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JIM OF HELLAS
THE TROUBLING OF BETHESDA POOL
* * * * * *
_Books by Laura E. Richards._
"Mrs. Richards has made for herself a little niche apart in the literary
world, from her delicate treatment of New England village
life."--_Boston Post._
+JIM OF HELLAS; or, IN DURANCE VILE+, and a companion story, +BETHESDA
POOL+. 16mo, 50 cents.
+MARIE.+ 16mo, 50 cents.
"Seldom has Mrs. Richards drawn a more irresistible picture, or framed
one with more artistic literary adjustment."--_Boston Herald._
"A perfect literary gem."--_Boston Transcript._
+NARCISSA+, and a companion story, +IN VERONA+. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.
"Each is a simple, touching, sweet little story of rustic New England
life, full of vivid pictures of interesting character, and refreshing
for its unaffected genuineness and human feeling."--_Congregationalist._
"They are the most charming stories ever written of American country
life."--_New York World._
+MELODY.+ The Story of a Child. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.
"Had there never been a 'Captain January,' 'Melody' would easily take
first place."--_Boston Times._
"The quaintly pretty, touching, old-fashioned story is told with perfect
grace; the few persons who belong to it are touched in with distinctness
and with sympathy."--_Milwaukee Sentinel._
+SAME.+ _Illustrated Holiday Edition._ With thirty half-tone pictures
from drawings by Frank T. Merrill. 4to, cloth, $1.25.
+CAPTAIN JANUARY.+ 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.
A charming idyl of New England coast life, whose success has been very
remarkable. One reads it, is thoroughly charmed by it, tells others, and
so its fame has been heralded by its readers, until to-day it is selling
by the thousands, constantly enlarging the circle of its delighted
admirers.
+SAME.+ _Illustrated Holiday Edition._ With thirty half-tone pictures
from drawings by Frank T. Merrill. 4to, cloth, $1.25.
+WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE.+ 4to, cloth, gilt top, $1.25.
The title most happily introduces the reader to the charming home-life
of Dr. Howe and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe during the childhood of the author.
+GLIMPSES OF THE FRENCH COURT.+ Sketches from French History.
Illustrated with a series of portraits in etching and photogravure.
Square 12mo, cloth, $1.50.
With true literary touch, she gives us the story of some of the salient
figures of this remarkable period.
+NAUTILUS.+ A very interesting story, with illustrations; uniquely
bound, small quarto, 75 cents.
+FIVE MINUTE STORIES.+ A charming collection of short poems and clever
stories for children.
_Estes & Lauriat, Publishers, Boston._
* * * * * *
JIM OF HELLAS
Or, In Durance Vile
BETHESDA POOL
by
LAURA E. RICHARDS
Author of "Captain January," "Melody," "Queen Hildegarde,"
"Five-Minute Stories," "When I Was Your Age,"
"Narcissa," "Marie," "Nautilus."
Tenth Thousand
Boston
Estes and Lauriat
1895
Copyright, 1895,
By Estes & Lauriat
All rights reserved
Typography and Printing by
C. H. Simonds & Co.
Electrotyping by Geo. C. Scott & Sons
Boston, U.S.A.
TO MY
Dear Brother,
HENRY MARION HOWE,
THIS VOLUME
IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED.
JIM OF HELLAS.
Part I.
Everyone knows the Island; it is not necessary to name it. With its
rolling downs, its points, its ponds, its light-houses, and above all,
its town,--who does not know the Island? Some day I shall write a story
about the downs, the billowy acres of gold on russet, russet on gold,
wonderful to see,--but this story is about the town.
The town has its nominal government, like other towns; its selectmen,
and its town-meeting, and other like machinery; but everybody knows that
the real seat of government lies in the Upper House. The meetings of
this republican House of Lords are held in the best room of
"Bannister's," the one inn of the town. It is a pleasant, roomy old
structure, built in the Island fashion, with wide windows and plenty of
them, and with a railed platform on its flat-topped roof, from which, in
former days, the women of the house used to watch for the coming of the
whaling-fleet.
There is little watching now on the Island. No ships come into that
wonderful harbour, once thronged with sails. The great wharves rot
silently and fall apart; a few old hulks rot quietly beside them. Two or
three fishing-smacks, a coal-schooner or two,--these are all one sees
now from the roof or the windows of Bannister's.
But the men who sit together in the upper room still look out of the
windows a great deal, because from them they can see the harbour, and
beyond it the sea; and the sea is what they love best to look at, for
the greater part of their lives has been spent on it. Old
sea-captains,--it needs but one glance to tell of what the Upper House
is composed: Men with faces that might have been carved out of mahogany,
wrinkled and seamed and beaten into strange lines by wind and weather;
with gray or white hair, for the most part, and shaggy beards, yet with
keen, bright eyes which are used to looking, and, what is not always the
same thing, to seeing what they look at.
Though most of them go to sea no more, they keep with care their
sea-going aspect; they wear pea-jackets with huge horn buttons, heavy
sea-boots, and never fail to don their sou'westers in bad weather. The
room in which they sit is well suited to them. On the broad window-seats
lie spy-glasses and telescopes of all kinds. The walls are hung with
sea-trophies.
Here is a piece of plank transfixed by the sharp blade of a sword-fish;
there, a pair of walrus-tusks; there, again, the beautiful horn of the
narwhal, like a wonderful lance of ivory, fit weapon for King Olaf or
Eric the Red. In the doorway stands a whale's jaw, a great arch ten feet
high, under which all must pass with thoughts of Jonah. As for corals
and shells, there is no end to them, for the upper room is a museum as
well as a place of convention, and here the captains love to bring their
choicest treasures, keeping only the second-best to adorn the
chimney-piece of the home-parlour.
In a great arm-chair, facing a seaward window, sits the patriarch of the
Upper House, old Abram Bannister. His grandfather had built the inn
itself, his grandsons now keep it. Every morning, winter and summer,
Jake and Bill "hist" the old captain out of bed, put him in his chair,
and wheel him into the great room; then they give him a spy-glass to
hold in his hand, and leave him till dinner-time. The captains begin to
straggle in about eight o'clock, when their morning chores are done.
They greet the white old man with never-failing cordiality; he is the
pride of the Upper House. They are never tired of asking him how old he
is, nor of hearing him reply in his feeble, cheery pipe,--
"Ninety-nine year, and risin' a hundred."
He sleeps a good deal of the day, and, on waking, never fails to cry
out, "Thar' she blows!"
Whereupon, one of the captains promptly replies, "Where away?" and the
patriarch says,--
"Weather bow!" and straightway forgets all about it, and plays with his
spy-glass.
When the captains are assembled in sufficient number, they discuss the
affairs of the town, talk over this or that question, and decide what
the "_se_-leckmen" ought to do about it.
Woe to the selectmen who should dare to oppose the decision of the Upper
House! Something dreadful would happen to them; but, as they never have
opposed it, one cannot tell what form the punishment would take.
Now it fell, on a day, that the captains were sitting together spinning
yarns, as was their custom when business was over. The present and the
immediate future provided for, it was their delight to plunge into the
past, and bring up the marvellous treasures hidden in that great sea.
Captain Zeno Pye was telling about the loss of the "Sabra" in the year
1807. His father had been on the vessel, and Captain Zeno sometimes
forgot that it was not himself, so often had he told the story. The
other captains, sitting like so many veiled prophets, each shrouded in
his cloud of smoke, listened with the placid enjoyment of connoisseurs,
making a mental note of any slightest variation of word or inflection in
the familiar narrative. Any one of them could have told it in his sleep,
but it was Captain Zeno's story, and it was one of the unwritten laws of
the Upper House that no captain should tell another's story.
"So," said Captain Zeno,--he was a little walnut-faced man, with sharp
black eyes, and a dry and rasping utterance,--"so they was makin' good
sailin' with a fair wind, on the 18th day of October, when all of a
suddent the lookout sung out--"
"Thar she blows!" broke in Captain Abram, in his piping treble.
"Where away?" responded Captain Silas Riggs, promptly.
"Weather bow!" said the old man, and fell silent again. All looked at
Captain Zeno, who smiled appreciatively.
"Won'erful, aint it?" he said, meditatively. "He knows that pint, Cap'n
Abram does, as well as I do. Wal, as I was sayin', they struck a school
o' whales, on the weather bow, sure enough; sperms they was, and
likely-lookin' fur as they could see. Three boats put off, and my
father, bein' mate at that time, had one of 'em. He sighted a
sixty-barrel bull, and was pullin' for him for dear life, when an old
cow come by with her calf, and when she saw the boat she dove, and one
eend o' the fluke struck 'em amidships, and stove a hole in 'em. Wal!
that kerwumpussed 'em, ye see! Nothin' for it but to pull back to the
ship, and set to work on repairs. My father called the carpenters, and
give 'em their job, an' then he looked after the school, and cussed a
little, mebbe, for all he was a perfessor, to think he was losin' all
the fun. All of a suddent he seed a whale leave the school, turn round,
and make straight for the ship. He didn't think nothin' of it, 'cept he
see 'twas the biggest bull his eyes had ever come across. Big? Wal!'
Twas like a island, Father used to say. He'd heerd tell of
two-hundred-and-thirty-barrel whales along back in the seventeens, and
he calc'lated this might be one of 'em left over. He see the critter was
comin' pooty nigh, and he sung out for a harpoon, thinkin' he might git
a shy, after all; when, lo ye! that whale took a start an' come through
the water like a shot out of a gun, and struck the ship just forrard of
the forechains.
"Wal, sir, they was knocked consid'able eendways, I tell ye! Father was
dumfoundered for a minute, and the ship's crew with him, what with the
surprise on't, and the everlastin' shakin' it giv 'em, too. But Father
never let his wits go without a string tied to 'em, and in a minute he
ordered all hands to the pumps, to see if she had sprung a-leak. She
hed, sir; she was sinkin'; and Father run up the sign for the boats to
come back. He turned round from runnin' up that signal, and you may call
me a Jerseyman if the whale wasn't comin' for 'em agin, head on and all
sails drawin'! Before Father could sing out, he struck 'em again, pooty
nigh the same place, with a crash that sent every man-jack sprawlin' on
his face. Wal, sir, 'twas boats then, I can tell ye, and no time to
lose, neither! Th' other boats kem back and took 'em aboard, and in five
minutes' time the 'Sabry' down with her nose and up with her heels, and
down she went to Davy. Yes, sir! That's what you might call--"
At this moment the captain was interrupted by a knock at the door. He
looked displeased, but said "Come aboard!" with as good a grace as he
could; while the other captains turned cheerfully in the direction of
the knocker, who might bring them something new in place of a
many-times-told tale.
A lank, ungainly man entered, and stood timidly on one foot, with his
mouth open, holding the door in his hand.
"Come aboard!" repeated Captain Zeno, impatiently. "Shet the door! Say
yer say with yer mouth, and then shet that,--if ye can get it all to at
onc't!" he added, in an undertone.
The ungainly man looked slowly round the room, and stroked his
lantern-jaws. "That man!" he said, deliberately, lingering on each word
as if it were too precious to part with, "what be I to do with him?"
The captains looked at one another. They had been speaking of this
matter only a few minutes before, but they feigned unconsciousness.
"What man do you mean, Sefami Bunt?" asked Captain Zeno, severely. "The
prisoner who was caught stealin' hens from Palmyry Henshaw last week?"
The man nodded. "Says he wants somethin' to do!" he said. "Says he'd
like to do chores round for his victuals. Says he doesn't like my
victuals."
The captains chuckled. Sefami Bunt was a bachelor, and his housekeeping
was not supposed to be of a high order.
"Have ye got him in the jail?" asked Captain Asy Bean.
The lantern-jawed man shifted uneasily to the other foot. "Wal, I hev!"
he admitted. "But he doesn't seem to be contented with that." Then,
after a pause, "I brung him with me. 'T want safe to leave him, for the
jail door sags so I can't lock it, and the chain is bust. So 'f you'd
like to see him for yerselves--"
"Where is he?" asked the captains in chorus.
Sefami Bunt gave a backward jerk with his head. "I tied him to the leg
o' the table," he said. "The boys is mindin' of him. Sh'll I fetch him
up?"
Receiving an affirmative answer, he disappeared, and returned, dragging
the prisoner by the collar.
The latter, the instant he caught sight of the assembly of mariners,
shook off his keeper with a single movement; then, making his obeisance
in true seaman fashion, he glanced quickly round the room, and stood
still, cap in hand, in an attitude of respectful humility.
He was a short, thick-set man, evidently of great strength; a sailor,
every inch of him, from the gold rings in his ears to the way he set his
feet down. Jet-black curls clustered about his brown, smiling face. His
dark eyes were alive with intelligence and humour. His open shirt
displayed a neck elaborately tattooed, while hands and wrists were a
museum of anchors, hearts and crosses.
"Will you speak to him, Cap'n Bean?" said one or two of the other
captains in low tones.
"Wal, I don't want to be settin' myself up," replied Captain Asy, "but
if it's the wish"--he glanced round the circle, and ascertained that it
was the wish. Whereupon, clearing his throat and assuming a quarter-deck
frown, he asked, in majestic tones, "What is your name, prisoner?"
The dark eyes looked intelligence. "Name, honourable captains? Giorgios
Aristides Evangelides Paparipopoulos."
"Great Andes!" exclaimed Captain Asy. "We've got the whole archipelago,
and no mistake. What do they _call_ ye? Hey?"
"Ah!"--the brown face flashed into a bewildering smile, an ivory
revelation. "Call me? Jim!"
The captains breathed again.
"That's more civilized!" said Captain Asy. "Now, you Jim, what have you
got to say for yourself?"
It appeared that Jim had a great deal to say for himself. He was not
happy, he must inform the honourable captains. He complained of his
quarters, of his jailer, of his fare. He had, it was true, stolen a hen,
being very hungry and having no money to seek the so honourable hotel.
The hen was almost uneatable, but--he had stolen her. He had been
condemned to three months' imprisonment in the jail, and it was well.
But--here he waxed eloquent, pathetic. "I haf been in jail, honourable
captains, before. Never for great offence, but--I have been. But never
like zis! Ze rain come in upon my bed. I try to shut ze door, for ze
wind blow at me, but he not shut. I sleep, and ze ship come in ze door
and eat me."
"Hold on there!" said Captain Asy. "What do you mean by that? Hey? Ship
come in the door?"
"Yes, honourable captain; t'ree gre't big ship. I hear 'baa! baa!' I
wake suddainlee, and zey are eat my foot."
"Sheep, he means!" the jailer explained. "The' warnt but two, I guess.
Fact, they got a way o' wand'rin' int' the jail, but they wouldn't ha'
hurt him any. He's dretful skeered for one that's knocked about pooty
nigh the world over, from what he says."
"But!" the prisoner maintained, turning a candid face upon the court;
"is it a jail--for ship to walk in and eat--what you say neeble--ze
foots of prisoners?"
"No! no! 'taint!" "That's so!" "He's right, gentlemen!" came from the
assembled captains.
"Zen," Jim continued, "ze mess! Salted backbone of hog--must I eat
always zis? Never for t'ree mont's ozer sing? Honourable captains, I
die."
"Wal!" said Sefami Bunt, with a hint of bluster in his voice, "I guess
if backbone's good enough for me, it's good enough for him! 'Twas a good
hawg! and, anyway, I've got to use it!"
"Sold the rest and salted down the backbone for yourself and prisoner?"
queried Captain Asy Bean.
The jailer nodded, and repeated in an injured tone:
"'Twas a good hawg! Anybody could ha' seen him fattenin' any time they
mind to pass by."
"And I tell Mr. Bont,"--Jim resumed the thread of his narrative, smiling
apology around,--"I tell him, 'Let-a me go!' not ron avay, of course; I
cannot ron avay if I wish. It is island. I tell him 'Let-a me go and
work! I make ze door good; I mend ze windows; I do for ozer people work,
perhaps zey give me ozer mess.' Is it not?" with a sudden flash and
gleam of eyes and teeth.
There was a short pause. "How did you come here, anyway?" queried
Captain Bije Tarbox.
It appeared that Jim had fallen overboard from his vessel. It was night,
and his fall had not been noticed. Fortunately, the vessel was, even at
the moment, passing the Island. He was a good swimmer, used to being in
the water for a long time--briefly, behold him! He stole the hen. He was
taken, brought before the "selected gentlemen." That was his story.
"Just step outside with Bunt a minute, my man," said Captain Asy Bean,
"and we'll settle your case." Then, as the door closed behind the
smiling criminal and his gloomy guardian, Captain Asy turned to the
others:
"Gentlemen, this story may or may not be true. It sounds fishy; but,
anyhow, the man must have come from somewhere, and I d'no as it matters
much, s'long as he's here now. Question is, what to do with him now he
_is_ here. Just like them _se_leckmen, lettin' the jail go to rack an'
ruin, an' then clappin' a man in thar for the sheep to nibble."
"Man's a seaman, anyhow," said Captain Bije Tarbox. "Ought t' ha' been
sent straight to us."
"That's so!" assented the captains all.
"Wal!" resumed Captain Asy, "'pears to me the straight thing is for us
to send for the _se_leckmen--they'll be goin' by to dinner direckly, an'
we can toll 'em in an' say to 'em--"
"Thar she blows!" sang out Captain Abram.
"Where away?" asked Captain Moses Packard.
"Weather bow!" was the reply; and then the talk went on again.