Cape Cod Stories Part 14

"This wa'n't in the program. I hit sand with a b.u.mp and pawed up for air. When I got my head out I see a water-wheel doing business close along-side of me. It was Allie.

"'Help!' he howls. 'Help! I'm drowning!'

"I got him by the collar, took one stroke and b.u.mped against the weir-nets. You know what a fish-weir's like, don't you, Mr. Brown?--a kind of pound, made of nets hung on ropes between poles.

"'Help!' yells Allie, clawing the nets. 'I can't swim in rough water!'

"You might have known he couldn't. It looked sort of dubious for a jiffy. Then I had an idee. I dragged him to the nighest weir-pole.

'Climb!' I hollers in his ear. 'Climb that pole.'

"He done it, somehow, digging his toes into the net and going up like a cat up a tree. When he got to the top he hung acrost the rope and shook.

"'Hang on there!' says I. 'I'm going after the boat.' And I struck out.

He yelled to me not to leave him, but the weir had give me my bearings, and I was bound for my power-boat. 'Twas a tough swim, but I made it, and climbed aboard, not feeling any too happy. Losing a good skiff was more'n I'd figgered on.

"Soon's I got some breath I hauled anchor, started up my engine and headed back for the weir. I run along-side of it, keeping a good lookout for guy-ropes, and when I got abreast of that particular pole I looked for Allie. He was setting on the rope, a-straddle of the pole, and hanging onto the top of it like it owed him money. He looked a good deal more comfortable than I was when he and Prince had treed me. And the remembrance of that time come back to me, and one of them things they call inspiration come with it. He was four feet above water, 'twas full tide then, and if he set still he was safe as a church.

"So instead of running in after him, I slowed 'way down and backed off.

"'Come here!' he yells. 'Come here, you fool, and take me aboard.'

"'Oh, I don't know,' says I. 'You're safe there, and, even if the yacht folks don't come hunting for you by and by--which I cal'late they will--the tide'll be low enough in five hours or so, so's you can walk ash.o.r.e.'

"'What--what do you mean?' he says. 'Ain't you goin' to take me off?'

"'I was,' says I, 'but I've changed my plans. And, Mr. Allie Vander-what's-your-name Davidson, there's other things--low-down, mean things--planned for this night that ain't going to come off, either.

Understand that, do you?'

"He understood, I guess. He didn't answer at all. Only gurgled, like he'd swallered something the wrong way.

"Then the beautiful t.i.t for tat of the whole business come to me, and I couldn't help rubbing it in a little. 'As a sartin acquaintance of mine once said to me,' I says, 'you look a good deal handsomer up there than you do in a boat.'

"'You--you--etcetery and so forth, continued in our next!' says he, or words to that effect.

"'That's all right,' says I, putting on the power. 'You've got no kick coming. I allow you to--er--ornament my weir-pole, and 'tain't every dude I'd let do that.'

"And I went away and, as the Fifth Reader used to say, 'let him alone in his glory.'

"I went back to the launch, pulled up her anchor and took her in tow. I towed her in to her pier, made her fast and then left her for a while.

When I come back the little cabin-door was open and the girl's jacket was gone.

"Then I walked up the path to the Saunders house and it done me good to see a light in Barbara's window. I set on the steps of that house until morning keeping watch. And in the morning the yacht was gone and the weir-pole was vacant, and Cap'n Eben Saunders come on the first train.

"So's that's all there is of it. Allie hasn't come back to Bayport sence, and the last I heard he'd married that Newport girl; she has my sympathy, if that's any comfort to her.

"And Barbara? Well, for a long time she'd turn white every time I met her. But, of course, I kept my mouth shut, and she went to sea next v'yage with her dad. And now I hear she's engaged to a nice feller up to Boston.

"Oh, yes--one thing more. When I got back to my shanty that morning I wiped the chalkmark off the door. I kind of figgered that I'd paid that debt, with back interest added."

THE LOVE OF LOBELIA 'ANKINS

Obed's yarn being done, and friend Davidson done too, and brown at that, Peter T. pa.s.sed around another relay of cigars and we lit up. 'Twas Cap'n Eri that spoke first.

"Love's a queer disease, anyway," says he. "Ain't it, now? 'Twould puzzle you and me to figger out what that Saunders girl see to like in the Davidson critter. It must be a dreadful responsible thing to be so fascinating. I never felt that responsibleness but once--except when I got married, of course--and that was a good many years ago, when I was going to sea on long v'yages, and was cruising around the East Indies, in the lat.i.tude of our new troubles, the Philippines.

"I put in about three months on one of them little coral islands off that way once. Hottest corner in the Lord's creation, I cal'late, and the laziest and sleepiest hole ever I struck. All a feller feels like doing in them islands is just to lay on his back under a palm tree all day and eat custard-apples, and such truck.

"Way I come to be there was like this: I was fo'mast hand on a Boston hooker bound to Singapore after rice. The skipper's name was Perkins, Malachi C. Perkins, and he was the meanest man that ever wore a sou'-wester. I've had the pleasure of telling him so sence--'twas in Surinam 'long in '72. Well, anyhow, Perkins fed us on spiled salt junk and wormy hard-tack all the way out, and if a feller dast to hint that the same wa'n't precisely what you'd call Parker House fare, why the skipper would knock him down with a marline-spike and the first mate would kick him up and down the deck. 'Twan't a pretty performance to look at, but it beat the world for taking the craving for fancy cooking out of a man.

"Well, when I got to Singapore I was nothing but skin and bone, and considerable of the skin had been knocked off by the marline-spike and the mate's boots. I'd s.h.i.+pped for the v'yage out and back, but the first night in port I slipped over the side, swum ash.o.r.e, and never set eyes on old Perkins again till that time in Surinam, years afterward.

"I knocked round them Singapore docks for much as a month, hoping to get a berth on some other s.h.i.+p, but 'twan't no go. I fell in with a Britisher named Hammond, 'Ammond, he called it, and as he was on the same hunt that I was, we kept each other comp'ny. We done odd jobs now 'n' again, and slept in sailors' lodging houses when we had the price, and under bridges or on hemp bales when we hadn't. I was too proud to write home for money, and Hammond didn't have no home to write to, I cal'late.

"But luck 'll turn if you give it time enough. One night Hammond come hurrying round to my sleeping-room--that is to say, my hemp bale--and gives me a shake, and says he:

"'Turn out, you mud 'ead, I've got you a berth.'

"'Aw, go west!' says I, and turned over to go to sleep again. But he pulled me off the bale by the leg, and that woke me up so I sensed what he was saying. Seems he'd found a feller that wanted to s.h.i.+p a couple of fo'mast hands on a little trading schooner for a trip over to the Java Sea.

"Well, to make a long story short, we s.h.i.+pped with this feller, whose name was Lazarus. I cal'late if the Lazarus in Scriptur' had been up to as many tricks and had come as nigh being a thief as our Lazarus was, he wouldn't have been so poor. Ourn was a shrewd rascal and nothing more nor less than a pearl poacher. He didn't tell us that till after we sot sail, but we was so desperate I don't know as 'twould have made much diff'rence if he had.

"We cruised round for a spell, sort of prospecting, and then we landed at a little one-horse coral island, where there wa'n't no inhabitants, but where we was pretty dead sartin there was pearl oyster banks in the lagoon. There was five of us on the schooner, a Dutchman named Rhinelander, a Coolie cook and Lazarus and Hammond and me. We put up a slab shanty on sh.o.r.e and went to work pearl fis.h.i.+ng, keeping one eye out for Dutch gunboats, and always having a sago palm ready to split open so's, if we got caught, we could say we was after sago.

"Well, we done fairly good at the pearl fis.h.i.+ng; got together quite a likely mess of pearls, and, as 'twas part of the agreement that the crew had a certain share in the stake, why, Hammond and me was figgering that we was going to make enough to more'n pay us for our long spell of starving at Singapore. Lazarus was feeling purty middling chipper, the cook was feeding us high, and everything looked lovely.

"Rhinelander and the Coolie and the skipper used to sleep aboard the boat, but Hammond and me liked to sleep ash.o.r.e in the shanty. For one thing, the bunks on the schooner wa'n't none too clean, and the Coolie snored so that he'd shake the whole cabin, and start me dreaming about cyclones, and cannons firing, and lions roaring, and all kind of foolishness. I always did hate a snorer.

"One morning me and Hammond come out of the shanty, and, lo and behold you! there wa'n't no schooner to be seen. That everlasting Lazarus had put up a job on us, and had sneaked off in the night with the cook and the Dutchman, and took our share of the pearls with him. I s'pose he'd cal'lated to do it from the very first. Anyway, there we was, marooned on that little two-for-a-cent island.

"The first day we didn't do much but cuss Lazarus up hill and down dale.

Hammond was the best at that kind of business ever I see. He invented more'n four hundred new kind of names for the gang on the schooner, and every one of 'em was brimstone-blue. We had fish lines in the shanty, and there was plenty of water on the island, so we knew we wouldn't starve to death nor die of thirst, anyhow.

"I've mentioned that 'twas hot in them parts? Well, that island was the hottest of 'em all. Whew! Don't talk! And, more'n that, the weather was the kind that makes you feel it's a barrel of work to live. First day we fished and slept. Next day we fished less and slept more. Third day 'twas too everlasting hot even to sleep, so we set round in the shade and fought flies and jawed each other. Main trouble was who was goin' to git the meals. Land, how we did miss that Coolie cook!

"'W'y don't yer get to work and cook something fit to heat?' says Hammond. ''Ere I broke my bloomin' back 'auling in the fish, and you doing nothing but 'anging around and letting 'em dry hup in the 'eat.

Get to work and cook. Blimed if I ain't sick of these 'ere custard apples!'

"'Go and cook yourself,' says I. 'I didn't sign articles to be cook for no Johnny Bull!'

"Well, we jawed back and forth for an hour, maybe more. Two or three times we got up to have it out, but 'twas too hot to fight, so we set down again. Fin'lly we eat some supper, custard apples and water, and turned in.

"But 'twas too hot to sleep much, and I got up about three o'clock in the morning and went out and set down on the beach in the moonlight.

Pretty soon out comes Hammond and sets down alongside and begins to give the weather a general overhauling, callin' it everything he could lay tongue to. Pretty soon he breaks off in the middle of a nine-j'inted swear word and sings out: