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2nd Edition Johanna Knox
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The complete guide to edible wild plants mushrooms fruits and nuts finding identifying and cooking Lyle
IN THE URBAN AND RURAL WILDERNESSES, THERE IS AN ABUNDANCE OF FOOD JUST WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED, IF ONLY YOU KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR. FORAGED FOOD IS HEALTHY, ECONOMICAL AND SUSTAINABLE, BUT THE BEST PART IS THE FUN YOU WILL HAVE FINDING IT.
This book is guaranteed to make you look at the plants around you in a dierent light. The Forager’s Treasury features proles of many edible plants commonly found in Aotearoa New Zealand; advice on where to nd them, how to harvest them and how best to use them; and over 60 delicious food recipes as well as more than 30 recipes for medicine, natural dyes, perfumes and skin care.
This fully revised and updated edition of a classic bestseller is an exhaustive treasure trove of information about our wild plants.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
A brief history of foraging in Aotearoa
Why forage?
Ready to forage
The treasures
Preserving the harvest
Tisanes
Infused syrups
Infused vinegars
Luxury butters
Infused oils
Infused honeys
Infused alcohols
The art of freezing
The art of drying
The art of pickling
Recipes
Flavour combinations
Super-salads
Snacks
Meals light and fresh
Meals warming and lling
Sweet treats
Solar cooking
Natural healing and well-being
Medicine from nature
Natural body care
Mental health
Found perfumes
A brief history of natural perfumery
Store-cupboard staples for perfumery
Bought botanicals a primer
Your brilliant nose
Getting started
Wild perfume formulas
Using xatives
The wide world of ingredients
Found colours
Dyeing with foraged plants
Using mordants
Preparing to dye
The art of dyeing
Play as you forage
Small adventures
Other games
Resources
He mihi
Glossary of reo Māori terms
Index
Preface
Ka ora te whenua, ka ora te tangata.
I wrote the rst edition of this book during 2012, and from the moment it went to print, I started making a list of things I’d love to change. Nine years later the list was quite long, and when Jenny Hellen from Allen & Unwin asked if I’d like to revise the book for a second edition, I had already half-written it in my head.
Obvious changes include identication photos and the longed-for index. I’ve updated some plant details, changed recipes and corrected a few errors. I’ve taken some sections out so that other ideas can be included, and I’ve xed the way I’ve expressed some things to better reect my current world view. Admittedly, that process has made me feel like a bit of a fake, hiding and overwriting the past, but I remind myself that the rst edition still exists. I still like it and I hope that, with all its dierences, it remains a resource in its own right.
Since I wrote the rst edition, the world feels for many of us like it’s changed a lot. Certainly we’re further along a trajectory we’ve been fearing.
But some things remain the same: whether your environment is urban, suburban or rural, foraging connects you to the land, the air, the waters and the life all around you. Day by day, month by month and year by year, you watch the changes and cycles. You become increasingly aware of the connections between every little thing. And the more you get to know them, the more you see and hear how the Earth calls on us to do better, to try to put things right however hard and uncomfortable that might be. Even if the Earth is in pain, she’s determined and she’s hopeful. And, because we’re a part of her, so should we be.
Kia hora te marino, Kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, kia tere te kārohirohi mua i tōu huarahi, āianei, ā ake tonu atu.
Introduction
The deeper you go into your whakapapa, the easier it is to connect with all things.
Ruby Solly, in conversation with Kahu Kutia in The Pantograph Punch, June 2020
Aotearoa New Zealand is a land of foragers. According to my mum, my own foraging life began at the age of about three when I unexpectedly squatted in the middle of my grandmother’s garden and ate a pansy. I recall adoring pansies with their little monster faces, so perhaps I was thinking, ‘I’ll eat you up, I love you so.’ Then again, I might simply have been exhibiting the instincts to pick and test that re in so many children’s minds.
I grew up visiting my grandparents and aunt at Ōtaki Beach on weekends and holidays. We gathered pipi, and took home empty shells, driftwood, sea glass, pussy willows and toetoe. I was aware of our whakapapa to the whenua there our ties to Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, as well as to Ngāti Kahu ki Tauranga further north but I didn’t know back then what that could or should mean for me. Then my grandfather died and my grandmother moved to Auckland.
We lived in Maungaraki, a raw, new bush-clad subdivision in the western hills of Te Awa Kairangi/the Hutt valley. Our section oered plenty of ora to explore, both native and introduced. My father, Fred Knox, worked hard to create a garden and orchard there. My mother, Mary Knox, was a busy environmental activist, continually dragging my sister Andrea and me to protests, fundraising stalls and meetings. A Pākehā back-to-nature movement
was in full swing, and I was entranced by some of its manifestations particularly the herbal medicine and natural-body-care revivals.
As a child, I embarked on my own projects. I made creams, washes, poultices and face packs. I enlisted my younger sister Andrea to lie still each morning while I plastered her face with bananas, oatmeal and bits of random garden plants. I stripped apples from my father’s tree and dug a small pit in the ground so I could bury them, hoping to surprise and delight my family by bringing out this fresh supply in the depths of winter. (They were denitely surprised.)
I also remember making a birthday present for my friend Vanessa by infusing water with rosemary and decanting it into an old perfume bottle. When Vanessa upended the bottle onto her wrist, out plopped a shocking lump of blue mould that quivered on her skin until she shrieked and hurled it o.
Despite early failures, I continued this kind of dabbling throughout my teenage years. Then, in my early twenties, something changed. For the rst time I started to earn my own money. Buying things suddenly seemed more fun than scrounging them and materialism ruled.
Within a few years, another wave of change broke over me. My rst child, my son Marlon, was born and I was washed into a twilight world of human body uids, disintegrating sleep patterns and single-minded dedication to this small new cause. The dull band of pain across my head became a part of me, and my inability to remember what I had done a day, or even an hour, before grew legendary. Just when I thought this period might never end, it did.
I resurfaced. Lo and behold, I had a new little friend who liked to pick me small bunches of forget-me-nots from garden borders and eat nasturtium leaves at the park. He reminded me of how I used to be, and I started gathering and experimenting again.
Eventually, my long, stumbling journey to reconnect with my Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga and Tauranga Moana iwi whakapapa
would lead me to spend a year studying for a rongoā diploma at Te Wānanga o Raukawa, learning from Rita Tupe, Maudy Tupe and Mate Tihema. And, just like that, I was an absolute beginner again, wide-eyed and hungry to understand.
More recently, my daughter Nova and I have been learning to harvest harakeke correctly as we embark on learning raranga together.
I think we’re all foragers at heart. From birth, the drive kicks in. We snue around, smelling, feeling and able to see only as far as we need, to nd food in our tiny mum-sized domains. Months pass, then years, but we still employ all our senses in the hunt for health and sustenance. We might be lucky enough to grow up with foraging traditions. Or perhaps we follow our noses towards delicious-smelling takeaways or surreptitiously feel avocados at the supermarket.
Gathering speaks to many needs at once: to escape, to explore, to discover, to collect, to heal, and to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. Most of all, though, I believe it speaks to our need to connect to the world around us.
Each of us forages dierently. We have our own gathering routines, favourite plants, and methods of harvest and use. We also have our own ways of ordering our ideas and experiences. And, wherever in the world our ancestors are from, we carry with us a specic legacy of foraging tradition and knowledge whether we know many parts of it already or we are trying to recover it. Gathering lore is a changing, evolving body of knowledge and every person has their pieces to add. I’ve enjoyed jigsawing together what pieces I can to make this book, and I’m grateful to the many people who’ve generously shared their experiences and expertise with me.
I’d like to think this is a book you can dip into and out of at whatever points catch your interest, or to use to follow your own trails. It’s by no means exhaustive. Nonetheless, it provides a host of accessible ideas and approaches
that I hope you will explore, alter, add to and make your own in ways that I can’t even imagine.
A brief history of foraging in Aotearoa
Tūpuna Māori were explorers, sailors, scientists, horticulturalists, farmers, builders, weavers, artists, hunters, sherpeople and healers. And, of course, they were gatherers. In Aotearoa they created societies based on hapū relationships, and they developed kawa and tikanga to live by. Their lives, laws and mātauranga were indivisible from the land and the surrounding waters.
The British Crown’s invasion began stealthily. It was marked by the arrival of Captain Cook, bearing instructions to look for land that Britain could take. European whalers, sealers and missionaries came next, and some hapū developed productive relationships with them. At this point, Europeans were dependent on Māori goodwill to survive.
Māori showed Europeans local plants that could be utilised for food and medicine. Europeans introduced Māori to useful foreign species, such as kohukohu (chickweed). The new plants often escaped and naturalised.
In 1840, many rangatira signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It enshrined the sovereignty of Māori hapū over their lands and taonga, while giving the British Crown permission to set up a governorship here to manage its own people.
The British had dierent ideas. Nonsensical as it is to think that powerful chiefs and their people simply decided to hand over sovereignty to some foreigners that is exactly how the British chose to interpret things. With the treaty signed, the British wilfully misunderstood or disregarded land agreements. They brought in troops, wiped out communities, and passed legislation to give themselves permission to take even more land. By 1937, they’d taken almost everything.
The society that Britain brought here was rapidly industrialising. This coaland oil-fuelled juggernaut rolled across the country, shifting earth, extracting resources, pouring concrete and excreting pollution. New plants and animals also invaded and continue to do so. (When we forage in urban environments today, these are the plants we mostly gather.)
Throughout this crisis, sometimes tenuously and against all odds, Māori were keeping their mātauranga around gathering practices alive. Pākehā, meanwhile, were inclined towards peaks and troughs of foraging. The peaks often coincided with tough economic times, such as during the wars and the Great Depression.
In the 1970s, oil shocks rocked the global economy, and many people in the Western world were realising that industrialisation was hurting life on Earth. A widespread new interest in environmentalism and thrift arose, as did another peak in foraging activity, both here and overseas. You can see some of the books this era produced in the Resources section.
Indigenous rights struggles were gathering power globally, and Māori were ghting on many fronts for their whenua, mātauranga and taonga. From this period emerged the groundbreaking Waitangi Tribunal claim Wai 262. It sought recognition of the indivisible relationships between Māori and their whenua, as well as a righting of the enormous breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi that were taking place as government and industry exploited native species and mātauranga Māori. The claim was lodged in 1991. It was another twenty years before the resulting report, Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, was published. This beautiful, information-rich document is, perhaps inevitably, also disappointing. However, the determined work by the original claimants continues to inform and inuence in powerful ways.
The auence of the 1980s saw Western enthusiasm for foraging wane until the early 2000s. Then came a renewed backlash against industrialisation’s
eects on personal and planetary health. Foraging blogs sprang up across the internet, and new foraging books rolled o the presses.
But who will stop the juggernaut? Today, commercial-industrial destruction continues unabated, and, alongside that, interest in foraging has powered up another level. Collecting from farms, cities and suburbs brings us face to face with the stories of our lands. For many of us, that impels us to think harder about what we can do to set things right, to help pull ourselves out of trouble. Some people are already stretched, doing all they can; others, and I am one of them, know we’ve got room, somehow, to do more.
The work needed feels massive. Perhaps turning to our ancestors wherever they are from is more important than ever. One way or another, most of us are here in Aotearoa because we or our ancestors planned hard, took great risks and met immense challenges in order to make change. We too carry this power inside us to turn things around.
Why forage?
There are many compelling reasons to gather from the wild: for health, for economy and for connection.
To keep healthy
The cultivated foods we buy in shops today have been bred for the commercial market, which values size, sweetness, colour, storability and uniformity. Nutritional value isn’t always high on the list of priorities, and consequently many modern cultivars have a lower nutritional value than their ancestors. Wild foods are often more densely packed with nutrients, and a wild-food diet can oer greater species variety.
To save money
In both the short and long term, foraging can save dollars. Relatively few people in this country will live entirely o what they gather, even for a short time, but if you have a pantry stocked with cheap staples you can combine them with many fresh, richly nutritious wild ingredients to make a wide range of dishes.
While I was writing the rst edition of this book, money was tight for my family. But I had stores of rice, pasta, our, sugar and beans. By spending money on only a few extra essentials and foraging for the rest, I killed two birds with one stone: I tested the recipes in this book and helped to keep my family well fed.
To explore terroir
Every plant is a storehouse of valuable phytochemicals natural chemicals made by plants. Each plant or group of plants specialises in certain chemicals
and holds them variously in its roots, sap, bark, leaves, owers and seeds. Some chemicals appear throughout a plant and others only in one part of it.
The same chemicals can pop up in diverse parts of the plant kingdom. For example, anethol gives liquorice, fennel and star anise their aroma, even though they’re from quite dierent plant families.
Chemicals give plants their individual colours, avours, fragrances, and nutritional and medicinal values. But the exact mix and relative strength of a chemical in any given plant can be aected by many things, including genetics, soil, moisture, altitude, surrounding light levels and temperature, as well as patterns of change in all those things. So, a plant’s exact location in space and time aects what it will yield.
All this is what winemakers call terroir. More recently, producers of artisan foods have adopted the term. Kairongoā and herbal-medicine practitioners, natural perfumers and bre-crafters have also long understood these principles.
As a forager, you’re in a unique position to discover the eects of terroir on the plants that grow in your patch. A quick stroll can reveal, for example, that the lavender owers growing outside a local cafe have a strength and softness to their fragrance that is quite dierent to those in the plants growing beside a neighbour’s gate, which may have a quieter scent with a sour note.
Learning about the interactions of place and plant is a fascinating, neverending journey. Even if you reach the geographical edges of your roaming space, you will never reach the edges of time, as plants grow and change each day, each season and each year.
To provoke thought
As human populations sweep around the globe, they deliberately take with them collections of plants useful to them or loved by them, and they also carry
stowaways. Just as some human cultures invade others, the same is true of some plant communities.
In any new location, some plants are well behaved, staying where you put them and posing little or no threat to their neighbours. Others storm a landscape, overrunning other plants in their path. While foraging, you see the eects of this process.
Human history and plant history are deeply entwined, and thinking about one sheds light on the other. You cannot really know, for example, why this dandelion grows on this grassy bank in this suburban park, unless you also know that 200 years ago the bank was full of rich, dark, damp native ngahere, loud with birds and threaded with the tracks of gatherers. You cannot know why this dandelion grows right here, waiting for you to pick it, unless you know what happened between then and now to clear the bush, remove the people who held mana whenua, and seed the new plants.
If we love the land we forage on, we need to be determinedly curious about its past, to be fearless in facing what we might nd out, and to be prepared to think about how to make things right and then act on those thoughts. Who took care of this land before? Who takes care of it now? Who doesn’t? Who should take care of it in future? What does ‘take care of’ mean?
To restore ties to the Earth
I reckon we all know, deep inside, that a reciprocal relationship with the planet isn’t just about creating pristine reserves. It’s about getting in there and entangling ourselves with the land and the life around us in a relationship of give and take. When we go too far one way or the other, we lose what it is to be a part of the Earth.
Modern industrialised society does this odd thing where it exploits large tracts of land, taking but not giving, and then sets aside a few reserves, decreeing that there shall be no taking from there. In contrast, traditional
foraging involves both give and take with all the lands you traverse, and it gives you a genuine relationship with those lands.
When I think about the space between myself and the stream I live on, I realize that the hardest work to be done in tending to that relationship is realizing that we were never, and are never, separate. Not even concrete, I realize, can block me, block us, from the knowing that we have a responsibility to nurture our relationships with place, starting with the ground beneath our feet, no matter how far below, or through how many layers of concrete, that ground may be.
EMALANI CASE, HE WAHĪ PA’AKAI: A PACKAGE OF SALT, HEWAHIPAAKAI.WORDPRESS.COM, FEBRUARY 2020
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Shore Road mystery
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Shore Road mystery
Author: Franklin W. Dixon
Illustrator: Walter S. Rogers
Release date: March 4, 2024 [eBook #73102]
Most recently updated: May 4, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1928
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHORE ROAD MYSTERY ***
THE HARDY BOYS THE SHORE ROAD MYSTERY
By FRANKLIN W. DIXON
A
T H B : T T T
T H B : T H C
T H B : H H G
ILLUSTRATED BY W S. R
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1928, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, I .
All Rights Reserved
Hardy Boys: The Shore Road Mystery
The
"DO YOU KNOW WHO WE'VE GOT HERE?"
CONTENTS
I. S C
II. C E
III. U S
IV. O B
V. M T
VI. O S R
VII. G M
VIII. T M T
IX. F C
X. T G D
XI. F
XII. T N C
XIII. I L
XIV. M A
XV. T S
XVI. K
XVII. T C
XVIII. T A T
XIX. C
XX. T T
XXI. A F
XXII. T R -U
XXIII. T M S
THE HARDY BOYS: THE SHORE ROAD MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
S C
"It certainly is a mystery how those autos disappeared," said Frank Hardy.
"I'll say it is," replied his brother Joe, raising his voice to be heard above the clatter of their motorcycles. "Just think of it! Two cars last week, two the week before, and one the week before that. Some thieving, I'll tell the world."
"And Martin's car was brand new," called back Chet Morton.
"Mighty tough," Frank affirmed. "It's bad enough to lose a car, but to have it stolen the day after you've bought it is a little too much."
"Must be a regular gang of car thieves at work."
The three boys, on their motorcycles, were speeding along the Shore Road that skirted Barmet Bay, just out of Bayport, on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
"A person takes a big risk leaving a car parked along this road," said Chet. "Every one of the five autos disappeared along the shore."
"What beats me," declared Frank, turning out to avoid a mud puddle, "is how the thieves got away with them. None of them were seen coming into Bayport and there was no trace of them at the other end of the Shore Road, either. Seems as if they just vanished into the thin air."
Chet slowed down so that the trio were riding abreast.
"If the cars were only ordinary flivvers it wouldn't be so bad. But they were all expensive, high-powered hacks. Martin's car would be spotted anywhere, and so would the others. It's funny that no one saw them."
"Some of these auto thieves are mighty smart," opined Joe. "They certainly have their nerve, working this road for three weeks, and with everybody on the lookout for them. It has certainly put a crimp in the bathing and fishing along the Shore Road." He gestured toward the beach below "Why, usually on a Saturday afternoon like this you'll see a dozen cars parked along here. What with boating and fishing and swimming, lots of people used to come out from town. Now, if they come at all, they walk."
"And you can't blame 'em. Who wants to lose a high-priced car just for the sake of an hour's fishing?"
"It's certainly mighty strange," Frank reiterated. "After taking two cars from almost the same place, you'd imagine the thieves would be scared to come back."
"They have plenty of nerve, that's certain."
"It isn't as if the police haven't been busy. They've watched this road ever since the first car was lost, and the other autos were stolen just the same. They've kept an eye on both ends of the highway and there wasn't a sign of any of them."
"It's strange that they haven't turned up somewhere. Lots of times a stolen car will be recovered when the thief tries to get rid of it. The engine numbers alone often trip them up. Of course, I guess they'd clap on false license plates, but it's pretty hard to get away with a fine-looking car like Martin's unless it's been repainted and altered a bit."
"It's no fun to lose a car," declared Chet. "I remember how badly I felt when the crooks stole my roadster last year."
"You got it back, anyway."
"Yes, I got it back. But I was mighty blue until I did."
The motorcycles rounded a bend in the road and before the boys lay a wide stretch of open highway, descending in a gradual slope. To their right lay Barmet Bay, sparkling in the afternoon sun. At the bottom of the slope was a grassy expanse that opened out on the beach, the road at this point being only a few feet above the sea level. The little meadow was a favorite parking place for motorists, as their cars could regain the road easily, but to-day there was not an automobile in sight.
"Look at that," said Frank. "No one here on a nice afternoon like this."
At that moment, however, the appearance of a man who came running up from the beach and across the grass, belied his words.
"Some one's here all right," remarked Joe. "And he seems in a hurry about something."
As the boys rode down the slope they could see the man hastening out into the middle of the road, where he stood waving his arms.
"Looks like Isaac Fussy, doesn't it?" said Chet.
"The rich old fisherman?"
"Yes, it's Fussy all right. Look at him dancing around. Wonder what's the matter."
In a few moments the boys had drawn near enough to see that the old man who was waving at them so frantically was indeed the wealthy and eccentric old fisherman known as Isaac Fussy. He was a queer old fellow who lived by himself in a big house on the outskirts of Bayport, and who spent much of his time on the bay. Just now he was evidently in a state of great agitation, shouting and waving his arms as the boys approached.
The motorcycles came to a stop.
"Anything wrong?" asked Frank.
"After 'em! After 'em!" shouted the old man, his face crimson with wrath, as he shook his fist in the air. "Chase 'em, lads!"
"Who? What's the matter, Mr. Fussy?"
"Thieves! That's what's the matter! My automobile!"
"Stolen?"
"Stolen! Robbed! I left it here not ten minutes ago and was startin' out in my boat to fish. I just looked back in time to see somebody drivin' away in it. An outrage!" shouted Mr. Fussy. "After 'em!"
"Why, it's been stolen just a few minutes ago, then?"
"They just went tearin' around the bend before you came in sight. If you look lively, you'll catch 'em. You know my car—it's a big blue Cadillac sedan. Paid twenty-eight hundred for it. Catch them thieves and I'll reward you. Don't waste time standin' here talkin' about it—"
The motorcycles roared and leaped forward.
"We'll do our best!" shouted Frank, as he crouched low over the handle bars.
A cloud of dust arose as the three powerful machines sped off down the road, leaving Isaac Fussy still muttering imprecations on the thieves who had stolen his Cadillac.
The boys were excited and elated. This was as close as any one had yet come to being on the trail of the auto thieves, and they knew that in their fast motorcycles they possessed a decided advantage. If, as Isaac Fussy said, the car had just disappeared around the bend a few minutes previously, they stood an excellent chance of overtaking it.
The motorcycles slanted far over to the side as they took the curve in a blinding screen of dust, then righted again as they sped down the next open stretch at terrific speed. There was no sign of the stolen car, but the open stretch was only about a quarter of a mile in length, skirting the shore, and the road then wound inland behind a bank of trees.
The clamor of the pounding motors filled the summer air as the boys raced in pursuit. Before them was a thin haze of dust, just settling in the road, which indicated that an automobile had passed that way only a few minutes before.
"We'll catch 'em!" shouted Chet, jubilantly
Without slackening speed, they took the next curve and then found themselves speeding through a cool grove, where the road wound about, cutting off the view ahead. When at length they emerged into an open section of farming land they gazed anxiously into the distance in hope of seeing their quarry, but they were disappointed. The fleeing car was not yet in sight.
Down the road, between the crooked fences, they raced, the engines raising a tremendous racket.
A few hundred yards ahead was the entrance to a lane that led into a farm. The lane was lined with dense trees.
Suddenly, Frank gasped and desperately began to cut down his speed. For, out of this lane, emerged a team of horses, drawing a huge wagonload of hay
The dust raised by Frank's motorcycle obscured the view of the other boys, and for a moment they did not realize what was happening. The trees along the lane had hidden the hay wagon from sight and Frank was almost upon it before he realized the danger. It was impossible to stop in time.
The man on the hay wagon shouted and waved his arms. The horses reared. The clumsy vehicle presented a barrier directly across the road.
There was only one thing for it. The boys had to take to the ditch to avoid a collision. There was no time to stop.
Frank wheeled his speeding machine to the left, praying for the best. For a moment, he thought he would make it. The motorcycle bumped and lurched, and then it went over on its side and he was flung violently over the handle bars into the bushes ahead.
Behind him he heard shouts, the roar of the other machines, and then two crashes, which came almost simultaneously. Chet and Joe had also been spilled.
CHAPTER II
C E
For a moment Frank Hardy lay in the thicket, stunned by the shock of his fall, with the breath knocked out of him. Gradually, he recovered himself and managed to scramble to his feet. His first thought was for the other boys, but a quick glance showed that both Chet and Joe were unhurt, beyond a few bruises.
Joe was sitting in the ditch, looking around him in bewilderment, as though he had not yet realized exactly what had happened, while Chet Morton was picking himself up out of a clump of undergrowth near the fence. In the road, the driver of the hay wagon was trying to calm his startled horses, who were rearing and plunging in fright.
"Any bones broken?" asked Frank of his two companions. Chet carefully counted his ribs.
"Guess not," he announced, cheerfully. "I think I'm all here, safe and sound. Wow! What a spill that was!"
Joe got to his feet.
"Good thing this is a soft ditch," he said. "It's lucky somebody didn't get a broken neck."
"Well, nobody did, and that's that. How about the bikes?"
Frank examined his own motorcycle, righted it, and found that the machine was not damaged beyond a bent mudguard. He had managed to slow down sufficiently before careering into the ditch, so that much of the shock had been averted and the motorcycle had simply turned over into the spongy turf.
"My bike's all right," announced Chet. "It's bent a little here and there, but it's good for a few more miles yet."
"Same here," said Joe Hardy, looking up. "I think we're mighty lucky to get off so easily."
"You mighta run me down!" roared the driver of the hay wagon, now that he had recovered from his fright. "Tearin' and snortin' down the road on them contraptions—"
"Why don't you watch the road?" asked Frank. "You heard us coming. We couldn't see you. You might have killed the three of us, driving out like that. You didn't have anything to worry about."
"I didn't, eh?"
"No."
"What if I'd been killed?"
"You could hear our bikes half a mile off—unless you are deaf," put in Joe.
"It ain't my business to listen for them contraptions," growled the man on the hay wagon. "I got my work to do."
"Well, don't blame us," said Frank. "And the next time you drive out of a side road like that, stop, look and listen."
"Say, who do you think you're givin' orders to?" and now the man reached for his whip and acted as if he meant to get down and thrash somebody.
"None of that—if you know when you are well off," cried Joe, his eyes blazing.
Chet stepped forward.
"If you say the word, we'll give you all that is coming to you," he put in.
All of the boys looked so determined that the man let his whip alone.
"Get out o' my way! I got to be goin'," he growled.
"Well, after this you be more careful," said Frank.
The driver grumbled, but the boys were not disposed to remain and argue the rights and wrongs of the matter. It had been an accident, pure and simple, with a certain amount of blame on both sides, so they mounted their motorcycles and drove on.
Because of the spill, the boys realized that their chances of overtaking the car thieves were correspondingly lessened, but they decided to continue the pursuit.
"At the rate they're going," said Chet, hopefully, "they may have an upset themselves."
While the Hardy boys and their chum are speeding along the Shore Road on the trail of the stolen sedan, it will not be out of place to introduce them more fully to new readers.
Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, a famous detective who had made a national reputation for himself while on the detective force of the New York Police Department and who had retired to set up a private practice of his own. Frank Hardy was a tall, dark lad, sixteen years old, while his brother Joe was a fair, curlyheaded chap, a year younger. Both boys were students at the high school in Bayport.
When Fenton Hardy retired from the metropolitan force, owing to the great demand for his services in private investigations, he had moved with his family to Bayport, a thriving city of fifty thousand, on Barmet Bay, on the Atlantic seaboard. Here the two boys attended school and here it was that they met with the first adventures that strengthened their resolution to follow in their father's footsteps and themselves become detectives when they grew older.
Fenton Hardy was one of the greatest American criminologists, and his sons had inherited much of his ability. From their earliest boyhood it had been their united ambition to be detectives but in this they had been discouraged by their parents, who preferred to see them inclined toward medicine or the bar. However, these professions held little attraction for the lads, and when they eventually had an opportunity to display their ability as amateur detectives they felt that they had scored a point toward realizing their ambition.
In the first volume of this series, "The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure," the lads cleared up a mystery centering about a strange mansion on the outskirts of Bayport, recovering a quantity of stolen
jewelry and bonds after the police and even Fenton Hardy had been forced to admit themselves baffled. Thereafter, their father had made but mild objections to the pursuit of their hobby and was, indeed, secretly proud of the ability displayed by his sons. Further mysteries were solved by the boys, the stories of which have been recounted in previous volumes of this series, the preceding book, "Hunting for Hidden Gold," relating their adventures in the far West, where they faced a bandit gang and went after a fortune in hidden gold in the depths of an abandoned mine.
Chet Morton, who was with the Hardy boys this afternoon, was one of their high school chums, a plump, good-natured lad with a weakness for food "and lots of it," as he frequently said. He lived on a farm about a mile outside Bayport and, like the Hardy boys, was the proud owner of a motorcycle. Frank and Joe also owned a motorboat, the Sleuth, which they had bought from the proceeds of a reward they had earned by their work in solving a mystery. Tony Prito, an Italian-American lad, and Biff Hooper, two other high school chums of the Hardy boys, also owned motorboats, in which the boys spent many happy hours on Barmet Bay and in which they had, incidentally, experienced a number of thrilling adventures.
"Often wished I owned a boat," said Chet, as they sped along, "but now I'm just as glad I have a motorcycle instead. I'd have missed all this fun this afternoon if I hadn't."
"You have a queer idea of fun," Joe remarked. "Getting dumped out on my head into a wet ditch doesn't make me laugh very hard."
"Better than studying algebra." Chet's aversion to school work was well known.
For a while they sped on without talking. There was no sign of the stolen automobile, but the boys did not entirely give up hope of catching up with it. When they had gone about three miles, however, even Frank was forced to admit that the fugitives had doubtless given them the slip.
"What's going on over there?" said Frank suddenly. "There's a state trooper and three men over in that farmyard."
"And a big car, too," said Chet.
"Why, I know this place," Joe declared. "This is Dodd's farm."
"Not Jack Dodd? The chap who goes to Bayport High."
"Sure. This is where he lives. I remember the place was pointed out to me once."
"I knew Jack Dodd lived on a farm but I didn't know it was this far out," said Chet. "Let's drop in and see what's up."
With Frank in the lead the three boys turned down the lane leading in to the Dodd place.
"I wonder what that trooper is here for," he said. "They all seem to be having an argument over something."
"Perhaps the trooper met the auto thieves!" conjectured Chet.
When they drove into the barnyard they saw a boy running toward them and they recognized him as Jack Dodd, a quiet, likable lad who was in their class at the Bayport high school.
"Hello, fellows!" he called to them, but they saw that there was a worried expression on his face. "What brings you away out here today?"
"Hunting trip," said Chet, with a curious glance toward the state trooper, who was standing over by the fence with Mr. Dodd and two burly strangers. Their voices were raised in a loud argument, in which Mr Dodd appeared to be opposed to the others.
"Hunting trip?"
"Hunting for auto thieves," Frank explained. "Isaac Fussy's car was stolen a little while ago. When we saw that trooper here we had an idea that perhaps he might know something about it."
"What's that?" shouted the trooper, a broad-shouldered young chap. "A car stolen?"
"Yes, sir. We were chasing it. A big Cadillac."
"Didn't see it," replied the trooper "It didn't pass this way, I'm sure of that. We've just found one stolen car, anyway."
"I tell you I didn't steal it!" declared Mr Dodd heatedly "I haven't the least idea how that car got there."
"That's all right," interposed one of the other men gruffly. "You can tell that to the judge. The fact is, we've found the car behind your barn and it's one of the cars that were stolen in the past couple of weeks."
The chums glanced questioningly at Jack Dodd.
"These men are detectives," he said, in a low voice. "They came out from the city with the trooper a little while ago."
"Did they really find a stolen car here?" asked Chet.
Jack nodded.
"They found one all right, but how on earth it got here, I don't know. It's a Packard and somebody must have driven it in and left it among the bushes behind the barn. We never noticed it."
"Well," the state trooper was saying, "I'm going to drive the car back to Bayport and return it to the owner. You don't claim it's yours, do you?" He gestured toward a splendid touring car near by.
"Of course it isn't mine," said Mr. Dodd. "I've never seen it before and I never want to see it again—"
"I guess you don't," growled one of the detectives.
"How it got here, I can't tell. I certainly had nothing to do with stealing it."
"People don't leave perfectly good cars hidden behind other people's barns," said the other detective. "You'd better tell us a straight story, Dodd. It'll be easier for you."
"I've told you all I know about it."
"Well, then, if you don't know any more about it, perhaps your son does."
