AT THE STATION.
Walter was at the life saving station looking up a stairway leading
from the crew’s room to an open scuttle in the roof. If Walter had put
his head out of the scuttle, he would have seen a railing, hemming in
a small platform; and from its center, rose a modest flag–staff. There
was no chance though for explorations, as the way was entirely blocked.
On the stairway, Walter saw an immense pair of boots, and above them
a stout pair of legs; and then a man’s bulky body, roofed by a huge
“sou’wester.”
“No room for me to pass there,” thought Walter.
The man held in his hand the object that at a life saving station comes
under the head, “marine glasses.”
“Do you see anything?” asked Walter recognizing the man to be Tom
Walker.
“Only a fishin’ smack, and a mean one at that. It’s my watch, you know.”
The boots, the legs, the big body, and the sou’wester all came down.
“Step up if you want to, Walter.”
Climbing the stairway, Walter swept the sea with his bright eyes, and
then looked landward across the black rocks and the fading fields. Then
he turned toward the sea again. Off in the east was the fishing smack,
slowly sailing in the sun. Then he looked up at the flag–staff, which
carried some specimen of marine architecture on its top.
“I see two craft,” said Walter.
“Two?” inquired Tom, solicitously.
“The fishing smack and this on top of the staff.”
“Ho—ho!” roared Tom.
“Only I can’t make out this second one in the air.”
“It _was_ a brig, but the last gale we had tore away its rigging, and
made some improvements; and I don’t know what on airth or water to call
that thing. I guess she is ’phibious, and will go on either.”
Walter’s eager eyes caught a glimpse of a box, on a landing half way up
the stairway to the lookout, and from this box projected bundles of
cloth, here and there showing bits of color.
“That is the signal box?” remarked Walter.
“Yes. Sometime I will explain them to you.”
“Will you?” inquired Walter, his hazel eyes snapping at the prospect
of this new continent of knowledge,—the signal department of the life
saving service.
“Sartin. Give you a hint now. For instance, we have a pennant, a
triangular flag, blue, with a white ball in it; and if I h’ist it, it
would mean ‘no’ to some question asked by a vessel off shore signaling
to me. Or, s’posin’ I h’isted a white pennant with a red ball. That
would mean ‘yes.’”
Walter desired to overhaul that unpretending box at once, but he knew
he must return to the store; and he only remarked, “I would like to see
all those signals out sometime.”
“I guess you can without any doubt. You take a good deal of interest in
our station, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. It is something entirely new to me.”
“You would make a pretty good surfman,” said Tom, glancing approvingly
at Walter’s compact frame. “Woodbury Elliott says you row a pretty
good stroke.”
“Oh! That his name? I came in his boat from the Crescent the other
night.”
“Yes,” said Tom deliberately, looking at Walter’s frame as if he were a
recruiting officer examining the physical points of a candidate for the
ranks of Uncle Sam’s army. “I think, I think—you would do.”
Walter laughed. “I guess I must be a storekeeper. However, I am pleased
if you think I have strength enough for a surfman.”
Tom now turned away, and with his glass swept the misty horizon again.
“There is the fishin’ smack,” he said. “And hullo! What’s that? I
missed her afore, sartin.”
“What is it?”
“She’s a fore–and–aft, sure as you are born; and—and—it is a coaster,
and she’s headin’ this way. Queer I missed her.”
“I didn’t see her. Uncle Boardman is expecting a coaster to come after
a load of potatoes. I wonder if that’s the one!”
“I shouldn’t wonder one bit. It’s hazy where she is, and that’s the
reason we didn’t see her.”
“I think I had better report that to uncle.”
“Of course,” remarked the surfman, pointing his glass again at the
schooner. “She may go somewhere else, but she acts to me as if she
wanted to run in at The Harbor.”
“I think I will tell Uncle Boardman.”
“What does she bring here, if it’s bound here for your uncle’s
potatoes?”
“I believe she brings a variety of things; some groceries for the
store, some salt for the fishermen, and so on. Her cargo is what they
call miscellaneous.”
It was not long before a coasting schooner was beating off the mouth of
the harbor, saying plainly by her actions that she wished to make port
as soon as possible.
“It must be the _Olive Ann_,” declared Boardman Blake; “and, Walter, I
think you had better go down to Spring’s wharf, and see if everything
is ready for the coaster there.”
Walter went to the wharf. Jabez Wherren, a fisherman, stood leaning
against an oaken pier, watching the fluttering efforts of the coaster
to reach a sheltered resting–place.
“I expect that is a schooner uncle is expecting, and she will come
here, Mr. Wherren. Will you look after her, please? I must go back to
the store.”
Receiving from the gray–headed old man a promise that he would
give the _Olive Ann_ a reception befitting a dame of her commercial
position, Walter hurried away. He returned to the store, and then left
again in an hour for the wharf, above which now shot up two tapering
masts, signaling the arrival of the coaster. He was passing the
schoolhouse at The Harbor, when a little girl playing on the rough step
of stone before the door, looked up and said, “I know you.”
It was Woodbury Elliott’s young companion, the day he had visited
Baggs’ shanty, and found Walter there.
“Oh, that you?” said Walter stopping. “Do you go to school here?”
“Yes.”
“Who is your teacher?”
“Sister.”
“Don’t you have any school to–day?”
“School is just out, but my sister hasn’t gone.”
“I wonder if she is the one that Woodbury said gave him his supper and
hot coffee,” thought Walter. “She knew how to cure a man in trouble.”
“Good afternoon,” said a pleasant voice in the entry. Walter looked
up, and there before him, advancing also toward him with a hand
outstretched in welcome, was May Elliott. The old schoolhouse in
the fishing village seemed to disappear at once, as by the touch
of a magician’s wand. In its place, was the academy. Again, it was
“composition day,” and in May Elliott’s hand was a schoolgirl’s
composition, from which she was reading these words: “The life that
does not take into account the need of those about us, that does not
take into account another life, that does not take God into account, is
making a serious mistake.”
All this came to Walter, and he stood in a daze.
“Don’t you know me, Plympton? May Elliott?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, quickly recovering from his surprise. “But I was
not looking for you, and—”
“It gave you a surprise? Won’t you come in?”
“I am glad to see you, Miss Elliott. Why, I didn’t know you were here!”
He followed her into the low–storied schoolroom, and sat down in a
chair that she placed for him near the door.
“Yes, I am here. My home is here at The Harbor, and you can see the
house through this window; that white house beyond the fishflakes in
the field. There are some apple–trees back of it, which you can see.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Walter again, looking off from the
house, and rapidly taking the picture of the young teacher. She was
hardly of medium height, and was simply clad, in a black alpaca dress,
wearing at her throat a crimson ribbon pinned with a small cross of
gold. Her brown hair was very soft and fine, and of a luxuriant growth.
Her features were a little irregular, but her complexion was fair, and
then a certain brightness and directness of look gave her blue eyes a
magnetic power.
“Yes,” she laughingly said, “I suppose you would call me the village
‘schoolmarm,’ at least, this fall. When I was a little girl, I
remember—sitting on one of those benches in front,—I had an ambition
to be some day the teacher of the school. But, Plympton, I have been
wanting to see you, and thank you for your kindness to my brother,
Woodbury. He has—has—a weakness, as you know; and what you did that
afternoon, checked him when he was sorely tempted.”
“I am very glad if I did any good. And—and—I have thought I would
like to thank _you_, sometime.”
“For what?”
“Do you remember your composition?”
“Oh, I believe I wrote a number of them. Which one was it?”
“That one called, ‘What are we living for?’ That influenced me a good
deal,” said Walter, rising as if to go.
“Did it? I never knew that it helped anybody, except, perhaps, it set
me to thinking more fully afterwards on the subject. Are you going?”
“I think I must. But I want to thank you for what you said; and if I
can help Woodbury, I will.”
In response, there was a bright look of sincere pleasure shining out
of May Elliott’s face. Through the day, a pair of blue eyes followed
Walter in his thoughts, as if intent to overtake him and ask him some
question.
“Miss Elliott keeps your school,” he said to Jabez Wherren on the wharf
at a little later hour.
“May, you mean? Wall, yes, and she’s a smart leetle critter, not more’n
sixteen or seventeen; but she makes them young ones toe the mark, I
tell ye. We all think a good deal of May; brought up here amongst us,
you know. There’s Woodbury, her brother; a smart feller as ever lived,
if he would never tech liquor. He might be a captain of his own craft,
jest as easy, jest as easy—as—as—mud.” After this expressive and
telling simile, Jabez recovered the breath he had lost in that effort,
and continued: “It’s a bright family, the Elliotts is. That little
Amy, she’ll beat the whole school a–spellin’—that is, all of her age.
Woodbury’s father and mother are well–to–do, forehanded folks. He’s a
skipper, and is on this very schooner. What’s that?”
Jabez was now directing his attention to the gangway of the _Olive
Ann_, which had been securely moored to the little wharf. A colored
boy in a shabby brown suit was disembarking, carrying a very small
bundle in his hand. Springing out upon the wharf, he looked in various
directions, as if a stranger, and he was calculating which way he had
better go. A choice between two routes offered itself, and he chanced
to take that which would lead him to Boardman Blake’s store.
“Who’s that passenger?” asked Jabez of Captain Elliott, a muscular,
heavy man of fifty.
“I can’t say. He shipped at New York, and worked for his passage. He
wanted to be off soon as I could spare him, and I said he might go now,
or stay longer. He’d rather be off now. I’m afeared he won’t pick up
any work very soon, but he will probably push on till he finds some
sort of a chance.”
Walter went home thinking of this unknown youth, a stranger, homeless,
tramping off anywhere. Aunt Lydia met him in the kitchen. A very broad
grin was on her face, as if the old lady had found a prize that made
her very happy.
“Come into the addition,” said she, beckoning mysteriously. “Step
softly, you know. I’ve got suthin’ to show you.”
The “addition” was built on to the rear of the house, and contained two
rooms, the lower being a kind of store–room.
“There!” said Aunt Lydia, pointing at the corner.
Curled up under an old quilt, a smile brightening a face happy in a
trip to some beautiful dream–land, was the “passenger,” as Jabez had
entitled him, who had just arrived per coaster _Olive Ann_.
“Ho, Aunt Lyddy! You got Young Africa there?” whispered Walter.
“Yes, and I didn’t have the heart to turn him away. You see he came
to the door, and sort of mournful, looked up and asked for a leetle
suthin’ to eat, and said he would work first, and I didn’t have the
heart to refuse him. Then I sez, ‘Where you goin’?’ ‘Dunno,’ he sez;
and I thought it wasn’t jest Christian to let him go a–wanderin’ off
into the world when the night was a–comin’, and I sez, pointin’ to
your Uncle Boardman in the barnyard, ‘you might ax that man, and if
he’s a–willin’, and can give you suthin’ to do, you can stay here
till mornin’.’ And it would have done your soul good to have seen how
grateful that child was when Boardman sez—and I knew he would—‘I’ll
leave it to Lyddy.’”
“What’s his name?” asked Walter, when they were in the kitchen once
more, leaving that “child” to his happy rest under Aunt Lyddy’s
homemade bedquilt; which, like its owner, was a little rough on the
outside, but exceedingly warm within.
“Pedro White, he told me. And jest think, I told it to your Uncle
Boardman, and he laffed and said ‘Pedro’ was Spanish, and he ought to
be called ‘Don Pedro.’ You know your uncle has read a ’mazin’ sight.”
Aunt Lydia had a very large respect for her husband’s “book–larnin’,”
as she called it. It must be acknowledged though, that before
the pressure of each day’s necessities, Uncle Boardman, with his
“book–larnin’,” would often retreat; while Aunt Lydia, gifted only
with her sharp, practical sense, would advance triumphantly. This fact
does not prove that book knowledge is of little worth. It is extremely
valuable. It should go hand in hand with excellent judgment to make it
of the greatest value to its possessor. “That child” slept profoundly
under Aunt Lydia’s bedquilt, which rivaled the rain–bow in its many
colors and the sunshine in its warmth.