School began in the tower room of the house at Hallock Point. Harry
Cornwall went to the lessons because he eagerly sought knowledge. Kate
Hallock tried to study because she wished to win the good opinion of
Frank, and, if possible, to excel him in everything. Frank went because,
as he said, “he had to.”
Captain Green taught in order to obtain for a well-beloved little
grandson, whose days on the earth were to be few in number, the
nameless, numberless little helps-by-the-way to the place of parting.
Had Mrs. Hallock known what the love for the sea meant to Captain Green,
instead of giving up the tower room for lessons, she would have chosen
the spot in the house the most remote from sight or sound of wave; but
there he was, day by day, with the blue of dancing, sun-lit water
beckoning to him. He could see the gentle glide of every keel that went
down the harbor, and feel the drawing of every sail that filled away
under the sweet pressure of the summer winds. More than any schoolboy
that ever groaned to play truant did Captain Green feel the impulse to
run away from school; nevertheless, he remained faithful to his trust,
and for two August weeks everything went well with the new enterprise.
Mrs. Dobson was perfectly gleeful over the grand opportunity afforded
Harry. She thought early and late, and worked all the day between the
thinkings, to give Harry every moment that was possible. The dear little
soul knew perfectly well that the more Harry learned, the less the
chance of keeping him in Pumpkin Delight Lane; but the more she loved
her boy, the less grew her selfishness, and the more she rejoiced in
whatever of good came to him.
On the shore there lay an old wreck, from which Harry wrenched a few
planks. By the aid of Frank Hallock, on the Saturday before school
began, he got them to the marsh that lay between the Point and the lane,
and placed them along the line of danger. Thus Harry made short work of
getting to and from the tower room.
Josh was for a few days greatly disturbed by the new order of going and
coming, and followed Harry across field and marsh until Captain Green
shook out on the air the tongue of his bell, whereat the dog gave forth
a recitation in a howl, and went home, only to repeat the same on the
day following.
On the little island, lying off shore from the town, there was a mill
for the making of oil from white fish. At the time the school began on
the Point, business at the oil mill was very good. Dozens of boats
sailed up to the wharf at evening, with loads of sparkling, rainbow-hued
menhaden, that had been trapped into nets during the day, in the deep
waters of the Sound. Far into the night, and sometimes until the
day-dawn came, men would work at unloading the fish, which were thrown
into tubs, the tubs hoisted by steam to a car, into which they were
dumped, until the thousands filled it. In its turn the car was drawn up
the long lines of rail leading from the wharf to the upper story of the
mill.
This mill was within sight from the room where Frank studied, and by the
aid of a spy glass could be seen distinctly, although lying two miles
away.
Every morning early, when the wind and weather served, the schoolmaster
went across to the island wharf to procure bait for his lobster pots.
Occasionally when a fog dropped suddenly down, or the wind blew fast
from off shore, Captain Green was late in returning from the lobster
pound, and the spy glass was used in the tower to find out his
whereabouts.
One morning Captain Green was caught in a fog when returning to the
mainland: the three scholars waited in the schoolroom, and he did not
return.
“It is just nice for you, Frank,” said Kate, “that he does not come, for
now you have time to learn the lessons you did not get last night.”
“No lessons until to-morrow,” said Frank. “There is no use studying.
Captain Green can never find his way in in this fog, for just before it
shut down I saw him off to the east of the island; shouldn’t wonder a
bit if the New Haven steamboat ran him down.”
“Frank Hallock!” cried Kate, “you speak just as though you’d be rather
glad of it if something did happen to the Captain. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself.”
“Why not, pray? I hate this study, study all the time. What’s the good
of it, anyhow? I don’t want to be what folks call a scholarly man. I’d a
great deal rather be a sailor—wish I was out now in this fog. It’s
capital jolly getting lost in fogs, and the first you know coming up to
land somewhere, and not knowing where in the world you’ve got to. I
often think, Kate, I’ll run away and go to sea.”
“O, Frank!” and Kate dropped her book and flew to Frank’s chair, and
putting her arms about his neck, began to cry.
“What a little goose you are, Kate,” said Frank. “I wonder if you think
a few tears will keep me at home, when I’ve made up my mind to set
sail.”
Kate assumed a vast amount of dignity on the instant, and in quite a
stately manner for Kate Hallock, groped her way, with eyes foggy with
tears, from the room.
“Don’t fall down stairs!” shouted Frank after her. And then Harry
Cornwall for the first time looked up from his slate, upon which he was
working out the examples of the lesson.
“Frank,” said he, “if I had a sister I don’t think I’d take such delight
in teasing her as you do.”
“O, yes, you would. You’d never find out without it whether she loved
you or not. Why, it’s just fun to see Kate’s great eyes when the tears
are getting together in them. Kate’s tears are always close to her eyes;
mine are clear down in my boots, and I’m glad of it; besides, Harry, I’m
most ready to be off to sea. I’ll tell you something. There’s a right
jolly good fellow working over in the oil mill at the island. His name
is Victor—Victor what, I don’t know, for he won’t tell—and he ran away
from home in Germany more than two years ago. His folks don’t know where
he is. I think it would be good fun not to have it known where I went to
or anything. Victor is as jolly as a regular tar: he has the nicest
eyes, blue as can be, and the whitest teeth—white as a shark’s; and he
says his father is rich, and his mother rides in her own carriage, and
everything is in hoity-toity good shape at home. Some day, he says, he
will write home, when he gets tired of working in the mill.”
“I don’t believe in your Victor, Frank. Look here, now: would you, Frank
Hallock, leave your home, and go to work in that oil mill?” questioned
Harry.
“Well, that is different. Maybe if I was off in Germany, and couldn’t
get anything else to do, and must earn my bread some way, I should go
into most any kind of a mill; but the fishing part I wouldn’t mind one
bit. I wonder what has become of Kate?”
“Frank,” said Harry, “I’ve wanted to say something to you for a good
many days now, but I hadn’t the courage. I thought it would be a right
good time that Saturday when we laid planks across the marsh, but
somehow every plank we got up from the beach made it harder, and I was a
coward after all.”
“Out with it now, then; it’s foggy enough to hide your blushes.”
“It’s something you will not like to hear, Frank.”
“Out with it, I say, while your courage is up.”
“Well, then, I don’t think it was right in you to let Kate give you
breakfast and dinner the day your father and mother went away.”
“It was one of the best turns Kate ever served me. I hope you haven’t
been talking to her about it, and putting notions of right and wrong
into her head, about it.”
“No; I haven’t talked with Kate, and I don’t believe the thought that
she was deceiving her father ever entered her mind; but she was, all the
same. And you let him think you had been kept on bread all day, when I
know that Kate gave you her own breakfast, and was so afraid that
somebody would find it out at home, that she went to Mrs. Dobson’s to
get something to eat when she was hungry, and never once told that she
had gone without her breakfast for you. And then she came home and gave
you her dinner, too.”
“Yes,” said Frank, rising from his chair and peering through the fog,
“Kate is a good deal of a friend of mine. I know perfectly well that if
I should ask her to run off to sea with me to-morrow, she would cry a
little and beg a good deal not to have me go, and then would go with me
after all.”
“And you are to blame, Frank.”
“To blame!” said Frank, the angry color rising in his cheeks.
At the instant the door opened and Mrs. Hallock looked in.
“I have come for Mr. Green,” she said. “Little Herbert is ill.”
“He’s caught in the fog off the island,” said Frank, “and hasn’t been
here this morning.”
“Can I do anything?” asked Harry, laying aside slate and books—but Mrs.
Hallock was gone.
There was not a boatman in the village who would not risk danger that he
could see, to fetch Captain Green to the little grandson whom he loved
so well; but to go forth, no one knew whither, into the dense fog—of
what use?
At least that was the reply made to Harry Cornwall at the town pier,
when he gave the news.
“Who will lend me a boat?” questioned Harry.
“Youngster! you scarcely know how to pull an oar,” was the only answer
his question received.
“But the sea is calm, and the boy may die. It will break the Captain’s
heart not to see him again,” urged Harry.
The boatmen looked up and down the harbor, as far as the fog permitted
them to see, and silently shook their heads.
“I will pay you for the boat if I injure it,” said Harry.
Before the man, who was about to urge Harry’s inability to pay, could
speak, Frank Hallock reached the pier.
“Here’s five dollars,” he cried, “for the man who finds Captain Green
and brings him in through the fog.”
In a moment a half dozen men stepped off the pier into as many boats and
began to pull down into the fog. The harbor’s mouth was a half mile
away.
Frank and Harry lingered only to hear the last stroke of oar, and then
Harry suggested going down to the Sound beach, past which the boats must
go to get to sea. When the shore was reached, the fog was so dense that
the boys could see no farther out than a few rolls of swollen water
coming in from the east. They began to shout with all their might and to
listen for an answer, but none came. Landward came another sound. It was
Kate, ringing, as she ran, the schoolmaster’s bell.
“I thought,” she said, coming to the shore, “that maybe you’d be down
here, and I was sure Captain Green would know the sound of his own bell
better than anything else; and, I do declare, if here isn’t Josh coming
after me.”
“Set him to howling,” said Frank.
“Let us shout and ring and howl together,” proposed Harry, and they
began.
The result was not, accurately speaking, a chorus, but they made the air
ring with sounds until Kate was forced to drop the bell and cover her
ears.
When a pause was made, out of sheer exhaustion, by boys and dog, they
seemed to hear a voice out of the fog.
“Coming!” was the word they heard repeated.
They rang the bell after an interval, and Josh, seeming to understand,
lifted up his mighty wail and cast it on the fog.
“Coming!” The answer came this time clearly from the voice of Captain
Green.
In ten minutes more his little boat was drawn up on the beach and he was
on his way home. There was no school that day. There was no school on
the morrow, nor for a week, because the lad lay very ill—and then there
was no school in the tower room any more, for there was no little
grandson, for love of whom to teach.