PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS
Rockman's Wharf was the center of the fishing activities of the town.
To it, each day, the small fishermen came in their dories with their
day's catch. From it motor boats chugged off to the bigger boats moored
in the bay, some schooner was always tied to the gray piles waiting to
be overhauled or to be chartered for deep sea fishing. There was always
something to watch on Rockman's, or someone to talk to. The fishing
folk spent their leisure hours loafing in the shadow of the long shed,
smoking and talking; often the artists boldly pitched their easels and
stools in everyone's way and painted a gray hull and a pink-gray sail,
checkered with white patches, or a dark-skinned Portuguese bending to
the task of spiking shiny cod from the bottom of a dory and throwing
them to the wharf to be measured and weighed.
Sidney never failed to thrill to the changing scenes that Rockman's
offered. She had become, like Mart and Lavender and a score of other
youngsters, a familiar figure on the old wharf. With the ease of a Cape
Coder born she talked to the Portuguese fishermen and to the men who
worked in the shed and to Captain Hawkes, who when he was not on the
_Mabel T_ sat on a leaning pile smoking and waiting for tourists to
engage him. She knew the fishermen and their boats by name and was as
interested in how much old Amos Martin got for his beautiful catch as
Amos himself. Rockman's knew her as "that summer gal of Achsa Green's."
"She beats all for askin' questions," it agreed, smilingly. "Ain't
anything misses _that_ gal!"
Sidney certainly did not intend anything should. She had to make up for
all the years she had not lived in Provincetown and if she watched and
listened closely she might some day catch up with Mart and Lavender.
She sat on the wharf late one afternoon, dangling her bare legs over
its edge, and watched the sails and the circling seagulls and
everything within sight and waited for Mart and Lavender to join her as
they had agreed. Lavender was running an errand for Cap'n Hawkes and
Mart had gone to Commercial Street for some candy.
It was too early in the day for the fishermen to come in. Sidney knew
that. For that reason a dory approaching Rockman's caught her eye. In
it were two men, in oilskins and rubber boots. As it came near to the
wharf a thickset fellow stepped out from the shed. Sidney had never
noticed him before. And her eyes grew round as she observed that in
place of one hand he wore an iron hook. Like a flash there came to her
a confused memory of stories she had read of high piracy and
buccaneers. She looked at the ugly hook and at the man and then at the
approaching dory and every pulse quickened and tingled. Without moving
a muscle she leapt to attention.
Partly concealed as she was by the pile of old canvas the man did not
see her. Nor did the two in the dory notice her. As the dory bumped its
nose against the wharf one of the men threw a line to the man on the
dock who caught it dexterously with the iron hook. He had evidently
been waiting for the dory. Then one of the two in the boat sprang to
the wharf while the other busied himself in shutting off the engine.
"'Lo, Jed. Good catch?"
"Yep. Good catch."
Not unusual words for Rockman's wharf but they rang with strange
significance to Sidney, athirst for adventure. Why, there were not any
fish in the dory! And the man with the hook had called the other Jed!
Jed Starrow! _It was Jed Starrow._ She peeked cautiously around the old
sails. Jed Starrow was tall and very dark and had just the right
swagger. If he had worn a gay 'kerchief knotted about his head,
earrings, and a cutlass in his sash he would have been the pirate true;
as it was easy for Sidney to see him like that in spite of his
commonplace oilskins and his cap.
The two men walked slowly up the wharf, Jed Starrow a little in advance
of the other. The man in the dory, having shut off the engine, lounged
in the bow of the boat and lighted a pipe.
Sidney sat very still until Jed Starrow and his companion were out of
sight. Then she climbed to her feet, slipped along the side of the shed
and ran up the wharf until she could jump down on the beach. Here she
waited Mart's return.
Mart and Lavender came almost at the same moment, Mart with a bulging
bag of assorted and dreadful-hued candies. Mysteriously Sidney beckoned
to them to join her in the seclusion of the beach.
"Whatever's happened?" mumbled Mart her mouth full of candy. "You act
like you were struck silly."
"I've found something out!" Sidney spoke in a sepulchral whisper though
their voices could not have been heard by anyone on the wharf. "Lav,
_who is Jed Starrow_!"
Lav stared at her in wonder.
"Why--why--he's Jed Starrow. That's all. Fellow 'round town. Owns the
_Puritan_, that new schooner."
"I believe--" Sidney spoke slowly. "I believe Jed Starrow is a--pirate!"
At this Lav and Mart broke into loud laughter. But Sidney stood her
ground, not even flushing under their derision.
"You can laugh. But I know--I know--instinctively. I sometimes do know
things like that. I guess it's an occult power I have. And, anyway,
Cap'n Davies hinted as much."
"Oh, Cap'n Davies--he's always snoopin' round for trouble. We have
plenty of rum-runners and I guess lots of things get smuggled--but
_pirates_--"
"Captain Davies distinctly _said_ pirates--" insisted Sidney who had
not sufficient experience to properly classify rum-runners and
smugglers. Anyway, pirates sounded more exciting.
"What's started all this?" asked Lavender.
Sidney told of the landing of the dory and the man with the iron hook
for a hand.
"Oh, that's only Joe Josephs. He's a wrecker."
Mart was catching something of Sidney's spirit; in truth Mart was
unconsciously catching a great deal from Sidney these days.
"Well, he's certainly doing something _besides_ wrecking. It's been an
awful poor season for wrecks and gran'ma says Joe Josephs' wife's been
to her sister's at Plymouth and got a new coat and hat for the trip and
she hasn't had a new thing since Letty Vine give her her blue serge
dress and that wasn't new."
"You see--" cried Sidney, exulting, "Joe Josephs has divided the
spoils!"
"Oh, you girls are crazy! Why everyone in the town knows Jed Starrow.
Don't you think everyone 'ud know if he was a pirate? He's lived here
ever since he was born, I guess."
"But, Lav, it was so _funny_ for them to say just alike 'good catch'
when they didn't have any fish at all! It was a password. Pirates
always have passwords."
"Prob'bly a code," jeered Lav, rocking with laughter. "You watch the
sky anights; mebbe they use rockets to signal one another, too."
Sidney was still sufficiently stirred by the whole incident as to be
able to tolerate Lav's stupidity.
"Of course I know pirates--even these days--wouldn't use rockets and
codes. I'm not as ignorant as all _that_. And I _am_ going to watch,
day and night. It'll be easy for me to watch 'cause I'm a girl and no
one will suspect what's in my head."
"I should say they wouldn't! Gee!" and Lav permitted himself a last
long laugh.
"And you may change your tune yet," cried Sidney, really vexed, "When
Mart and I discover something."
"We'll both keep our eyes open!" Mart agreed, admiring Sidney's
imagination even though she could not always follow it. "But we ought
to keep quiet 'bout our suspicions, hadn't we?"
Sidney hesitated. She _did_ want to tell Mr. Dugald about the "good
catch." But Mart went on convincingly.
"If we told anyone we were on, y'see it might get to Jed Starrow
himself."
"That'd be the biggest joke in town," Lav warned, with a chuckle.
Sidney ignored him. "Of course we must not breathe a word of our
suspicions to a soul," she averred. "And if either of us finds out
anything she must tell the other at once. I think we _will_ find
something, too, for two heads are better than one."
"Say, are you going to leave me out of your fun--just 'cause I laughed?"
Sidney did not want to leave Lavender out but she did want to punish
him a little. She pretended to consider his question.
"If you find it all so highly amusing you might be tempted to tell
someone--"
"What'ya mean? That I'd squeal on you? If you think _that_, well, I
don't want to be in on it--"
"Oh, Lav, of course I know you wouldn't squeal," cried Sidney,
relenting. "And we _will_ need you to help find things out. Oughtn't we
to have some sign or a word or something to sort of signal that one of
us knows something to tell the others? What'll it be--"
Mart scowled down at the sand. For the moment she was possessed with an
envy for Sidney's agile imagination, a disgust at her own stolid
faculties. Why couldn't _she_ think of things right offhand the way
Sidney could?
But it was Lavender who suggested the "signal."
"Hook!" he offered and Sidney clapped her hands in delight.
"Oh, grand! No one would ever guess. And it sounds so shivery! Why,
that man with the iron hook just _has_ to be a pirate!" Then she
suddenly grew embarrassed by her own enthusiasm. "It's different with
you two," she explained, "you've lived here all your lives and you
don't know what it's like to have to be a po--" She broke off,
startled. One breath more and she would have revealed the truth to
Lavender and Mart. "Middletown is the pokiest town--there's nothing
exciting ever happens there."
"I don't know as much exciting happens here. I s'pose enough happens,
only you have to have something inside you that makes you _think_ it
exciting, I guess." Which was Mart's initial step into any analysis of
emotion, but not her last.
Lavender turned toward the wharf. "I got to go and hunt up Cap'n
Hawkes," he announced regretfully. "So it'll be 'hook,' will it? Well,
I swear from henceforth I'll watch every citizen of Provincetown to see
if he has a cutlass at his belt or a tattoo on his chest. Come on,
girls--sleuths, I mean--"
"I do hope," sighed Sidney as she and Mart wandered homeward over the
hard sand, "that one of us'll have to say 'hook' soon. Don't you?"
But in her heart Sidney had an annoying conviction that neither Mart
nor Lav took her pirate suspicions quite as seriously as she did. At
supper Lav deliberately kept the conversation on Jed Starrow and his
activities with a disconcerting twinkle in his eyes. Mart assumed the
same lofty tolerance of their secret game as she showed to their play
on the _Arabella_--as though it were a sort of second-best fun.
"Well, I don't care," Sidney declared stoutly. To think of Jed Starrow
as a wicked buccaneer and Joe Josephs, the wrecker, as his accomplice
in piracy, satisfied her craving for adventure. For the next many days
she let it color everything she saw, every word she overheard; the
connecting links she forged from her own active imagination.