Keziah Coffin Part 17

"'And 'bout time, too, I guess,' says 'Bije. 'I cal'late the skipper's right. This IS Horsefoot and we're right between the shoals. Yes, sir, and I hear breakers. Lively there!'

"They hove over the mudhook and dropped the sails. Nat shook his head.

"'Breakers or not,' says he, 'I tell you I've smelt home for the last half hour. Now, by the jumpin' Moses, I can TASTE it!'

"And inside of a couple of shakes come the rain. It poured for a while and then the fog cleared. Right acrost their bows was Trumet, with the town clock strikin' ten. Over the flat place between the hills they could see the light on the ocean side. And they was anch.o.r.ed right in the deep hole inside the breakwater, as sure as I'm knee high to a marlin spike!

"'Bije just stared at Hammond with his mouth open.

"'Nat,' says he, 'you're a seaman, if I do say it. I thought I was a pretty good bay pilot, but I can't steer a vessel without a compa.s.s through a night as black as Pharaoh's Egypt, and in a thick fog besides, and land her square on top of her moorin's. If my hat wa'n't slos.h.i.+n'

around thirty mile astern, I snum if I wouldn't take it off to you this minute!'

"'Nat,' stammers Zach, 'I must say I--'

"Nat snapped him shut like a tobacco box. 'You needn't,' says he. 'But I'll say this to you, Zach Foster. When I undertake to handle a vessel I handle her best I know how, and the fact that I don't own her makes no difference to me. You just put that down somewheres so you won't forget it.'

"And this mornin'," crowed Captain Zebedee, concluding his long yarn, "after that, mind you, that lubber Zach Foster is around town tellin'

folks that his schooner had been over the course so often she COULDN'T get lost. She found her way home herself. WHAT do you think of that?"

The two members of the parish committee left the parsonage soon after Captain Mayo had finished his story. Elkanah had listened with growing irritation and impatience. Zebedee lingered a moment behind his companions.

"Don't you fret yourself about what happened last night, Mr. Ellery,"

he whispered. "It'll be all right. 'Course n.o.body'd want you to keep up chummin' in with Come-Outers, but what you said to old Eben'll square you this time. So long."

The minister shut the door behind his departing guests. Then he went out into the kitchen, whither the housekeeper had preceded him. He found her standing on the back step, looking across the fields. The wash bench was untenanted.

"Hum!" mused Ellery thoughtfully, "that was a good story of Captain Mayo's. This man Hammond must be a fine chap. I should like to meet him."

Keziah still looked away over the fields. She did not wish her employer to see her face--just then.

"I thought you would meet him," she said. "He was here a little while ago and I asked him to wait. I guess Zeb's yarn was too much for him; he doesn't like to be praised."

"So? Was he here? At the Regular parsonage? I'm surprised."

"He and I have known each other for a long while."

"Well, I'm sorry he's gone. I think I should like him."

Keziah turned from the door.

"I know you would," she said.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH CAPTAIN NAT PICKS UP A DERELICT

It is probable that John Ellery never fully realized the debt of grat.i.tude he owed to the fog and the squall and to Captain Nat Hammond.

Trumet, always hungry for a sensation, would have thoroughly enjoyed arguing and quarreling over the minister's visit to Come-Outer meeting, and, during the fracas, Keziah's parson might have been more or less battered. But Captain Nat's brilliant piloting of the old packet was a bit of seamans.h.i.+p which every man and woman on that foam-bordered stretch of sand could understand and appreciate, and the minister's indiscretion was all but forgotten in consequence. The "Daily Advertisers" gloated over it, of course, and Captain Elkanah brought it up at the meeting of the parish committee, but there Captain Zeb Mayo championed the young man's course and proclaimed that, fur's he was concerned, he was for Mr. Ellery more'n ever. "A young greenhorn with the s.p.u.n.k to cruise single-handed right into the middle of the Come-Outer school and give an old bull whale like Eben the gaff is the man for my money," declared Zebedee. Most of his fellow-committee agreed with him. "Not guilty, but don't do it again," was the general verdict.

As for the Come-Outers, they professed to believe that their leader had much the best of the encounter, so they were satisfied. There was a note of triumph and exultation in the "testimony" given on the following Thursday night, and Captain Eben divided his own discourse between thankfulness for his son's safe return and glorification at the discomfiture of the false prophets. Practically, then, the result of Ellery's peace overture was an increased bitterness in the feeling between the two societies and a polis.h.i.+ng of weapons on both sides.

Keziah watched anxiously for a hint concerning her parson's walk in the rain with Grace, but she heard nothing, so congratulated herself that the secret had been kept. Ellery did not again mention it to her, nor she to him. A fortnight later he preached his great sermon on "The Voyage of Life," and its reference to gales and calms and lee sh.o.r.es and breakers made a hit. His popularity took a big jump.

He met Nat Hammond during that fortnight. The first meeting was accompanied by unusual circ.u.mstances, which might have been serious, but were actually only funny.

The tide at Trumet, on the bay side, goes out for a long way, leaving uncovered a mile and a half of flats, bare and sandy, or carpeted with seaweed. Between these flats are the channels, varying at low water from two to four feet in depth, but deepening rapidly as the tide flows.

The flats fascinated the young minister, as they have many another visitor to the Cape, before or since. On cloudy days they lowered with a dull, leaden l.u.s.ter and the weed-grown portions were like the dark squares on a checkerboard, while the deep water beyond the outer bar was steely gray and angry. When the sun shone and the wind blew clear from the northwest the whole expanse flashed into fire and color, sapphire blue, emerald green, topaz yellow, dotted with white sh.e.l.ls and ablaze with diamond sparkles where the reflected light leaped from the flint crystals of the wet, coa.r.s.e sand.

The best time to visit the flats--tide serving, of course--is the early morning at sunrise. Then there is an inspiration in the wide expanse, a snap and tang and joy in the air. Ellery had made up his mind to take a before-breakfast tramp to the outer bar and so arose at five, tucked a borrowed pair of fisherman's boots beneath his arm, and, without saying anything to his housekeeper, walked down the lawn behind the parsonage, climbed the rail fence, and "cut across lots" to the pine grove on the bluff. There he removed his shoes, put on the boots, wallowed through the mealy yellow sand forming the slope of the bluff, and came out on the white beach and the inner edge of the flats. Then he plashed on, bound out to where the fish weirs stood, like webby fences, in the distance.

It was a wonderful walk on a wonderful day. The minister enjoyed every minute of it. Out here he could forget the petty trials of life, the Didamas and Elkanahs. The wind blew his hat off and dropped it in a shallow channel, but he splashed to the rescue and laughed aloud as he fished it out. It was not much wetter than it had been that night of the rain, when he tried to lend his umbrella and didn't succeed. This reflection caused him to halt in his walk and look backward toward the sh.o.r.e. The brown roof of the old tavern was blus.h.i.+ng red in the first rays of the sun.

A cart, drawn by a plodding horse and with a single individual on its high seat, was moving out from behind the breakwater. Some fisherman driving out his weir, probably.

The sand of the outer bar was dimpled and mottled like watered silk by the action of the waves. It sloped gradually down to meet the miniature breakers that rolled over and slid in ripples along its edge. Ellery wandered up and down, picking up sh.e.l.ls and sea clams, and peering through the nets of the nearest weir at the "horsefoot crabs" and squid and flounders imprisoned in the pound. There were a few bluefish there, also, and a small school of mackerel.

The minister had been on the bar a considerable time before he began to think of returning to the sh.o.r.e. He was hungry, but was enjoying himself too well to mind. The flats were all his that morning. Only the cart and its driver were in sight and they were half a mile off. He looked at his watch, sighed, and reluctantly started to walk toward the town; he mustn't keep Mrs. Coffin's breakfast waiting TOO long.

The first channel he came to was considerably deeper than when he forded it on the way out. He noticed this, but only vaguely. The next, however, was so deep that the water splashed in at the top of one of his boots.

He did notice that, because though he was not wearing his best clothes, he was not anxious to wet his "other ones." The extent of his wardrobe was in keeping with the size of his salary.

And the third channel was so wide and deep that he saw at once it could not be forded, unless he was willing to plunge above his waist. This was provoking. Now he realized that he had waited too long. The tide had been flowing for almost an hour; it had flowed fast and, as he should have remembered, having been told, the princ.i.p.al channels were eight feet deep before the highest flats were covered.

He hurried along the edge, looking for a shallower place, but found none. At last he reached the point of the flat he was on and saw, to his dismay, that here was the deepest spot yet, a hole, scoured out by a current like a mill race. Turning, he saw, creeping rapidly and steadily together over the flat behind him, two lines of foam, one from each channel. His retreat was cut off.

He was in for a wetting, that was sure. However, there was no help for it, so he waded in. The water filled his boots there, it gurgled about his hips, and beyond, as he could see, it seemed to grow deeper and deeper. The current was surprisingly strong; he found it difficult to keep his footing in the soft sand. It looked as though he must swim for it, and to swim in that tide would be no joke.

Then, from behind him, came a hail. He turned and saw moving toward him through the shallow water now covering the flat beyond the next channel, the cart he had seen leave the sh.o.r.e by the packet wharf, and, later, on the outer bar. The horse was jogging along, miniature geysers spouting beneath its hoofs. The driver waved to him.

"Hold on, mate," he called. "Belay there. Stay where you are. I'll be alongside in a shake. Git dap, January!"

Ellery waded back to meet this welcome arrival. The horse plunged into the next channel, surged through it, and emerged dripping. The driver pulled the animal into a walk.

"Say," he cried, "I'm cruisin' your way; better get aboard, hadn't you?

There's kind of a heavy dew this mornin'. Whoa, Bill!"

"Bill" or "January" stopped with apparent willingness. The driver leaned down and extended a hand. The minister took it and was pulled up to the seat.

"Whew!" he panted. "I'm much obliged to you. I guess you saved me from a ducking, if nothing worse."

"Yes," was the answer, "I wouldn't wonder if I did. This ain't Sat.u.r.day night and 'twould be against Trumet principles to take a bath any other time. All taut, are you? Good enough! then we'll get under way." He flapped the reins and added, "G'long, Julius Caesar!"

The horse, a st.u.r.dy, sedate beast to whom all names seemed to be alike, picked up his feet and pounded them down again. Showers of spray flew about the heads of the pair on the seat.

"I ain't so sure about that duckin'," commented the rescuer. "Hum! I guess likely we'll be out of soundin's if we tackle that sink hole you was undertakin' to navigate. Let's try it a little further down."