THE SCAR
Another fishfly (or was it the same that had droned accompaniment to
Cap'n' Abe's story-telling upon a former occasion?) boomed against the
dusty panes of the window while the fretful, sand-laden wind swept
searchingly about the store on the Shell Road.
It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and
land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset. In the silence
punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharp _swish, swish_ of the
sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly.
"We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the
last to enter and bang the store door. "She's pullin' 'round into the
no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her
mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while. Won't be no clams
shipped from _these_ flats to-morrow."
"High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper. "How _dry_ ye'll be,
Milt, remains to be seen."
"_In_-side, or _aout_?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for
Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel.
Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner. "This
wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said. "They was makin'
some fillums over there on the wreck of the _Goldrock_, that's laid out
four year or so in Ham Cove------"
"Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts.
"You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup.
"Well," said Amiel, "four _or_ five. The heave of her made ha'f of 'em
sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an'
'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned. I
cal'late _he's_ got enough."
"The gale that brought the _Goldrock_ ashore had just such another
beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively. "But she'd never
been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right. They
mutineed, you know."
"The sculpins!" ejaculated the storekeeper briskly. "Can't excuse
that. Anything but a crew that'll turn on the afterguard that they've
signed on for to obey!"
"That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab. "Ye say a true word."
"An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper. "I've had
experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down
the old scar upon his jaw.
"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt
Baker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?"
"Yep."
"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup,
she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."
"So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I
speak of turned pirates, and they held me--the only one of the
afterguard left alive--to navigate the ship.
"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the
_Galatea_?" went on the narrator unblushingly.
His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it--yes. But you don't mean
to say you sailed on _her_, Am'zon?"
"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her--she
carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home
by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn--a hermaphrodite brig she
was; and--she--could--sail!
"But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin'
smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that
the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.
"They was a hard crew I allow--them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the
like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And
the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we
got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might
say.
"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the
storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin'
aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast. _They_ lived
well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck.
"I got knocked out first thing--there's the scar of it," and the
captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was
a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child.
"Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they
didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin'
down from N'York.
"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard,
they begun to see they needed me to navigate the _Galatea_. They give
me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator--the
bloody crew o' pirates!"
"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.
"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in
my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas
for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee
traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our
first prize--an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her
crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para
all right, I heard afterward.
"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we
looted her of everything wuth while. Then----"
The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky,
half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:
"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"
"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.
"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news
vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin'
spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are
comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."
"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for
the door.
The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out
on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all
directions were the neighbors--both men and women. The possibility of
a wreck--the great tragedy of long-shore existence--would bring
everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.
He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across
her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already
halfway to the shore. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches
the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the
motion picture company were running excitedly about.
"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder
where that schooner is."
He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to
follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the
offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he
could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers
high upon the strand.
But suddenly the man remembered that he was _not_ Cap'n Abe! He stood
here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the rough and
ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had
tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years.
What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from
the scene of excitement at such a time? He turned back into the store
for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door. Then he
shuffled down the road.
At first he closed his eyes--squeezing the lids tight so as not to see
the gale-ridden sea. But finally, stumbling, he opened them. Far away
where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the
greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves
charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses,
their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale. Black was
the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.
Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks. A curtain of
spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of
those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.
The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road. Scattered
in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees
brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril. Here a group
of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened
down upon their heads. Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty
summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the
possibility of making a film of the scene. Farther away huddled a
party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and
children at their skirts. Beyond them the people from the cottages on
the bluff were hurrying to the spot--women in silk attire and men in
the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear.
The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this. He stood squarely up to
the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the
rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand. With his other hand he
stroked the scar along his jaw. He had a feeling that he had been
cheated. That story of the mutiny of the _Galatea_ was destined to be
one of his very best narratives.
He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe. He had
heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his
achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own. He
could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it.
And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a
narrative. Cap'n Abe did not like it.
His keen vision swept the outlook once more. How darkly the clouds
lowered! And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut
shrewdly. It would be a wild night. Casually he thought of his
cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus
purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all.
"Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't
at sea in a blow like this."
It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing. Her
poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n
Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging.
She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that
rolled in from the horizon line. Now and then a curling wave-crest hid
even her topmasts. Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks
shrouded her.
For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks. Unless the
wind shifted--and that soon--she must batter her hull to bits upon the
reef.
The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so
well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation. When
the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion,
it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four
hours' duration.
"She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly.
The might of the sea made him tremble. The thought of what was about
to happen to the schooner--a fate that naught could avert--sickened
him. Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers,
the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred.