the boat. He did not tell any one he was going because he realized the absurdity of a young camp assistant with thirty dollars a week going to inspect a boat which was for sale for two thousand dollars. He just wanted to look at it; a cat can look at a king.

He did not go about his inspection in Hervey’s original way; he secured permission from the man in whose care the boat had been left, and this man rowed him out to the boat which lay at anchor a hundred feet or so from shore.

Tom felt rather embarrassed at finding that some one representing the owner was to accompany him, and he had an unpleasant feeling that the man knew he was not a likely customer.

“They thinking of buying a boat for the camp?” the caretaker asked as they rowed out.

“Oh, I just thought I’d look her over,” said Tom, non-committally. “It’s a bargain, I hear.”

“These rich fellers get tired of their toys, you know,” said the man. “I suppose if that boat was down New York and he advertised her, she’d be snapped up quick enough.”

“Who is the owner?” Tom asked.

“Homer, his name is; folks got a big place near Greendale. Oak Lodge they call it. He’s in Europe now.”

Tom climbed up on the deck of the boat with more reverence for it than ever Hervey Willetts had shown.

It was a cabin cruiser, one of those palatial motor-boats which seem all the more luxurious and attractive for being cosy and small. It had a quaint name, Goodfellow, which somehow seemed appropriate to its combined qualities of snug comfort and sporty trimness. It looked a wide awake, companionable boat.