In September Mermaid and Cap’n Smiley and Ho Ha went beach-plumming. As
they wandered over the dunes picking the blue-red-purple berries there
was much conversation, sometimes conducted in shouts, when the three
were spread a little apart.
“D’ you know the Latin name of these plums, Hosea?” demanded the
keeper. Ho Ha looked very serious.
“My bad mark in school was always in Latin!”
The keeper winked at Mermaid. Ho Ha had gone to a little red
schoolhouse, winters, until he was thirteen.
“It’s _prunus maritima_,” he reminded the scholar. “That’s almost
calling ’em maritime prunes.”
“They’re commoner than prunes with us. Do they get the name from being
served in sailors’ boarding-houses?”
“You were shanghaied to sea, once, weren’t you, Hosea?”
“Sixteen when it happened. On South Street, New York. Froze my feet
standing a trick at the wheel off Cape Horn. Mate came into the
fo’c’s’le and grabbed one foot and twisted it until I howled; then he
pulled me out on deck,” said the Coast Guard, reminiscently. “I’d
always been sort of crazy about the sea from a kid.” He emptied his
pickings into a big basket, straightened up a moment, resumed his
picking, and said:
“I worshipped, just about, an uncle, my mother’s brother, who’d been
to sea all his life. And when I was a shaver on our farm up in the
hills in the middle of the Island I slept in the attic. Every night,
Cap’n, as I got in bed I could see through a little attic window, right
over the tree tops Fire Island light. ’Twas maybe twenty miles away.
’Twould show, just a faint spark, then kindle, then glow bright, then
flame like--like a beacon. Just for a few seconds; then ’twould die
out. Occulting. It seemed to beckon to me. I was only a kid and there
was something wonderful and friendly about that light! And secret, too.
It seemed to be signalling just to me, a little chap in an ice-cold
attic on a lonely hill farm. Seemed as if that light said: ‘Come on,
Hosea Hand! I’m set here to tell you that there’s a great world out
here waiting for you! I’m an outpost! There’s lands and peoples and
adventures and ten thousand leagues of ocean--and there’s life, the
greatest adventure of all! Hurry up and grow up, Hosea Hand!’ And then
all shivering and excited, I’d crouch under the big, pieced quilt and
watch that light come and glow, shine and dim, flame and go out--until
I’d fall asleep and dream I was out there where it called me!”
The little girl listened, fascinated. She had stopped picking, and her
childish breast rose and fell with quick breathing. Cap’n Smiley picked
perfunctorily and once his hand closed so tightly about the coloured
plums that they crushed them. Ho Ha worked steadily and after a few
moments he went on:
“I was fourteen when my father died. The year before I’d quit school
to help work the farm. In those days there wasn’t any science called
agriculture. We just tilled the soil. My father was always trying to
get more land; I used to wonder what for, when it was such slavery to
work it! Maybe he suspicioned the day would come when we’d understand
the soil and know how to make it yield without back-breaking and
heart-break.”
“Your brother is pretty comfortably off, Hosea.”
“Yes,” said Ho Ha, with a curious inflection. “Yes, Richard’s
comfortable. But he’s getting along. You know he’s ten years older than
me.”
Cap’n Smiley gave an ejaculation of surprise. There had been some
unfairness of dealing by Richard Hand with Hosea Hand after their
father’s death, but the keeper did not know exactly what it was. The
Blue Port story had it that Richard Hand had wanted his brother to stay
and help work the farm, and Ho Ha had run off to sea instead. Back of
this lay a tale of the father’s will. This had left the dead man’s
estate to be divided equally between the sons. Richard, however, was to
have the farm intact; and he was to effect such a settlement as would
assure Hosea of his share in cash for whatever use he wanted to make of
it. The father’s idea had been simple: the younger boy hated the farm
and wanted an education; this money would help him get it; after that
he must fend for himself.
So much Cap’n Smiley knew; so much, indeed, everybody knew. The rest
no one appeared exactly to know, but the general impression was that
Richard, as executor, had wound up his father’s affairs to suit himself.
“What happened?” Cap’n Smiley asked himself as he picked away, giving
only absent attention to Mermaid’s chatter. “Knowing Richard Hand as
I do, I suspect Hosea never got a cent of money and never will. I can
make a pretty good guess that after paying the debts there was nothing
left but the farm. To settle fairly with the boy, Dick Hand would have
had to borrow money by mortgaging the place--and I don’t see him doing
that!
“Humph!” concluded the keeper to himself. “Fourteen-year-old boy with
no one to look out to see he got his rights. No lawyer had a hand in
that estate! Dick delays the settlement; in the meantime, his young
brother gets restless. Dick treats him badly; insists the boy stay
and help work the farm; Hosea runs away. Dick winds up the estate;
represents himself willing to settle with his brother but unable to;
don’t know his whereabouts. Ho Ha away for years; when he comes back he
tells his brother to go to the devil!”
Mermaid was conducting a dialogue with the wronged Hosea.
“Uncle Ho!” she cried, and Cap’n Smiley was reminded of the “Land, ho!”
of the sailor. “Wasn’t that a queer way for David to deal with the
Ph’listines?” Mrs. Biggles read the Bible Sunday mornings to her Henry
and Mermaid.
“Why,” inquired Mermaid, “do you suppose he spanked them?”
“Who spanked?”
“David spanked the Ph’listines,” explained Mermaid. Ho Ha and the
keeper eyed each other and then looked perplexedly at the red-haired
mite. “How do you know he spanked the Philistines?” ventured the keeper.
“Why, it says he smote--that means struck--them ‘hip and thigh,’” she
replied. “I’ll be awful glad when I can read about it myself. David
threw a stone at Gollyath and killed him. Maybe a good spanking was all
Gollyath needed.”
“Maybe,” assented Cap’n Smiley. Ho Ha was speechless. The keeper looked
at him. “See your uncle, Mermaid,” he directed. “Living up to his name,
isn’t he?”
The child caught the contagion of laughter and bubbled with it herself.
“Do tell me what’s so funny, Uncle Ho,” she begged. “Please do!”
“A ghost just told me a joke,” said Ho Ha, looking at her with
twinkling eyes. Mermaid was alert and excited at once. She believed in
ghosts, not only because she was seven years old but because she lived
on the Great South Beach where ghosts are natural and both respectable
and respected. She clamoured to hear the joke. Ho Ha considered. He
did not know as he ought to tell her; perhaps the ghost would not like
that; it might want to tell Mermaid itself.
“Could you tell me what ghost it is?” the youngster besought him. “Was
it the Duneswoman?”
“No,” Ho Ha answered. “It was one of the pirates. One of Kidd’s men.
One of those fellows with gold earrings and black whiskers. Well--I
don’t know’s there’s any harm in my telling you. He said if Kidd had
been spanked proper as a boy----” Ho Ha stopped, as if no more need be
said, and shook his head with a regretful air. Mermaid remarked:
“Do you suppose, Uncle Ho, that Mrs. Biggles spanks Mr. Biggles?”
“No doubt she has to sometimes,” agreed Ho Ha, with perfect seriousness.
Mermaid emptied her apron of a pint of plums. Her mind slipped back to
ghosts.
“Dad,” she asked Cap’n Smiley, “does the Duneswoman know everything
about the beach?”
“I think she does, pretty nearly,” the keeper told her. “Do you see
much of her?”
“Only her head and arms. Sometimes she reaches out her arm to me.”
“I meant, do you see her often?”
“Oh, yes! Except when I’m with Mrs. Biggles. Mrs. Biggles says she
never has seen her. She says I ought not to see her and mustn’t pay any
’tention to her,” Mermaid informed him.
“Perhaps that’s because Mrs. Biggles never sees her and doesn’t know
how nice she is.”
“Just what _I_ said.” Mermaid bit a plum and made a wry face. She
wanted to ask Dad more about the Duneswoman.
That was a ghost only he and she had seen--a lovely Face and Arm that
sometimes floated for an instant on the dark summer ocean, looked
toward you ... and was gone.