she said, answering my thought and making up my mind for me in a trice.
(She has a way of doing this, displaying the most unerring accuracy at
it any time these twenty years!) And, in the turn of a hand, she had
kilted up her skirts, tied a shawl, over her head, and was making for
the kitchen door.
"Lord love you, miss, you can't go out in this!" said Crump, aghast.
"Why not? I've been out in it once already."
"But, Mary!" I cried, and tried to withhold her. "What good can you do?
Here is Crump, and here am I. We'll find them both. This is no work for
a woman. You are wet, you may get hurt----"
"And you?" she retorted. Then, in a lower voice, "Don't stop me, Mr.
Pendarves; don't try to keep me from going. I can't stay quietly here,
and wait, and wait, and not know what's happened. I think I should go
mad. I _must_ go. You are wasting time; your grandfather--oh, can't you
understand?"
I understood only that she was frantic with anxiety, and might have
offered further remonstrance had it not been for the sudden defection of
Crump. He edged a little nearer, and gently jogged my elbow.
"I'm with ye, miss," he announced, with startling alacrity; and, as we
followed her out, he explained to me in a hoarse and perfectly audible
whisper behind one hand: "I'm always with 'em when they get that look
on, Mr. Nicol. Catch me adrift on a lee shore! I've learned a lot since
I signed with Sarah."
The breakfast-table had been laid, and the empty chairs stood around it
in their places, under the smiling supervision of the admiral's
portrait. In the kitchen, Mary had a bright fire going, her neat towels
hanging to dry. She opened the door, and the next instant this pretty
and comforting picture was shut behind us, and there we were crouching
in the rain under the eaves, with the wind bellowing overhead.
[Illustration: "IT LAY BEFORE US, A CONSIDERABLE HEAP OF GOLD AND SILVER
COINS, TARNISHED BUT RECOGNIZABLE"]
Mary stood on tiptoe again to scream: "I've been all over except in the
orchard--you can see the shore from there."
I took her hand within my arm, and we struggled forward. As we drew
nearer the cliff, the loud and awful noise of breakers in the Cat's
Mouth silenced the storm; yet the wind was no whit diminished. A man
could hardly have kept his feet, I think, along the cliff path. Before
we reached the corner where the ancient tree that had weathered so many
gales lay prostrate, uprooted at last, although we had as yet no view of
the immediate shore, we could see a white aureole of spray hang, vanish,
and return in a breath, yards in air above the Brown Cow. We fetched a
compass around the orchard, stumbling and staggering among stumps and
matted weeds and half-hidden logs without finding my grandfather, or any
trace of him; and Crump having dropped behind, we had lost sight of him
when that eery screech he adopted to make himself heard traveled to us
down the wind. He was kneeling by the dislodged roots of our old tree,
and, as he caught my eye, began an uncouth pantomime of surprise and
wonder; then stooped, grasped a handful of something, and held it aloft
with extravagant gestures. He bawled again, and, having got closer by
this time, I heard the words:
"Doubloons, Mr. Nick! Pieces-of-eight! Spanish dollars! Doubloons!"
"Heaven help us all!" went through me, "Here's another gone mad."
The spectacle put our search momentarily from my mind. I knew Crump's
head to be none of the strongest, and I should never have guessed what
had actually happened--for surely this was a strange place and way in
which to stumble upon old Admiral Pendarves' treasure!
Yet that was what the carrier had done; he was never saner in his life.
It lay before us, a considerable heap of gold and silver coins,
tarnished but recognizable, in a rotting wooden keg sunk into the ground
at the foot of the tree and partly meshed in its roots. Crump plowed
among the coins with his hand.
"There's a mort of money here, Mr. Nicol," he said, "and there's been
more. Look, here's some of it scattered out in the grass; it couldn't
have got away out there of itself. And here's a footprint in the mud."
He looked up thoughtfully. "Likely some of it's on its way to Sidmouth
now," said he. "I thought his pockets bulged."
"Well, I wish him joy of it!" said I.
"Lord, you could have the law on him for that, Mr. Nicol. Ain't you
going to?"
"Not I!" said I, holding Mary's hand.
Something in this attitude must have moved Crump to his next remark. He
looked us both over with an impartial and dispassionate air, cast a
calculating eye on the treasure; then, "Enough left to get married and
set up on, anyway," he said weightily. "There's worse things in the
world than being married--though you'd hardly believe it. That's what I
often says to Sarah!"
At that Mary Smith snatched her hand suddenly from mine and moved toward
the edge of the cliff, crying out that we must continue our search. I
climbed the orchard wall and looked along the shore. Here the cliff
dropped away almost sheer, and the narrow strip of shingle at its base
was lost in the surf. Farther to the north it widened a little with the
curve of the shore, and through a swaying curtain of rain I could follow
it to a point we called the Notch, near the entrance of the Cat's Mouth;
of late years they have dredged the channel and moored a bell-buoy off
this headland. There was nothing alive in sight; some prone black
objects I saw, with a start, were only a few fisher-boats drawn up on
the sand, and none too safe. I looked out to sea; the tide was making,
and, where the strait drew in toward the Cat's Teeth, the waves fought
and clamored with a horrid vigor, like living monsters. Their huge
voices outdid the winds, and, as one after another made forward,
towered, and broke upon the reefs, the Teeth disappeared in a welter of
foam. Hereabout we found the old man at last.
Where he had got a boat, or with what madman's strength he had launched
it, we could not guess. It was midway of the Cat's Mouth that I first
caught sight of him, at no great distance measured by feet and inches,
but as far beyond human aid as if the wide Atlantic had separated us. He
was standing up in the stern, with folded arms, in something the posture
he may have maintained on the poop of his ship in old days--where,
perhaps, he fancied himself at this moment. I trust that reason was
withheld from him in the utter hour; and certainly, although I could not
discern his features, I saw him make no gesture either to invite help or
to indicate that he had any understanding of his position. If mad, I
thought (right or wrong) his death thus less ignoble than his life had
become; if sane, he held a strong and steadfast heart, and bore himself
well on his last voyage. By some strange chance, the boat spun and
tossed among the breakers, yet kept an even keel, and boat and man
together made a viking end. For, so standing, unconscious or unmoved, he
went down, before our eyes, between the white and pointed reefs of the
Cat's Teeth.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
BOB, DEBUTANT
BY HENRY GARDNER HUNTING
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENMAN FINK
Of course, Bob knew that, as an abstract ethical principle, it is wrong
to fight. His mother had been endeavoring to impress that idea upon him,
from the moment it was first decided that he should go to public school
till his books and his lunch-box were packed and he was on his way
thither; and she had succeeded fairly well, for she had exacted a
promise from him faithfully to avoid personal encounters as wholly
sinful and unbecoming.
As a matter of fact, Bob knew only so much about fighting as he had
learned through round-eyed, somewhat frightened observation of a very
few entirely bloodless encounters among older boys; and, inasmuch as he
had found himself consistently excluded from nearly all other, more
peaceful pursuits and interests of these older ones, it was not
unnatural that he should feel merely a spectator's interest in their
fistic battles also, and that he should look upon them as he would have
looked upon any other natural phenomenon--with some excitement, perhaps,
but with no personal concern.
Bob admired his mother. To him, she was the most beautiful and the most
resourceful woman in the world. He had found her judgment upon many
subjects so wise that he was quite prepared to believe her position in
this matter (which did not appear to be vital) completely and
unquestionably correct, and to promise accordingly.
But conditions which exist on the big, bare public-school playgrounds,
away alike from parental restraint and parental protection, are quite
different from those in the home door-yard, and the code which obtains
in the ward-school world is not an open book to all mothers of
chubby-fisted sons who are called upon to observe it. It seems difficult
for mothers to comprehend that a normal boy's standing on the
school-ground is, like that of a young cock in a barn-yard, simply a
matter of mettle and muscle.
So it was as early as Bob's second day at school--on the first Papa Jack
had gone with him--that a revelation came both to him and to his mother.
To him it was a painful revelation, first because he had this new code
to learn, and afterward because of his promise; and it was the latter
thing that made the real difficulty. When you are a small boy you can
easily adapt yourself and your habits of mind to new conditions and
environment; but when you have some one else to think of, and when you
are bound by a promise, that complicates matters.
[Illustration: "SCHOOL-BAG AND LUNCH-BOX DROPPED FROM HIS HANDS"]
Now, one "Curly" Davis--who was said to have been christened Charles,
but whose astonishingly spiral locks surely constituted better authority
for a name than any possible application of baptismal water--was, by
right of reputed might, dictator of the Vine Street Primary. Curly was
alleged to be of pugnacious disposition, and had not been bred to
appreciation of the Golden Rule. He had the outward bearing of one who
has reason for confidence in his personal prowess. He was popularly
believed to have fought many fights and fierce,--just when and where his
admirers seemed not to consider important,--and he had a reputation for
ferocity rather disproportionate to his stature. He had a way of glaring
at you, too, if you happened to be a new boy at school, which was
sufficiently suggestive of a sanguinary temperament to overawe the
average youngster and to render quite unnecessary any more active
demonstration.
Like all despots who rule through fear, Curly had a following. It was
made up of lesser lights of like tastes and ambitions, who toadied to
and imitated the tyrant simply to avoid the unpleasant necessities which
the alternative involved. These followers, numbering some six or eight,
through their unity of aim and Curly's leadership, had gained a certain
ascendency over the far greater, but unorganized, body of would-be
independents who, chafe as they might under the yoke, dared not attempt
to throw it off; and these loyal retainers were zealous in service of
their lord's interests and pleasure.
On that beautiful fall morning when Bob first went alone to school, he
had not been ten minutes on the playground, standing upon its outer
edge, school-bag and lunch-box in hand, to gaze upon its novelties,
before a satellite of Curly's, one Percy Emery, espied him. Instantly it
was as though Percy had discovered some new quarry, unearthed a fresh
specimen of some genus, edible and choice.
"Hi, Curly," he yelled, with the eager loyalty of his kind, "come 'ere.
'Ere's a new one. Look at the school-bag to 'im."
Curly, who was at the moment engaged in the pleasing pastime of
hectoring a scared little five-year-old who ought still to have been in
the kindergarten, pricked up his ears at the cry and, like a hungry
bird of prey leaving a mouse for a lamb, promptly swooped down upon the
new game. His movement was the signal for the gathering of a crowd, and,
before Bob was fairly aware that he was the object of attention, he had
become the center of a curious group whose interest, if not wholly
hostile, was in the main certainly not friendly. The dictator himself
confronted him with unmistakably bellicose intentions.
"New shoes!" said Curly contemptuously, selecting the first obviously
vulnerable point open to a shaft of insult. "New shoes! Spit on 'em!" He
suited the action to the word, and immediately word and act alike were
imitated by two or three of his more ardent admirers.
"Stop!" said Bob. He did not know what it meant. He backed away from his
persecutors.
"Aw, stop, eh?" mocked Curly. "Who are _you_? What's yer name?"
"Bob McAllister."
"Bob! Bob-tail! Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which
only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me?
You? You want to fight?"
He danced about Bob's quiet little figure, snapping his fingers in the
new boy's eyes. Then, suddenly, he swung his wiry body and swept a
stinging blow in Bob's face.
A yell of delight from the despot's own drowned a weaker chorus of
protest. Curly backed and squared, ready for some show of retaliation or
resistance, a scornful little grin on his face.
"Come on, now. Fight! Stop me!" he cried.
But Bob did not move. Curly's blow had landed fair on the tender little
red lip, and it had cut against the teeth behind; a tiny scarlet stream
flowed down Bob's smooth little chin. In his eyes the dizziness of the
first jar gradually gave way to slow amazement. Then the tears welled
up, hot tears which overflowed the lids and ran scalding down the
cheeks, but they did not conceal or quench a glitter which grew to a
bright flame behind them.
Bob's school-bag and lunch-box dropped from his hands. The pudgy fists
which had never before been clinched with belligerent purpose, but which
were, nevertheless, a boy's fists, doubled themselves into hard little
knots; but still he stood quiet.
[Illustration: "HE SET HIS FACE ONCE MORE TOWARD SCHOOL AND WALKED VERY
FAST"]
So far as his whirling little mind could think, he thought thus: So this
was fighting; this was what he had promised mother not to do; what he
had promised--had promised--promised. He was not so big, this boy who
had struck him, not so big. Bob was not afraid. But that a promise is
a thing to be kept inviolate he had learned, oh, years ago, from Papa
Jack, along with all the other _of-course-ities_ of life, like telling
the truth, keeping your troubles to yourself, and not being a cry-baby
or a telltale. And a promise to mother--well, nothing could be more
sacred. Yet here was a new condition which he had never met before, a
new situation which suddenly made him see in an altogether different
aspect a question supposedly settled--this question of to fight or not
to fight. It made his sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have
been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known
that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant
after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to
be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something
else was stirring in his heart--something which might not, perhaps, be
wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a
boy whose grandfather had carried a musket at Gettysburg and whose
father had worn khaki at San Juan. He wondered if his mother could have
known.
[Illustration: "A RING OF BOYS--EXCITED, EAGER, YELLING"]
But Bob's fists only clinched; they did not strike. All the sturdy
little muscles in his small body stiffened, and he stood with head up
and eyes blazing, but he did not strike. And then the school-bell
suddenly began to ring, and the group about him broke away; and Curly
Davis started off, shouting back something about fixing _him_ after
school, and--he was alone.
Bob stood still. He realized that the last bell for school had rung. He
knew that he should have gone in with the others. That was what he had
been sent to school for, certainly. But he stood still.
The tears had dried upon his face, and so had the thin little line of
red on his chin. His lip was swelling, and felt as if a hazelnut or a
big bean had been pushed up under it and were sticking to and stinging
the skin. He stooped and picked up his school-bag and lunch-box, stood
still again for a moment, and then walked away. He was not going to
school, and, naturally, as there was nowhere else to go, he was going
home.
But a great, heavy weight seemed to have settled down upon his breast
and pressed in upon it, and it was hard to breathe. His thoughts were
still confused, but he was wondering--wondering. Why was it? Why had
they treated him so? Why had they singled him out to attack him? Why had
that boy with the curly hair struck him? Why had the others laughed?
Didn't they like him? Didn't any one like him? Why, what had he done?
His heart swelled with sudden misery and wretchedness. Why was such an
unkind thing permitted in the world? And then again returned that
something which stirred inside him, something hot and hard, which made
his cheeks and eyes burn and his fingers clinch once more. And then
again the question, "Could mother have known?"
Mrs. McAllister saw him coming a block away, and she ran down to the
gate to meet him as he trudged in. Bob looked up into his mother's face.
The quick concern in her eyes, as she saw the battered little lip and
the stained chin, came nearer to making him sob than Curly's blow had
done; but, though the tears would well up and his throat felt very
tight, he only swallowed and carefully wet the puffed lip with his
tongue.
"Why, Bobbie, Bobbie, what is the matter?" cried his mother, dropping
down on her knees on the walk beside him. She put both her hands on his
shoulders and turned his face toward her; and Bob looked straight into
her troubled blue eyes, and suddenly began to feel better--began to
feel, indeed, that he did not have to care so much, after all.
"Oh, Bobbie, _have_ you been fighting?"
Bob shook his head.
"How did you get your lip hurt so? Did you fall down?"
Again he shook his head. He didn't know just how to tell her. It wasn't
fighting. At least, _he_ didn't fight; it had been that other boy. But,
somehow, he did not want to say that; he did not want to tell; he wanted
something, but he did not know just what it was. He found himself
forgetting how he had felt a moment before, and then he discovered that
he was not thinking about what he wanted at all. He was thinking what a
very _blue_ blue his mother's eyes were when she looked at him so, and,
all at once, he felt more sorry for her than for himself, because she
looked so troubled; and he kissed her quickly, and hurt his lip.
Mrs. McAllister led him into the house. "Won't you tell mother, Bob?"
she asked.
But he couldn't. He was feeling better--much better--but he couldn't
tell. There was another reason now, that he hadn't thought of before: it
would make her feel more sorry. And after all, it didn't matter so
much; that is, it didn't if-- He looked up at her with a new thought.
"But, Bob, you must tell mother all about it," she was saying, as she
carefully bathed his chin and lip, and so he had to shake his head
again.
"Then you must tell papa this noon, Bob."
Bob considered. No, he couldn't tell Papa Jack, either. He felt pretty
sure father himself wouldn't tell about such a thing if he were a boy.
He was silent.
Mrs. McAllister began to move about her work, though she still looked at
him frequently and anxiously. Bob went away to the window, and stood
looking out. He remembered how he had started out that morning, with
school-bag and lunch; he remembered how he had approached the
school-grounds, and how big and strange and attractive a place it had
seemed to him at first, and what a good time all those boys had been
having; and then he remembered how, suddenly, he had found them all
around him, summoned by the call of that boy with the hateful grin, and
how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found
himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the
cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till
they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big
leather couch, and thought and thought.
Papa Jack came home for lunch at noon, and mother told him. Bob heard
them in the hall.
"He says he didn't fight," said his mother, "and he says he didn't fall
down. He won't tell me, and I told him he must tell you. I don't know
why he doesn't want to tell; he isn't ashamed or very much frightened,
and he didn't cry after he came home."
Bob heard Papa Jack's footsteps cross the hall and come in upon the
hard-wood library floor, and then on the big rug by the library couch.
Papa Jack sat down beside him and put his big fingers around Bob's
little ones.
"Well, what about it, Son?"
Bob looked up and smiled. Always such a pleasant, warm feeling came over
him when Papa Jack came near him and talked to him.
"What about it, Son?"
But Bob could not reply. His eyes grew serious as they looked back into
his father's.
"What did this, Bob?" asked Papa Jack, gently touching the hazelnut
bruise with a finger.
"A boy," said Bob.
"What boy?" asked Papa Jack. "A big boy?"
Silence, and then a shake of the head.
"Did you strike him first?"
Again Bob shook his head.
"What did you do to him?"
Still another shake of the head.
"Do you mean he just came up and struck you without any provocation?"
"He laughed," said Bob.
"What else?"
"Spit on my new shoes," reddening.
Papa Jack drew his mustache down between his lip and teeth. "Hm! He did,
eh? What else?"
"Said 'Bob-tail, bob-cat,'"
Papa Jack looked puzzled.
"Said I was--Bob, bob-tail, bob-cat," explained Bob.
"Oh!" Papa Jack seemed to see light. "And then he struck you?"
A nod once more.
Mr. McAllister looked out the window and his fingers closed tightly
around Bob's. "When was this, Bob--before school?"
"Mm."
"And you came right home?"
A nod.
"Did you strike him back?"
Bob's eyes widened. "No."
Papa Jack's eyes widened also. "Why?"
"Because."
"Because what, Bob?"
"Because mama said not to fight."
"And you promised?"
Bob nodded again.
"I see." Papa Jack's eyes suddenly lighted with something Bob did not
understand, and he sat looking down at Bob for a long minute. "I see,"
he said again, and then he turned and called to mother. "Helen!" And
mother came in, with a piece of white sewing in her hands.
"Helen," said Papa Jack, "it's a case of bullying. The boy promised you
not to fight, and he didn't. It's a mistake, mother. He's been set upon
by some young bully, and couldn't defend himself because of his
promise."
Mother looked at Bob; there was distress in her eyes, but something else
came into them, too.
"It's only the beginning, dear--the beginning of battles," said Papa
Jack, and he put his other hand on mother's.
"Bob," he said, "mother doesn't mean you're not to defend yourself.
Understand? By fighting, mother only means beginning fights, picking
fights, provoking other boys to fight. We _have_ to defend ourselves. It
isn't right to pick a fight; that's what mother means."
Bob saw tears come into his mother's eyes. Papa Jack saw them, too.
"There's only one way among boys, Helen dear. The bullies must be
fought, you know. Our boy's got to be a boy's boy if he's to be a man's
man by-and-by."
Suddenly mother bent over and kissed Bob, and held him, with her arms
thrust under and about him--held him hard.
"The only thing, Bob, is to be a man always. Be square and white. Do the
right thing. I can't tell you what it will be every time; neither can
anybody else: but you your own self will know. It may be right even to
fight sometimes, for yourself and for others who are bullied; but every
boy knows for himself when it's right and when it's wrong. If he does as
he _knows_, he'll do right."