SOMETHING BREAKS
An express wagon, between the shafts of which was a raw-boned gray
horse leaning against one shaft as a prop while he dozed, stood before
Cap'n Abe's store as Louise and Mr. Judson Bane came up from the shore
front. She thanked the actor as he set the heavy baskets on the porch
step.
"Those blackfish look so good I long for a fish supper," he said,
smiling in open admiration upon her.
Louise was quick to establish a reputation for hospitality. Perhaps it
was the Silt blood that influenced her to say: "Wait till I speak to
Uncle Amazon, Mr. Bane."
There was a tall gaunt man in overalls and jumper, who, somehow,
possessed a family resemblance to the gray horse, leaning against the
door frame, much as his beast leaned against the wagon shaft. Perry
Baker and the gray horse had traveled so many years together about
Paulmouth and Cardhaven that it was not surprising they looked alike.
When Louise mounted the porch steps she could not easily pass the
expressman, who was saying, in drawling tones:
"Well, I brought it over, seeing I had a light load. I didn't know
what else to do with it. Of course, it was Cap'n Abe give it to me to
ship. Let's see, I didn't happen to see you here that night you came,
an' I brought the young lady's trunks over, did I?"
"Not as I know on," barked Cap'n Amazon with brevity.
"Funny how we didn't meet then," drawled Perry Baker.
There seemed to be a tenseness to the atmosphere of the old store.
Louise saw the usual idlers gathered about the cold stove--Washy Gallup
on his nail-keg, his jaw wagging eagerly; Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue
side by side with their elbows on the counter; Cap'n Joab Beecher
leaning forward on his stick--all watching Cap'n Amazon, it seemed,
with strained attention.
It was like a scene set for a play--for the taking of a film, perhaps.
The whimsical thought came to Louise that the director had just
shouted: "Get set!" and would immediately add: "Action! Camera! Go!"
"Course," Perry Baker drawled, "I sent it to Boston as consigner,
myself; so when the chest warn't called for within a reasonable time
they shipped it back to me, knowin' I was agent. Funny Cap'n Abe
didn't show up for to claim it."
Cap'n Amazon, grim as a gargoyle, leaned upon the counter and stared
the expressman out of countenance, saying nothing. Perry shifted
uneasily in the doorway. The captain's silence and his stare were
becoming irksome to bear.
"Well!" he finally ejaculated, "that's how 'tis. I'd ha' waited
till--till Cap'n Abe come home--if he ever _does_ come; but my wife,
Huldy, got fidgety. She reads the papers, and she's got it into her
head there's something wrong 'bout the old chest. She dreamed 'bout
it. An' ye know, when a woman gets to dreamin' she'll drag her
anchors, no matter what the bottom is. She says folks have been
murdered 'fore now and their bodies crammed into a chest----"
"Why, you long-winded sculpin!" exclaimed Cap'n Amazon, at length
goaded to speech. "Bring that chest in and take a reef in your
jaw-tackle. I knew a man once't looked nigh enough like you to be your
twin; and he was purt nigh a plumb idiot, too."
Louise had never before heard her uncle's voice so sharp. It was plain
he had not seen his niece until after Perry Baker turned and clumped
out upon the porch, thus giving the girl free entrance to the store.
She turned, smiling a little whimsically, and said to Bane:
"The moment is not propitious, I fear. Uncle Amazon seems to be put
out about something."
"Don't bother him now, I beg," urged the actor, lifting his hat. "I
will call later--if I may."
"Certainly, Mr. Bane," she said with seriousness. "Uncle Amazon and I
will both be glad to see you."
The expressman came heavily up the steps with a green chest on his
shoulder. It had handles of tarred rope and had plainly seen much
service; indeed, it was brother to the box in the storeroom which
Louise had found filled with nautical literature.
The girl entered the store ahead of the staggering expressman, but
stepped aside for him to precede her, for she wished to beckon to Amiel
to come out for the baskets of fish.
"Watch out where you're putting your foot, Perry!" Cap'n Joab suddenly
exclaimed.
His warning was too late. Some youngster, eager to peel his banana,
had flung its treacherous skin upon the floor. The expressman set his
clumsy boot upon it.
"Whee! 'Ware below!" yelled Amiel Perdue.
To recover his footing Perry let go of the chest. It fell to the floor
with a mighty crash, landing upon one corner and bursting open. During
the long years it had stood in Cap'n Abe's storeroom the wood had
suffered dry rot.
"Land o' Liberty an' all han's around!" bawled the irrepressible Milt
Baker. "There ain't ho corpse in that dust, for a fac'!"
"What kind of a mess d'ye make that out to be, I want to know?" cackled
Washy Gallup.
The hinges had torn away from the rotting wood so that the lid lay wide
open. Tumbled out upon the floor were several ancient garments,
including a suit of quite unwearable oilskins, and with them at least a
wheelbarrow load of bricks!
"Well, I vum!" drawled the expressman, at length recovering speech. "I
hope Huldy'll be satisfied."
But Cap'n Joab Beecher was not. He stood up and pointed his stick at
the heap of rubbish on the floor and his voice quavered as he shrilly
asked:
"Then, _where's Cap'n Abe_?"
They all turned to stare again at Cap'n Amazon. That hardy mariner
seemed to be quite as self-possessed as usual. His grim lips opened
and in caustic tone he said:
"You fellers seem to think that I'm Abe Silt's keeper. I ain't. Abe's
old enough--and ought to be seaman enough--to look out for Abe Silt.
What tomfoolery he packed into that chest is none o' my consarn. I
l'arnt years ago that Moses an' them old fellers left the chief
commandment out o' the Scriptures. That's 'Mind your own business.'
Abe's business ain't mine. Here, you Amiel! clear up that clutter an'
let's have no more words about it."
The decisive speech of the master mariner closed the lips of even Cap'n
Joab. The latter did not repeat his query about Cap'n Abe but, with a
baffled expression on his weather-beaten countenance, departed with
Perry Baker.
That a trap had been for Cap'n Amazon, that it had been sprung and
failed to catch the master mariner, seemed quite plain to Louise.
Betty Gallup's oft-expressed suspicions and Washy Gallup's gossip
suddenly impressed the girl. With these vague thoughts was connected
in her mind the discovery she had made that one of Cap'n Amazon's
thrilling stories was pasted into the old scrapbook. Why she should
think of that discovery just now mystified her; but it seemed somehow
to dovetail into the enigma.
Cap'n Amazon lifted the flap in the counter for Louise and in his usual
kindly tone said:
"Good fishin', Niece Louise? Bring home a mess?"
"Yes, indeed," she told him. "The baskets are outside. Let Amiel
bring them around to the back."
"Aye, aye!" returned the captain briskly. "Tautog? We'll have 'em for
supper," and let her pass as though nothing extraordinary had occurred.
But to Louise's troubled mind the bursting of the old chest was like
the explosion of a bomb in Cap'n Abe's store.
What was the meaning of it all? Why had the chest been filled with
bricks and useless garments? And by whom?
If by Cap'n Abe, what was his object in doing such a perfectly
incomprehensible thing? He had deliberately, it seemed, shipped a
quite useless chest to Boston with no expectation of calling for it at
the express office. Then, _where had he gone_?
Cap'n Joab's query was the one uppermost in Louise Grayling's thought.
All these incomprehensible things seemed to lead to that most important
question. Had Cap'n Abe gone to sea, or had he not? If not, what had
become of him?
And how much more regarding his brother's disappearance did Cap'n
Amazon know than the neighbors or herself? In her room Louise sat and
faced the problem. She deliberated upon each incident connected with
Cap'n Abe's departure as she knew them.
From almost the first moment of her arrival at the store on the Shell
Road, the storekeeper had announced the expected arrival of Cap'n
Amazon and his own departure for a sea voyage if his brother would
undertake the conduct of the store.
The incidents of the night of Cap'n Amazon's coming and of Cap'n Abe's
departure seemed reasonable enough. Here had arisen the opportunity
long desired by the Shell Road storekeeper. His brother would remain
to look out for his business while he could go seafaring. Cap'n Amazon
knew just the craft for the storekeeper to sail in, clearing from the
port of Boston within a few hours.
There was not much margin of time for Cap'n Abe to make his
preparations. Perry Baker was at hand with Louise's trunks, and the
storekeeper had sent off his chest, supposedly filled with an outfit
for use at sea. Just what he had intended to do with useless clothing
and a hod of bricks it was impossible to understand.
Cap'n Abe had come to her bedroom door to bid Louise good-bye, and she
had seen him depart in the fog just at dawn. Yet nobody had observed
him at the railroad station and he had not called for the chest at the
Boston express office.
The chest! That was the apex of the mystery. Never in this world had
Cap'n Abe intended to take the chest with him to sea--or wherever else
he had it in his mind to go.
Nor was the chest intended to be returned to the store until Cap'n Abe
himself came back from his mysterious journey. The fact that Perry
Baker had shipped it in his own name instead of that of the owner had
brought about this unexpected incident.
Washy Gallup's gossip--his doubt regarding Cap'n Abe's shipping on a
sea voyage--now came home to Louise with force. Washy suggested that
the storekeeper was afraid of the sea; that in all his years at
Cardhaven he had never been known to venture out of the quiet waters of
the bay.
To the girl's mind, too, came the remembrance of that talk she had had
with Cap'n Abe on the evening of her arrival at the store. Was there
something he had said then that explained this mystery?
He had told her of the wreck of the Bravo and the drowning of Captain
Joshua Silt, his father, in sight of his mother's window. She had been
powerfully affected by that awful tragedy; this could not be doubted.
And the son, Cap'n Abe, a posthumous child, might indeed have come into
the world with that horror of the sea which must have filled his poor
mother's soul.
"It would explain why Uncle Abram never became a sailor--the only Silt
for generations who remained ashore. Yet, he spoke that night as
though he loved the sea--or the romance of it, at least," Louise
thought.
"Perhaps, too, his own inability to sail to foreign shores and his
terror of the sea made him so worship Cap'n Amazon's prowess. For they
say he was continually relating stories of his brother's
adventures--even more marvelous tales than Cap'n Amazon himself has
related.
"Such a misfortune as Cap'n Abe's fear of the sea may easily explain
his brother's good-natured scorn of him. Uncle Amazon doesn't say much
about him; but I can see he looks upon Cap'n Abe as a weakling.
"But," sighed the girl in conclusion, "even this does not explain the
mystery of the chest, or where Cap'n Abe can be hiding. I wonder if
Uncle Amazon knows?"