IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PIRATES
THE weirs, to which they took their way that afternoon in the
Towncrier's dory, _The Betsey_, was "the biggest fish-trap in any waters
thereabouts," the old man told them. And it happened that the net held
an unusually large catch that day. Barrels and barrels of flapping squid
and mackerel were emptied into the big motor boat anchored alongside of
it.
At a word from Uncle Darcy, an obliging fisherman in oilskins held out
his hand to help the children scramble over the side of _The Betsey_ to
a seat on top of the cabin where they could have a better view. All the
crew were Portuguese. The man who helped them climb over was Joe Fayal,
father of Manuel and Joseph and Rosa. He stood like a young brown
Neptune, his white teeth flashing when he laughed, a pitchfork in his
hands with which to spear the goosefish as they turned up in the net,
and throw them back into the sea. If nothing else had happened that
sight alone was enough to mark it as a memorable afternoon.
Nothing else did happen, really, except that on the way out, Uncle
Darcy finished the story begun on the Green Stairs and on the way back
told them another. But what Richard remembered ever after as seeming to
have happened, was that _The Betsey_ suddenly turned into a Brigantine.
Perched up on one of the masts, an unseen spectator, he watched a mutiny
flare up among the sailors, and saw that "strutting, swaggering villain,
John Quelch, throw the captain overboard and take command himself." He
saw them hoist a flag they called "Old Roger," "having in the middle of
it an Anatomy (skeleton) with an hour-glass in one hand and a dart in
the heart with three drops of blood proceeding from it."
He heard the roar that went up from all those bearded
throats--(wonderful how Uncle Darcy's thin, quavering voice could sound
that whole chorus)----
"_Of all the lives, I ever say,
A Pirate's be for I.
Hap what hap may, he's allus gay
An' drinks an' bungs his eye.
For his work he's never loth,
An' a-pleasurin' he'll go
Tho' certain sure to be popt off.
Yo ho, with the rum below._"
And then they made after the Portuguese vessels, nine of them, and took
them all (What a bloody fight it was!), and sailed away with a dazzling
store of treasure, "enough to make an honest sailorman rub his eyes and
stagger in his tracks."
Richard had not been brought up on stories as Georgina had. He had had
few of this kind, and none so breathlessly realistic. It carried him out
of himself so completely that as they rowed slowly back to town he did
not see a single house in it, although every western window-pane flashed
back the out-going sun like a golden mirror. His serious, brown eyes
were following the adventures of these bold sea-robbers, "marooned three
times and wounded nine and blowed up in the air."
When all of a sudden the brigantine changed back into _The Betsey_, and
he had to climb out at the boat-landing, he had somewhat of the dazed
feeling of that honest sailor-man. He had heard enough to make him "rub
his eyes and stagger in his tracks."
Uncle Darcy, having put them ashore, rowed off with the parting
injunction to skip along home. Georgina did skip, so light of foot and
quick of movement that she was in the lead all the way to the Green
Stairs. There she paused and waited for Richard to join her. As he came
up he spoke for the first time since leaving the weirs.
"Wish I knew the boys in this town. Wish I knew which one would be the
best to get to go digging with me."
[Illustration: _They took their Way in the Betsey_]
Georgina did not need to ask, "digging for what?" She, too, had been
thinking of buried treasure.
"_I'll_ go with you," she volunteered sweetly.
He turned on her an inquiring look, as if he were taking her measure,
then glanced away indifferently.
"You couldn't. You're a girl."
It was a matter-of-fact statement with no suspicion of a taunt in it,
but it stung Georgina's pride. Her eyes blazed defiantly and she tossed
back her curls with a proud little uplift of the chin. It must be
acknowledged that her nose, too, took on the trifle of a tilt. Her
challenge was unspoken but so evident that he answered it.
"Well, you know you couldn't creep out into the night and go along a
lonely shore into dark caves and everything."
"_Pity_ I couldn't!" she answered with withering scorn. "I could go
anywhere _you_ could, anybody descended from heroes like _I_ am. I don't
want to be braggity, but I'd have you to know they put up that big
monument over there for one of them, and another was a Minute-man. With
all that, for you to think I'd be afraid! _Tut!_"
Not Tippy herself had ever spoken that word with finer scorn. With a
flirt of her short skirts Georgina turned and started disdainfully up
the street.
"Wait," called Richard. He liked the sudden flare-up of her manner.
There was something convincing about it. Besides, he didn't want her
to go off in that independent way as if she meant never to come back. It
was she who had brought the Towncrier, that matchless Teller of Tales,
across his path.
"I didn't say you wasn't brave," he called after her.
She hesitated, then stopped, turning half-way around.
"I just said you was a girl. Most of them _are_ 'fraid cats, but if you
ain't I don't know as I'd mind taking you along. That is," he added
cautiously, "if I could be dead sure that you're game."
At that Georgina turned all the way around and came back a few steps.
"You can try me," she answered, anxious to prove herself worthy to be
taken on such a quest, and as eager as he to begin it.
"You think of the thing you're most afraid of yourself, and tell me to
do it, and then just watch me."
Richard declined to admit any fear of anything. Georgina named several
terrors at which he stoutly shook his head, but presently with uncanny
insight she touched upon his weakest point.
"Would you be afraid of coffins and spooks or to go to a graveyard in
the dead of the night the way Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn did?"
Not having read Tom Sawyer, Richard evaded the question by asking, "How
did they do?"
"Oh, don't you know? They had the dead cat and they saw old Injun Joe
come with the lantern and kill the man that was with Muff Potter."
By the time Georgina had given the bare outline of the story in her
dramatic way, Richard was quite sure that no power under heaven could
entice him into a graveyard at midnight, though nothing could have
induced him to admit this to Georgina. As far back as he could remember
he had had an unreasoning dread of coffins. Even now, big as he was, big
enough to wear "'leven-year-old suits," nothing could tempt him into a
furniture shop for fear of seeing a coffin.
One of his earliest recollections was of his nurse taking him into a
little shop, at some village where they were spending the summer, and
his cold terror when he found himself directly beside a long brown one,
smelling of varnish, and with silver handles. His nurse's tales had much
to do with creating this repulsion, also her threat of shutting him up
in a coffin if he wasn't a good boy. When she found that she could exact
obedience by keeping that dread hanging over him, she used the threat
daily.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said finally. "I'll let you go digging
with me if you're game enough to go to the graveyard and walk clear
across it all by yourself and"--dropping his voice to a hollow
whisper--"_touch--ten--tombstones_!"
Now, if Richard hadn't dropped his voice in that scary way when he
said, "and touch ten tombstones," it would have been no test at all of
Georgina's courage. Strange, how just his way of saying those four words
suddenly made the act such a fearsome one.
"Do it right now," he suggested.
"But it isn't night yet," she answered, "let alone being mid-night."
"No, but it's clouding up, and the sun's down. By the time we'd get to a
graveyard it would be dark enough for me to tell if you're game."
Up to this time Georgina had never gone anywhere without permission. But
this was something one couldn't explain very well at home. It seemed
better to do it first and explain afterward.
Fifteen minutes later, two children and a dog arrived hot and panting at
the entrance to the old burying ground. On a high sand dune, covered
with thin patches of beach and poverty grass, and a sparse growth of
scraggly pines, it was a desolate spot at any time, and now doubly so in
the gathering twilight. The lichen-covered slabs that marked the graves
of the early settlers leaned this way and that along the hill.
The gate was locked, but Georgina found a place where the palings were
loose, and squeezed through, leaving Richard and the dog outside. They
watched her through the fence as she toiled up the steep hill. The sand
was so deep that she plunged in over her shoe-tops at every step. Once
on top it was easier going. The matted beach grass made a firm turf.
She stopped and read the names on some of the slabs before she plucked
up courage to touch one. She would not have hesitated an instant if only
Richard had not dared her in that scary way.
Some little, wild creature started up out of the grass ahead of her and
scurried away. Her heart beat so fast she could hear the blood pounding
against her ear-drums. She looked back. Richard was watching, and she
was to wave her hand each time she touched a stone so that he could keep
count with her. She stooped and peered at one, trying to read the
inscription. The clouds had hurried the coming of twilight. It was hard
to decipher the words.
"None knew him but to love him," she read slowly. Instantly her dread of
the place vanished. She laid her hand on the stone and then waved to
Richard. Then she ran on and read and touched another. "Lost at sea,"
that one said, and under the next slabs slept "Deliverance" and
"Experience," "Mercy," and "Thankful." What queer names people had in
those early days! And what strange pictures they etched in the stone of
those old gray slabs--urns and angels and weeping willows!
She signaled the tenth and last. Richard wondered why she did not turn
and come back. At the highest point of the hill she stood as if
transfixed, a slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her
hands clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down
the hill, floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only
to flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last few yards of
the embankment.
"What scared you?" asked Richard, his eyes big with excitement as he
watched what seemed to be her terrified exit. "What did you see?" But
she would not speak until she had squeezed between the palings and stood
beside him. Then she told him in an impressive whisper, glancing
furtively over her shoulder:
"There's a whole row of tombstones up there with _skulls and cross-bones
on them! They must be pirate graves!_"
Her mysterious air was so contagious that he answered in a whisper, and
in a moment each was convinced by the other's mere manner that their
suspicion was true. Presently Georgina spoke in her natural voice.
"You go up and look at them."
"Naw, I'll take your word for it," he answered in a patronizing tone.
"Besides, there isn't time now. It's getting too dark. They'll be
expecting me home to supper."
Georgina glanced about her. The clouds settling heavily made it seem
later than it really was. She had a guilty feeling that Barby was
worrying about her long absence, maybe imagining that something had
happened to _The Betsey_. She started homeward, half running, but her
pace slackened as Richard, hurrying along beside her, began to plan what
they would do with their treasure when they found it.
"There's sure to be piles of buried gold around here," he said. "Those
pirate graves prove that a lot of 'em lived here once. Let's buy a
moving picture show first."
Georgina's face grew radiant at this tacit admission of herself into
partnership.
"Oh, yes," she assented joyfully. "And then we can have moving pictures
made of _us_ doing all sorts of things. Won't it be fun to sit back and
watch ourselves and see how we look doing 'em?"
"Say! that's great," he exclaimed. "All the kids in town will want to be
in the pictures, too, but we'll have the say-so, and only those who do
exactly to suit us can have a chance of getting in."
"But the more we let in the more money we'd make in the show," was
Georgina's shrewd answer. "Everybody will want to see what their child
looks like in the movies, so, of course, that'll make people come to our
show instead of the other ones."
"Say," was the admiring reply. "You're a partner worth having. You've
got a _head_."
Such praise was the sweetest incense to Georgina. She burned to call
forth more.
"Oh, I can think of lots of things when once I get started," she assured
him with a grand air.
As they ran along Richard glanced several times at the head from which
had come such valuable suggestions. There was a gleam of gold in the
brown curls which bobbed over her shoulders. He liked it. He hadn't
noticed before that her hair was pretty.
There was a gleam of gold, also, in the thoughts of each. They could
fairly see the nuggets they were soon to unearth, and their
imaginations, each fired by the other, shoveled out the coin which the
picture show was to yield them, in the same way that the fisherman had
shoveled the shining mackerel into the boat. They had not attempted to
count them, simply measured them by the barrelful.
"Don't tell anybody," Richard counseled her as they parted at the Green
Stairs. "Cross your heart and body you won't tell a soul. We want to
surprise 'em."
Georgina gave the required sign and promise, as gravely as if it were an
oath.
From the front porch Richard's father and cousin, James Milford, watched
him climb slowly up the Green Stairs.
"Dicky looks as if the affairs of the nation were on his shoulders,"
observed Cousin James. "Pity he doesn't realize these are his care-free
days."
"They're not," answered the elder Richard. "They're the most deadly
serious ones he'll ever have. I don't know what he's got on his mind
now, but whatever it is I'll wager it is more important business than
that deal you're trying to pull off with the Cold Storage people."
[Illustration]