the squire’s voice go on angrily. Each mother was complacently certain
that he was having no effect on her child.
'He is telling her she ought to be ashamed of herself,' said Mrs. Myers.
'He is telling him he is such a mother-baby,' responded Mrs. Hill. 'She
will not go back to him while the world stands.'
'The righteous shall be justified, and the wicked shall be condemned,'
said Mrs. Myers.
Suddenly the squire’s monologue ended with a louder burst of oratory.
The silence which followed frightened Mrs. Hill.
'Let me in!' she demanded, rapping on the door.
'This court shall be public, not private,' cried Mrs. Myers.
She thrust Mrs. Hill aside and knocked more loudly, at which imperative
summons the squire appeared. He stood for an instant with his back to
the door, the bright light shining on his handsome face. Seeing him
appear alone, the two women stood still and stared.
'Where is he?' asked Mrs. Myers.
'Where is she?' demanded Mrs. Hill.
The squire’s voice shook.
'There is to be no divorcing in Millerstown yet awhile,' he announced.
'Where is he?' cried Mrs. Myers.
'Where is she?' shrieked Mrs. Hill.
The squire smiled. The parting blast of the train whistle, screaming as
if in triumph, echoed across the little town. They had had abundance of
time to get aboard.
'He is with her, where he should be,' he answered Mrs. Myers, 'and she
is with him, where she should be,' he said to Mrs. Hill, 'and both are
together.' This time it seemed that he was addressing all of
Millerstown. In reality he was looking straight at Caleb Stemmel.
'You m-m-mean that--' stammered Mrs. Myers.
'What _do_ you mean?' demanded Mrs. Hill.
'I mean,'--and now the squire was grinning broadly,--'I mean they are
taking a wedding-trip.'
GREGORY AND THE SCUTTLE
BY CHARLES HASKINS TOWNSEND
THIS is a tale of the warm sea-tides that daily and nightly flood the
channels among the Bermuda Islands. I had almost written it 'The Scuttle
and Gregory,' but it was Gregory who carried on the campaign
aggressively and finally triumphed with the trap-net, so that the
sea-monster was dragged away into captivity.
At our first meeting, when I described the creature whose subjection I
wished to accomplish, Gregory said, 'That’s the scuttle.' I suggested
the word cuttle, as, perhaps, more appropriate, but it was not
appreciated. The scuttle by any other name could never be satisfactory
to him. Quibbling over a mere title seemed unnecessary, so I made an
effort to get down to essentials and adopted Gregory’s word. As a result
of our conference, Gregory took certain implements of capture and sailed
out of the bay; only to return, after a considerable absence, with an
empty boat.
He had, however, matured certain plans which it seemed reasonable to
follow out. It appeared that a combination of forces was desirable, so I
contracted for the services of both Gregory and his boat, and we set
about the circumvention of the scuttle by fair measure or foul.
As we sailed away in the light morning breeze, Gregory expatiated upon
the subtlety of the scuttle and the labors of the black toilers of the
sea, who had sought to capture him.
'How big is he?' I inquired.
'Not too big, sir,' said Gregory, holding up a short oar by way of
suggesting dimensions.
I was interested, for I had read, in a book by one Hugo, how a man had
once entered a sea-cave, and had had a fearful struggle with the
creature. Respecting the truth of this, however, there is reasonable
doubt, although I know of the capture of an octopus of the seas about
Vancouver Island, which actually measured several oars' lengths across
its outspread arms. But all this is not telling the story of Gregory’s
search.
The scuttle eluded us for many days, artfully removing choice foods from
the snares we set for him; but we sometimes caught faint glimpses of him
down under the over-hanging borders of coral reefs, where he sat in
shadowy caverns, thrusting forth his horrifying arms to seize the unwary
sea-people.
While Gregory with great caution moved the boat close by the rocks, I
peered constantly through the water-glass into the grayish depths where
the fierce-jawed moray has his hunting-grounds, and where the
sharp-stinging medusa drifts along, moving out of the way of no creature
whatsoever. It was an enchanted world that lay beneath us, and I saw
many strange things which cannot be described here.
But I must explain about the water-glass, an article with which all
fishermen of the Bermudas are familiar. Like many another indispensable
thing, it is of simple construction, being nothing more than a wooden
bucket with a bottom of glass. By placing it on the surface of the water
and inserting one’s face in the open top, it is possible to see
distinctly whatever may be beneath.
We worked our way at times into small bays where green sea-lettuce lay
in the shallow water in masses. These we overturned with our oar and
boat-hook, hoping to come upon the wily object of our pursuit.
The lair of the scuttle, according to Gregory, may be discovered by
certain unmistakable signs. It is the accustomed way of the creature to
drag his prey to his hiding-place, there to devour it at leisure. Crafty
in the capture of his victims, and wily in the concealment of himself
from observation, he makes no attempt to hide the débris of his feasts.
He thrusts his garbage forth from his stronghold, unconcerned as to
where it fall, provided the entrance be clear for his own movements. If
he has feasted high on lobster or oyster, crab or clam, a mountain of
shells proclaims his lair. The heap may grow until it would fill a
basket as large as a man could lift.
Knowing his weakness for these dainties, Gregory gathered a supply,
hoping to lure the scuttle into his power. He did, in fact, nearly
succeed on one occasion by lowering a tempting morsel near where the
creature lay concealed. A long arm snatched and held the bait until the
sharp, hidden hook tore loose, and Gregory almost fell over as he jerked
the stout line.
This method might have succeeded if I had not been anxious to take my
departure from the islands and so urged haste. Whereupon Gregory, who
was big and powerful and did not fear a personal encounter with the
scuttle, became more aggressive.
On the following day, when the tide was motionless and the water glassy,
he saw the scuttle disappear under a narrow ledge a couple of fathoms
down in the clear, greenish channel. He was overboard in an instant, and
with a few quick strokes reached the bottom. Looking down through the
water-glass I could see the whitish soles of his bare feet as he made
tremendous upward thrusts with his legs.
The scuttle was disturbed by the suddenness of the attack, and as he had
not selected a favorable place for concealment, decided to make off, and
lost no time in doing so. He may have caught sight of the whites of
Gregory’s determined eyes. He was barely quicker, however, than the
quick arm of the man, and might have been seized had he not played a
scurvy trick: the water suddenly turned black--black as Gregory’s own
face.
It appears that the creature always bears a sac of inky fluid ready in
an instant to darken the water all about him, and can dart away under an
impenetrable cloud of his own conjuring. This characteristic, which I
had hitherto read of, I now saw verified. By magic the scuttle had
disappeared, and a moment later there was a porpoise-like snort as
Gregory’s head popped above the surface.
Later, we had proof also of the scuttle’s mysterious power of suddenly
changing his color. Like the chameleon, he may appear conspicuously dark
at one moment and inconspicuously pale at another, against the grayish,
ragged wall of the coral reef. This I made sure of as our boat came
close to another of his hiding-places. Although he was in full sight, it
took me some minutes to realize that the ghostly outlines pointed out to
me were not a part of the gray background of jagged rock. He can,
moreover, instantly turn brown or become spotted, as I later saw with my
own eyes after we had got him into our power.
It was clear that there was nothing more to be done in that locality; so
Gregory clambered aboard and we held counsel together as the boat
drifted broadside up the channel with the tide; and the earnestness of
the black man made so profound an impression on me that when we parted
in the evening I was not without hope that my mission would eventually
be crowned with success.
But the next day we were again disappointed. Gregory dived and had the
scuttle in his arms almost before I could brush from my eyes the salt
water his splash threw over me. As he came up alongside, however,
trouble began, for the scuttle got a grip on the bottom of the boat with
his many sucker-covered arms, and, while Gregory was getting his
breath, his hold slipped, and again the creature was off. Just how he
managed to disappear so suddenly remains a mystery; neither Gregory, who
went under again, nor I, who promptly reached for the water-glass, got
the faintest glimpse of him. Doubtless he shot away body foremost, after
the manner of his kind, every one of his eight arms contributing to the
haste of his departure.
Failing in all these manœuvres, I began to scout among lonely pools
under the cliffs, where, if cautious, one may see strange sea-folk when
the tide is out. Gregory, left alone with his stratagems, disappeared
for a few days. The last glimpse I had of him was of a very black man
with a very earnest face, loading a huge wicker contrivance into a boat.
I had considerable faith in his resourcefulness, for he knew the reefs
and caves as well as did the scuttle himself.
But my solitary patrol of the rocky shore proved fruitless, and I was
glad, two days later, to find Gregory sitting on a stone wall down by
the little dock, swinging his bare feet and enjoying the hot sunshine,
but not much inclined to talk. He told me that he had gone to a distant
island village in search of a large trap-device used for catching fish.
This, with the help of another fisherman, he had lowered into a deep
cleft among the reefs two or three miles to the westward. I was to go
with him the next day to see if by any possibility the scuttle had been
deluded into entering it, for it was baited with something which the
always hungry monster was pretty sure to investigate.
We were off early in the morning, but made slow progress, as there was
little wind. It was fully three hours before we arrived at the sunken
trap, which Gregory located by the bearings of certain distant cliffs,
for there were few portions of the reef showing at high tide. The breeze
being light, the stone killick with line attached was thrown overboard
without lowering the sail. Through the water-glass we made out the
framework of the big trap on the bottom. I let out more anchor-line, the
sloop drifting astern until we were nearly over the trap, when Gregory
yelled that the scuttle was ours.
He let down a grapple, and after some heaving and hauling we dragged the
cumbersome contrivance on board. The hatch over the water-filled well of
the sloop was shoved back to make ready for the entrance of our captive.
I kept a firm grip on the trap while Gregory, all the while shouting
instructions to me and abuse at the scuttle, undid the fastenings at one
corner. It took a deal of punching with an oar to dislodge the creature,
whose eight arms were reaching in all directions. When one of them
thrust through an opening and took a turn around Gregory’s bare arm, the
whites of the man’s eyes were even more conspicuous than his white
teeth. There was a ripping sound as he tore the arm away from that
sucker-covered arm of the scuttle, but no harm was done to either
combatant.
What with the lurching of the sloop, the rocking of the big unsteady
trap, the resistance of our captive, and Gregory’s shouting, there was
considerable turmoil for so limited an area as that we occupied on our
small craft. The scuttle was gradually crowded down, and was presently
forced to take refuge in the well to escape the black man’s oar. In the
bottom of the trap lay the empty shell of the great crayfish which had
tempted the creature to his undoing. With the hatch back in place, and
the trap lashed against the windward side of the mast, our work was
done.
After a pull on the sheet, I took the tiller and my companion rested
from his labors; but his tongue was loosened, and by the time we came to
anchor in the twilight, he had said more about the scuttle than I have
been able to recall, and a good deal that I am not hopeful of being able
to verify. Nevertheless, he had earned his reward, and as the lights
were beginning to glimmer around the harbor, he went to his home with a
comfortable jingle of coins in his pocket.
When the steamer sailed away to the north, the scuttle was a captive on
board, staring with unwinking eyes at the passengers who came to gaze at
him. He escaped from confinement twice during the voyage, and we had no
small difficulty in getting him properly secured. We learned that a
large prisoner, if he is persistent enough, may take flight through a
comparatively small hole, and we were therefore unremitting in our
watchfulness until the captive was landed securely within the walls of
the ancient fortress at the Battery.
And that is how the octopus came to the Aquarium.
IN NOVEMBER
BY EDITH WYATT
THEY had pitched camp in the shelter of a great buff-colored dune, with
two up-turned canoes, and a small tent with a flap staked over it.
Lake Michigan, all green and mist-blown, banded the whole north horizon,
to break along the curving beach in little hoary crowns of foam and
bubbles. Southwest, southeast, and south, the broad, full contours of
the dunes purled far away, beneath the gray and purple sky of the late
autumn. They were grown with red-oak and yellow poplar-brush toward the
west. Toward the southeast and south their long pure curves,
low-swooping like a swallow’s flight, ran nude and pale, in shadows
exquisitely changing in the rising afternoon.
Beside a smoky fire, between the tent and the lake, a sunburned young
woman with roughly blown hair, in corduroy skirt and a boy’s overcoat,
dark and shabby, now hid her eyes from the smoke, in the crook of her
arm, and now rubbed vaseline on a stiff shoe in her lap.
These occupations so closely engaged her attention that she did not at
first observe, across the beach, the approach of a little sandy woman
between fifty and sixty, in a short walking-skirt and a felt walking-hat
tied down with a veil. Her shoes looked damp. She glanced rather shyly,
but with a sort of liking and friendliness, at the tent and the fire.
'Come and dry your shoes,' said the girl hospitably, lifting her eyes.
She was a rather pretty blonde girl, with a good-humored, quiet
expression.
'Are you folks camping out here?' said the visitor, still looking with
an air of satisfaction and pleasure at the camp. 'You’re from Chicago,
relatives to Mrs. Horick in South Laketown, ain’t you? So I heard. I’ve
sewed some for her. Oh, I just wisht I was you. Few cares enough for
camping to do it this time of year. Your folks come here to fish?'
'No,' said the girl quietly. 'One of my cousins was taken sick this
fall, and told to live outdoors. So he decided to come out here and camp
with his wife and little boy and me. For a while.'
'You have a nice place for it.'
'My cousins have gone to the station on some errands,' said the girl
reflectively, polishing her shoe. She could not very well say to her
relative’s dressmaker, that the camp had feared the visit of Mrs. Horick
on that very afternoon.
Mrs. Horick was a pretty, competent, hard-edged young woman, who enjoyed
such things in life as tight face-veils, high traps, and docked horses.
The adult campers had drawn lots to select her victim for the afternoon.
The lot had fallen to Jim Paine. But Jim took so unbridled a pleasure in
displeasing Mrs. Horick that it was decided such a fate would be too
cruel to her. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell to Alice
Paine. But Mrs. Horick depressed Alice, sometimes for several hours
after her departure. The lots were drawn again. This time the lot fell
to Elsie Norris. With whoops, it was determined Elsie must remain. She
would not care a fig what Mrs. Horick said or thought, would be entirely
amiable with her, and, besides, had no shoes to walk to the station in.
One pair was wet. The other was too stiff to put on. After dressing
Elsie in the most handsome garments the camp afforded, the others had
left her, early in the afternoon, with Shep, Rabbie’s collie, wandering
around within call, and occasionally barking at imaginary wolves in the
brush.
'Perhaps you met my cousins on your way,' said Elsie.
'No. I didn’t come from that direction. I came from Gary. It ain’t much
of a place to live. But I got a real good airy room, with a back-porch
of my own, in a carpenter’s family there. Miss Brackett’s my name. I’m
about the only dressmaker in the place, so’s I get plenty of custom,
more 'n all that I can do; and well-paid, too, you can say in a way,'
she added with a sigh; 'and in a way, not; because I hate sewing. But
then I walk a good deal around here. There’s some fine walks through the
oaks and in the dunes; just as fine as any one could wish,' she said
with a look of content. 'It makes me just about homesick to see your
camp. I was camping myself six years ago.'
'Were you? Here?'
'No,' said Miss Brackett, with a little hesitation. In response to
Elsie’s invitation, she had seated herself on a log, near the fire.
There was evidently something very stirring in their little camp to her.
For a moment she even looked as if she were going to cry. 'It was on the
plains,' she said finally, with a certain pride. 'A long wagon-trip, a
whole year long.'
'How fine!'
'Yes,' said Miss Brackett, looking at the dunes and the surging lake.
'It was, as you might say, a great experience. You hardly would believe
me, but before that time, why, I hardly knew there was such a place as
outdoors; not till I was forty-six years old; and that’s a fact.'
Elsie glanced up at her inquiringly. She had heard of persons who
acquired Spanish at ninety, or who experienced a passionate personal
infatuation for the first time at sixty, but never of an adult creature,
devoted to an indoor existence, who suddenly felt in middle age a real
response to the great inarticulate voices of the earth.
'Up to then, I lived on the West Side, in Chicago, with my married
sister. My father left the place to her and to me. Most of the rest of
the property went to my young half-brother Kip. But when Nettie’s
children were nearly grown, it seemed as though there wasn’t any room
left in the house for me; and yet they needed me, you see, to sew for
them, right straight along. I used to sew, sew, sew till midnight and
past, often, tucking on the girls' summer dresses, especially that last
spring when I was at home; and I began to cough then and get so dreadful
tired. That winter Nettie thought each of the girls ought to have their
own room. It was no more than right, either. Nettie and me, we each had
our own room when we was young girls. So I used to sleep just on two
chairs with quilts in the back parlor, and couldn’t seem to rest very
good, and, besides, had to get up and get dressed and the room fixed,
real early, so Will could come there and read his morning paper. Well, I
used to keep all my things in shoe-boxes, up in the attic, so they’d be
out of the way. They used to laugh, and laugh, about those boxes; and
one night we was all sitting on the steps, and they were laughing, and
my youngest niece, Baby, she got real mad. She 's so warm-hearted and
she never wanted to take my room, and only did because it provoked
Nettie so, for her not to. Babe turned real white, and she said all of a
sudden, "The reason why Aunt Min hasn’t anything but shoe-boxes to keep
her things in is just because we’ve turned her out of everything," she
said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves." And she jumped up and ran
into the house.
'That night my brother Kip happened to be there. He’d been West ever
since he was fifteen. He’s a lot younger than Nettie and me--only
twenty-five, then. We thought Kip was an awful wild, queer sort of
fellow, then; we didn’t know him at all. I felt just like the rest. He’d
run through all that was left him long ago; and he’d married an actress
and was separated from her. He was a sort of a Socialist too, and even
had tramped some. But he seemed to be real kind in some ways. When Babe
said that, he looked at me quite hard. When he went home he says to me,
"You look sick, Min," he says, and he took hold of my hand. "You’ve got
fever. Why don’t you see a doctor?"
'Well, I don’t know what got into me. After they was all gone that
night, I just broke down, and cried and cried. I did feel dreadful sick
and feverish, and I hadn’t no money of my own to see a doctor, and felt
just all gone really. I managed to get up and fix the room before any of
them come down. But then I had to lie on the sofa, and couldn’t get to
breakfast. And after breakfast--would you believe it?--a doctor come.
Kip sent him, himself. But he frightened Nettie to death. I felt
dreadfully sorry for her.'
'He told your sister how ill you were,' said Elsie gravely.
'Oh, yes. But it wasn’t so much that, as she was so afraid some of the
children might catch my trouble. She was all right though as soon as
they got me to the hospital, though she was provoked too, because it
took so much of her time to come there to see me. She come twice before
I went away. The doctor said that going away was my only chance. For all
that I was up and around, he thought I couldn’t live a year.'
Neither of them spoke for a moment, looking away at the dunes.
'Then--what do you think--Kip had an intimate friend, quite a rich young
man, Will Bronson, who was sick the same way I was. That’s how Kip come
to notice my sickness so. The doctors wanted him kept out of doors, and
he and Kip was going on this wagon-trip. But his mother was nearly crazy
worrying over it, and worrying the young man and crying all day and
night. She thought Kip never could take care of him. Well, those boys
wanted me to go off with them on the wagon-trip. They said I could cook
for them, and it would relieve the mother. And it did. They took me to
see her. And she thought if a person like me could go on a wagon-trip it
couldn’t be so awful after all. Well, the short and the long of it was,
we went to Fort Leavenworth, and the boys got a wagon and provisions and
blankets and thick shoes and things for me, and they got two good mules
from the government post, and we started off.'
Miss Brackett sat erect. A look of elation burned in her violet eyes.
Elsie drew a deep breath and laughed.
'Yes. I didn’t like the idea at first: all the rough clothes, and our
being alone on the plains, and after a while going to be right in the
desert--it seemed to me terrible. But it was the only thing there was
for me to do. I just kep' my mouth shut tight through all that time. And
then, I don’t know, more and more, oh, I just come to love it!'
After a moment Elsie said, 'And did you really have any hardships?'
'What do you call hardship? The rainy reason was bad. But I’ve been lots
wetter longer at a time, through whole winters, when I’d lend my rubbers
to the children. Sometimes it was terrible cold. But then we always had
a good fire. I’ve been lots colder in the back parlor and on crowded
street-car platforms, and lots and lots more uncomfortable. Once we got
off the trail. Once we had a bad time about finding water. One night,
after the mules was hobbled they jumped along so far, even hobbled, that
we couldn’t get them for hours. Kip and Will Bronson was gone six hours
in different directions; and I was afraid they was lost. But I’ve had
more hardship, you might say, and not that I want to complain either, in
one week on the West Side at home, than in a whole year of what they
called roughing it. And for hard feelings, and real mean bad ways of
acting, I’ve seen more of them over getting out one shirt-waist in a
dressmaker’s shop, than in that whole time on the wagon-trip. Even
though once we had a man in our camp that we heard afterwards was a
criminal and fugitive from justice,' she added with a laugh.
'What sort of a man was he?'