SARGASSO
After all, when she considered it later, Louise wondered only that she
had not seen through the masquerade long before.
From the beginning--the very first night of her occupancy of the
pleasant chamber over the store on the Shell Road--she should have
understood the mystery that had had the whole neighborhood by the ears
during the summer.
She, more than anybody else, should have seen through Cap'n Abe's
masquerade. Louise had been in a position, she now realized, to have
appreciated the truth.
"You are Cap'n Abe," she told him, and he did not deny it. Sadly he
looked at the dead canary in the bottom of the cage, and wiped his eyes.
"Poor Jerry!" her uncle said, and in that single phrase all the outer
husk of the rough and ready seaman--the character he had assumed in
playing his part for so many weeks--sloughed away. He was the simple,
tender-hearted, almost childish Cap'n Abe that she had met upon first
coming to Cardhaven.
Swiftly through her mind the incidents of that first night and morning
flashed. She remembered that he had prepared her--as he had prepared
his neighbors--for the coming of this wonderful Cap'n Amazon, whose
adventures he had related and whose praises he had sung for so many
years.
Cap'n Abe had taken advantage of Perry Baker's coming with Louise's
trunk to send off his own chest, supposedly filled with the clothes he
would need on a sea voyage.
Then, the house clear of the expressman and Louise safe in bed, the
storekeeper had proceeded to disguise himself as he had long planned to
do.
Not content with the shaving of his beard only, he had dyed his hair
and the sweeping piratical mustache left him. Walnut juice applied to
his face and body had given him the stain of a tropical sun. Of
course, this stain and the dye had to be occasionally renewed.
The addition of gold rings in his ears (long before pierced for the
purpose, of course) and the wearing of the colored handkerchief to
cover his bald crown completed a disguise that his own mother would
have found hard to penetrate.
Cap'n Abe was gone; Cap'n Amazon stood in his place.
To befool his niece was a small matter. At daybreak he had come to her
door and bidden Louise good-bye. But she had not seen him--only his
figure as he walked up the road in the fog. Cap'n Abe had, of course,
quickly made a circuit and come back to re-enter the house by the rear
door.
From that time--or from the moment Lawford Tapp had first seen him on
the store porch that morning--the storekeeper had played a huge game of
bluff. And what a game it had been!
In his character of Cap'n Amazon he had commanded the respect--even the
fear--of men who for years had considered Cap'n Abe a butt for their
poor jests. It was marvelous, Louise thought, when one came to think
of it.
And yet, not so marvelous after all, when she learned all that lay
behind the masquerade. There had always been, lying dormant in Cap'n
Abe's nature, characteristics that had never before found expression.
Much she learned on this evening at supper, and afterward when the
store had been closed and they were alone in the living-room.
Diddimus, who still had his doubts of the piratical looking captain,
lay in Louise's lap and purred loudly under the ministration of her
gentle hand, while Cap'n Abe talked.
It was a story that brought to the eyes of the sympathetic girl the
sting of tears as well as bubbling laughter to her lips. And in it all
she found something almost heroic as well as ridiculous.
"My mother marked me," said Cap'n Abe. "Poor mother! I was born with
her awful horror of the ravenin' sea as she saw the Bravo an' Cap'n
Josh go down. I knew it soon--when I was only a little child. I knew
I was set apart from other Silts, who had all been seafarin' men since
the beginnin' of time.
"And yet I loved the sea, Niece Louise. The magic of it, its mystery,
its romance and its wonders; all phases of the sea and seafarin'
charmed me. But I could not step foot in a boat without almost
swoonin' with fright, and the sight of the sea in its might filled me
with terror.
"Ah, me! You can have no idea what pains I suffered as a boy because
of this fear," said Cap'n Abe. "I dreamed of voyagin' into unknown
seas--of seein' the islands of the West and of the East--of visitin'
all the wonderful corners of the world--of facin' all the perils and
experiencin' all the adventures of a free rover. And what was my fate?
"The tamest sort of a life," he said, answering his own question. "The
flattest existence ever man could imagine. Hi-mighty! Instead of a
sea rover--a storekeeper! Instead of romance--Sargasso!" and he
gestured with his pipe in his hand. "You understand, Louise? That's
what I meant when I spoke of the Sargasso Sea t'other day. It was my
doom to live in the tideless and almost motionless Sea of Sargasso.
"But my mind didn't stay tame ashore," pursued Cap'n Abe. "As a boy I
fed it upon all the romances of the sea I could gather. Ye-as. I
suppose I am greatly to be blamed. I have been a hi-mighty liar,
Louise!
"It began because I heard so many other men tellin' of their
adventoors, an' I couldn't tell of none. My store at Rocky Head where
I lived all my life till I come here (mother came over to Cardhaven
with her second husband; but I stayed on there till twenty-odd year
ago)--my store there was like this one. There's allus a lot of old
barnacles like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup clingin' to such reefs as
this.
"So I heard unendin' experiences of men who had gone to sea. And at
night I read everything I could get touchin' on, an' appertainin' to,
sea-farin'. In my mind I've sailed the seven seas, charted unknown
waters, went through all the perils I tell 'bout. Yes, sir, I don't
dispute I'm a hi-mighty liar," he repeated, sighing and shaking his
head.
"But when I come here to the Shell Road, where there warn't nobody
knowed me, it struck me forcible," pursued Cap'n Abe, "that my fambly
bein' so little known I could achieve a sort of vicarious repertation
as a seagoin' man.
"Ye see what I mean? I cal'lated if I'd had a brother--a brother who
warn't marked with a fear of the ocean--_he_ would ha' been a sailor.
Course he would! All us Silts was seafarin' men!
"An' I thought so much 'bout this brother that I _might_ ha' had, and
what he would ha' done sailin' up an' down the world, learnin' to be a
master mariner, an' finally pacin' his own quarter-deck, that he grew
like he was real to me, Niece Louise--he re'lly did. I give him a
name. 'Am'zon' has been a name in our fambly since Cap'n Reba Silt
first put the nose of his old _Tigris_ to the tidal wave of the Am'zon
River--back in seventeen-forty. He come home to New Bedford and named
his first boy, that was waitin' to be christened, 'Am'zon Silt.'
"So I called this--this dream brother of mine--'Am'zon.' These
Cardhaven folks warn't likely to know whether I had a brother or not.
And I made up he went to sea when he was twelve--like I told ye, my
dear. Ye-as. I did hate to lie to ye, an' you just new-come here.
But I'd laid my plans for a long while back just to walk out, as it
were, an' let these fellers 'round here have a taste o' Cap'n Am'zon
Silt that they'd begun to doubt was ever comin' to Cardhaven. An'
hi-mighty!" exploded Cap'n Abe, with a great laugh, "I _have_ give 'em
a taste of him, I vum!"
"Oh, you have, Uncle Abram! You have!" agreed Louise, and burst, into
laughter herself. "It is wonderful how you did it! It is marvelous!
How _could_ you?"
"Nothin' easier, when you come to think on't," replied Cap'n Abe. "I'd
talked so much 'bout Cap'n Am'zon that he was a fixed idea in people's
minds. I said when he come I'd go off on a v'y'ge. I'd fixed
ev'rything proper for the exchange when you lit down on me, Niece
Louise. Hi-mighty!" grinned Cap'n Abe, "at first I thought sure you'd
spilled the beans."
Louise rippled another appreciative laugh. "Oh, dear!" she cried,
clapping her hands together. "It's too funny for anything! How you
startled Betty! Why, even Lawford Tapp was amazed at your appearance.
You--you do look like an old pirate, Uncle Abram."
"Don't I?" responded Cap'n Abe, childishly delighted.
"That awful scar along your jaw--and you so brown," said the girl.
"How did you get that scar, Uncle Abram?"
"Fallin' down the cellar steps when I was a kid," said the storekeeper.
"But these fellers think I must ha' got it through a cutlass stroke, or
somethin'. Oh, I guess I've showed 'em what a real Silt should look
like. Yes, sir! I cal'late I look the part of a feller that's roved
the sea for sixty year or so, Niece Louise."
"You do, indeed. That red bandana--and the earrings--and the
mustache--and stain. Why, uncle! even to that tattooing----"
He looked down at his bared arm and nodded proudly.
"Ye-as. That time I went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the
store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in
the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for
twenty-five dollars. Course, I didn't dare show it none here--kep' my
sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers. But
now------"
He laughed again, full-throated and joyous like a boy. Then, suddenly,
he grew grave.
"Niece Louise, I wonder if you can have any idea what this here
dead-and-alive life all these years has meant to me? Lashed hard and
fast to this here store, and to a stay-ashore life, when my heart an'
soul was longin' to set a course for 'way across't the world?
Sargasso--that's it. This was my Sargasso Sea--and I was smothered in
it!"
"I think I understand, Cap'n Abe," the girl said softly, laying her
hand in his big palm.
"An' now, Louise, that I've got a taste of romance, I don't want to
come back to humdrum things--no, sir! I want to keep right on bein'
Cap'n Am'zon, and havin' even them old hardshells like Cap'n Joab and
Washy Gallup look on me as a feller-salt."
"But how------?"
"They never really respected Cap'n Abe," her uncle hurried on to say.
"I find my neighbors _did_ love him, an' I thank God for that! But
they knew he warn't no seaman, and a man without salt water in his
blood don't make good with Cardhaven folks.
"But Cap'n Am'zon--he's another critter entirely. They mebbe think
he's an old pirate or the like," and he chuckled again, "but they
sartin sure respect him. Even Bet Gallup fears Cap'n Am'zon; but, to
tell ye the truth, Niece Louise, she used to earwig Cap'n Abe!"
"But when the _Curlew_ arrives home?" queried the girl suddenly.
"Hi-mighty, ye-as! I see _that_," he groaned. "Looks to me as though
somethin'll have to happen to Abe Silt 'twixt Boston and this port.
And you'll have to stop your father's mouth, Louise. I depend upon you
to help me. Otherwise I shall be undone--completely undone."
"Goodness!" cried the girl, choked with laughter again. "Do you mean
to do away with Cap'n Abe? I fear you are quite as wicked as Betty
Gallup believes you to be--and Aunt Euphemia."
He grinned broadly once more. "I got Cap'n Abe's will filed away
already--if somethin' should happen," said the old intriguer.
"Everything's fixed, Niece Louise."
"I'll help you," she declared, and gave him her hand a second time.