"Impressive Lesson.
Perishableness!"
[Illustration: Skull]
"What does it mean?" said the girl, with pale, inquiring lips.
Now as I loved the courtly valor of my race, I laughed.
"You do not understand those long words, Belle. It means, in those
peculiar words, something about a Jack-o'-lantern."
"Oh," said Belle, gazing at it with sudden refreshment, "I guess it 's
the only funny one in the book! They're usually so solemn."
We turned to the next page:
"Important Lesson.
Discontent.
The Bachelor's Button that wanted to be a sunflower: the scow that
wanted to be a schooner."
"Why," said Belle, with her finger on the cut of the angry and
resentful bachelor's button that was throwing down its petals because
it could not be a sunflower--"why did it want to be a sunflower?"
"I can't imagine," I said.
"Wouldn't you just as soon be a bachelor's button as a sunflower?"
"Well, I don't know," I murmured; but while I affected still to be
pondering this subject doubtfully, Wesley came up from the clam flats.
He pointed to the cut on the opposite page:
"Warning Lesson.
Slothfulness."
A plump and evidently highly contented maiden was here represented as
lolling on a sofa.
"'T means _lazy_. She looks jest like Belle O'Neill, don't she?" said
Wesley, grinning maliciously.
"Who"--flamed up Belle O'Neill--"put straws into the cow's teats, an'
let the milk run, while he laid out on the grass an' slep', and Miss
Pray found it out and flailed him with the broomstick?"
Wesley's grin froze on his features; he returned wearily to his rake.
"Comforting Lesson.
A saint walking among the saved, on Revival Terrace."
But the saint, though tall and bearded, wore a ball dress such as the
unchastened belles of society sport upon earth, a profuse skirt, with
flashing train; and he was walking quite alone.
"Where are the 'saved'?" said Belle, with ghastly hope.
"They are just around the corner," said I cheerfully; "where that
suggestion of clouds is--see!"
"N-no, but I guess they are. Ain't he the lookin'est thing you ever
saw?"
"Quite the lookin'est!"
Belle giggled. I bore her out in it sympathetically.
Wesley, who observed how we were at least keeping the crows off of the
clams, smiled upon us with feeble indulgence.
But as we read on, Belle did come to a lesson of such useful terror
that she decided to take her rake and assist Wesley among the flats.
I approved her, and lay back, smiling, in the I heard Wesley's little
old voice pipe up, considerately: "You'll scare 'em jest as well if you
do go to sleep, major."
I kept on smiling. The sun seemed a lake of glory and I a boatman,
fair and free, sailing vast distances upon it with just one stroke of
my wand-oar--and here I began to scare the crows unconsciously.
The air of the Basin anon exhilarated one, anon soothed one into
wondrous, deep, peace-drunken slumber.
When I awoke Vesty stood over me, calling me.
There was a purple, dark sky--now but little after mid-day--glowing
with red at the edges like a sunset; the wind was blowing strong. It
was dark, yet all was distinct about me. I sprang to my feet with a
sort of solemn exultation and bared my head.
"Wake, major, wake!" Vesty cried to me. She drew me and pointed out to
sea. "Notely's boat--it was trying to make home--it is on the reefs."
I saw it then by a flash of that unearthly light, the wind descending
like the last of days. I hastened with Vesty to the low beach, where
the people were moving strangely, looking out on the sea with its
swift-crested breakers.
From the yacht, beating helpless on the ledges, Notely and the few who
had sailed with him that morning were putting out the life-boat; but
Captain Rafe kept running his weather-stained hand down his white face,
his head shaking.
"Bare chance t' save half of 'em in the gale--they'll swamp her; nay,
nay, they'll never get her home with that freight; and it's no sea--it
's a herricane, above and below. I see the sky in broad day like that
but once before, and then----"
His voice was hushed, the boat was off, was lost; then once again we
saw her; we felt the gale rushing; when we could see again, there were
a few struggling in the waves, a few climbing back upon the sinking
masts of the vessel, with wild signals.
The little Basin boats were old and frail; only Gurdon had lately been
building a new fishing-boat. While we were looking off he had been
hauling it down the steep bank by the cottage.
Now when we saw him Vesty ran to him and put the child in his arms and
clung to him. I saw a great light come over his face.
"Gurd," said his father sternly, the old stained hand still stroking
his white face, "ye have strength and skill above the most--but look at
yon! Put up your boat, lad; it's no use. Moreover, there are five men
yonder on the masts--your boat, tested in an ordinar' sea, holds but
five alone!"
"Will ye go out jest to give them another chance to wrack themselves,
and ye put yerself by to drown?" said another, with a trembling,
half-ferocious laugh. "Look to yer wife and child. Don't be a fool!"
"There 's not one o' ye," cried Gurdon, "but if ye had a boat fit 'u'd
do all ye could, an' men sinkin' and a-wavin' ye like that--let me off!
There 's no other way----"
His voice broke. He looked at his wife and child, a look the woman
understood for all eternity.
Vesty stood like marble; her shawl had escaped from her own throat, but
was warm about the child that Gurdon had placed back on her breast.
As we waited, watching, transfixed, Fluke came running breathless from
the woods where he had been as guide with the party of Notely's
pleasure-seekers who had stayed behind that morning.
Captain Rafe ran to him, with the hand still stroking his pallid face:
"That was Gurdon out there, making so near the sinking boat--he would
go--only five----"
But Fluke heard never a word. He saw; his face flushed with a kind of
mad joy; he tossed his hair back, and leaping into the waves, swam to
his own frail little fishing-boat that was tossing at anchor.
His voice leaped back to us above the tumult of the wind: "Gurd and
me'll come home together!"
There was a lull in the gale; the five were put off from the sinking
craft in Gurdon's boat.
And the men were standing with ropes on the shore; but I only saw, as
the tempest moaned, to swell again, one figure on a bending mast,
between sea and sky, and one in a frail shell toiling toward him.
The tempest fell and smote. Then did nothing seem to me fated
underneath those awful heavens, but grand and free; freest, mightiest
of all that figure imprisoned between storm and cloud, overwhelmed,
buried----triumphant, imperishable! Then did the dead that I had known
come forth and walk upon the waves before me: and I beheld that they
were not dead, but glorious and strong--that, rather, I was dead.
Then all seemed black about me. I would have clutched at somewhat, but
I felt a cold hand grasp mine in appealing agony. They brought in with
ropes through the breakers the five men who had neared the shore in the
young sailor's new fishing-boat.
But the "Twin Brothers," the sublime figure on the mast, the toiling
figure in the boat, had "gone home together!"