TIMID COUSIN VIC.

BY WILLIAM DRYSDALE.

To tell the story of Will Hall's trip to the tropics may seem like telling dangerous secrets and getting people into trouble. But there is this to be considered about it: If the Spaniards catch Will's father, they will shoot him, anyhow; so it can do no harm to admit that Henry Hall, who is Will's father, and David Hall, who is Will's uncle, are engaged in the perilous business of carrying patriots across from the Florida Keys to the Cuban coast.

Will has nothing whatever to do with this business, for he is a school-boy in New York, storing his mind with regular and irregular verbs, and a vast amount of information about football and '96 pneumatic tires. So when his father took him down in the schooner to the Florida Keys to visit Uncle David, Will had no idea that ten days after leaving New York he would be crawling through a Cuban thicket, dodging Spanish soldiers.

Matacumbia Key, at the very tip of Florida, where Uncle David lives with his daughter Vic, is a long way from New York, and Will had never seen either of them, and, of course, had never seen their house on the beach, with the whole Florida Strait for a front yard, and nothing between their shady piazza and the Cuban coast but eighty miles of salt water.

"There ought to be some sport down there," he told the boys before he started. "Plenty of boating and fishing, you know, and cocoanut-trees, with monkeys in them, I suppose, and maybe some sharks to kill. Lonesome, though. You see, there ain't many people, and my cousin Vic is only fourteen. A little country girl of fourteen can't be much company for a New York chap nearly sixteen."

There was sport in plenty, but not exactly the kind that Will expected. The "little country girl" took her cousin in hand in a way that astonished him, and would have made him miserable if the Cuban adventure had not given him a chance to show what he was made of.

At first Vic was shy—painfully shy. She kept her eyes cast down, and only answered "Yes, sir," or "No, sir," when Will spoke to her.

"I think I can bring her out after a while," he said to himself. "Of course she'd be a little timid at the start, 'specially with a fellow from a big place like New York. She's a pretty girl, too."

About that there could be no doubt. Vic was large for her age, and the tan on her round cheeks tried to hide their natural pink, but did not quite succeed. When her work was done (for, being motherless, she was cook and house-keeper), she generally put on her boating-suit of blue flannel, which was as good as a bathing-suit, and it did not interfere when she chose to wade out to her pet sharpie, anchored just off the beach.

The fathers were busy with their schooner, and with the men camped in the bush waiting to be carried over to Cuba, and Will and Vic were left to their own resources.

"Can you shoot?" Vic asked one morning, very timidly, hardly raising her eyes.

"Rather!" Will exclaimed. "I wish I'd brought my gun along."

"I have a rifle," Vic said, and ran into the house and brought the rifle and a box of cartridges.

Will measured off thirty paces, and stood a big cocoanut on top of a stump.

Vic handled the rifle as if she were afraid of it, and took the first shot. The cocoanut did not stir. Then Will fired without hitting. After three or four rounds Will's bullet grazed the side of the nut, and he was duly elated.

"You'll be all right with more practice," he told her. "I've practised a great deal in shooting-galleries."

"I think the mark is too low for me," she answered, with becoming humility. "Pin a bit of paper to that tree beside the stump, about as high as your head."

Will pinned up a scrap of paper half the size of his hand, and they fired several rounds without touching it. Then Vic started toward the house with the rifle.

"Not going to give it up, are you?" he called. But her only answer was "Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five"—she was pacing. When she reached "one hundred," she stopped and turned—one hundred paces from the tiny mark.

"You stand there by the tree," she called, "and see whether I can hit the old thing from here."

Will laughed, and obeyed. Crack! went the rifle.

"Why," he cried, "you've hit it right in the centre! I don't suppose you could do that again in a week!"

"I'll try," Vic answered, and fired again.

"Well, upon my word!" Will shouted. "You've hit it again! What a remarkable accident!"

Vic fired again, and made a third hole in the paper.

That time Will did not say a word. He began to suspect something. Vic fired twice more, and made two more holes. The first hole was right in the centre, and the other four made a neat little circle around it.

"All right, Cousin Vic," Will said, as he handed her the paper; "I owe you one. You're a dead shot with a rifle, and you've been making a beautiful guy of me."

But Vic only laughed, and looked as timid as ever.

Next morning the sky was overcast, and Will suggested a sail in Vic's sixteen-foot sharpie.

"Don't you think it's rather rough?" she asked, looking doubtfully from the sky to the water. "Do you think it would be safe?"

"Safe as a house!" Will answered, decidedly. "You needn't be afraid; I'm an old hand with a boat."

After some hesitation Vic consented, and even determined that she had better sail the boat herself, as she was more used to the rigging.

"All right," Will gallantly said. "If anything happens I can swim enough for both of us."

The water was so much rougher than it looked from shore that Will began to feel uneasy about having a girl at the helm. They were a mile from the house, bobbing up and down on the waves like a cork in a mill-race, when Vic said they had gone far enough, and put the tiller suddenly hard down.

"Look out! Ease her up!" Will shouted; but it was too late. The sharpie went over like a flash, and they were both thrown into the water.

Vic went down instantly, and then came up with her arms waving wildly.

"Help! help!" she cried, and the next instant she disappeared again.

Will was holding on to the slender foremast, but he let go and sprang toward his cousin. When she came up again he seized her.

"Now do as I tell you, or we'll both drown," he said, as calmly as he could. "Don't grab me, but put one hand on my back and let yourself float."

She did as he told her, and he struck out toward the boat, and soon righted it, for Will was an excellent swimmer. Vic seemed limp as a rag, but he put her hands on the gunwale, and told her to hold on there while he baled out the water, and then he climbed in and helped Vic in over the stern.

"Take me home," she muttered, leaning helpless against the side, and Will headed the boat for the beach.

"Oh, Will!" she said, when they were nearly back, "how can I ever thank you for saving my life?"

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed; "that was nothing. You know I told you I am a pretty good swimmer."

"A minute more—" she gasped; then her feelings overcame her, and she buried her face in her hands.

When the boat was anchored, Vic waded ashore, and ran toward the house very spryly for a girl who had been so weak a few minutes before. The two fathers had returned, and were sitting on the piazza, and when Vic ran up the steps, laughing, Will thought it was because she wished to make as light as possible of her danger.

"Now, Mary Victoria Hall," her father said, much to Will's surprise, "you've got to stop that sort of thing. I saw that little caper out in the boat, and I'm not going to have you playing such tricks on your cousin. You must look out for this girl, Will, as she is the worst tease in Florida. There is not a better sailor than she in all the Keys, and nothing could upset her unless she chose. Why, she sails that sharpie fifteen miles to school every day in winter, and she knows every rock and reef. She tipped you over purposely, to give you a ducking."

"Why, Uncle David—" Will interrupted.

"Nothing else," Mr. Hall went on; "and as to drowning, you might as well try to drown a duck. She swam out to the Alligator Light, twenty miles, when she was only twelve years old. She has been making game of you, that's all."

"You see," Vic's father continued, "she is left alone here so much, while I am away sponging and fishing, that I had to teach her to take care of herself. But I don't want her to be playing her pranks on you just because you live in a city and ain't used to girls who are good sailors and good rifle-shots."

Vic looked very meek while her father was talking, but Will saw that she was ready to laugh at any minute. When he went into the house to change his clothes he was almost ready to admit that his trip to the Keys was a dismal failure. That a crack football-player, an expert bicycler, a leader in all the sports in a big school in the greatest city in the country, should be outdone in everything by a little country girl who looked as meek as a lamb, and be the butt of her jokes, was enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Two days after Will's gallant rescue of his cousin from no danger at all, he and Vic were left alone. Their fathers had sailed for Cuba in the schooner, with eighty men and hundreds of cases of ammunition. If all went well, they would be back from Cuba the following night. But if all did not go well? The cousins knew that any slight mishap might bring trouble into both families, and they were unusually quiet.

At nine o'clock in the morning Will went out on the piazza, and the white appearance of the water surprised him. So did the wind, coming in a steady sweep from the northward, cooling the air, and churning the Florida Strait into foam. Vic soon joined him, looking anxiously from water to sky and sky to water, and shook her head.

An hour later he found her pacing the piazza, looking very much troubled. The wind had increased, and the water was wild and furious.

"It is a norther," she said, "and a bad one. I don't see why it had to come to-day."

"It is a fair wind to carry them to Cuba," Will suggested.

"It is just the wind to drive them on the rocks and wreck them," Vic retorted. "They will certainly try to land to-night, and they have only one little boat. That would be nothing among all those men."

She took two or three more turns up and down, and then stopped.

"I am going to cross the straits in my sharpie, Will," she said. "If anything happens to them the sharpie may be of great assistance. It is the best little sea-boat I know of."

"To cross to Cuba, you mean?" Will asked, without showing any great surprise.

"Yes," she answered. "It is only eighty miles, and I can make it before dark. I have made longer voyages than that."

"It will be a nice little sail," Will laughed. "If you happen to meet a Spanish cruiser, you might capture her and bring her home."

He was on his guard for another practical joke, and did not intend to be caught. But Vic walked up to him and seized his arm with a very earnest grip.

"Don't think I am trying to play another trick on you, Will," she said, "for I am not. You don't know what danger this storm puts both our fathers in. I may be able to help them, and I am going to try."

Her earnest manner left no doubt that she meant what she said, and Will became serious.

"I don't know whether a small boat can live in that sea," he said, "but if you start for Cuba, I am going with you."

Vic was not prepared for such an answer as this; but she had known Will only for a few days. Any of his schoolmates could have told her that where there was real danger to be faced he would be at the front. She protested against his going, for she knew the peril of such a trip in so small a boat; but Will was firm as a rock, and even while she urged him to stay behind he waded out to the sharpie and began to make it ready.

"If your father is in danger," he said, "so is mine. You know I am going if you go, so what's the use of talking?"

That eighty-mile sail across the Florida Strait in a raging storm is one of the things that Will cannot be induced to talk much about. It is a sort of nightmare to him. There was not only the physical danger, which was serious enough, but there was the chance that their fathers might land safely, and then blame them severely for undertaking such a voyage.

Vic had put a jug of water and a box of biscuits under the stern seat, and she took the tiller as a matter of course. Will was kept busy baling out the water, which came over the sides in a fury of spray. But Vic knew that that spray was all in their favor. The force of the wind was so great that it kept the sea down by sweeping off the crests of waves, though it made an appalling smother of foam.

If a boy can sit with his heart in his throat for nearly nine hours at a stretch, Will Hall did it that day. In a few hours the spray made crusts of salt upon both their faces, and in the furious gale talking was almost impossible. But through it all Vic kept the little sharpie headed due south, for she knew that the schooner would try to land just to the eastward of Cardenas.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, with the mountains of Cuba looming up bold before them, they passed a broken mast floating on the water, weighted with torn and knotted rigging. They could not go near enough to make sure whether it was part of the schooner or not. But it looked serious.

Two hours later they were in behind the reefs, and then the doubt was settled. All around them, in the comparatively smooth water, floated wreckage from some vessel that had gone to pieces, and the fragments of white-painted planks told the melancholy story.

"We must lie alongshore till dark," Will declared, "and then make a search, for they may be in hiding. I still have hopes that they may have escaped from the schooner. Then the next thing will be to escape from the Spaniards, and there we can help them with the sharpie."

Somehow it was Will who was in command now of the relief expedition. On the water Vic was confident of herself; but when the danger was from the Spanish coast-guard, she looked naturally to Will for directions.

About eight o'clock the darkness came rapidly and they started inland to search for tidings, leaving the sharpie hidden among the bushes on the shore of a little inlet. It was a desolate part of the coast, and so far they had not seen a living person. Will picked up a stout piece of driftwood for a club.

"If there is a house anywhere in the neighborhood, we must find it," he said. "The people will know whether any one was saved from the wreck. They will most likely be Cubans, and therefore friends. Keep your eyes and ears open, Vic, for we must dodge the Spaniards."

Hardly anything could have been more hopeless than such a search made by a boy and girl who knew nothing of the country, nothing of the language, but groped their way in pitch darkness through a dense forest. But they were Americans, and both knew that the sharpie might mean escape from death for their fathers, if their fathers were not already drowned. Presently they discovered a path and followed it, tripping over roots and rocks, stumbling, scratching their faces with thorns.

"Oh, Will!" Vic exclaimed, after a collision with a sharp cactus. "I can't go any further. I don't know what to do!" And she began to cry.

"Don't think of yourself at all, Vic," Will urged. "I can take care of you. Maybe your father is hiding in these very woods, and our boat may save him. We can't go back and desert them. We must push on and find somebody, even if it is a Spanish soldier. Hist!"

The prospect of finding a Spanish soldier was nearer than he thought, for the words were hardly out of his mouth before they heard the sound of men tramping through the bushes.

As they stood and listened the sounds grew nearer—sounds of many feet, and words of command in Spanish.

"Come away from the path!" Will whispered, and seizing Vic's arm, he drew her into the underbrush, and on hands and knees they crawled away from the danger.

In a moment more the soldiers passed; thousands of them, they thought, by the sound, but in reality something less than a hundred. When Will and his cousin resumed their feet they could not find the path. To add to their troubles, they were lost in the Cuban forest.

How long they struggled through the sharp bushes they did not know till afterward; but when they stopped it was because a stone wall stood in their way—the stone wall of a small cabin. Will felt his way along the wall till he found the door, but it was shut and locked. He rapped, but there was no response.

"I am afraid it is deserted," he said; "but maybe we can get in to wait for daylight."

Again he rapped at the door, and softly called: "Hello! Let us in! We are Americans and friends."

Suddenly the door opened, and a familiar voice answered. "Will Hall, how do you come to be here?"

"What's that?" said another voice inside; and Will and Vic needed no further telling that their fathers were found.

In another minute they were inside the dark cabin, and the door was barred.

"Where is your boat?" both the men asked, almost in the same breath.

"Down by the shore," Will answered, "hidden in the bushes."

"Then you have pulled us out of a tough scrape," said Vic's father. "Twice we have narrowly escaped capture, and we expected to be taken before daylight."

After the wreck of the schooner they and all the men had reached shore safely, and the men had gone on into the mountains. But the small boat was stove, and the two Americans were in a trap. They had found the cabin, and hidden there from the Spanish guard.

Vic leaned heavily upon her father when they started for the boat; and before they reached the shore he and Will were carrying her, for her strength was gone.

"No wonder she is used up," said Will, as the boat beat out to the eastward, tacking tediously toward the American coast; "no wonder, after all she has been through. But how she kept up till we found you! She is the bravest girl in Florida, Uncle David. Our coming after you was all her doing."

Whatever the others said about Will's share in the rescue, it was enough to warrant him in saying, as he does when the boys begin to talk about the Cuban war: "Yes, I've had a little hand in that thing myself. So has my Cousin Vic."