The blue pearl

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Argonauts 3

II The Mile Run 30

CHAPTER I F IFTY thousand dollars!” said Big Jim Donegan

“Not for one pearl!” exclaimed Will

Bright.

“For a blue pearl,” corrected the lumber-king. “Bring me one as big as the pink pearl you found last summer and I ’ll pay that for it cash down. But what ’s the use of talkin’,” he went on morosely, “there ain’t such a thing. Nobody ever saw a big blue pearl.”

“I have,” quietly asserted a slim, swarthy boy who during the whole evening had never been more than a foot away from Will.

Big Jim opened his mouth to roar as he usually did whenever any one differed with him — and then shut it again. He had found that it did not pay to contradict Joe Couteau, that boy with the blood of a long line of sure, silent Indian chiefs in his veins.

It was some two years after Will and Joe had come back from their great adventure already chronicled in the “Boy Scouts in the Wilderness.” Without food, fire or clothing they had spent thirty days in the forest; fought for their lives with savage beasts and still more savage men; found a great pink pearl ; broken up a band of moonshiners; and last and best of all had won for their Boy Scout troop a cabin and ten acres of timber-land from Mr. Donegan. Since that time old Jim Donegan, the lumber-king of America, had become a firm friend of the Boy Scouts of Cornwall. Especially did he admire Will and Joe who had proved to him that he was wrong in his estimate of the Boy Scouts and from whom he had bought the pink pearl — at a price. To-night the whole Troop was being entertained on his estate; and, after a wonderful dinner, the old man had offered to show the boys his collection of precious stones which, except for making money early and often, was his only hobby.

After dinner he had taken them into the library. There upon touching a spring in the wall a great bookcase, filled with books, swung forward showing the side of a vast vault of chrome-steel. Unlocking a whole nest of combination-locks one after another, an enormous door opened silently and the Troop entered a solid steel room. The long cabinet of satin-wood drawers lined with black velvet held the famous collection of the lumber-king. For an hour or more he showed the delighted boys his treasures. As drawer after drawer was opened, the little room seemed filled with the shimmer and sheen of a perfect rainbow of colors. There were the red blink and flare of rubies, with their sullen depths of blood and fire, from Brazil and India and the faraway Caucasus, which, carat for carat, outpriced the best diamonds of Kimberley. Some of them were large enough to have names and stories. Three of them had been part of the loot of pirate-ships and they gleamed vengefully from the black velvet as if all the blood and pain and sin of those cruel crews had been crystallized in their blood-red depths. Another drawer was full of the cool, deep, unfathomable green of emeralds, with a flash in their depths such as one sees in a great wave as it breaks in the sun. Some had been dug by short-lived serfs in the Ural Mountains centuries ago. Others had been part of the treasure which Cortez and Pizarro brought back from the hoards of Montezuma and Inca. Then there was the cold star-shine of great diamonds, water-white like fire and ice, while one yellow diamond shone like golden Jupiter in a midnight sky. Rarest of them all was “Hellheart,” smoky black with a red heart of flame. The tradition was that it had belonged to Blackbeard, the pirate. It was cut in the shape of a great heart by some unknown lapidary. Mr. Donegan told the boys that no diamond-cutter of to-day could cut the wonderful faceted heart which smouldered before them. There were ice-blue sapphires; opals, a tortured blaze of prismatic colors and delicate translunary tints; apple-green jade; turquoises like robins’ eggs; soft, lustrous moonstones, chrysoprase, jacinths, sea-blue aquamarines, masses of lapis-lazuli and malachite; strange shifting cat’s-eyes; pale yellow topazes ; white sapphires which glowed instead of glittering; fiery, scarlet carbuncles; cynophane, with its wire-like line of silver — few of the kings of earth had a collection which could equal t‘he one belonging to Jim Donegan, who had begun life as a lumber- jack.

At last, the old man drew out one drawer larger than all the others, filled with a shimmering, multi-colored mass of pearls, his favorite gem. They glowed as if holding some hidden, soft light within, and were graded and shaded with all the art that the trained eye and skill of the old collector could command. Not one of them there but was worth a small fortune. Some of them were round, gleaming pearls from far-away sharkhaunted seas! Others were the larger irregular treasures torn from the four-hundred-odd kinds of fresh-water mussels that are found in all of our rivers, brooks and lakes. The colors were as different as the shapes. White, black, brown, amber, yellow and green were all there. By itself glowed the lustrous pink pearl that Will had found, that Scar Dawson had stolen and that Joe had rescued. Yet among all that rainbow there was no shade of blue.

“You fellows stay a bit,” Mr. Donegan said gruffly to Will and Joe. “I ’ll send you home in my car later on.”

When the last guest was gone Jim turned to the Indian boy.

“Tell me all about that blue pearl!” he demanded.

Joe looked at him silently for a moment.

“Once when I very little,” he said at last, “I went with my uncle to Goreloi. That mean Island of the Bear,” he explained. “He big medicine-'man and he w^ant to be bigger, so he go to get blue pearl. That very good medicine,” the boy explained.

“You bet it ’s good medicine,” muttered the old collector, “but what did he w4nt to take a kid like you along for anyway?”

“Because,” answered Joe, “he afraid to trust any man with secret. Man might kill him when he sleep and take pearl,” he went on simply. “He take me because I young and his own blood and he need some one to watch while he hunted.”

“Watch for what?” interrupted Mr. Don-egan again.

Joe paused a moment.

“That place not have its name for nothing,” he at last responded. “It guarded.”

“If it were any one else,” broke in Will, “I ’d think this was all a fairy story.”

“I, myself, see,” returned Joe gravely.

“Go on, go on,” urged the lumber-king.

Joe thought for a moment.

“We come to little blue river,” he continued at last. “It run out of great dark cave in mountain. I sit in canoe with paddle ready to push off while chief hunt, hunt, hunt for pearl. At night we camp in little cave and roll big stone in front of entrance. One day, two day, three day he hunt. Then on last day he open big mussel and pull out blue, shiny stone and call very loud. I call too very loud, ’cause just behind him come pad, pad, pad great brown beast. It look like bear but bigger, fiercer than any bear any one

IO ever saw except in a bad dream. Chief reach canoe just in time. I push off and we hardly get away. Then chief show me pearl. It was bright blue and big as pigeon-egg. Then we paddle a day and a night and get back to tribe.”

Old Jim Donegan had leaned forward so as not to miss a syllable of the boy’s story. When Joe had finished the old man looked at him for a long time without speaking.

“I haven’t wife, nor chick nor child,” he said at last slowly. “My collection takes the place of them all. No collection on earth has a pearl like the one you saw. I ’ve got to have one from that same river.”

Joe shook his head.

“No one knows the way to Goreloi,” he said, “except Great Chief. He may be dead. When I left tribe he had gone away on far journey South. Maybe he never come back.”

The old man paced up and down the room and made Joe describe the pearl over and over again.

“Boys,” he said at last, “I want you fellows to go to Goreloi, wherever it is, and bring me

1 1 back a blue pearl. I ’ll finance the trip and if you have any luck, you ’ll have more money in three months than most men get in ten years. School stops next week. You might just as well make money this vacation instead of spending it.”

The boys looked at each other.

“I ’ll bet,” went on the old man, “that you fellows find vacations here kind o’ dull after killin’ bears and carcajous and rattlesnakes and huntin’ pearls and fightin’ moonshiners on your last one! Here ’s a chance to travel and have adventures ! Why, boys,” he went on earnestly, “when you get as old as I am, you ’ll know that the adventurous life is the best life. The boy who is always lookin’ for adventures, who is always ready for quests, who learns to. face dangers and overcome difficulties — that ’s the kind of a boy who amounts to something when he gets to be a man. It ’s the strenuous life that counts. We were n’t put into this world to play safe, but to seek and fight and find and wander, and to never, never quit!”

The old lumber-king stopped and looked at them sadly.

“If I were ten years younger, or if I could only depend on my legs, I ’d go with you myself,” he said at last, “and we ’d have a great old time together, too! Nowadays, though, my adventurin’ has to be done for me and I ’m appointin’ you fellows my proxies. Pick out two more chaps to go with you that you can depend on. Four is the right number for a hard trip. I ’ll grub-stake you and if there is such a thing as a big, blue pearl, you fellows are to find it. What do you say?”

Will looked at Joe.

“Listens kind o’ good to me, old scout,” he exclaimed.

Joe shook his head doubtfully.

“Long, hard trip,” he said briefly. “My uncle say to me danger, sorrow, death always price of blue pearl.”

The lumber-king looked disgusted.

“You ’d better get Joe some nice thick wool socks,” he remarked to Will sarcastically; “his feet ain’t any too warm!”

“You ’ve got another guess coming,” returned Will indignantly. “Joe always ' talks safe and acts dangerous’! If you had been with him in the tight places where I have, you would n’t speak that way.”

“There, there,” soothed the lumber-king. “I take it all back. Any kid that helped break up Scar Dawson’s gang and went through what he did with you certainly has n’t got anything the matter with his circulation,” and he patted Joe’s unresponsive back apologetically. “You boys think it over, and come back here to-morrow night and let me know what you decide.”

All the way home the boys talked it over. At least, Will talked and Joe grunted. They separated without coming to any decision. The next day at school they thought far more of blue pearls and bears and Indians than they did of algebra and history and English. Just before the day’s session was over, Mr. Sanford, the young principal, read to their class a translation from the Greek of the story of the Golden Fleece.

“And they rowed over the wine-dark sea, heroes all beyond the sunset where were gold and pearls and mysterious enchanted islands and strange peoples. For some death awaited, for others riches, for all a fame which still rings across the vanished years.”

As he finished Will turned to find Joe watching him closely. Will raised his eyebrows questioningly. Joe gave a little nod. The Quest of the Blue Pearl had begun.

That night a strange thing happened. They had gone to Mr. Donegan’s house to tell him of their decision. The lumber-king was delighted and just as he was promising that he would persuade Will’s parents to let him go his English butler came in to him, much disturbed.

“There ’s a h’individual at the door who insists upon seeing you, sir,” he announced.

“Did n’t you tell him I was busy, James?” snapped the old man irritably.

“Indeed I did, sir,” returned the perturbed James. “H’all he said was that he was going to get busy himself.”

“He did, eh!” exclaimed Mr. Donegan. “Well, you show him in, and I ’ll attend to his business mighty quick.”

i5

A moment later the door opened and in slipped a little, wiry, gray-bearded man with sharp, black, unflinching eyes.

“Hello, Jim !” he said. “Howdy, Will,” he went on, turning to the boys.

“Well, if it ain’t old Jud Adams!” shouted the lumber-king, seizing one of his hands while Will grabbed the other. “Why did n’t you send your name in?” went on Mr. Donegan, shaking the old man affectionately.

“I did,” said Jud, rescuing himself with some difficulty from the over-enthusiastic greetings of his friends. “I told that chap with a shiny shirt on that I was Jud Adams. He kept a sayin’, ‘You ain’t no judge, come some other time,’ but I said to him, ‘Now is the time.’ ”

Old Jud had spent the best part of his life in the open. It was he who had given Will his first lessons in woodcraft. He had prospected and trapped and hunted all over the North American continent. In his youth he had spent a year with an Eskimo tribe. Later he had been in the Klondike rush, and was one of the first to go over fatal “Dead Horse

1 6

Pass,” and had dug for gold from the Mexican border up to beyond Circle City.

“Jim,” said Jud finally, “I hear that you ’re goin’ to grub-stake a party to do some prospectin’ in the Northwest.”

“How did you hear that?” said Big Jim in astonishment.

“Never mind,” said Jud, “nobody can’t do any treasure-huntin’ in this village without me hearin’ about it. If there ’s any prospectin’ party goin’ out from Cornwall I ’m goin’ to be in it. I ’ve been all over the Northwest from the Aleutian Islands clear up above the Arctic Circle. I know the people, white, red and yellow. I ’ve trapped and hunted and dug for gold and starved and fought and tramped over that whole blame country. There ain’t many things out there that flies or creeps or runs that I have n’t seen. One of these kids I taught all he knows, which ain’t much,” went on Jud without giving Mr. Donegan a chance to speak. “Here I am right in the prime o’ life, pinin’ away for somethin’ to do, and I tell you, Jim Donegan, i7

you ’ll make a bad mistake if you send out any party that doesn’t have me along.”

“Prime o’ life!” scoffed Big Jim. “Why, Jud, you ’re sixty-five if you ’re a day!”

“I ain’t, I ain’t!” shrieked the other. “But what if I be? It ain’t a man’s years that count. It ’s what he can do. There ain’t anything that these kids can do that I can’t do better.”

“Well,” said the lumber-king at last, “it’s up to these boys. If they want you, I sure do!”

“You bet we want you, Jud,” said Will, and Joe nodded approvingly.

Followed a long discussion of ways and means in which Jud’s experience was a great help. As for guns the boys decided to take the new high-powered American army rifles which, using soft-nosed bullets, would stop anything. For himself Jud still clung to an old Sharp’s rifle that with certain modern improvements he had used for over forty years.

So far as Joe could indicate on the map, the island where his tribe lived, as well as that mysterious “Island of the Bear,” were both parts of that fringe of islands which guard the shores of upper Alaska. It was while his uncle was away on his mysterious trip to the South, and while Joe was on a hunting-trip that his mother had been left to starve during one of the great famines which overtake, sooner or later, all Indian tribes. When he returned to find her dead, he had left the tribe and with the help of a near-by mission had managed to cross the continent and join his father’s brother at Cornwall.

The expedition once decided upon, Mr. Donegan organized the details with the decision and dispatch which had made him a multi-millionaire. First he obtained the consent of Mr. and Mrs. Bright that Will might go — no small undertaking.

“If he succeeds, I ’ll back him for the rest of my life — and afterwards,” he assured them.

“That’s a good deal for Big Jim Donegan to say,” Mr. Bright remarked privately to his wife. “I guess, Mother, we ’ll have to let the boy go. Life is just one chance after another, anyway. He ’s as liable to die plowin’ as i9

pearlin’,” went on Mr. Bright, who was something of a philosopher. No such formality was necessary with old Hen Couteau, the charcoal burner, Joe’s uncle.

“I go back to see my people,” Joe announced.

“Yes?” said the old man. “Well, go ahead. You ain’t no use in the charcoal business — but I ’ll be glad to see you back again.”

The same night that he secured the consent of the Brights, Mr. Donegan wired to Port Townsend on Puget Sound, which was the headquarters for a fleet of steamers which he owned on the Pacific. He arranged to have the boys met there by the Bear, a swift seaworthy little steamer whose captain had cruised frequently through the northern waters and who, if anybody, would be likely to know his way to Akotan, the island where Joe’s tribe lived.

Remained only the choice of the last member of the party. Both Will and Joe were agreed that he must be a member of the Cornwall Troop. It was hard to choose. Buck Whittlesey and Billy Darby were leaders of the Owl and Wolf patrols to which Will and Joe belonged respectively. Boots Lockwood and Freddie Perkins were enthusiastic woodsmen and devoted friends of both the boys; and then there was Jack Dorsey, the best shot in the town, and Bob Coulston, an Eagle Scout. It was hard to make a decision. At last Will had a bright idea.

“Next week,” he said, “comes the Interscholastic Games. Every fellow whom we have thought of taking is on the team of the Cornwall High. Let ’s wait until after the Games and pick out the one who shows the most sand and sense at the Games.”

Joe and Jud agreed.

“Better pick out a good runner,” said the old trapper. “If Joe’s tellin’ the truth about that treasure island of his, we ’ll all need to be pretty lively on our legs in order to get back alive!”

For years the Cornwall High School had entered teams in the great Interscholastic Games where twenty schools competed for the championship of the East. So far she had never scored a point. Cornwall was a small town, and, although her boys were a strong and sturdy lot, they had no track and only the crudest kind of training. Then came Mr. Sanford, the new principal. He solved the most complicated problems in algebra and geometry with dazzling ease. It was rumored that at college he used to read Greek aloud for the pleasure of it and translate the morning newspapers into Latin. Probably that was an exaggeration. At any rate he never showed any such alarming symptoms of learning at Cornwall. It was he, however, who had organized and become the scout-master of the Cornwall Boy Scouts. Under him Will and Joe had won the cabin for the Troop two years before, and it was Mr. Sanford who had helped rescue them from the burning cabin in that last never-to-be-forgotten fight with the moonshiners. It was not until school opened again that year, however, that the boys suspected that he knew anything about athletics. One afternoon when school was over, he had strolled down to the cow-pasture which the boys used for an athletic field and watched them training for the fall games. He seemed to be more amused than impressed by their efforts. First he watched the sprinters of which Boots Lockwood was the particular star. Some of them started standing up, others crouched, but one and all hung on their marks when the last signal was given.

“If you ’ll spring from both feet you ’ll find that you get away faster,” he suggested to the line of alleged sprinters. The boys smiled at each other, and went on with their own system. Mr. Sanford flushed a little.

“I ’ll come back in a little while,” he said finally, “and show you that I know what I ’m talking about.”

His suggestions to the broad-jumpers on how to strike the take-off and his advice to the quarter-milers about their first hundred were met with the same indifference. Whereupon the principal left the field. Fifteen minutes later, he was back again carrying a traveling bag. With this he retired to the dressing-house, which had once been a cow-shed. Presently there emerged from this ex-cow-shed a figure in which the boys could scarcely recognize their learned principal. He wore a sleeveless jersey and a pair of running-trunks. On his feet were the first pair of spiked running-shoes that had ever appeared at Cornwall, while in his hands he carried a pair of battered, nicked and grooved running-corks. The whole team gathered around him as he went toward the straight-away stretch of green turf where the sprinters practiced.

“Now,” he said decisively, “pick out your three best men and start us off for the full distance.”

Boots and two other sprinters lined up beside him while one of the other boys proceeded to start them. Mr. Sanford crouched down with the others, but as the starter said “Get set!” his lithe body slowly rose and at the very first breath of the final “Go!” he leaped into his stride and was off a full yard ahead of the rest. Run as they would, not one of the three best sprinters of the Cornwall High School was able to draw up level with him again. Then he went down to the broad-jump pit and with his first jump covered twenty feet, which was six inches farther than anybody else could negotiate. When he finished, he was surrounded by an admiring group.

“You fellows want to remember,” he said, puffing a little, “that even tottering old chaps like me may know something about athletics. If I am still here next year,” he went on as he started back to the dressing-house, “I ’m going to put the Cornwall High School Athletic Team on the map.”

Thereafter he called upon Big Jim Donegan. The old man came in puffing and rumbling and grumbling as usual.

“Well, Mr. Schoolmaster,” he began, “what can I do for you? You ’ve taken a cabin and ten good acres of timber-land away from me for your Troop and made me pay those two kids of yours a frightful price for their pink pearl. Now what is it? Another hold-up, I expect.”

“You have the idea,” said the principal, who had become a fast friend of the old man. “I want you to help me turn out a winning athletic team for Cornwall High School and show these other schools we are the real stuff.”

The lumber-king was all interest at once. He had been born in Cornwall.

“I ’m afraid you can’t do it, Mr. Schoolmaster,” he said sympathetically. “You know a lot about book-learnin’, but I guess you never had time to learn much about runnin’ and jumpin’ and so on.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned the other. “I used to know about athletics and perhaps I have n’t forgotten it all yet. Anyhow, if you will help we can get a winning team.”

“What do you want me to do?” queried old Jim. “I have n’t time to go out and run on the team myself.”

“Well, I ’ll tell you, Mr. Donegan,” said the principal. “I want you first to build the best quarter-mile cinder path that money can buy on that old cow-pasture that you let us use, and a little training house with some showerbaths in place of the old cow-stable. Then I ’ve just heard that old Mike Murphy, the best trainer in the world, wants to come up from Philadelphia and settle in a northern climate for his health. He trained the Yale Team which won the Intercollegiate years

2 6 ago, and the Olympic Team that won the championship of the world, and I can get him up here if you ’ll foot the bill. Then I want you — ”

“Whoa! Whoa!” yelled the old man. “I smoke, you know, and I ’d like you to leave me enough to buy a little tobacco now and then!”

“Well,” returned Mr. Sanford, “I ’ll let you off from anything more except running-suits and spiked shoes.”

Old Jim thought for a moment.

“You ’re on,” he said finally. “Go as far as you like! Only — I expect a winning team.”

Followed great doings for the Cornwall High School. A thin-faced man with reddish hair, cold, blue eyes, and a gray moustache came to town. He had been seen to slap the dignified principal of the high-school violently on the back and call him “Dannie.” An army of workmen changed the cow-pasture into a well-appointed athletic-field. Then one afternoon, after school, the boys were gathered together and Mike, as everybody called him, gave them a little talk. He had the rare gift of arousing his audience. He told the boys what athletics had done for America and how it helped men and boys to keep themselves straight and clean and strong. Then he went on to tell the boys stories of great athletes whom he had known and trained. He told of Owen, the first man who ever went under ten seconds for the hundredyard dash in that great race when Jewett, Owen, Westing and Carey all started in the finals, each with a different start. He told them of old Deerfoot, the Indian, who, running in his moccasins, set a world record of eleven miles and nine hundred and seventy yards for the hour, and of the great professional race of W. G. George and Bill Lang when the mile record went down to 4.1 2^4- “But the best race I ever saw, lads,” he finally ended, “was the day when Yale won the Intercollegiate Cup for keeps after a dozen colleges had been tryin’ for twenty years. The half-mile race was the last event. Fifty men started. When they turned into the home-stretch, at the last lap, there were three men left and you could have covered them all with a blanket. Neck and neck and neck they came down, staggerin’ and weavin’ around, all gone, and just before they got to the tape there was one slim little chap, a quarter-mile runner, who had won the quarter only an hour before and had no business to be runnin’ in the half. He threw his head back and the foam lay on his lips and he clenched his corks and he come in, and drew away from that bunch, runnin’ on nothin’ at all but the nerve and courage of him! An’ he broke the tape a foot ahead of the two best half-milers in the world. An’ he broke the Intercollegiate record, and won the cup, an’ he ’s right here before you and his name ’s Dannie Sanford!”

There was a sudden silence as the boys looked at Mr. Sanford, who blushed and tried to stop Mike. Then there was a storm of cheers and applause, after which the trainer went on.

“He sent for me, boys. He says you ’ve been the laughin’-stock of the whole school league, but if you fellows will come out and do what I tell you, next spring you ’ll be doin’ the laughin’.”

That was the beginning of it. There were seventy-six boys in the school. Seventy-five of them signed up that afternoon to try for the athletic team. The only reason the seventysixth did n’t was because he had only one leg. All that winter the boys ran cross-country, rain, shine, snow or cold. Day after day, Mike trained and trained and trained them, indoors and out. The over-confident he held back. The timid he spurred on with stories of what could be done by even weaklings, if only they would dare. The lazy, the disobedient, the lax who would not or could not train he weeded out; and a few days before the games he told Mr. Sanford that he had a team of boys fit to run for their lives.

Chapter II

A T last the day of the games dawned, as days have had a habit of doing for several years back. The whole school gathered at the station to go with their team to the college town where the games were to be held. There was Mike, wearing a wonderful new Panama, ostentatiously cheerful and full of good stories and funny jokes, as always before a competition. Mr. Sanford was there in white flannels, and Pop Smith, the pop-corn man, a little old man with a long white beard who looked like a gnome and who claimed to be the official mascot of the Cornwall team. Besides these there were several thousand rooters — at least, they sounded like several thousand. Probably, if counted by numbers and not by noise, they would total fifty. Just as the train was about to start, there was a volley of toots, and down the road whirled a 30 red racer, out of which tumbled old Jim Donegan and Jud Adams.