IV

Cap’n Smiley, young Joe Sayre, and Jim Mapes went back with Mrs.

Biggles. It was a clear night with many stars but the moon had not yet

risen. The fresh, damp southeast wind was playing great chords upon the

organ of the surf. Eight minutes’ tramping over the dunes brought the

four persons to the Biggles house--a fisherman’s shack of two rooms,

but tight and dry. The lamp’s glow came through window panes. After

circling the house Cap’n Smiley moved to one of the windows. He came

back immediately and said to the others with a low chuckle:

“Whoever he is, he’s hungry. Mrs. Biggles, he’s eating your provender!”

All fear left the bayman’s wife. With an exclamation she advanced

before the others could restrain her. They followed her through the

door in time to hear her exclaim:

“You good-for-nothing, what are you doing eating my Henry’s cold samp

porridge!”

The man choked on a mouthful. Swiftly he rose and tried to slip by her.

She gave him a heavy box on the head and the men at the door caught and

held him.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” asked Cap’n Smiley, sharply,

though amazed mirth at the transformation of Mrs. Biggles caused his

eyes to twinkle. The sailor stood quietly enough. His English was

poor. He was, he said, one of the crew of the wrecked ship. He had

been washed ashore unconscious on the night of the disaster but had

recovered his senses before dawn, creeping into the sandhills. There

he had hidden in bushes and slept. He had slept all day and at night

he had prowled about. Breaking into one of the few summer cottages on

the beach he had found a little food and on that he had subsisted. He

hadn’t approached the Coast Guard Station nor made himself known to any

one because of a fight in San Francisco in which he had killed a man.

A boarding-house keeper had sheltered him and put him on the _Mermaid_,

but the captain knew who he was and he had expected to be arrested when

the ship made New York. The wreck had seemed to offer him a miraculous

chance of escape, and he had somehow escaped with his life. Was he to

survive in the face of such odds only to lose his life ashore? But

now, half-starved and plainly feverish, he could struggle no longer;

he would confess and take his chances. His eye remained with a fixed

fascination on the food that lay on the table. He wriggled feebly in

Cap’n Smiley’s hard grasp to reach it; then sank down limply with

delirious mutterings.

The keeper and Joe Sayre picked him up and carried him, as men on

shipboard carry a lighter sail, to the station. Mrs. Biggles, entirely

reassured, they left in her cabin. At the station a bed was made on the

floor in the living room, not far from the stove. The keeper got out

his medicine chest and prepared to spend a wakeful night.

The man was evidently in a very bad state. Sedatives seemed to have no

effect on him. He tossed about on the floor as if he felt a heaving

deck under him. He talked almost continuously. His exchanges with the

boarding-house keeper and with the skipper of the _Mermaid_ were on his

lips; and interspersed with cringing entreaties were sentences that

must have been uttered in a quarrel with the man he had killed. Cap’n

Smiley listened patiently, but he could not make much of it.

The man killed in the fight had not been a sailor but a landsman, that

was evident, and he had had something to do with a woman--no, a girl.

Then came the words, “Six years old,” and the keeper suddenly realized

that all this might relate to the child sleeping in his bed. He bent

down and waited for her name, but it never came. Most likely the

speaker did not know it. There was something about a “Captain King,”

but the name of the _Mermaid’s_ captain had been Jackson.... This

Captain King had had something to do with the six-year-old girl.... She

was not his child but another’s.... He had arranged to send her back

... keeping himself out of it.... Child ... Cap’n Smiley’s thoughts

travelled to the letter found with the body of the _Mermaid’s_ skipper.

It must have been from this Captain King. But to whom was he returning

this child who was not his? And who were her parents? All this sick

man knew he had learned from an agent of Captain King who had brought

the child to the master of the _Mermaid_, and who had been drinking

with the money someone, presumably King, had paid him.... The keeper,

with a beating heart, gave heed to the sailor’s talking. Much of it

was irrelevant and not a little was unclean; once the man sang part of

a chantey, and once he cursed a fellow working beside him aloft on a

yard. It was a long and strained vigil that the Coast Guardsman kept,

and when, toward morning, the poor wretch on the floor sank into a

coma and died, he had an intolerable sense of being cheated, first by

a dead man who should have kept his papers in oilskin packets, and

then by a dying man whose tongue should either have wagged a few hours

longer or never have wagged at all.

V

Spring advanced. The velvety grass of the salt meadows became a

delightful green. Mermaid of the Lone Cove Station played all day

among the dunes and down by the surf, and the men, particularly Ho Ha,

played with her. She had a part in their daily drills and exercises.

When they wigwagged with red and white flags she wigwagged with a

small red and white flag, too. When the little brass cannon was fired

and Jim Mapes, standing on a platform that encircled a high pole--a

platform that represented the maintop as the pole represented a ship’s

mainmast--caught the heaving line and made it fast Mermaid, her hair

glinting in the sunlight, stood beside him. The line rigged, Mermaid

made the round trip to the dunes and back, and then a last trip to the

dunes in the breeches buoy. Her two small legs protruded ridiculously,

and the tip of her head was hidden in the big circle of the buoy’s

belt. On other days there was drill with the surf boat, but on these

occasions Mermaid could only stand on the beach and jump up and down

with excitement while her uncles (as she was taught to call them)

waded warily out in big hip boots, watched for the right moment, and

pushed beyond the breakers. Cap’n Smiley, who was always helping the

little girl to invent games, had suggested to her that she play she was

on a desert island. He had explained to her what a desert island was,

and had made her acquainted, verbally, with one Robinson Crusoe.

She, Mermaid, was a desert islander and the surfboat, returning, was a

boat come to take her off. She had been alone, utterly alone, on the

desert island for years. At the sight of the boat coming through the

surf emotion should be hers. It was, and would have been anyway; but it

might never have been the imaginative and kindled thing it became with

the keeper’s help. Standing at the tiller he would call out, as the

boat turned shoreward:

“Courage! You shall be restored to your family and friends!”

And when the boat was beached he would advance to the child, bow

respectfully before her, and even sometimes, kneeling, kiss her hand.

He would say:

“Your gracious Majesty, we have voyaged to the Indies and have taken

possession of them in the name of Castile!”

Or:

“Welcome, my lady, back to the world of living men!”

Or, merely bowing, and with a deference as studied as Stanley’s in the

African jungle:

“Madame Mermaid, I believe!”

Mermaid received him without full comprehension but with high glee.

With a deplorable lack of etiquette she invariably reached up both

arms, put them around his lowered neck, and kissed him.

She was pretty with the promise of loveliness, perhaps of beauty. It

was not only her hair and her eyes but the modelling of her chin and

the spacing of her features. The skin was unusually clear, with colour

in the cheeks, and a few faint, clustered freckles.

The men were devoted to her and she returned their affection. Even Ha

Ha, the sad soul, the introspective one, though he never smiled, was

less gloomy in his opinions when Mermaid stood by. Ho Ha, unable to

compete with the keeper in telling engrossing stories, set himself to

work to provide pets. There were foxes on the beach and he had come

upon a litter. The cubs were dedicated to Mermaid--until nightfall

when their mother gnawed the ropes which fastened them. Ho Ha sought

vainly in Bellogue and Blue Port for a white rabbit with pink eyes. The

beach was infested with plain brown rabbits, for the most part rather

unafraid of man. Mermaid could approach within a few feet of these

but they would not stay to let her touch them. Occasionally, trotting

along the ocean shore beside Ho Ha, Mermaid came upon the round-toed

tracks of a cat. Then the coast guardsman would explain how some of the

summer people had left their cats on the beach in the fall to fend

for themselves. Cats so abandoned, explained Ho Ha, quickly became

wild; they doubtless caught birds and visited the water’s edge in the

reasonable hope of finding a bit of fish for supper. They were as wild

as the foxes and much more savage; if Mermaid should see one she must

not make advances lest she be set upon and clawed. The sinuous line in

the sand was the trail of a snake, probably a harmless garter snake,

but possibly a black snake. Mermaid shuddered and her little hand

closed more firmly over Ho Ha’s fingers.

While her natural education was thus proceeding Cap’n Smiley gave much

thought to the question of her schooling. Soon she would be seven,

if, indeed, she were not already. Since the lack of a birthday is

troublesome he bestowed his own upon her and promised some sort of a

birthday party come May 27th.

But before this celebration ripened the agreeable course of life on the

beach suffered an intrusion. On a fine May day Cap’n Smiley was puzzled

to see advancing along the beach and turning in toward his station a

group of women whom he recognized, as they neared, to be from Blue

Port. Hastily assuring himself that his sister was not one, he arrested

the drill with the breaches buoy and stepped forward to meet them.

There were Mrs. Horton, Mrs. Brand, Mrs. Dayton, and Miss Errily. The

four came up slowly, talking among themselves with earnestness. When

they were within earshot they stopped and Miss Errily seemed to take

the lead, her thin lips closed in a straight line.

“Good morning,” said Cap’n Smiley, pleasantly. “We’re about finished

with the drill, but there’s time enough to see it done over if----”

Miss Errily interrupted him:

“We didn’t come to see the drill, Cap’n Smiley,” she said in the severe

tone natural to her. “We came to protest, on behalf of good people,

against your allowing that child with the improper name to stay here.

No one knows anything about her and I dare say the name you’ve given

her is no worse than the rest if it were known; but a crew of rough men

is not a fit surrounding in which any child should be brought up.”

For an ex-schoolteacher Miss Errily’s sentence construction was not

flattering, but it was not the construction which bothered the keeper.

The pleasant expression left his face.

“I don’t like insinuations, Miss Errily. Say what you have to say right

out.”

Miss Errily compressed her lips more tightly before reopening them.

“Everyone knows, Cap’n Smiley, that this girl is a nobody-knows-who.”

“Go on,” the keeper told her.

“Doubtless,” pursued Miss Errily, “she is a--no, I cannot bring myself

to say it, and it is unnecessary--an Improper Child” (Miss Errily’s

tone capitalized the words) “With Improper Origins and Antecedents.

Her proper place is an Institution. Naturally, the Children’s Home

connected with the county house and poor farm. They train them very

well for domestic service, and good servants are becoming scarce. Few

nowadays can keep their place and so, few keep their places. Besides,

it is a Scandal--I speak frankly--an Open Scandal for a child of her

years to be living here with rough men who cannot look after her

properly nor discipline her. School, church, and home; she goes without

all three.”

Cap’n Smiley’s blue eyes flashed as the blue ocean at which he had

been gazing flashed when the sun caught the waves. Now he turned and

faced the women, but Ho Ha, who had been listening with clenched fists,

was before him. At the beginning of Miss Errily’s remarks Ho Ha had

whispered in Mermaid’s ear and the child had scampered toward the

station, not unpleased, for she did not like the looks the visitors

gave her.

“Wait a minute, Miss Errily,” said Ho Ha. He drawled the words.

“Wait--a--minute. You are not holding school, now. Who sent you?”

The spokeswoman stiffened. She replied, angrily:

“We represent the Feeling of a Community. We----”

“And this,” observed Ho Ha, not waiting for her, “is another

community. If you represent any feelings except your own and those of a

few other meddlesome women, Miss Errily, it’s the first time in forty

years--you’re about sixty-two, aren’t you? My father was in your first

class and you were about twenty-two then.”

“Hosea!” said the keeper, in a low tone of rebuke, but he shook oddly

as he said it.

“My age,” quivered Miss Errily, “whatever it is, should be sufficient

to insure Respectful Treatment.” But she was obviously upset. Mrs.

Brand took her place.

“Insult me, if you dare, Hosea Hand!” she cried, challengingly. Ho Ha

looked at her thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t tell any one to his face what you write about people to

other people, Maria Brand,” he rejoined. “I still have your letter in

which you wrote me that Cap’n Smiley’s sister----”

“I never wrote such a letter!” almost shrieked Maria Brand, with a look

of half terror at the keeper, whose eye, fixed on the glittering ocean,

remained there. Ho Ha, turning to Mrs. Dayton as if he were finishing a

sentence addressed to her, went on implacably.

“--if you must look after other people’s children, why not look after

your husband’s?” Mrs. Dayton went red and white, half opened her lips,

and then started to walk rapidly away. The ranks had broken. Miss

Errily and Maria Brand, followed by Mrs. Horton, were also in rapid

retreat in the direction taken by Amelia Dayton who had no children,

and whose husband’s did not bear the name of Dayton. Cap’n Smiley

frowned on his surfman. “That was going too far!” he censured him.

“Not a bit, not a bit!” said Ho Ha with heat. “Nothing but a pack of

busybodies! Dick Dayton’s brats roll in dirt while Amelia Dayton lends

money at usury. My regret is that I didn’t get a chance to ask Jane

Horton if she had paid her farmer’s fine yet. You know he watered the

milk and I can guess by whose orders!”