A NEWCOMER
Tobias postponed the telling of the wonderful news to Miss Heppy until
after supper and after Ralph Endicott had wheeled away from the Twin
Rocks Light in his car. She had crowded down the question until then;
but it finally came out with a pop.
"Who did Uncle Jethro leave his money to, Tobias?" she demanded, as he
turned away from closing the door.
"To me an' you, Heppy--pretty near every last cent of it."
"Now, stop your funnin'!"
"Ain't funning. It is the truth," her brother said. "Six thousand
dollars, nearabout. And if you'd seen Icivilly Potts's face!" he
chuckled.
"For love's sake!" gasped Miss Heppy. "It can't be!"
"It _can_ be, for it _is_."
"Why, Tobias, we're rich!"
"I cal'late."
"I--I never would have believed it!" exclaimed his sister, and sinking
into her chair she threw her apron over her head and began to sob aloud.
"Oh, sugar! what you cryin' for?" Tobias demanded. "'Cause Icivilly and
them others didn't get Uncle Jethro's money? Have some sense, do! This
ain't no time for weeping. Just think of what you can do with three
thousand dollars."
"You just said six thousand!" ejaculated Miss Heppy, hastily reappearing
above the hem of her apron. "Where's half of it gone?"
"Oh, you're to get half and me half. What you going to do with your
three thousand, Heppy?"
"Just what you will do with yours, Tobias Bassett!" she exclaimed. "Put
it into the Clinkerport Bank to our joint account. We got 'most two
thousand there now. We'll have eight thousand against the time when we
can't work no more and will need it."
"Oh, sugar!" muttered her brother. "I might ha' knowed it. Your idea
of a pleasure spree always was going to the bank to make another ten
dollar deposit."
"Now, Tobias," she said with gravity, "don't you let no foolish,
spendthrift idees get a holt on your mind. I won't hear to 'em. You
never would have had a penny in the bank if it hadn't been for me."
"That's the truth," sighed Tobias. "You got me so that every time a
quarter comes my way the dove of peace on it screams for mercy. Yessir!
I'm getting to be a reg'lar miser, 'long o' you, Heppy."
The lightkeeper and his sister fully understood and appreciated each
other's virtues. That Tobias was generous to a fault and that
Hephzibah's saving disposition had long since warded him from financial
wreck, they both were well aware. Tobias publicly scorned, however, to
acknowledge this latter fact.
"I certainly shall hate to see you turn the key on every dollar of that
money, Heppy," he complained, preparing to mount to the lamp to see that
all was right up there. "We ain't never cut a dash in our lives. I
certainly should like to make a splurge for once."
"You'd fly right in the face of Providence if I wasn't here to hold you
back," declared his sister. "Experience can't teach you nothing."
"Oh, sugar! I know I've always spent my paycheck like ducks and
drakes," he chuckled. "Wal, leave it to you, Heppy, and Uncle Jethro's
money won't get much exercise, for a fact."
When he came down from the lamp he announced a change in the weather.
The wind began to whine around the tall staff and rain squalls drifted
across the sullenly heaving sea outside the Twin Rocks. The night
dissolved into a windy and tumultuous morning, and the fishing fleet
remained inside the capes.
Tobias went aloft after breakfast to clean and fill the lamp before
taking his usual morning nap. To the eastward rode a dun-colored object
that at first could scarcely be made out, even by his keen eyes.
"It's a craft of some kind--sure is!" he muttered. "But whether it's
turned bottom up, or is one o' them there motor-boats, decked over
for'ard and without no mast--Hi! There's a mast of a kind, and with a
pennant to it, or something. Mebbe 'tis the feller's shirt."
That the motor craft was in some trouble the lightkeeper was confident.
The heavy seas buffeted it without mercy. He saw that the master of the
craft could not keep steerageway upon it.
"He'll be swamped, first thing he knows," muttered the anxious
lightkeeper. "Yep! he's put up some kind of a flag for help. But,
sugar! nobody won't see him from inside the harbor--an' there ain't
another livin' craft upon the sea."
Tobias hurried down from the lamp gallery. The cove between the light
and the Clay Head was empty of all craft so early in the season. In
fact, the only boats in sight were his own sloop, still high and dry
upon the sands at the base of the lighthouse, and the heavy dory from
which he trolled for rock-fish as he chanced to have time on the outer
edge of the reefs.
He flung a word to Heppy, and she ran out and helped him launch the
dory.
"You have a care, Tobias," she cried after him as he settled the oars
between the thole-pins. "Remember you ain't so young as you used to be."
"Oh, sugar!" he returned, "I ain't likely to forget it as long as your
tongue can wag, Heppy."
The heaving gray waves roared over the rocks in great bursts of foam.
The tiny, sheltered bight between the reefs had offered a more or less
quiet launching for the dory, but the lightkeeper was soon in the midst
of flying spume, his craft tossed and buffeted by the broken water that
eddied off the points of the reef.
He drove clear of this in a few moments and pushed out to sea. Rising
on a "seventh wave"--a particularly big one--Tobias glanced over his
shoulder. The wallowing motor-boat was still right side up. There
seemed to be but one person in it. The pennant whipped from the short
staff in the stern where the figure of the man was likewise to be
distinguished.
"She's broken down complete," muttered the old lightkeeper, "and he's
keeping her head to it with an oar."
He settled himself for the long and arduous pull before him. In his
youth he had many times managed a dory--sometimes laden with fish from
the trawl-lines--in a worse sea than this. Tough in fibre as the ash
oar he drove, was Tobias Bassett. He did not overlook the possible peril
in this trip to the unmanageable motor-boat, but he had taken just such
chances often and again.
Spoondrift, dashed from the caps of the waves, drenched him. When he
turned his head now and again to make sure of his course, this spray
spat viciously in his face. Little whirlwinds swooped down upon the sea
and turned certain areas of it into boiling cauldrons of yellow foam.
"Looks like a caliker cat in a fit," was Tobias's comment on one
occasion.
But these squalls were for the most part ignored by the lightkeeper.
They were unpleasant visitations, but he knew the dory could weather
them.
He pushed on unfalteringly. Glancing from time to time over his
shoulder, Tobias saw that the occupant of the stalled motor-boat had
sunk down in her cockpit. He seemed to have lost his steering oar, and
the craft was being tossed whithersoever the sea would.
"The poor fish!" growled Tobias. "He's likely to find a watery grave
after all. Must be something the matter with him."
As the dory drew nearer the lightkeeper saw a pallid face staring at him
over the gunnel of the motor-boat. The boat had shipped considerable
water and was wallowing deep in the sea; but the man seemed unable even
to bail out.
"Crippled--must be," decided the rescuer, at last. "I'd better get to
him soon, or he'll lose all holts."
Despite the boisterous seas the lightkeeper brought his dory skilfully
alongside the tossing motor-boat. The wan face of the young fellow in it
advertised his woe.
"What's the matter with ye?" bawled Tobias.
"I've hurt my foot!" replied the man. "I guess I've sprained it."
"Oh, sugar! That might ha' kept ye from walking ashore. But what's the
matter with your boat?"
"The engine won't run, and the steering-gear is fouled. I haven't been
able to do a thing with it since daybreak."
"Hard luck!" returned Tobias. "Better come aboard here. Can ye make it
alone?"
"Can't you tow me? I don't want to lose my boat. It cost a lot of
money."
"Likely. But I ain't no sea-going towboat," said the lightkeeper. "If
I undertook to try to tow your boat, we'd bring up about to the Bahamas.
You'll have to kiss it good-bye, I cal'late."
"I'll pay you well," cried the other.
"Can't be did," said Tobias confidently. "Now, then, when I throw her
to ye, be ready to crawl over the gunnels. We ain't got no time to
jabber. Stand by!"
Seeing that the old man was firm in his intention, the castaway prepared
awkwardly to make the exchange. He was doused between the two boats,
but Tobias Bassett's strong hand helped him inboard, or a tragedy might
have been enacted. The castaway was a man in the early twenties, and
not at all robust looking. Nor did his countenance very favorably
impress the rescuer.
"Still, ye can't scurcely judge the good points of a drowned rat,"
Tobias considered, as the man he had rescued squatted in the stern of
the dory, nursing his right foot and groaning.
"Tell me all about it," the rescuer suggested. "How did it happen?"
"I left Nantucket yesterday noon, going to Boston."
"All the weather-wise folks on Nantucket must be dead, eh? Or didn't
nobody tell ye to take the inside passage?"
"Well, I thought I could make it outside before it blew really hard.
And I could have done so, only for that engine."
"I see."
"Then I fell and twisted my foot. It's swollen, you see. Can't put my
weight on it."
"Too bad," grunted the lightkeeper between strokes. "And you been
battin' off and on here all night?"
"Pretty near."
"Lucky I spied ye. It's going to blow harder before it gets through.
You didn't stand much chance of being picked up by any other craft, so
far inshore."
"I hate to lose my boat," complained the castaway.
"You like to have lost your life, young feller," said Tobias, seriously.
"You can get another motorboat easier. What's your name?"
"Conway Degger. I belong in Boston."
"Do ye, now? Come o' rich folks, I cal'late?"
"Not rich enough to throw away a motor-boat like that."
"Oh, sugar! I s'pose not. If the wind shifts she may come ashore."
"She'll be smashed up."
"Mebbe not past mending," said Tobias, trying to be comforting.
"Anyhow, you be glad, young feller, that ye got out of it as slick as ye
did."
"I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful," groaned Degger, caressing
his bruised foot. "But motor-boats don't grow on bushes."
"Never thought they did. Or I should try if one o' them bushes would
grow in Heppy's garden," chuckled the lightkeeper.
It was a long and hard pull to make the lighthouse landing. It was near
noon, and Tobias had rowed steadily for four hours, when the dory
grounded upon the sands with the surf roaring over the reefs between
which he had skilfully steered.
"Wal, we made it, didn't we?" sighed the lightkeeper, with a measure of
sarcasm quite lost upon Mr. Degger. "One spell I didn't know as we
would--you bein' crippled and helpless like you be."
"I am a thousand times obliged to you, Skipper," said Degger, quite
warmly, as he cautiously stood on one foot like a sandhill crane. "I
don't know how to thank you."
"No, I see ye don't," observed Tobias. "But ne'er mind. I got an attic
full of 'thank-yous.' Don't try to give me no more. Come up to the
light and have dinner. I smell fish chowder, and I do think my Sister
Heppy can make fish chowder 'bout right."
Conway Degger evidently agreed with the lightkeeper regarding Miss
Heppy's cooking. After Tobias had aided the cripple to hop up the
strand and to the light, and had introduced him to Miss Heppy, Degger
proceeded to make himself quite at home. Miss Heppy plodded up the
spiral stairway to the lamp room after dinner to consult with her
brother.
"He wants I should take him to board for a spell," she said. "He seems
a civil spoken sort of boy. I s'pose we could put him in the spare
room, now that you've finally got new winder-sashes for it."
"Wal, I s'pose you could."
"He wants to stay till his foot gets better. It's as black as your hat.
I been bandaging it."
"Did he want a bandage put on his pocketbook, too?"
"Now, Tobias! He's going to pay me four dollars."
"For the bandage?"
"A week. For his board."
"That's mighty good----"
"Why----"
"For _him_," finished the lightkeeper. "But it's your business, Heppy,
not mine. Seein's we are only going to have 'bout eight thousand
dollars in the bank, I presume you'd better take boarders to help out."
"Now, Tobias Bassett! it behooves us to make money while we may. We
ain't gettin' any younger."
"I agree with you," said her brother. "And I don't believe we'll be
wickedly overburdened with all the money you make out of this Degger
feller."
For Tobias had judged fairly accurately that young man's idiosyncrasies.
There was nothing of the spendthrift about Mr. Conway Degger.