UNDER FIRE
"Uncle Amazon?" burst out Louise. "A pirate?"
"That's what he looks like," repeated Betty Gallup, nodding her head on
which the man's hat still perched. "I never saw the beat! Why, that
man give me the shock of my life when I came in here just now!"
"What _do_ you mean?" the amazed girl asked,
"Why, as I come in--I was a lettle early, knowin' you was here--I heard
as I s'posed Cap'n Abe in the sittin'-room. I saw this letter, sealed
and directed to me, on the dresser there. 'Humph!' says I, 'Who's
writin' billy-doos to _me_, I'd admire to know?' And I up and opened
it and see it's in Cap'n Abe's hand. Just then I heard him behind
me----"
"Heard _who_? Not Cap'n Abe?"
"No, no! This other feller--this Cap'n Am'zon Silt, as he calls
himself. But I _thought_ 'twas Cap'n Abe's step I heard. He says:
'Oh! you've found the letter?' I declare I thought 'twas your uncle's
voice!"
"But it was my uncle's voice, of course," Louise reminded her, much
amused, "Cap'n Amazon Silt is my uncle, too."
"Humph! I s'pose so. Looks to be. If 'tis him. Anyhow," pursued the
jerkily speaking Betty Gallup, "I turned 'round when he spoke spectin'
to see Cap'n Abe--for I hadn't read this letter then--_and there he
warn't_! Instead--of all the lookin' critters! There! you go take a
peek at him and see what you think yourself. I'll put the breakfast on
the table. He's made coffee and the mush is in the double-biler and
the biscuits in the oven are just browning. I reckon he's as handy
'round the kitchen as Cap'n Abe is. Lots of these old sailors be."
"Fancy! an uncle who is a pirate!" giggled Louise and she ran through
the living-room and the dividing hall to the door of the store. First
she saw Cap'n Amazon from the rear. The red bandana swathing his bead,
below which was a lank fringe of black hair, was the only bizarre thing
she noticed about her new-found relative. He seemed to have very quick
hearing for almost instantly he swung smartly around to face her.
"Oh!" was expelled from the girl's lips, for she was as startled as
Lawford Tapp and Betty Gallup had been.
Compared with the mild-appearing, heavily whiskered Cap'n Abe, this
brother of the storekeeper was in looks what Betty had pronounced him.
His dark complexion, the long mustache, as black and glossy as a crow's
wing, the gold rings in his ears, with the red handkerchief to top it
all, made Cap'n Amazon Silt as romantic a figure as ever peered out of
a Blackbeard or a Henry Morgan legend.
There were intricate traceries on his forearms in red and blue ink;
beneath the open collar of his shirt the girl gained a glimpse of other
tattooing. There was a faint scar traced along his right jaw, almost
from ear to chin, which added a certain grimness to his expression.
Yet his was not at all a sinister face. His eyes twinkled at her
kindly--almost like Cap'n Abe's eyes--and the huge mustache lifted in a
smile.
"Ahoy!" he cried jovially. "So this is my niece, Louise, is it? Well,
to be sure! Abe didn't overpraise you. You _be_ a pretty tidy craft."
The girl dimpled, coming forward to give him her hand. As on the day
before, her hand was lost in a warm, firm clasp, while her uncle
continued to look her over with approval.
"Yes, sir!" he ejaculated. "You look to me like one o' the tidiest
craft I ever clapped eyes on. I don't scarcely see how Abe could go
away and leave you. Dunno's he's got an eye for a pretty woman like
me. Bless you! I been a slave to the women all my life."
"Yet never married, Uncle Amazon?" she cried roguishly.
"Tell you how 'twas," he whispered hoarsely, his hand beside his mouth.
"I never could decide betwixt and between 'em. No, sir! They are all
so desir'ble that I couldn't make up my mind. So I stayed single."
"Perhaps you showed wisdom, Uncle Amazon," laughed the girl.
"Still--when you grow old----"
"Oh! there's plenty of sailors' snug harbors," he hastened to say.
"And time enough to worry about that when I _be_ old."
"I thought----Why! you look younger than Cap'n Abe," she said.
"Ain't it a fact? He's let himself run to seed and get old lookin'.
That's from stayin' ashore all his life. It's the feel of a heavin'
deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man's wishbone. Yes,
sir! Abe's all right--good man and all that--but he's no sailor,"
Cap'n Amazon added, shaking his head.
"Now, here!" he went on briskly, "we ought to have breakfast, hadn't
we? I left that woman Abe has pokin' around here, to dish up; and it's
'most six bells. Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise."
"I'll run to see if the biscuits are done," said the girl; and she
hurried to the kitchen ahead of him. Betty Gallup was waiting for her.
"What d'ye think of him?" she whispered anxiously.
"Why, he's splendid!" the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter.
"He's a _character_!"
"Humph! Mebbe. But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now
he ain't a man I'd trust. Nothin' a-tall like Cap'n Abe!"
"I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram."
"Humph! How long you knowed Abram Silt? Come here yesterday for the
fust time. Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we've knowed Cap'n Abe
around here for twenty year and more. Course, he ain't Cardhaven born;
but we know him. He's as diff'rent from this pirate that calls himself
Cap'n Am'zon Silt as chalk is from cheese."
The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap'n Amazon from the store.
They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe
the evening before. She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was
going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had. But no, he began
spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth.
Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat.
Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a
stranger to turn. The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe
always sat. He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap.
"Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon. "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?"
Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into
the face of the captain. Louise could see the cat actually stiffen
with surprise. Then, with a "p-sst-maow!" he leaped down and ran out
of the room at high speed.
"What--what do you think of that?" gasped Cap'n Amazon. "The cat's
gone crazy!"
The girl was in a gale of laughter. "Of course he hasn't," she said.
"He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face. You
can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon."
Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation. "You
got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe. I must have surprised
the critter. And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt."
"Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise.
"There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the
cage hanging in the sunlit window. "What's Abe call him?"
"Jerry."
"And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary. Wouldn't
trust nobody else, he said, to feed and water him." He rose from the
table, leaving his breakfast. "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?"
He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires
of the cage. Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped
along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger,
sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings.
"There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief. "_He_ takes to me all
right."
"That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway. She had
removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching
seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be
completely hidden when she had the hat on her head. "That don't show
nothin'," she repeated grimly.
Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why
don't it, I want to know?"
"'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind."
"Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone.
"It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again.
"I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced. "Didn't want
to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird. Jerry's
used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the
slats of the cage for him to perch on. He just thinks you're Cap'n
Abe."
She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes. Cap'n
Amazon came slowly back to his chair. "Blind!" he repeated. "I want
to know! Both his deadlights out. Too bad! Too bad!"
He did not seem to care for any more breakfast.
Footsteps in the store soon brought the substitute shopkeeper to his
feet again.
"I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the
seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled. "I'd ought to hauled in the
gang-plank when we set down."
He disappeared into the store and almost at once a shrill feminine
voice greeted him as "Cap'n Abe." Vastly abused, Louise arose and
softly followed to the store.
"Give me coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe.
I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra
Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em
for markers in their garden. I want--land sakes! Who--what----
_Where's_ Cap'n Abe?"
"He ain't here just now," Cap'n Amazon replied. "I'm his brother.
You'll have to pick out the needle you want. I can find and count the
clothespins, I guess. Two dozen, you say?"
"Land sakes! Cap'n Abe gone away? Don't seem possible."
"There's a hull lot of seemin' impossible things in this world that
come to pass just the same," the substitute storekeeper made answer,
with some tartness. "Here's the needle drawer. Find what you want,
ma'am."
Louise was frankly spying. She saw that the customer was a lanky young
woman in a sunbonnet. When she dropped the bonnet back upon her narrow
shoulders with an impatient jerk, the better to see the needles, it was
revealed that her thin, light hair was drawn so tightly back from her
face that it actually seemed to make her pop-eyed.
She had a rather pretty pink and white complexion, and aside from the
defect of hairdressing might have been attractive. She possessed a
thin and aquiline nose, however, the nostrils fairly quivering with
eagerness and curiosity.
"Land sakes!" she was saying. "I know Cap'n Abe's been talkin' of
goin' away--the longest spell! But so suddent--'twixt night and
mornin' as ye might say------"
"Exactly," said Cap'n Amazon dryly, and went on counting the pins from
the box into a paper sack.
"What 'bout the girl that's come here? That movie actress?" asked the
young woman with added sharpness in her tone. "What you going to do
with _her_?"
Cap'n Amazon came back to the counter and even his momentary silence
was impressive. He favored the customer with a long stare.
"Course, 'tain't none o' my business. I was just askin'----"
"You made an int'restin' discovery, then, ma'am," he said. "It _ain't_
any of your business. Me and my niece'll get along pretty average
well, I shouldn't wonder. Anything else, ma'am? I see the needle's
two cents and the pins two cents a dozen. Six cents in all."
"Well, I run a book with Cap'n Abe. I ain't got no money with me,"
said the young woman defiantly.
"Le's see; what did you say your name was?" and Cap'n Amazon drew from
the cash drawer a long and evidently fully annotated list of customers'
names, prepared by Cap'n Abe.
"I'm Mandy Baker--she 'twas Mandy Card."
"Yes. I find you here all right. Your bill o' ladin' seems good.
Good-mornin', ma'am. Call again."
Mandy Baker looked as though she desired to continue the conversation.
But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech
that impressed Mrs. Baker--as it had Lawford Tapp--that here was a very
different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe. Mandy sniffed,
jerked her sunbonnet forward, and departed with her purchases.
Cap'n Amazon's quick eye caught sight of Louise's amused face in the
doorway.
"Kind of a sharp craft that," he observed, watching' Mandy cross the
road. "Reminds me some o' one o' them Block Island double-enders they
built purpose for sword-fishing. When you strike on to a sword-fish
you are likely to want to back water 'bout as often as shove ahead. I
cal'late this here Mandy Baker is some spry in her maneuvers. And I
bet she's got one o' the laziest husbands in this whole town. 'Most
always happens that way," concluded the captain, who seemed quite as
homely philosophical and observant as his brother.
As a stone thrown into a quiet pool drives circling ripples farther and
farther away from the point of contact, so the news of Cap'n Abe's
secret departure and the appearance of the strange brother in his
place, spread through the neighborhood.
The coming of Louise to the store on the Shell Road had also set the
tongues to clacking. Mandy Baker, who took her husband's rating in
women's eyes at his own valuation, was up in arms. A pretty girl, and
an actress at that!--for until recent years that was a word to be only
whispered in polite society on the Cape--was considered by such as
Mandy to be under suspicion right from the start.
The mystery of Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about
Louise. Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came
on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt. Women
left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for
something considered suddenly essential to their work. Some of the
clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon.
Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that
strange, red-kerchief-topped figure behind Cap'n Abe's counter.
Cap'n Joab Beecher was one of the earliest arrivals. Cap'n Joab had
been as close to Cap'n Abe as anybody in Cardhaven. There had been
some little friction between him and the storekeeper on the previous
evening. Cap'n Joab felt almost as though Cap'n Abe's sudden departure
was a thrust at him.
But when he introduced himself to Cap'n Amazon the latter seized the
caller's hand in a seaman's grip, and said heartily: "I want to know
Cap'n Joab Beecher, of the old _Sally Noble_. I knowed the bark well,
though I never happened to clap eyes on _you_, sir. Abe give me a
letter for you. Here 'tis. Said you was a good feller and might help
wise me to things in the store here till I'd l'arned her riggin' and
how to sail her proper."
Cap'n Joab was frankly pleased by this. He spelled out the note Cap'n
Abe had addressed to him slowly, being without his reading glasses, and
then said:
"I'm yours to command, Cap'n Silt. Land sakes! I s'pose your brother
had a puffict right to go away. He'd talked about goin' enough.
Where's he gone?"
"On a v'y'ge," said Cap'n Amazon.
"No! Gone to sea?"
"Yes. Sailing to-day--out o' Boston."
"I want to know! Abe Silt gone to sea! Wouldn't never believed it.
Always 'peared to be afraid of gettin' his paws wet--same's a cat,"
ruminated Cap'n Joab. "What craft's he sailin' in?"
The Boston morning paper lay before Cap'n Amazon, opened at the page
containing the shipping news. His glance dropped to the sailing
notices and with scarcely a moment's hesitancy he said:
"_Curlew_, Ripley, master, out o' Boston. I knowed of her--knowed
Cap'n Ripley," and he pointed to the very first line of the sailing
list. "If Abe got there in time he like enough j'ined her crew."
"Shipped before the mast?" exploded Cap'n Joab.
"Well," Cap'n Amazon returned sensibly, "if you were skipper about
where would you expect a lubber like Abe Silt to fit into your crew?"
"I swanny, that's so!" agreed Cap'n Joab. "But it's goin' to be hard
lines for a man of his years--and no experience."
Cap'n Amazon sniffed. "I guess he'll get along," he said, seemingly
less disturbed by his brother's plight than other people. "Three
months of summer sailin' won't do him no harm."
That he was under fire he evidently felt, and resented it. His
brother's old neighbors and friends desired to know altogether too much
about his business and that of Cap'n Abe. He told Louise before night:
"I tell you what, Abe's got the best of it! If I'd knowed I was goin'
to be picked to pieces by a lot of busybodies the way I be, I'd never
agreed to stay by the ship till Abe got back. No, sir! These folks
around here are the beatenest I ever see."
Yet Louise noticed that he seemed able to hold his own with the curious
ones. His tongue was quite as nimble as Cap'n Abe's had been. On the
day of her arrival, Lou Grayling had believed she would be amused at
Cardhaven. Ere the second twenty-four hours of her stay were rounded
out, she knew she would be.