schooner _Molly and Kate_, was trying to do two things at once. He
was superintending the unloading of ballast by a crew of four men
and a boy and he was answering the questions of Billy Mayes, who sat
beside him. Billy was twelve and Captain Ezra was almost five times
twelve, but they were great cronies. The _Molly and Kate_ was tied
up to Forster’s Wharf only last evening, and already, this being a
Saturday morning, Billy was on hand to hear what wonderful adventures
had befallen his friend on the latest voyage. The _Molly and Kate_
carried lumber to fascinating Southern ports like Charleston and
Savannah and Jacksonville and even, less frequently, Havana, and never
a voyage but what Captain Ezra returned with a new budget of marvelous
tales for Billy’s delight. Some day Billy was going to sail with the
Captain and see the astounding places and things with his own two very
blue eyes: see Charleston and Cape Hatteras and the Sea Islands and
Florida. But more especially he would visit Pirate Key, for it was on
Pirate Key that the Captain met with his very startlingest adventures.
Billy had never been able to find Pirate Key on any map, but, as the
Captain explained, it wasn’t very big and few mariners even knew of
its existence. Somewhere between the Marquesas and the Dry Tortugas it
lay, and beyond that the Captain declined to commit himself: which,
under the circumstances, Billy considered quite proper, for it seemed
that the natives of Pirate Key were a peculiarly sensitive people and
much averse to visitors and publicity. Even the Captain, with his
winning personality, had had much difficulty in becoming friends with
the inhabitants of the island. The first time he had tried to land on
it, many years ago, he and his crew had been fired on with poisoned
arrows. Captain Ezra could still point out the dents made by the arrows
on the old blue dory that trailed astern there. The Captain, with one
mild gray eye on the crew, had just finished a soul-stirring account of
the hurricane that had met them off the South Carolina coast on their
northward trip, and Billy was still glowing with pride at the thought
of knowing so intimately a person of such nautical skill and personal
bravery, for, although the Captain hadn’t said so in so many words, it
was very plain that only heroism and remarkable seamanship had brought
the _Molly and Kate_ safely through great peril, when “Long Joe” Bowen,
shoveling sand nearby, was conquered by a perfectly terrible spasm of
coughing and choking. Captain Ezra viewed him silently for a moment and
then inquired mildly:
“Been an’ swallered some o’ that sand, Joe?”
“Long Joe” nodded and said “Yes, sir,” in a very husky voice.
“Mm, well you want to be more careful,” advised the Captain most
sympathetically, “’cause if you ain’t I’m likely to have to swab out
your throat for you, an’ that’s a remarkably painful operation, Joe.”
There was no response to this, but Billy could see “Long Joe’s”
shoulders heaving and knew that he must already be in much pain. Billy,
like his friend the Captain, had a very sympathetic nature. When the
sufferer appeared to be easier Billy looked up again at the Captain’s
seamed and ruddy countenance and asked:
“Did you get to Pirate Key this time, sir?”
“Pirate Key?” responded the Captain. “Oh, yes, we were there a couple
o’ days. Not on business, but you see I’d promised the King I’d drop in
on him the next time I was down around there. Seein’ as he leads a kind
o’ lonely life, an’ him an’ me bein’ particular friends, as you might
say, I didn’t have the heart to say no to him.”
“Was he quite well?” asked Billy politely.
“Pretty smart for an old fellow. You see, Billy, he’s――let me see――why,
he must be well over a hundred now.”
“A hundred!” gasped the boy.
The Captain nodded gravely. “Them Pirate Key folks lives a long time.
They don’t go to school until they’re twenty. If they did, you see,
they’d forget all they’d learned afore they was what you might call
middle-aged.”
Billy pondered that. Not going to school until one was twenty had
things to be said in its favor. Still, it was revolutionary, and he
decided to put it aside for further consideration.
“And how was the Queen? And the Prince?” he asked interestedly.
“Well, the Queen was well, but the Prince had been an’ ate something as
didn’t agree with him. The Royal Physician was some worried when I got
there, but I give him a couple o’ doses of kerosine oil an’ it did him
a power o’ good.”
“The――the physician?” asked Billy doubtfully.
“No, the Prince, o’ course. There wasn’t nothing the matter with the
physician.” The Captain sounded slightly vexed. “He’d been an’ ate
some――some――what’s this now?――some hoki-moki fruit.” He viewed Billy
sternly. “The Prince had.”
“Really?” asked Billy. “What――what is hoki-moki fruit like?”
“Well,” replied the narrator, knocking the ashes from his pipe and
thoughtfully scraping the bowl with his pocket knife, “it’s a sort o’
like a orange an’ sort o’ like a apple.”
“Oh!”
“An’ it’s pizen if you eat it afore it’s ripe. Don’t never touch a
hoki-moki fruit till it’s purple, Billy.”
Billy promised instantly. “Only,” he added, “I might not know it,
Captain Ezra, if I was to go to Pirate Key. Is it round? Does it grow
on trees?”
“More square than round, you might say. It grows in clusters as big as
that water cask there. Hundreds of ’em together. An’ they grow high
because if they didn’t the wild horses would eat ’em when they was
green an’ die. That’s one o’ the wonders o’ Nature, Billy.”
“Yes, sir. But I didn’t know horses ate fruit.”
“Ain’t you ever see a horse eat a apple? Why, they’re plumb fond o’
apples. Bananas, too. An’ watermelons. Guess the only kind o’ fruit a
horse won’t eat is cocoanuts.” The Captain filled his pipe leisurely
and in silence. Then: “Another peculiar thing, Billy, is that you might
call the affinity o’ the hoki-moki tree an’ them wild horses. They
can’t keep away from ’em, the horses can’t. There’s something about
the――the tree itself that draws the horses: something in the wood, they
say. You don’t never find any bark on a hoki-moki tree low down because
the wild horses keeps rubbin’ themselves against it. Seems like they
just can’t resist the――the sub-tile influence. It’s extraordinary.”
Billy agreed emphatically that it was. “Are there many wild horses on
the key?” he inquired after a moment.
“Thousands. The natives catch ’em an’ train ’em. The King has more’n
three hundred horses in his private stable, an’ the Queen she has
about a hundred, an’ the Prince he’s got maybe thirty or forty, too.”
The Captain applied a lighted match to his pipe and puffed blue smoke
clouds into the spring sunlight. “They kill ’em for their hides, too,”
he went on presently. “They make fine leather.”
“I shouldn’t think they’d need leather,” said Billy, “being just
savages.”
“Savages!” The Captain viewed him reprovingly. “Don’t you ever let ’em
hear you say that, son! Benighted, in a manner o’ speakin’, they may
be, but they ain’t savages. As for leather, why, now, they make lots o’
uses o’ it: saddles an’ harnesses an’ travelin’ bags――――”
“Traveling bags!”
“――An’ trunks.” The captain paid no heed to the interruption. “An’
here’s another peculiar thing. You may be able to explain it, but I
can’t, an’ I never heard anyone who could. Them hoki-moki trees has
just as much affinity for a horse-hide as they has for the horse
himself. Lay a horse-hide saddle twenty feet away from a hoki-moki tree
an’ just as soon as you lets go of it it’ll begin to move right over to
the tree and try to rub itself against it! Now you explain that!”
“But I can’t,” said Billy, wide-eyed. “It――it’s most――most extronry!”
“It surely is!” declared the Captain. “What you might call one o’ the
marvels o’ Science. I ain’t never――That the lot, Joe? Well, I guess
it’s most dinner time, ain’t it? Talkin’ always gives me a powerful
appetite an’ I’m plumb famished. Sing out to Steve to start that galley
fire an’ get a hustle on him!”
Billy’s thoughts dwelt a good deal for the rest of that day on Captain
Ezra’s interesting discourse, and when he went to sleep it was to dream
terribly complicated things about wild horses and hoki-moki trees
and the fascinating inhabitants of Pirate Key who wore the scantiest
attires but indulged themselves in traveling bags! Sunday was always a
hard day to live through, for after church and Sunday school were past
many empty hours stretched ahead. This Sunday, however, was not so bad,
for Mr. Humbleton, the bank treasurer, came to call in the afternoon
and brought Arthur Humbleton with him. Arthur was fourteen and a youth
of affairs and position in the community, as became the son of a bank
treasurer. For one thing, Arthur was captain of the Broadport Junior
Baseball Team. Billy and Arthur were graciously allowed to retire from
the front parlor and the society of their elders and found sanctuary
on the little side porch where the chill of an easterly April breeze
failed to penetrate. Billy was glad of the opportunity to talk to
Arthur, for he had a request to make, and after several false starts he
managed to make it.
“I wish,” he said, after swallowing hard a couple of times, “I wish
you’d let me play on the nine this year, Arthur.”
Arthur Humbleton observed him frowningly. Then he shook his head. “I
don’t see how I could, Billy,” he answered. “The team’s all made up,
in the first place, and then you aren’t much of a player. Maybe next
year――――”
“I can play in the outfield all right,” defended Billy eagerly.
“Oh, most any fellow can catch a fly,” replied the other carelessly.
“There’s more to baseball than just that, Billy. You’ve got to know
how to run the bases and bat and lots of things.”
“I can run bases just as fast as――――” Billy paused. He had been going
to say “as you can,” but diplomacy came to his aid. “As fast as Tom
Wallace can,” he substituted.
“Maybe, but you can’t bat a little bit,” responded Arthur triumphantly.
“And you know you can’t.”
“If I had more practice, Arthur――――”
“No, sir, you couldn’t ever be a real corking batter.” Arthur was
kindly but firm. “A fellow has to have the batting eye. Of course I
don’t say that maybe if you worked awfully hard this year and practiced
every day you mightn’t be a lot better, but I don’t believe you’ll ever
be a real star, Billy.”
The subject, engrossing to both boys, continued for some time, and in
the end it was agreed that Billy should become a sort of unofficial
outfield substitute with the privilege of practicing with the nine
sometimes and making himself useful chasing the long flies that
infrequently went over Mr. Bannerman’s garden fence. As Mr. Bannerman
was aged and crabbed and disliked seeing small boys wallowing across
his asparagus bed in search of baseballs, the position assigned
to Billy promised as much danger as honor. But he knew himself
to be fast on his feet and knew Mr. Bannerman to be slow, and he
accepted gratefully. Soon after that Arthur was summoned hurriedly
by his father, so hurriedly that he left behind him an enticing blue
paper-bound pamphlet entitled “How to Play Base Ball” which Billy
discovered just before supper and which he surreptitiously studied
later behind the shielding pages of “Travels in the Holy Land.”
But he found it difficult to understand until he happened on a dozen
pages at the end of the booklet devoted to advertisements of baseball
goods. There were soul-stirring pictures and descriptions of mitts and
gloves, bats and masks and balls. He admired and coveted, and mentally
compared the prices set down against the articles with the contents
of the little box in his top bureau drawer that was his bank. The
comparison wasn’t encouraging. Billy sighed. And just then his eyes
fell on a word that challenged attention. “Westcott’s Junior League
Ball,” he read. “Regulation size and weight, rubber center, all-wool
yarn, double cover of best quality selected horsehide. Warranted to
last a full game without losing elasticity or shape.”
Billy read it twice. Then he became thoughtful. After that he read the
description of the baseball again and his eyes became big and round.
Later, in bed, with the light from the electric lamp at the corner
illuming the ceiling, he lay sleeping for a long hour, experiencing the
triumph that thrills all great discoverers and inventors.
The next morning he surprised every member of the household by being
downstairs in advance of breakfast _and with his shoes tied_! His
mother viewed him anxiously and felt his face but was unable to detect
anything abnormal save, perhaps, a certain intensity of gaze and
impatience of delay. There was a full half-hour between breakfast and
school and Billy made the most of it. Captain Ezra was smoking his pipe
on the wharf when Billy arrived, breathless, on the scene.
“Well, well,” exclaimed the Captain. “Ain’t you round kind of early?”
But there was scant time for amenities and Billy plunged directly into
his business. “Are you going down South again pretty soon, sir?” he
inquired anxiously. The Captain allowed that he was; as soon, in fact,
as the new cargo was aboard, which, if he wasn’t saddled with the
laziest crew on record, ought to be in about four days. “And are you
going to Pirate Key?” Billy continued. The Captain blinked.
“Well, I might,” he replied after slight hesitation. “Why?”
“Because I want you to bring me a piece of that hoki-moki wood, sir, a
piece big enough to make a bat. You see――――”
“A bat? What sort of a bat?”
“Why, a baseball bat. Could you, do you think? It would have to be that
long――” Billy stretched his arms――“and that big around――” Billy formed
a circle with his small fingers――“and it oughtn’t to have any knots in
it. Is hoki-moki very knotty, Captain Ezra?”
“Knotty? N-no, I wouldn’t call it that. I――――” He coughed and cast a
troubled gaze toward the lighthouse point. “What was it you wanted it
for, now?”
“A baseball bat,” answered Billy, almost impatiently. “I thought if you
could get me a piece big enough I could get Jerry Williams, over at
Morris’s carpenter shop, to make it for me. Could you? Would it――would
it be much trouble to you, sir?”
“Why, n-no, only――hm――you see I ain’t plumb sure of gettin’ to Pirate
Key this trip, Billy.” Billy’s face fell and Captain Ezra went on
quickly. “But I ain’t sayin’ I won’t, you know. Fact is, it’s more’n
likely I will. An’ if I _do_――――”
“Oh, will you please?” cried Billy, beaming. “How much would it cost,
sir? I’ve only got twenty-two cents, but if you’d take that I’d pay you
the rest when you came back.” He dug into a pocket, but the Captain
waved the suggestion aside.
“Shucks,” he said, “a little piece o’ wood ain’t goin’ to cost nothin’.
Why, I guess I could bring off a whole tree if I wanted it. I guess
there ain’t anything on that there island I couldn’t have for the
askin’, Billy, the King an’ me bein’ so friendly. Tell you what I’ll do
now. I’ll get ’em to cut a piece o’ that wood an’ make the bat for you
right there. How’ll that be?”
Billy looked dubious. “Why, that’s awfully kind, sir, but――but do you
think they’d know how to make a baseball bat? Bats have to be made
awf’ly partic’larly, Captain Ezra, or else they aren’t much good.”
“Don’t you worry about that, son. They been makin’ their own bats on
Pirate Key for years, an’ I guess there ain’t no better ones to be
had.”
“Why, do they play baseball _there_?” gasped the boy.
“’Course they do! Leastways, they play what’s pretty near like it.
The――the general idea’s similar. They’re plumb crazy about it, too.
They got a eight-club league down there――――”
But at that moment the bell in the town hall clanged its first stroke
and Billy fled.
During the four days that the _Molly and Kate_ remained at Forster’s
Wharf, Billy and the Captain met twice and when the schooner finally
sailed the Captain had full, detailed and most explicit instructions
regarding that length of straight, well-seasoned hoki-moki wood that
was to be brought back either in the rough or shaped into the Pirate
Key idea of a baseball bat. After that there was nothing for Bill to do
save await the return of the schooner.
April gave place to May and the Broadport Juniors began to play
Saturday afternoon games on the back common and to practice diligently
on other days after school was over. Billy served a rigorous
apprenticeship in the outfield, chasing flies that went over the
heads of the regular players and several times scrambling over Mr.
Bannerman’s fence and recovering the ball from under the rhubarb
or from between the rows of early peas. So far fortune had attended
him and he had invariably escaped with his life. Now and then he
was allowed to take his turn with the batters and stand up at the
plate while Waldo Hutchins pitched his famous “slow ones.” Practice
is supposed to make perfect, but Billy was still a long way from
perfection as a batsman. Nor could either he or Arthur Humbleton
observe any great amount of improvement. But Billy persisted, consoling
himself with rosy dreams of the future. Almost any day now the _Molly
and Kate_ might return bearing Billy’s Great Discovery.
Meanwhile the Juniors won from Scalfield Grammar School, were defeated
by the West Side Reds and were annihilated by the Downerport Eagles.
And then, as it seemed to Billy, just in the nick of time to prevent a
similar fate at the hands of that especial rival, the Broadport White
Sox, the _Molly and Kate_ tied up again at Forster’s Wharf!
That was an eventful day in Billy’s life, eventful from the moment
he heard the glad news to the moment that he was back at the house
with the precious hoki-moki bat in his possession. He had scarcely
heard Captain Ezra’s detailed and interesting account of the securing
of the article. For once, anxious to put the bat to the test, Billy
thought the Captain just the least bit loquacious! But he banished the
thought almost instantly, blushing for its ungraciousness, and quite
overwhelmed his benefactor with thanks ere he hurried away with the bat
tightly clutched in hand and one jacket pocket bulging with a perfectly
good “genuine horsehide” ball that had seen only two weeks’ service in
practice and had been acquired from Captain Humbleton for fifteen cents.
Subsiding, much out of breath, on the edge of the side porch, Billy
once more examined his prize with eager eyes. As to shape it looked as
fine as the best “wagon tongue” ever made. There was no doubt about it,
those Pirate Key natives knew how to make a baseball bat! Billy was
just a trifle disappointed about one thing, however, and that was the
lack of novelty. To all appearance the bat was quite like any other bat
except that the inscription “Genuine Hoki-Moki Wood” appeared half-way
along its smooth length. The words were printed in uneven characters,
and evidently with pen and ink, and the ink had run with the grain of
the wood. The varnish was still new and just a bit sticky, but that
was to be expected since varnish always dried slowly near salt water.
Hoki-moki wood was, contrary to Billy’s preconceived idea, light
instead of dark, and closely resembled ash. A surprising feature of the
bat was the twine-wound handle. It seemed strange to Billy that the
natives of Pirate Key should know of that refinement. His respect for
them grew tremendously then and there.
Having examined the bat to his heart’s content, he stood up and swung
it experimentally. It proved the least bit heavier than he could have
wished, but that wasn’t anything to trouble about. He had frequently
heard Jack Cantrell express a preference for a heavy bat, and Jack was
the hard-hitter of the Broadport Juniors. Remained now the supreme
test, and Billy approached it falteringly. Suppose it failed! Suppose
Captain Ezra’s tales of the peculiar properties of hoki-moki wood
proved false! Billy felt that the disappointment would be more than he
could bear! Nerving himself to the ordeal, he laid the bat at the edge
of the porch, squeezed the horsehide ball from his pocket and deposited
it with trembling fingers against the house. Seven feet separated ball
and bat, and as he withdrew his fingers he gave a deep troubled sigh.
For an instant it seemed that the experiment was to fail, and Billy’s
heart sank sickeningly. But then, as he stepped back across the boards
to the porch’s edge the miracle happened. Slowly, irresolutely the ball
moved, rolled a few inches, stopped, went on, gathered momentum and
traveled straight along a board until it bumped companionably against
the hoki-moki bat!
Billy shrieked his triumph and danced ecstatically on the mignonette
bed. It was true! The Great Discovery was proved.
Again he tried the experiment and again the ball yielded to the magic
influence of the bat as the needle of a compass yields to the influence
of the North Pole. Thrice the experiment worked perfectly. A fourth
time the ball, having been placed further to the left, collided with
the handle of the bat, jumped it and rolled over the edge of the porch
into the flower bed. Billy waited for it to rise up and come back
again, but that effort appeared beyond it. Considering that a distance
of eighteen inches intervened between porch floor and flower bed, Billy
felt that it would be asking too much of the ball. Anyway, it atoned a
minute later by rolling nicely from house wall to bat with what seemed
greater alacrity. Billy was more than satisfied.
I feel that I ought to inform the reader of a fact that quite escaped
Billy, which is that the outer edge of the side porch was fully an inch
and a half lower than the inner, being so built that water would run
off it. I doubt if Billy ever knew of this. Certainly the slope was not
perceptible to an unsuspicious vision. I make no claim that the slope
of the porch floor had anything to do with the remarkable behavior
of the ball. I am willing to believe that the ball would have rolled
across to the bat had the floor been perfectly level. I only mention
the fact in the interest of truth.
Later Billy sought the back yard and tried throwing the ball in the
air and hitting it with the bat. At first this experiment proved
less successful than the other, but presently he found, to his great
delight, that he could hit almost every time! To be sure, he didn’t
always hit just squarely, but he hit. That absorbing occupation came to
an end when the ball went through a cellar window with a fine sound of
breaking glass. Thereupon Billy recovered the ball and went innocently
in to supper.
That night, for fear of burglary, Billy slept with the hoki-moki bat
beside him under the covers.
The next day was Saturday and the day of the White Sox game. Billy
spent most of the morning knocking the ball against the back yard fence
and only desisted when Aunt Julia informed him from an upstairs window
that she had a headache and would go crazy if he didn’t stop making all
that noise. Billy stopped and went and sat on the side porch, with his
feet in the mignonette and the hoki-moki bat hugged to his triumphant
breast, and dreamed dreams worthy of Cæsar or Napoleon.
The Broadport Juniors wanted to win to-day’s game, wanted to win
it more than they wanted to win any other contest in a long and
comprehensive schedule. The White Sox team was comprised of boys who
lived on the Hill. The Hill was the town’s patrician quarter. Just
about everyone who lived up there had an automobile and a chauffeur
to drive it and wore their good clothes all the time. The juvenile
residents of that favored locality were, in the estimate of the
down-town boys, stuck-up and snobbish, and they had a fine opinion of
their baseball prowess. The worst of it was that their opinion was
justified, for the White Sox――the down-towners jeeringly called them
the Silk Sox――usually beat almost every team they went up against! Last
year the Juniors had played two contests with them and had been beaten
decisively each time. And so Captain Arthur Humbleton and all the other
boys of the Juniors and all their adherents――including mothers and
brothers and sisters and an occasional father――were especially keen on
a victory. And when, in the first of the sixth inning, the White Sox
finally solved Waldo’s delivery and made three hits and, aided by an
infield error, sent four runs over the plate the Juniors’ bright dream
faded and despondency gloomed the countenance of Captain Humbleton and
his doughty warriors. The White Sox had already held a one-run lead,
the score at the start of the sixth having been 12 to 11, and now, with
four more tallies added, they looked to have the contest safely on ice.
Billy, his precious bat held firmly between his knees, occupied a seat
on the substitute’s bench, a yellow-grained settee borrowed from the
High School across the common. He had twice offered his services to
Arthur and they had been twice refused, the second time with a scowl.
Billy was absolutely certain that he could, if allowed to face the
opposing batter, who hadn’t much but a fast ball to boast of, deliver
wallops that would radically alter the history of the game. But the
hoki-moki bat was no better than any little old sixty-cent stick so
long as he was not allowed to use it. To his credit is the fact that
he had determined, in case the White Sox still held the lead at the
beginning of the ninth inning, to entrust the bat to others should
Arthur still refuse his services. That was real self-denial, real
patriotism. As much as Billy wanted to wield the wonderful hoki-moki
bat himself victory for the team stood first.
The friends of the Juniors clapped and cheered as “Wink” Billings went
to bat in the last of the sixth, and the one who cheered the loudest
was Captain Ezra Blake. The Captain had come at Billy’s earnest and
repeated behest and had togged himself out wonderfully in honor of the
occasion. The Captain did not, Billy suspected now, know a great deal
about baseball, for he cheered just as loudly when a villainous White
Sox rapped out a two-bagger as he did when one of the Juniors stole
home from third. But it was very evident that the Captain’s intentions
were of the best.