As soon as possible Christopher and Mr. MacDonald had aroused the
island, and every possible boat had started out. I telegraphed to
Charlie Sands also, and he was on his way by the first train.
But all the next day went by, and no sign of the schooner or of Tish
and Lily May. And as Aggie said, sitting up in bed with a bowl of
junket--she could only eat soft food, poor thing--“We bay dever see
theb agaid, Lizzie. They bay have to walk the plak or sobethig.”
I spent all my time on the beach, awaiting news, and at evening
Charlie Sands arrived from the mainland. He came over to me as I sat
disconsolately on a rock, cutting up fish and feeding the sea gulls as
our poor Tish had always done, and listened to my story.
“Now,” he said when I had finished, “how many men were on that boat?”
“Three.”
“Three,” he repeated thoughtfully. “And my dear Aunt Letitia and Lily
May. Is that correct?”
“And boxes and boxes of-f--of liquor, Charlie.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the liquor,” he said. “I imagine by this
time----” He hesitated and sighed. “It seems rather a pity, in a way.
Still----”
“A pity!” I said angrily. “Your Aunt Letitia and Lily May Carter
abducted, and you say it is a pity!”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Just for the moment my mind had wandered.
Now let’s see. They’ve had eighteen hours, and the percentage was
favorable. I rather think--of course, I’m not sure--but I rather think
it’s about time something happened.”
He then rose to his feet and looked out over the water, and said, “What
kind of a boat was it anyhow?”
“It was a schooner.”
“Of course,” he said. “It would be a schooner, naturally. And while
I am not a betting man, I’ll wager ten dollars against a bottle of
blackberry cordial that this is it now.”
I leaped to my feet, and there, coming around the point of our cove,
was the revenue boat! I could only stand and stare. Our beloved Tish
was at the helm, and as we gazed she shouted to Lily May, who at once
shoved the anchor overboard. As all the sails were still up, the boat
listed heavily to one side, but it stopped.
There was no one else in sight, and this seemed to make Charlie Sands
somewhat uneasy.
“By the gods,” he said, “she’s done away with them!”
But this proved to be erroneous. Our dear Tish, having brought the
vessel to a halt, straightened her bonnet, and then drawing the small
boat which trailed behind to the foot of the rope ladder, she and Lily
May got into it and Tish rowed it to the shore.
Her first words were typical.
“I want a policeman, Lizzie,” she said briefly, “and a room in the
jail, and a bath.”
“I doubt if the jails are arranged that way,” said Charlie Sands,
coming forward. “Still, we can inquire.”
She had not noticed him before, and his presence startled her. I have
never seen our Tish flinch, but she very nearly did so then. And she
gave Lily May a curious look.
“I have taken three prisoners,” she said with dignity. “They are locked
in, down below in that ship. And here’s the key, for Mr. MacDonald.”
She then felt in her workbag, handed a key to Charlie Sands, and
started with dignity to the house. Charlie Sands looked at the key and
then called after her.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he said.
She stiffened and glared at him.
“If you mean the curse of this nation, rum,” she said coldly, “I have
thrown it overboard.”
“Not every bottle?” he said in a pleading voice.
“Every bottle,” she said, and walked firmly into the house.
Lily May did not follow her. She stood eying Charlie Sands through her
long lashes.
“Well?” she said. “Doesn’t papa still love mamma?”
“I’ll tell you that,” he said sternly, “when you tell me something
else.” He then stooped and picked up a one-hundred-dollar bill which
was lying on the grass. “Where did this come from?”
“Well, well?” said Lily May. “You are lucky, aren’t you?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Charlie Sands. “Where did this come
from?”
“They grow around here,” said Lily May cheerfully. “Not everywhere, but
here and there, you know. Like four-leaf clovers.”
“It didn’t by any chance drop from my Aunt Tish’s workbag?”
“Well, you might call up and inquire,” she suggested, and sauntered off
to the house.
She spent an hour and a quarter getting dressed that evening, and when
the Swallow and Christopher came back, Christopher almost crazy, she
was sitting on the veranda doing her finger nails.
Hannah was laying the table inside, and she says she greeted him with
“Hello, old egg! And how are things?”
And that fool of a boy just got down on his knees and put his head in
her lap and his arms around her; and when he looked up he said, “You
little devil! I’ve a good notion to turn you over my knee and spank
you.”
As Aggie says, it was queer love-making, and there is no use trying to
understand the younger generation.
“Under no circumstances,” she says, “would Mr. Wiggins have threatened
me with that. But then,” she adds, “Mr. Wiggins would never have put on
those dreadful clothes and pretended to be something he wasn’t either.
Times have changed, Lizzie.”
For it turned out, that very night, that Christopher was Billy Field.
* * * * *
Never, so long as I live, shall I forget that evening around Aggie’s
bed, when Tish told her story. The bootleggers had tied her up at once,
and even Lily May also. But Lily May was so quiet and chastened that
they had weakened, after a while, and had let her loose.
“And then what did you do?” asked Charlie Sands.
“I amused them,” she said, not looking at Tish.
“I think,” Tish said in a terrible voice, “the less said of that the
better.”
But it appears--for one must be frank--that Lily May saw that Tish was
working with her ropes, and so she began to tell them stories. They
must have been very queer ones, for Tish has never reverted to the
subject.
“I told them the flapper story,” she said to Charlie Sands, “and that
new Ford one, and the April-fool joke.”
Charlie Sands seemed to understand, for he nodded.
“Pretty fair,” he said.
But it seems they relaxed after that, and then she got them started on
mixing different kinds of drinks. She would say, Did you ever try this
and that, with a drop of something else floated on the top? And she
would taste the things they brought, and they would take the rest.
“It was Bill who went under first. He went asleep standing up,” she
said. And the captain next. But by that time Tish had freed herself,
and she knocked Joe out with a piece of chain that was handy. And then
their troubles were over, for they only had to drag them down below and
lock them up. But they had been banging at the door all day, and Tish
had had to make them keep quiet. She had the captain’s revolver by that
time, and now and again she fired a bullet into the door frame, and
they would hush up for an hour or so. Then they would start again.
Our dear Tish finished her narrative and then rose.
“And now,” she said brightly, “it is time for bed. I have done my duty,
and shall sleep with a clear conscience.”
“Are you so sure of that?” said Charlie Sands, and fixed her with a
cold eye.
“Why not?” Tish asked tartly.
“One reason might be--piracy on the high seas.”
“Piracy!” said Tish furiously. “I capture three rum runners, and you
call it piracy?”
“Then there’s no matter of money to be discussed.”
“Certainly not,” said Tish.
“Of seventeen hundred and forty-one dollars,” he insisted. “At the
present moment concealed in your bedroom.”
“That money belongs to the church.”
“I see. But the amount interests me. I can understand the seventeen
hundred, and even the forty. But why the one?”
“Two months at eight hundred and seventy dollars and fifty cents per
month,” Tish said, staring at him defiantly. “Even an idiot could
figure that.”
“And you took it from those bootleggers?”
“I’d earned it for them.”
“By force and duress?”
“Nothing of the sort. The man was asleep.”
“Hijacking,” he said softly. “Ye gods and little fishes! Hijacking for
the church!”
He seemed a trifle dazed, although Tish carefully explained her
position to him.
“I see it all,” he said. “It sounds all right, but there must be a
catch in it somewhere. I don’t quite grasp it, that’s all.”
After a time, however, he got up and went to the door, still thinking,
and called Christopher.
“Come in, you young imposter,” he said, “and tell us how much you’ve
had out of the summer.”
“I couldn’t quite make it,” said Christopher sadly. “Five hundred for
the boat and two hundred revenue salary. That’s all.”
“Certainly it’s not all, Billy Field!” said Lily May. “I have three
hundred from Smith, haven’t I? That makes the thousand.”
But Charlie Sands was holding his head.
“It sounds all right,” he said. “The parish house gets a kitchen,
and Field gets Lily May. Personally I think my Aunt Tish ought to
get thirty years, but still----” He groaned. “Rum running, assault
and battery, piracy, straight larceny and hijacking!” he said. “And
everybody’s happy! There’s a profound immorality somewhere,” he added,
looking around at us. “But where?”
He got up feebly. “I’m getting too old for much of this,” he said.
“Get me a stiff dose of blackberry cordial, somebody. And, Field, slip
around to old MacDonald’s and get a bit of something to float on the
top.”