We lay in Padanaram all that day and night. In the afternoon Catty and I
went on the street car to New Bedford and saw the old whaling museum,
which is one of the most interesting things in America, and looked
around the town to find traces of the whalers that used to sail from the
port. But there weren’t so many traces. The whaling fleets are almost
done with. But we had a good time and saw lots of things.
That evening we were sitting on the deck of the _Albatross_ and Catty
says, “What are those funny riggings so many of these yachts have on
them?”
“You mean that dingus sticking out in front?” says I; “the thing that
looks like a bowsprit?”
“Yes,” says he.
“That,” says Mr. Browning, “is the pulpit.”
“For preaching?” says I. “Who do they preach to, and why do they all
have it?”
“For harpooning,” says he. “Swordfish. That’s the great sport here. Wish
we had time to give it a try. They say it’s wonderful fun.”
“How do they do it?” says Catty.
“They go outside, some place past Cuttyhunk in the ocean. A swordfish
blows something like a whale. They come up and lie on the surface and
sleep. I’ve heard you can get right close to them without disturbing
them at all. These boats have a man with a long harpoon out on the
pulpit, inside that little railing, and when they get right over the
swordfish, they let drive. The shaft is free from the head of the
harpoon, and as soon as it strikes, it falls off. A long line is
fastened to the head, and a keg is fastened to the line. These swordfish
are great big fellows, you know; weigh a lot. As soon as the harpoon
nicks them, they’re off like regular submarine boats, and the fishermen
throw the keg overboard and let the fish pull it around. Then they
follow till the fish tires itself out—and shoot it.”
“Must be a circus,” says Catty.
Catty and I were pretty tickled with ourselves for sending the
_Porpoise_ off on a wild-goose chase, but we didn’t say a word, because
we weren’t supposed to know anything about it. But Mr. Browning and Mr.
Topper looked a heap relieved, and surprised, too. When they saw that
black yacht up-anchor and move away, you would have thought somebody had
left them a billion dollars.
“Now what d’you make of that?” says Mr. Topper in a whisper.
“Beats the Dutch,” says Mr. Browning. “Guess you were mistaken about
her. Couldn’t have been following us at all.”
“She was,” says Topper. He began to look kind of worried. “Can’t be
they’ve discovered anything, can it? They didn’t get aboard us?”
“Not a chance. This boat been guarded every second. Nobody could get
aboard without being seen.”
“Anyhow,” says Mr. Topper, “they’re gone, and we’d better take advantage
of it.”
“We’ll skin out at crack of dawn. And if they get sight of us again it
won’t be _my_ fault.”
So we went to bed, and for half an hour we laid awake while Naboth and
Rameses III argued all over the place about what became of the pillar of
salt that Lot’s wife turned into. Naboth claimed it was still standing
on the very spot, and Rameses III said he saw it in a museum in New
York, and he said Lot’s wife was a powerful homely woman, if the salt
was any real likeness of her, and he felt like Lot was probably mighty
glad to get rid of her. When they got to that point I dozed off.
It was hardly light when we were waked up. Naboth was getting up the
anchor; the engine was running, and just as Catty and I got on deck, we
heard Mr. Browning throw in the clutch. Mr. Topper fired our cannon in
salute to the Yacht Club, and we moved out of the harbor into Buzzards
Bay.
It was a little misty and we couldn’t see far, but Mr. Browning was
navigating, and had all of us standing forward to look out for spars and
buoys and such-like. We headed right across the bay. Pretty soon the sun
came out, and a little breeze came along, and the mists disappeared. A
long ways ahead we could see land, and the chart said it was Cuttyhunk,
with bigger land off the port bow, and a tiny island called Penikese to
starboard.
“That’s the leper colony,” says Mr. Browning.
“Real lepers—like in the Bible?” says Catty.
“Regular lepers. The government keeps them there—like on that island in
the Sandwich group.”
“Can we see them?” says Catty.
“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” says Mr. Browning. “I’ve got
a lot of curiosity, but lepers are something I don’t need in my
business. The nearest we get to that island is about a mile away from
it.”
“Huh,” says Catty to me. “I had an idea leprosy was just a Bible disease
and in Ben Hur. Didn’t ever figger we had it right at home.”
“Folks get it from eating fish,” says I.
“I’ve et fish all my life,” says he, “and I never got it. Why, when Dad
and I were tramps, we pretty nearly _lived_ on fish, and we never had a
sign of it. Fish, your grandmother!”
“Maybe it wasn’t fish,” says I. “Maybe it was snakes.”
“And maybe it was angle worms,” says Catty.
“Anyhow, folks get it from something,” says I.
Just as we headed up the narrow channel that leads through rocks and
reefs to Cuttyhunk, that a fish line is named after, there was a little
lobster boat laying to and pulling up a lobster pot. We ran up alongside
and cut out the engine, and Mr. Browning hollered to know if the man had
any lobsters to sell.
“Got a pail?” says he, and Naboth fetched up a pail. Then the man filled
it chock-full of little lobsters and passed it back to us, and Mr.
Browning says, “How much?” and the man says, “Oh, about a dollar’n a
quarter.”
Those were the first lobsters I’d ever seen, except on the labels of
cans, and I didn’t think so much of them on account of their being so
small, until Mr. Topper explained they were young ones, which was why
the lobster man sold them to us so cheap.
Then we started along, and in a few minutes came to anchor off the stone
piers that lead through into the little land-locked basin of Cuttyhunk
where the lobster fleet anchor. We didn’t go in because we were
protected enough outside if a storm came up, and because the basin was
so small and full of other craft that we would have had a lot of trouble
maneuvering. But Mr. Browning took Catty and me ashore.
There was quite a big wharf inside, and a good sized boat fastened to
it. We went right to it to find out what was going on, and a man told us
it was the boat that carried lobsters to the Boston market. They were
loading lobsters at that very minute. We went aboard and watched.
Catty went and looked down a hatch and called me over.
“Look,” says he.
The whole inside of the ship was a kind of a tank, and that tank was
alive with lobsters, and barrels and barrels more were being poured and
chucked in. One of the men said there were about ten thousand of them. I
guess lobsters object to going to market because they kicked and flopped
out of the kegs and pails and waggled their big claws and grabbed at
things as vicious as could be. I got over being disappointed in lobsters
right there. Why, some of them looked as big as bulldogs, and acted
about the same. I wouldn’t have let one of those fellows get a grip on
my toe for the whole ship. Just imagine being in swimming and having one
of those things grab you by the foot! Whee! I’ve been grabbed by an
ordinary crab, but it would be as different to be nailed by a lobster as
there is difference between being stepped on by a cat and a horse.
We walked around the island some, and stood up on the cliff and watched
the surf smashing against the rocks, which was a fine sight. There is a
big club there where folks from Boston come to fish, and a few houses
and a lighthouse, and that’s about all. It must be an awful place to
live in winter, sort of shut off from all the world, with winds
thrashing at you from the ocean all the time, and great waves thundering
day and night. I’ll bet it’s about as lonesome a place as there is
anywheres.
We didn’t stay there very long, but went back to the _Albatross_ and
Rameses III had lunch ready. He served it in spells between arguments
with Naboth about whether lobsters were fish or animals, so the meal
went kind of slow. Naboth claimed they were animals because they had
whiskers, and Rameses III argued that wasn’t any argument at all because
cat fish have whiskers, too. Naboth said a lobster was a kind of an
alligator, and an alligator was a relation to a turtle, and a turtle was
a cousin to an armadillo, and an armadillo was an honest-to-goodness
animal, and that anything that was a relative to an animal had to be an
animal itself. But Naboth claimed a lobster lived in the water and never
came on shore at all for anything. “A lobster hain’t got no bizness to
tend to ashore,” says he, “no more’n a flounder has. He jest don’t have
no dealin’s with dry land a-tall, and that’s why he’s a fish. All them
other critters you mention has transactions to transact on dry land, but
not no lobster. He jest tends to his bizness on the floor of the ocean
till some feller comes along and hauls him out, protestin’. A critter
that’s as fond of water as all that’s a fish whether it’s a fish or
not.”
Then Mr. Browning spoke up and says: “What we want is food, and more
speed about it, and you men can compromise and call a lobster a bird.
It’s as close to being a bird as it is either a fish or an animal.”
“Huh,” says Naboth, “if a lobster hain’t a fish and hain’t an animal,
what is it? You tell me that.”
“A lobster,” says Mr. Browning, “belongs to a class all by itself. The
scientific name of lobsters is gilly-winkus; and no gilly-winkus can
ever get to be a fish or a bird in a million years. They’re called
gilly-winkuses on account of the way they roll their eyes.... Now fetch
on the coffee.”
After lunch we got under way again and ran down the shore, dodging buoys
of lobsters pots, till we got to Robinson’s Hole. Up this way the folks
called the little passages between islands “holes.” We ran through the
passage to the Vineyard Sound, and then headed diagonally across to
Martha’s Vineyard.
Catty and I sat way up forward playing checkers and talking things over.
“Well,” says I, “I guess we lifted the trouble off of Mr. Topper’s
shoulders.”
“Maybe,” says he.
“How maybe?” says I.
“The cruise isn’t over yet, and we haven’t lifted that treasure, or
whatever it is he’s after.”
“But we’ve got rid of the black yacht.”
“Maybe,” says he again.
“Huh,” says I.
“Wait,” says he. “They’ll go and dig where that map we gave ’em says to
dig, and they won’t find anything. Then what’ll they do?”
“They’ll wish they had hold of you and me,” says I.
“They will,” says he, “and they’ll come looking for us. Not for you and
me special, but for the _Albatross_ and Mr. Topper. And,” he said, “if
I’m any judge of where we’re heading, they won’t have much trouble
finding us.”
“Why?” says I.
“We sent them to Nantucket, didn’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re heading towards Nantucket ourselves.”
“Don’t believe it.”
“Going across to Martha’s Vineyard now, aren’t we?”
“Sure.”
“Next island is Nantucket.”
“Nobody’s said we were going there.”
“Bet we do.”
“Let’s find out,” says I.
So we got up and went to the bridge, and Catty says to Mr. Browning,
“Where are we heading?”
“Vineyard Haven,” says he.
“And after that?”
“Edgartown.”
“And after that?”
“Nantucket.”
“Huh,” says Catty, and he eyed me kind of savage, like I’d done
something I shouldn’t. “Now what?” says he to me.
“I dunno,” says I.
“We’ll run slam into them,” says I.
“And all our work for nothing.”
“Sure.”
“Wee-wee,” says he kind of solemn, “wouldn’t it be rotten luck if this
treasure was hid on Nantucket, and we had sent them to the very place?”
“It would be,” says I.
“It’s up to you and me,” says he, “to get busy and do some figuring.”
So we went forward to do it.