Cape Cod Folks Part 6

The sound of his voice in irate expostulation, mingled with the steady flow of those serener tones, grew gradually faint in the distance, and I was left alone with the sepulchral group of young men.

They arose, still maintaining the weighty aspect of those elected to the hour, and abruptly opened their lips in song.

There was no repression now; the Ark fairly rang with the sonorous strains of that wild Jubilate.

They sang:--

"Light in the darkness, sailor, Day is at hand; See, o'er the foaming billows, Fair haven stands."

Their voices rolling in at the chorus with the resistless sweep of the ocean-waves:--

"Pull for the sh.o.r.e, sailor, Pull for the sh.o.r.e; Heed not the rolling waves, But bend to the oar:"

and with a final "Pull for the sh.o.r.e," that sent that imaginary life-boat bounding high and dry on the strand at the hands of its impulsive crew.

Then they sat down and wiped the perspiration from their faces, which had become transfigured with a sudden zest and radiance.

I recovered myself sufficiently to express a bewildered sense of pleasure and grat.i.tude.

"Do you sing, teacher?" asked Harvey Dole, a round-faced youth with an irrepressible fund of mirth in his eyes, who had broken in on the former silence with an unguarded little snicker.

Lovell Barlow, he of the dignified countenance and spade-shaped beard, had faintly and helplessly echoed that snicker, and now repeated Harvey's words:--

"Ahem, certainly--Do you sing, teacher? Do you, now? Do you sing, you know?"

I had some new and seriously awakened doubts on the subject. However, the degree of attainment not being brought into question, I felt that I could answer in the affirmative.

The countenances of the group brightened still more perceptibly.

"And do you sing No. 2?" inquired Harvey, eagerly.

I tried to a.s.sume, in reply, a tone of equal animation.

"Is it something new? I don't think I've heard of it before."

"Why, it's the Moody and Sankey hymn-book!" exclaimed Harvey, looking suddenly blank.

I strove to soften the effect of this blow by a lively show of recognition.

"Oh, yes, I know perfectly now. It's 'Hold the Fort,' 'Ring the Bells of Heaven,' and all those songs, isn't it?"

"'Hold the Fort' 's in No. 1," said George Olver, a new speaker, with beautiful, brave, brown eyes, and a soldierly bearing.

He spoke, correcting me, but with the tender consideration which a father might display toward an unenlightened child.

"There's three numbers," said Harvey Dole, "and you ought to learn to sing 'em, teacher. We sing 'em all the time, down here."

"You are fond of singing?" I questioned.

Ned Vickery, of lithe figure and straight black hair, a denizen of the Indian encampment, started up, flus.h.i.+ng through his dark skin.

"I lul-love it!" he said.

Ned Vickery sang with the most exquisite smoothness, but stumbled a little in prosaical conversation.

A silent Norwegian, Lars Thorjon, who had sat gazing at me and smiling, flushed also at the words, and murmured something rapturous with a foreign accent.

"Yes, we're rather fond of singing." I heard George Giver's resolute tones.

Harvey Dole gave a low, expressive whistle.

"I like it, certainly, ahem! _I_ do. _I_ like it, you know," said Lovell Barlow.

"We have a singin' time generally every night," said Harvey. "Sometimes Madeline plays for us on her music, and sometimes we go down to Becky's.

Madeline's melodeon is very soft and purty, but George here, he likes the tone of Beck's organ best, I reckon. Eh, George?"

Harvey winked facetiously at George Olver, who reddened deeply but did not cast down his eyes.

"If I was you, George," continued the merciless Harvey; "I'd lay for that Rollin. Gad, I'd set a match to his hair. I'd nettle him!"

"I'd show him his p-p-place!" stammered Ned Vickery, with considerable warmth.

"_I_ would, certainly," reiterated the automatic Lovell "I'd show him his place, you know; _I_ would certainly."

The big veins swollen out in George Giver's forehead knitted themselves there for an instant sternly.

"I don't interfere with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs."

Our attention was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound of a violin played with, singular skill and correctness just outside the window.

"Glory, there's Lute!" exclaimed Harvey, bounding ecstatically from his chair.

"Come in, Lute, come in?" he shouted; "and show us what can be got out of a fiddle!"

"Let him alone," said George Olver, but the group had already vanished through the door, Lovell following mechanically.

"That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me.

"I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days.

Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'--I suppose it's true--there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month--I Reckon that's true--to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin'

back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was sick on't.

"I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this sh.o.r.e are allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin'

back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the farderest."

The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared half-dragging, half-pus.h.i.+ng before them a matchless Adonis in glazed tarpaulin trousers and a coa.r.s.e sailor's blouse.

I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way to school. It was the imp's older brother.

"Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he wasn't slicked up. But I tell him clo's don't make much difference with a humly dog, anyway. Come along, Lute, and put them blushes in your pocket to keep yer hands warm in cold weather. Teacher, this is our champion fiddler, inventor, whale-fisher, cranberry-picker, and potato-b.u.g.g.e.r,--Luther Larkin Cradlebow!"