INTRODUCING “OLD KITE ROBERSON”
Captain Duff was not visible when Phil reached the _Seamew_; but the
mate received him, and in answer to his inquiry as to the whereabouts
of his friend, pointed to the forecastle. There our lad found Serge,
from whom he was desirous of obtaining some information concerning
the schooner’s master, in whose power he had so deliberately placed
himself. Having had no experience in shipping as one of the crew of a
vessel, Phil did not realize how fully he had done this; but he had
seen enough of Captain Duff’s peculiar manner to render him rather
nervous now that the irrevocable step was taken.
Serge could only say that while the subject of their conversation was
almost as much of a mystery to him as to Phil, he had at least proved
himself a capital seaman. Also that while his frequent outbursts of
temper were frightful to witness, no serious consequences had thus far
resulted from them. No one had, however, ventured to thwart his will in
the slightest, and all hands regarded him with more or less of fear.
While the two lads were thus talking there came a sudden call for all
hands to up anchor and make sail, whereupon they tumbled up on deck and
turned to with a will, Phil working with the rest to the best of his
limited knowledge concerning what was to be done.
Before a light off-shore breeze the trim schooner slipped out of the
cove, and, as the sun was sinking behind the snow-capped Olympic
mountains, gained the waters of the Strait of Fuca, through which she
would reach the open sea.
While Phil stood gazing at the fast-fading land, feeling a little
homesick and lonely, Jalap Coombs informed him that the captain wished
him to bring his things aft into the cabin.
As the lad had not seen his recently acquired outfit since coming
aboard, he had nothing to carry, and so entered the cabin with empty
hands.
“Where is your rifle?” demanded the captain, as soon as he appeared.
“I left it behind, sir.”
“What!” roared the other, springing to his feet with every appearance
of violent rage. “Left it behind? Cheated me out of a first-class
rifle? Never mind; it shall be charged to your account.” Then, working
himself into an increase of passion, he bellowed: “You young villain!
I’ve a mind to brain you for this,” and seizing a stool from the floor,
he lifted it threateningly, at the same time taking a step forward.
Phil’s first impulse was to fly from the presence of one whom he had
every reason to believe a madman. On second thoughts he turned, and,
with a very pale face but a steady voice, said: “You don’t dare do it.
You are a coward, and you know it as well as I do.”
For the first time in all his sea-going life big, red-faced, bullying
Captain Duff was bearded in his own den, and that by a mere slip of a
boy, as he regarded the lad now so boldly confronting him. He was a
coward at heart, and he knew it. His very air of bluster and bravado,
assumed so long ago that it had become a second nature, was worn solely
for the purpose of misleading his associates, and hiding from them
his true character. This manner was so well borne out by his size and
his ferocious expression that until this time he had succeeded in
inspiring awe merely by noise and aspect. Now his true character was
known, the fraud he had perpetrated so successfully and so long was
discovered, and like a great gorgeous soap-bubble his inflated wind-bag
of bravery had been pricked and dissipated.
The collapse of this roaring pretence was so sudden and complete as
to be staggering. For a moment the man stood motionless, with the
stool still uplifted, but with every vestige of color fled from his
ordinarily crimson face. Then the stool dropped to the floor with a
crash, and he tottered limply backward into the huge arm-chair that he
had occupied when Phil entered the cabin. His eyes rolled, his breath
came in gasps, and a hoarse rattling issued from his throat.
During this extraordinary scene Phil stood his ground, outwardly calm
and resolute, but wondering whether he was to be eaten or skinned alive
for his audacity. At length, realizing that the enemy was powerless for
the time being, he left the cabin, and reported to the mate on deck
that he believed Captain Duff was having a fit, and needed attention.
Upon this Jalap Coombs cautiously approached the sky-light, and peered
down into the cabin. Then he as cautiously tiptoed back to where Phil
was standing. “I ruther guess we’d best leave him alone to fight it
out,” he said. “He’s a born fighter, Cap’n Duff is, an’ he’s had ’em
afore. As my friend old Kite Roberson uster say consarning fits: ‘When
a ordinary seaman takes a notion to indulge in ’em, roll him on deck,
douse him with buckets of salt-water, and otherwise wrastle ’em out of
him, fer he ’ain’t no business with any such luxuries. With a cap’n,
though, it’s diffrunt. He’s a priverleged character, and when he feels
inclined fer a fit, he wants to enjoy it, and have it out without
interference, same as ef it war a glass o’ grog. So never interrupt a
cap’n’s fits ef you want to have peace _and_ quietness aboard ship.’
That’s what old Kite uster say, and he must er knowed, ’cause he’d had
more millions of experience than most.”
“Who was this Mr. Robinson?” asked Phil.
“Who! Kite――old Kite Roberson? ’Tain’t likely now that ye never heerd
of him? Why, he was one of the best-known men. By his own ’count he’d
been ’round the world more times than there is parallels of latitood,
and some of his charts looked like spider-webs, they war kivered so
thick with his tracks. Why, he come from the same place as me, old Kite
did, and sometimes it makes me feel prouder’n a mere mortal man orter
feel to think that him and me was fashioned outer the same clay, as it
war, and brung up on the same air.”
“It must be a great satisfaction,” remarked Phil, politely. Then, to
show his interest in the subject, he asked: “But where is your native
place, Mr. Coombs? You are a down-Easter, are you not?”
“Sartain I am,” replied the mate. “A genuine down-Easter is the one
thing on this watery earth I can surely claim to be. But whether I’m a
Britisher or a Yankee is the problem I’m wearing my life out trying to
solve.”
“That seems queer,” said Phil, reflectively.
“Queer ain’t no name fer it. It’s simply redickerlous. Ye see, when
they settled the boundary ’twixt Maine and the Provinces, they run it
plumb through my father’s house, and as nigh as I can figger I was born
straddle of the line. After that I was brung up fust on one side, and
then on t’other; so that ef one man says I’m a Britisher and another
says I’m a Yank, they ain’t nuther of ’em lying, nor yet they ain’t
telling the truth. Sometimes I feel as ef I war a British subjeck, and
again like a full-blown American citizen. It depends mostly on the
weather. When it’s damp _and_ foggy, like it is now, I ginerally feels
like a subjeck. Old Kite Roberson he uster say――”
Just then came the note of a siren fog-horn over the waters from dead
ahead. A dense mist had rolled in from the sea, obscuring the light on
Race Island, the most southerly of the few light-stations maintained
on the coast of British Columbia. All the time that he was talking
with Phil, Jalap Coombs had also been keeping a sharp lookout for this
light. Now, at the first note of its siren, he sprang up, transformed
in an instant from a shambling, garrulous “subjeck,” as he called
himself, into an alert and thoroughly capable Yankee sailor.
“Ready about!” he shouted, in clear, crisp tones. “Hard a-lee!”
And a minute later, as the lively craft spun round to a deafening
accompaniment of rattling blocks and slatting canvas, “Draw away!”
With this the schooner settled comfortably down on her new course, and
bending gracefully over before a damp sea-breeze, sped swiftly away
from the threatened dangers of Race Island rocks.
About this time Ebenezer, the black cook, announced that supper was
ready in the cabin, and the mate, after a long careful look both to
windward and leeward, suggested to Phil that they might as well go
below and “stow a cargo of chuck.”
In the cabin, which was fairly roomy and well ventilated, stood a
table on which supper was spread, a small stove for heating purposes
only, the captain’s big arm-chair, several stools, and a short bench.
On two sides were single tiers of comfortable-looking bunks, five in
all. On the starboard side was a closed door that evidently opened
into a small state-room, and on the port side was a narrow passage
leading to the galley, an unusual luxury of appointment in schooners
of the _Seamew’s_ class, and one that assured the safe and speedy
transmission of food from the stove on which it was cooked.
Captain Duff was nowhere to be seen when Phil and the mate entered the
cabin, and in answer to Phil’s inquiring glance, the latter pointed
significantly with his thumb towards the closed state-room door.
There were, however, two other occupants of the cabin, both young
men. They were already seated at the table, and eating with silence
and despatch. They did not speak to Phil nor he to them, and as the
mate also ate in silence the meal was uninterrupted save by the steady
clatter of knives, forks, and spoons against that peculiarly thick and
indestructible form of china known as stone-ware.
The two young men finished first, pushed back from the table, lighted
their pipes, and left the cabin.
“Who are they?” asked Phil, after they had disappeared.
“Hunters,” was Mr. Coombs’s laconic answer.
Then he too pushed back from the table, and Phil hastened to ask him
before he could leave the cabin where he should find his bag, as he
wished to get a pea-jacket from it.
The mate merely pointed to an end berth on the port side, in which,
sure enough, Phil spied a new canvas bag that he now recognized as his
own.
“Am I to bunk in here?” he asked, in some surprise.
“Sartain,” replied Mr. Coombs, and then he too vanished up the
companion-way.