A year had stolen by since the death of Binny Wallace--a year of which I
have nothing important to record.
The loss of our little playmate threw a shadow over our young lives for
many and many a month. The Dolphin rose and fell with the tide at the
foot of the slippery steps, unused, the rest of the summer. At the close
of November we hauled her sadly into the boat-house for the winter; but
when spring came round we launched the Dolphin again, and often went
down to the wharf and looked at her lying in the tangled eel-grass,
without much inclination to take a row. The associations connected with
the boat were too painful as yet; but time, which wears the sharp edge
from everything, softened this feeling, and one afternoon we brought out
the cobwebbed oars.
The ice once broken, brief trips along the wharves--we seldom cared to
go out into the river now--became one of our chief amusements. Meanwhile
Gypsy was not forgotten. Every clear morning I was in the saddle
before breakfast, and there are few roads or lanes within ten miles of
Rivermouth that have not borne the print of her vagrant hoof.
I studied like a good fellow this quarter, carrying off a couple of
first prizes. The Captain expressed his gratification by presenting me
with a new silver dollar. If a dollar in his eyes was smaller than a
cart-wheel, it wasn't so very much smaller. I redeemed my pencil-case
from the treasurer of the Centipedes, and felt that I was getting on in
the world.
It was at this time I was greatly cast down by a letter from my father
saying that he should be unable to visit Rivermouth until the following
year. With that letter came another to Captain Nutter, which he did not
read aloud to the family, as usual. It was on business, he said, folding
it up in his wallet. He received several of these business letters from
time to time, and I noticed that they always made him silent and moody.
The fact is, my father's banking-house was not thriving. The
unlooked-for failure of a firm largely indebted to him had crippled
“the house.” When the Captain imparted this information to me I didn't
trouble myself over the matter. I supposed--if I supposed anything--that
all grown-up people had more or less money, when they wanted it. Whether
they inherited it, or whether government supplied them, was not clear
to me. A loose idea that my father had a private gold-mine somewhere or
other relieved me of all uneasiness.
I was not far from right. Every man has within himself a gold-mine whose
riches are limited only by his own industry. It is true, it sometimes
happens that industry does not avail, if a man lacks that something
which, for want of a better name, we call Luck. My father was a person
of untiring energy and ability; but he had no luck. To use a Rivermouth
saying, he was always catching sculpins when everyone else with the same
bait was catching mackerel.
It was more than two years since I had seen my parents. I felt that I
could not bear a longer separation. Every letter from New Orleans--we
got two or three a month--gave me a fit of homesickness; and when it was
definitely settled that my father and mother were to remain in the South
another twelvemonth, I resolved to go to them.
Since Binny Wallace's death, Pepper Whitcomb had been my fidus Achates;
we occupied desks near each other at school, and were always together
in play hours. We rigged a twine telegraph from his garret window to
the scuttle of the Nutter House, and sent messages to each other in
a match-box. We shared our pocket-money and our secrets--those amazing
secrets which boys have. We met in lonely places by stealth, and parted
like conspirators; we couldn't buy a jackknife or build a kite without
throwing an air of mystery and guilt over the transaction.
I naturally hastened to lay my New Orleans project before Pepper
Whitcomb, having dragged him for that purpose to a secluded spot in the
dark pine woods outside the town. Pepper listened to me with a gravity
which he will not be able to surpass when he becomes Chief Justice, and
strongly advised me to go.
“The summer vacation,” said Pepper, “lasts six weeks; that will give you
a fortnight to spend in New Orleans, allowing two weeks each way for the
journey.”
I wrung his hand and begged him to accompany me, offering to defray
all the expenses. I wasn't anything if I wasn't princely in those days.
After considerable urging, he consented to go on terms so liberal. The
whole thing was arranged; there was nothing to do now but to advise
Captain Nutter of my plan, which I did the next day.
The possibility that he might oppose the tour never entered my head. I
was therefore totally unprepared for the vigorous negative which met
my proposal. I was deeply mortified, moreover, for there was Pepper
Whitcomb on the wharf, at the foot of the street, waiting for me to come
and let him know what day we were to start.
“Go to New Orleans? Go to Jericho!” exclaimed Captain Nutter. “You'd
look pretty, you two, philandering off, like the babes in the wood,
twenty-five hundred miles, 'with all the world before you where to
choose!'”
And the Captain's features, which had worn an indignant air as he began
the sentence, relaxed into a broad smile. Whether it was at the felicity
of his own quotation, or at the mental picture he drew of Pepper and
myself on our travels.
I couldn't tell, and I didn't care. I was heart-broken. How could I face
my chum after all the dazzling inducements I had held out to him?
My grandfather, seeing that I took the matter seriously, pointed out
the difficulties of such a journey and the great expense involved. He
entered into the details of my father's money troubles, and succeeded
in making it plain to me that my wishes, under the circumstances, were
somewhat unreasonable. It was in no cheerful mood that I joined Pepper
at the end of the wharf.
I found that young gentleman leaning against the bulkhead gazing
intently towards the islands in the harbor. He had formed a telescope of
his hands, and was so occupied with his observations as to be oblivious
of my approach.
“Hullo!” cried Pepper, dropping his hands. “Look there! Isn't that a
bark coming up the Narrows?”
“Where?”
“Just at the left of Fishcrate Island. Don't you see the foremast
peeping above the old derrick?”
Sure enough it was a vessel of considerable size, slowly beating up to
town. In a few moments more the other two masts were visible above the
green hillocks.
“Fore-topmasts blown away,” said Pepper. “Putting in for repairs, I
guess.”
As the bark lazily crept from behind the last of the islands, she let go
her anchors and swung round with the tide. Then the gleeful chant of
the sailors at the capstan came to us pleasantly across the water. The
vessel lay within three quarters of a mile of us, and we could plainly
see the men at the davits lowering the starboard long-boat. It no sooner
touched the stream than a dozen of the crew scrambled like mice over the
side of the merchantman.
In a neglected seaport like Rivermouth the arrival of a large ship is an
event of moment. The prospect of having twenty or thirty jolly tars
let loose on the peaceful town excites divers emotions among the
inhabitants. The small shopkeepers along the wharves anticipate a
thriving trade; the proprietors of the two rival boarding-houses--the
“Wee Drop” and the “Mariner's Home”--hasten down to the landing to secure
lodgers; and the female population of Anchor Lane turn out to a woman,
for a ship fresh from sea is always full of possible husbands and
long-lost prodigal sons.
But aside from this there is scant welcome given to a ship's crew in
Rivermouth. The toil-worn mariner is a sad fellow ashore, judging him by
a severe moral standard.
Once, I remember, a United States frigate came into port for repairs
after a storm. She lay in the river a fortnight or more, and every day
sent us a gang of sixty or seventy of our country's gallant defenders,
who spread themselves over the town, doing all sorts of mad things. They
were good-natured enough, but full of old Sancho. The “Wee Drop” proved
a drop too much for many of them. They went singing through the streets
at midnight, wringing off door-knockers, shinning up water-spouts, and
frightening the Oldest Inhabitant nearly to death by popping their
heads into his second-story window, and shouting “Fire!” One morning a
blue-jacket was discovered in a perilous plight, half-way up the steeple
of the South Church, clinging to the lightning-rod. How he got there
nobody could tell, not even blue-jacket himself. All he knew was, that
the leg of his trousers had caught on a nail, and there he stuck, unable
to move either way. It cost the town twenty dollars to get him down
again. He directed the workmen how to splice the ladders brought to his
assistance, and called his rescuers “butter-fingered land-lubbers” with
delicious coolness.
But those were man-of-war's men: The sedate-looking craft now lying off
Fishcrate Island wasn't likely to carry any such cargo. Nevertheless, we
watched the coming in of the long-boat with considerable interest.
As it drew near, the figure of the man pulling the bow-oar seemed oddly
familiar to me. Where could I have seen him before? When and where? His
back was towards me, but there was something about that closely cropped
head that I recognized instantly.
“Way enough!” cried the steersman, and all the oars stood upright in
the air. The man in the bow seized the boat-hook, and, turning round
quickly, showed me the honest face of Sailor Ben of the Typhoon.
“It's Sailor Ben!” I cried, nearly pushing Pepper Whitcomb overboard in
my excitement.
Sailor Ben, with the wonderful pink lady on his arm, and the ships and
stars and anchors tattooed all over him, was a well-known hero among my
playmates. And there he was, like something in a dream come true!
I didn't wait for my old acquaintance to get firmly on the wharf, before
I grasped his hand in both of mine.
“Sailor Ben, don't you remember me?”
He evidently did not. He shifted his quid from one cheek to the other,
and looked at me meditatively.
“Lord love ye, lad, I don't know you. I was never here afore in my
life.”
“What!” I cried, enjoying his perplexity. “Have you forgotten the
voyage from New Orleans in the Typhoon, two years ago, you lovely old
picture-book?”
Ah! then he knew me, and in token of the recollection gave my hand such
a squeeze that I am sure an unpleasant change came over my countenance.
“Bless my eyes, but you have growed so. I shouldn't have knowed you if I
had met you in Singapore!”
Without stopping to inquire, as I was tempted to do, why he was more
likely to recognize me in Singapore than anywhere else, I invited him to
come at once up to the Nutter House, where I insured him a warm welcome
from the Captain.
“Hold steady, Master Tom,” said Sailor Ben, slipping the painter through
the ringbolt and tying the loveliest knot you ever saw; “hold steady
till I see if the mate can let me off. If you please, sir,” he
continued, addressing the steersman, a very red-faced, bow-legged
person, “this here is a little shipmate o' mine as wants to talk over
back times along of me, if so it's convenient.”
“All right, Ben,” returned the mate; “sha'n't want you for an hour.”
Leaving one man in charge of the boat, the mate and the rest of the
crew went off together. In the meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb had got out his
cunner-line, and was quietly fishing at the end of the wharf, as if to
give me the idea that he wasn't so very much impressed by my intimacy
with so renowned a character as Sailor Ben. Perhaps Pepper was a little
jealous. At any rate, he refused to go with us to the house.
Captain Nutter was at home reading the Rivermouth Barnacle. He was
a reader to do an editor's heart good; he never skipped over an
advertisement, even if he had read it fifty times before. Then the paper
went the rounds of the neighborhood, among the poor people, like the
single portable eye which the three blind crones passed to each other in
the legend of King Acrisius. The Captain, I repeat, was wandering in
the labyrinths of the Rivermouth Barnacle when I led Sailor Ben into the
sitting-room.
My grandfather, whose inborn courtesy knew no distinctions, received
my nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common
forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his
forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock
as a sort of handle to bow with.
The old tar had probably never been in so handsome an apartment in all
his days, and nothing could induce him to take the inviting mahogany
chair which the Captain wheeled out from the corner.
The abashed mariner stood up against the wall, twirling his tarpaulin
in his two hands and looking extremely silly. He made a poor show in a
gentleman's drawing-room, but what a fellow he had been in his day, when
the gale blew great guns and the topsails wanted reefing! I thought of
him with the Mexican squadron off Vera Cruz, where,
'The rushing battle-bolt sung from the three-decker out of the foam,'
and he didn't seem awkward or ignoble to me, for all his shyness.
As Sailor Ben declined to sit down, the Captain did not resume his seat;
so we three stood in a constrained manner until my grandfather went to
the door and called to Kitty to bring in a decanter of Madeira and two
glasses.
“My grandson, here, has talked so much about you,” said the Captain,
pleasantly, “that you seem quite like an old acquaintance to me.”
“Thankee, sir, thankee,” returned Sailor Ben, looking as guilty as if he
had been detected in picking a pocket.
“And I'm very glad to see you, Mr.--Mr.--”
“Sailor Ben,” suggested that worthy.
“Mr. Sailor Ben,” added the Captain, smiling. “Tom, open the door,
there's Kitty with the glasses.”
I opened the door, and Kitty entered the room bringing the things on
a waiter, which she was about to set on the table, when suddenly she
uttered a loud shriek; the decanter and glasses fell with a crash to the
floor, and Kitty, as white as a sheet, was seen flying through the hall.
“It's his wraith! It's his wraith!”' we heard Kitty shrieking in the
kitchen.
My grandfather and I turned with amazement to Sailor Ben. His eyes were
standing out of his head like a lobster's.
“It's my own little Irish lass!” shouted the sailor, and he darted into
the hall after her.
Even then we scarcely caught the meaning of his words, but when we saw
Sailor Ben and Kitty sobbing on each other's shoulder in the kitchen, we
understood it all.
“I begs your honor's parden, sir,” said Sailor Ben, lifting his
tear-stained face above Kitty's tumbled hair; “I begs your honor's
parden for kicking up a rumpus in the house, but it's my own little
Irish lass as I lost so long ago!”
“Heaven preserve us!” cried the Captain, blowing his nose violently--a
transparent ruse to hide his emotion.
Miss Abigail was in an upper chamber, sweeping; but on hearing
the unusual racket below, she scented an accident and came ambling
downstairs with a bottle of the infallible hot-drops in her hand.
Nothing but the firmness of my grandfather prevented her from giving
Sailor Ben a table-spoonful on the spot. But when she learned what had
come about--that this was Kitty's husband, that Kitty Collins wasn't
Kitty Collins now, but Mrs. Benjamin Watson of Nantucket--the good
soul sat down on the meal-chest and sobbed as if--to quote from Captain
Nutter--as if a husband of her own had turned up!
A happier set of people than we were never met together in a dingy
kitchen or anywhere else. The Captain ordered a fresh decanter of
Madeira, and made all hands, excepting myself, drink a cup to the return
of “the prodigal sea-son,” as he persisted in calling Sailor Ben.
After the first flush of joy and surprise was over Kitty grew silent
and constrained. Now and then she fixed her eyes thoughtfully on her
husband. Why had he deserted her all these years? What right had he to
look for a welcome from one he had treated so cruelly? She had been true
to him, but had he been true to her? Sailor Ben must have guessed what
was passing in her mind, for presently he took her hand and said--“Well,
lass, it's a long yarn, but you shall have it all in good time. It was
my hard luck as made us part company, an' no will of mine, for I loved
you dear.”
Kitty brightened up immediately, needing no other assurance of Sailor
Ben's faithfulness.
When his hour had expired, we walked with him down to the wharf, where
the Captain held a consultation with the mate, which resulted in an
extension of Mr. Watson's leave of absence, and afterwards in his
discharge from his ship. We then went to the “Mariner's Home” to engage
a room for him, as he wouldn't hear of accepting the hospitalities of
the Nutter House.
“You see, I'm only an uneddicated man,” he remarked to my grandfather,
by way of explanation.