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[Illustration: "All day long the boys played down by the river."]
Captain June
By
Alice Hegan Rice
Author of "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,"
"Lovey Mary," Etc.
With Pictures by C. D. Weldon
[Illustration]
New York
The Century Co.
1907
Copyright 1906, 1907,
by THE CENTURY CO.
_Published October, 1907_
THE DE VINNE PRESS
TO THE LITTLE BOY I LOVE BEST
FRANCIS BARBOUR HEGAN
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"All day long the boys played down by the river" _Frontispiece_
The Tea-party on the Train 17
"'Do you want me to help you?'" 37
"'It's a Matsuri--a festival,' Seki explained" 49
"'Does it spell anything?' June asked" 75
"They peeped through the cracks, gravely discussing the
situation" 85
"It was the old sword-hilt that Monsieur had given him" 97
"Long after he was asleep she sat beside him" 107
"June waved good-by to the friends below" 117
CAPTAIN JUNE
CAPTAIN JUNE
CHAPTER I
JUNE had never sat still so long during the whole six years of his
existence. His slender body usually so restless and noisy was
motionless; his hands too fond of teasing and mischief lay limp in his
lap, even his tongue was still and that was the most wonderful of all.
The only part of him that stirred was a sparkling pair of gray eyes that
were looking out upon the strangest world they had ever seen.
The entire day had been one of enchantment, from the first waking hour
when he discovered that the engines on the big steamer where he had
lived for seventeen days had stopped, and that the boat was actually
lying at anchor just off the coast of Japan. Seki San, his Japanese
nurse who had cared for him ever since he was a baby, had been so eager
to look out of the port-hole that she could scarcely attend to her
duties, and the consequence was that he had to stand on the sofa and
hook his mother's dress and help her with the little pins at the back of
the neck while Seki San finished the packing. June could not dress
himself but he knew a great deal about hooks and eyes and belt pins.
When mother got in a hurry she lost things, and experience had taught
him that it was much easier to fasten the pin where it belonged than to
spend fifteen minutes on the floor looking for it.
At last when all the bags and trunks were ready, and the pilot and the
health officer had come aboard, and everybody had waited until they
could not wait another moment, the passengers were brought ashore in a
wheezy, puffy launch, and were whirled up to the hotel in queer little
buggies drawn by small brown men with bare legs and mushroom hats, and
great sprawling signs on their backs.
Since then June had sat at a front window too engrossed to speak. Just
below him lay the Bund or sea-road, with the wall beyond where the white
waves broke in a merry splash and then fell back to the blue water
below. Out in the harbor there were big black merchant steamers, and
white men-of-war, there were fishing schooners, and sampans with wobbly,
crooked oars. But the street below was too fascinating to see much
beyond it. Jinrikishas were coming and going with passengers from the
steamers and the coolies laughed and shouted to each other in passing.
Women and girls clattered by on wooden shoes with funny bald-headed,
slant-eyed babies strapped on their backs. On the hotel steps, a little
girl in a huge red turban and a gorgeous dress of purple and gold was
doing handsprings, while two boys in fancy dress sang through their
noses and held out fans to catch the pennies that were tossed from the
piazza above.
If Cinderella, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Aladdin and Ali Baba had
suddenly appeared, June would not have been in the least surprised. It
was where they all lived, there could be no possible doubt as to that.
Here was the biggest picture book he had ever seen, the coming true of
all the fairy-tales he had ever heard.
He was dimly conscious that in the room behind him Seki San was
unpacking trunks and boxes, and that his mother was coming and going and
leaving hurried instructions. Once he heard her say, "Don't say anything
to him about it, Seki, I'll tell him when he has to be told." But just
then a man went by with a long pole across his shoulder and round
baskets on each end, and in the baskets were little shining silver
fishes, and June forgot all about what his mother was saying.
June's father was a young army officer stationed in the Philippines.
June was born there but when still a baby he had been desperately ill
and the doctor had sent him back to the States and said he must not
return for many years. It was a great grief to them all that they had to
be separated, but Capt. Royston had gotten two leaves of absence and
come home to them, and now this summer June and his mother had come all
the way from California to meet him in Japan.
June was not his real name. It was Robert Rogers Royston, Junior, but
mother said there never could be but one Robert for her, and father did
not like the Rogers for a Christian name, so they called him Junior, and
Junior soon got bobbed off into June. The name suited him too, for a
sunshinier little chap you never saw. He never seemed to know that he
was not as strong as other boys, and when his throat was very bad and
his voice would not come, why he sat up in bed and whistled, just the
keenest, cheeriest, healthiest whistle you ever heard.
It was on the indoor days that Seki San used to tell him about her
wonderful country across the sea, of the little brown houses with the
flower gardens on the roofs, of the constant clatter, clatter of the
wooden shoes, and the beautiful blossoms that rained down on you like
snow.
"Where are the blossoms?" he demanded, suddenly turning in his chair.
"You said they came down thick and white and that I could let them fall
over my face."
Seki San did not answer, she was kneeling beside a very disconsolate
figure that lay on the bed with face buried in the pillows. When June
spoke, his mother sat up and pushed back her tumbled hair. She was a
very little mother with round eyes and lips as red as June's, only now
her eyes were red and her lips trembling.
"You may go in the other room, Seki San," she said, "I want to talk to
June by himself."
June sidled up cautiously and took a seat near her on the bed. The one
unbearable catastrophe to him was for his mother to cry. It was like an
earthquake, it shook the very foundations on which all his joys were
built. Sometimes when the postman forgot to leave a letter, and
occasionally when he was sick longer than usual, mother cried. But those
were dark, dreadful times that he tried not to think about. Why the
tears should come on this day of all days he could not understand.
She put her arm around him and held him close for a long time before she
spoke. He could feel the thump, thump of her heart as he leaned against
her.
"June," she said at last, "you are going to be a soldier like father,
aren't you?"
June's eyes brightened. "Yes, and carry a sword!" he said.
"There is something more than a sword that a soldier has to have."
"A gun?"
Mother shook her head. "It's courage, June! It's something I haven't got
a scrap of. You'll have to be brave for us both!"
"I'm not afraid," declared June. "I go to bed in the dark and go places
by myself or anything."
"I don't mean that way," said his mother. "I mean doing hard things just
because they are right, staying behind for instance when--when somebody
you love very much has to go away and leave you."
June sat up and looked at her. "Who's going away?" he demanded.
Mother's voice faltered. "Father's terribly ill with a fever, June. The
letter was waiting here, it is from our old doctor in Manila, he says,
'Come on first steamer, but don't bring the boy.'" The earth seemed
suddenly to be slipping from under June's feet, he clutched at his
mother's hand. "I am going too!" he cried in quick alarm, "I won't stay
behind, I can't, mother!"
Her arm tightened about him. "But I don't dare take you, June, think of
the terrible heat and the fever, and you are the only little boy I've
got in the world, and I love you so!"
"I won't take the fever," protested June. "I'll be good. I'll mind every
word Seki says."
"But Seki isn't going. She wants to take you home with her down to a
little town on the Inland Sea, where there are all sorts of wonderful
things to do. Would you stay with her, June, while I go to father?"
Her voice pleaded with eagerness and anxiety, but June did not heed it.
Slipping from her arms, he threw himself on the floor and burst into a
passion of tears. All the joys of the enchanted country had vanished,
nothing seemed to count except that mother was thinking of leaving him
in this strange land and sailing away from him across the sea.
"Don't cry so, June, listen," pleaded his mother. "I have not decided, I
am trying to do what is best."
But June refused to be consoled. Over and over he declared that he would
not stay, that he would rather have the fever, and die than to be left
behind.
By and by the room grew still, his mother no longer tried to pacify him,
only the ticking of the little traveling clock on the table broke the
stillness. He peeped through his fingers at the silent figure in the
chair above him. He had never seen her look so white and tired, all the
pretty smiles and dimples seemed gone forever, her eyes were closed and
her lips were tightly drawn together. June crept close and slipped his
hand into hers. In an instant her arms were about him.
"I don't know what to do, nor where to turn," she sobbed. "I am afraid
to take you and afraid to leave you. What must I do?"
June was sure he did not know but when mothers are little and helpless
and look at you as if you were grown up, you have to think of a way. He
was standing beside her with his arm around her neck, and he could feel
her trembling all over. Father often said in his letters, "Be sure to
take care of that little Mother of yours," but it had always seemed a
joke until now. He sighed, then he straightened his shoulders:
"I'll stay, Mudderly," he said, then he added with a swallow, "Maybe it
will help me to be a soldier when I get big!"