AT BIG WRECK COVE
The girl had never been to sea before, not even on a pleasure boat
down the harbor. The delights of a sail to Nantasket were quite
unknown to her. Naturally this voyage out through the bay and into
the illimitable ocean was sure to be either a delight or a most
unpleasant experience.
Happily it was the former. She proved to be a good sailor.
"You was born for a sailor's bride, miss," Horry told her.
But he said it when nobody else was by to see the blush which
stained her cheek. And yet she did not look happy after the old
salt's observation. He hastened to interest her in another theme.
It was the tail of the afternoon watch. Because of the light and
shifting airs the _Seamew_, in spite of her wonderful sailing
qualities, had only then raised the northern extremity of the Cape
and, turning on her heel, was now running out to sea again on the
long leg of a tack into the southeast.
Horry hung to the spokes of the wheel while the skipper was helping
Orion make up the manifest. The steersman had jettisoned his usual
quid of tobacco when the girl approached him, and without that aid
to complacency Horry just had to talk.
"Did you see the wheel jerk then, miss? That tug to sta'bo'd is the
only fault I find with this here schooner. She's a right tidy craft,
and Cap'n Tunis is a good judge of sailing ships, as his father was
afore him.
"But although this _Seamew_ looks like a new craft, she isn't. Sure,
he knowed she wasn't new, Cap'n Tunis did, when he bought her up
there to Marblehead. Only trouble is, he didn't seem to go quite
deep enough into her antecedents, as the feller said. He bought her
on the strength of her condition and the way she sailed on a trial
trip."
"Well, isn't that all right?" asked his listener. "How would one go
about buying a ship?"
"Huh--ship? Well, a schooner ain't a ship, Miss Bostwick.
Howsomever, buying a schooner is like buying a race horse. You want
to know _his_ pedigree. They said the _Seamew_ had been brought up
from the Gulf to sell. And maybe she was. But she is Yankee built,
every timber and rope of her. She warn't built down South none."
"Shouldn't that make the bargain all the more satisfactory?"
queried the girl, smiling.
"Ordinarily, yes, ma'am. But it looks like they was hidin'
something. It looks like, too, she was built for sailing and
fishing, not to be a cargo boat."
"I think she is beautiful."
"She is sightly, I grant ye," said Horace. "But there's something to
be considered 'sides looks when a man is putting his money into a
craft. As I say, her pedigree oughter be looked up. What was the
schooner before they changed the slant of them masts, painted her
over, and put a new name under her stern?"
"I don't understand you at all, Mr. Newbegin," said the girl,
staring at him with a strange look dawning in her own countenance.
He bent toward her, after casting a knowing glance aloft. His
weather-bitten face was preternaturally solemn.
"Ye can't help havin' your suspicions 'bout ships or folks that are
sailin' under cover. There's got to be some reason for a man
changing his name and trying to get by on one that ain't his'n. Same
with a schooner like this."
"Oh!"
"There is such things as hoodooed ships, Miss Bostwick, just like
there is hoodooed folks," he said hoarsely, without seeming to
notice her shrinking from him and her changed countenance.
"Oh! Is there?" she inquired faintly.
"Surest thing you know," acclaimed the old seaman with his most
impressive manner. "There was a hoodooed schooner sailed out o'
Salem some years back, the _Marlin B._ She had the same tug to
sta'bo'd that I feel when I'm steerin' of this here schooner."
The girl was recovering from her momentary excitement. She saw that
Newbegin had no ulterior meaning in his speech. He shook his head
and cast a wary glance toward the companionway to see that the
skipper was not appearing from below.
"Listen here, Miss Bostwick," he said hoarsely. "It's a mighty
curious thing. I had just come back from a v'y'ge to New Guinea, and
I thinks I'd like a trip to the Banks, not having been fishin' since
I was a boy. I went to Sutro Brothers in Salem and got me a berth on
the _Marlin B._ I marked that every man aboard her, skipper and all,
warn't Salem men, nor yet from Gloucester nor Marblehead. But I
didn't suspicion nothing.
"Tell you, Miss Bostwick, them that goes down to the sea in ships
runs against more than natur's wonders. There's mysteries that ain't
to be explained, scurce to be spoke of. I dunno why we shouldn't
believe in spirits and ghosts and dead men come alive. The Bible's
full of such, ain't it?
"Well, then! And what I tell you is as sure, as sure. I took the
_Marlin B._ out of that harbor, being at the wheel. It was
February, and a nasty snow squall come up and smothered us complete
and proper. That schooner was a hummer; she sailed just so pretty as
this one. She did for a fact. But I felt that tug to sta'bo'd. Do
you know, Miss Bostwick, as I was tellin' Cap'n Tunis, there ain't
never two craft just alike, no more than there is two men."
"Is that so?" she said.
"Ships is almost human. I never did see two so much alike as this
_Seamew_ and the _Marlin B._ Well, to continue, as the feller said,
we was smothered in that snow squall for 'bout ten minutes. At the
wheel there I heard off to windward the rushing sound of another
craft. She was a tall ship, too, and she had as much canvas spread
as we had. She came down on us like a shot.
"I shouted to the mate, but he had heard it too. He yelled for all
hands on deck. We both knowed the _Marlin B._ was due to be run
under unless a miracle intervened. It was a moment I ain't likely to
forget, for we stood there, the whole ship's company, hanging on by
backstay and rail, peering out into the smother of the snow, while
the amazing rush of that unknown craft deafened us.
"Then out of her upper works--I swear I could see the tangle of
ropes and slatting canvas--came a voice that rang in my ears for
many a day, no matter how the others heard it. It shouted:
"We're the spirits of them ye run under! We're the spirits of them
ye run under!"
"My soul and body, Miss Bostwick, but I was scairt!" confessed the
old salt. "That rushing sound and the voices crashed on through our
rigging and went down wind in a most amazing style. It was a ghost
warning like nothing I'd ever heard before or since. And it struck
the whole crew the same way. We begun to question what the _Marlin
B._ was. She was a new schooner and had made but one trip to the
Banks previous to this one we was on. We began to ask why her
original crew had not stayed with her.
"You can't fool sailormen, Miss Bostwick," continued the old man,
shaking his head with great solemnity. "They sees too much and they
knows too much. Sutro Brothers had got rid of the _Marlin B.'s_
first crew and picked up strangers, but murder will out. The story
come to us through the night and in the snow squall. We couldn't
stand for no murder ship. We made the skipper put back."
"Why, wasn't that mutiny?" gasped the girl.
"He was glad enough to turn back hisself. Even if he lost his ticket
he would have turned back. Then we learned what it meant. On her
first trip for fish, returning to Salem, the _Marlin B._ run under a
smaller fishing craft and every soul aboard of her was lost. And it
stands to reason that every time that murder schooner went out of
the harbor and came to the spot where she'd run the other craft
down, those uneasy souls would rise up and denounce the _Marlin B._"
"Oh!" gasped the girl, startled, for Tunis Latham and Orion stood
behind her.
"Your tongue's hung in the middle and wags both ends, Horry,"
growled the young skipper. "You trying to scare Miss Bostwick out of
her wits? What you poor, weak-minded, misguided fellows heard that
time in the snow squall was a flock of black gulls coming down
with the wind. And somebody aboard of the _Marlin B._ was a
ventriloquist. Your whole crew weren't ignorant of the accident that
happened on her first trip. Somebody had it in for Sutro Brothers,
and made much of little, same as usual."
"Oh, they _did_?" muttered Horry.
"Anyway," said Captain Latham, "that's neither here nor there. We
aren't sailing the _Marlin B._, for she's in Chilean waters, owned
by a South American millionaire. You can stow that kind of talk,
Horry--anyway, while Miss Bostwick is aboard."
They were until late in the evening beating into Paulmouth Harbor,
but the heavens were starlit and the air as soft as spring. The
tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef was mellow and soothing;
they heard it for a long time before the _Seamew_ made the short leg
of the final tack and went rushing in past the danger mark under
the urge of a sudden puff of the fitful breeze.
"The old bell is welcoming us, Ida May," Captain Latham said to the
girl who reclined in a canvas chair which the cook had raked out of
the lazaret for her use. "I've beat my way in here when it hasn't
sounded so cheerful."
"I am wondering what sort of welcome I shall receive when we get
to--Wreckers' Head, do you call it?" she asked softly.
"That'll be all right, too," he told her with confidence. "Just wait
and see."
They dropped anchor near the Main Street dock in order that they
should be able to warp the schooner in to unload her cargo in the
morning. Tunis allowed shore leave, late as the hour was. But he sat
beside the passenger on the _Seamew's_ deck, and they talked. It was
surprising how much those two found to talk about! Perhaps a good
deal of their inconsequential chatter was to hide the anxiety each
felt in secret as to the future.
However, that talk was a memorable one for both Tunis Latham and the
girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great
deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a
starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the
schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the
sounds of insect life from the shore were accompaniments to their
long talk.
Orion Latham, tumbling over the forward rail from a waterside
dinghy, whispered hoarsely in Johnny Lark's ear:
"What do you know about that? There they are, billin' and cooin',
just where we left 'em when we went ashore. Wouldn't it sicken you?"
But Johnny only grinned and chuckled, shaking the tiny gold rings in
his ears till they sparkled in the faint light. He had a girl
himself in Portygee Town, at Big Wreck Cove.
The creaking of the hawsers and the "heave hos" of the crew as they
warped the _Seamew_ in to the wharf awoke the girl passenger in the
cabin. There was little fancy about the schooner's after house, but
it was comfortable.
There was a tarry smell about the place that rather pleased the
girl. The lamp over the round table vibrated in its gimbals, but did
not swing. There were several prints upon the walls of the cabin,
prints which showed the rather exceptional taste of the _Seamew's_
master, for they had been tacked up since she had come into Tunis
Latham's possession.
There was, too, a somewhat faded photograph on a background of
purple velvet, boxed in with glass, screwed to the forward
stanchion. It was the photograph of an overhealthy-looking young
woman, with scallops of hair pasted to her forehead undoubtedly
with quince-seed pomatum, her basque wrinkled across her bust
because of the high-shouldered cut of it. But it had been in the
extreme mode when it was made and worn, in the eighties.
The brooch which fastened the lace collar had been painted yellow by
the "artist photographer" of that day, and even the earrings she
wore had been touched up, or perhaps painted on with the air brush.
This was Tunis Latham's mother, the girl who had seemed so promising
an addition to the family in the opinion of Medway Latham, the
builder of "Latham's Folly." The rather blowzy prettiness of Captain
Randall Latham's young wife had been translated into real beauty in
her son; for Tunis had got his physique and open, bold physiognomy
from his mother.
The girl lying in an upper berth, a close cap tied over her neatly
braided hair, parted the cretonne curtains to look at these
ornaments hung about the cabin. She realized that the photograph, so
strangely contrasting with the prints of some of the world's
masterpieces, was a sort of shrine to Tunis Latham. He revered the
mother whom he had told the girl he could not remember of ever
having seen. His love and admiration for that unknown mother had
helped make the captain of the _Seamew_ what he was.
He was a good man, a safe man for any girl to trust. And yet he was
lending himself to a species of masquerade which, if ever it became
known, would bring upon his head both derision and scorn. He risked
this contumely cheerfully and with a reckless disregard for what
might arise through the plans they had made while sitting beside
each other on that bench on Boston Common.
He would not admit the point of his own risk. He would not consider
it when they had talked, only the night before, on the deck of the
schooner. He scouted every possibility of any harm coming to him
through their attempt to replace the girl in a firm niche in society
and give the Cap'n Ira Balls what they needed of companionship and
care.
The girl sat up in the berth and let her bare legs dangle a moment
before dropping to the rug. In her bare feet she padded to the
photograph of Captain Randall Latham's young wife.
The girl stood before the old photograph, her hands clasped, her
gaze raised to the pictured face, as a votary might stand before the
Madonna. There were tears in the girl's violet eyes. At that moment
she was uplifted, carried out of herself by the wealth of feeling in
her heart. Her lips moved.
"I promise," she said softly, "I promise you that I will never do
anything that will hurt him. I promise you that I will never let him
do anything that may harm him. He has given me my chance. I promise
before you and God that he shall not be sorry, ever, that he has
raised me out of the dust."
She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the glass which covered
the photograph.
The wind held fair, a quartering offshore blow, and the schooner,
having discharged her cargo, just past noon spread her upper sails,
caught a gentle breeze of old Boreas, and shot out of the harbor and
so to the southward with a following wind which brought her to the
mouth of Big Wreck Cove long before nightfall.
Upon the bluff of Wreckers' Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling
Ball homestead. Tunis pointed it out to the passenger.
"That is where you are going to be happy, Ida May," he said to her
softly.
"I wonder," murmured the girl.
He looked down into her rapt face. The violet eyes were fixed upon
the old house and the brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding
it. Perhaps Cap'n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from
the front yard the white-winged _Seamew_ threading so saucily the
crooked passage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the
serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on the other.
Inside the cove the schooner's canvas was reduced smartly to merely
a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to
Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ashore. Tier upon tier of barrels
of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away
in the _Seamew's_ hold. Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign
fate.
"Hi golly! Ain't we goin' to have no spare time at all? This running
in a coasting packet is plain slavery; that's what it is! A man
don't have a chance even to go home and change his socks 'tween
trips."
"Have a clean pair in your duffel bag; then you won't have to go
home for 'em, 'Rion," advised Tunis. "We've got to make hay while
the sun shines. There'll be loafing enough to cut into the profits
by and by when bad weather breaks."
Orion grunted pessimistically. Little in this world ever just suited
Orion.
"She's a hoodooed packet. I said it from the first," he muttered to
Horry. "You know well enough what she was before they gave her a
lick of paint and a new name. We'll all pay high yet for sailin' in
her."
"I wouldn't let Cap'n Tunis hear me say that 'nless I was seekin' a
new berth," rejoined the old mariner.
Tunis left the mate and Horry to carry on while he took the
passenger ashore, meaning to spend the night himself at home with
Aunt Lucretia. He stopped to get Eunez Pareta's father to harness up
his old horse and transfer Miss Bostwick's trunk and bag to the Ball
homestead. Eunez was in evidence--as she always was when Tunis came
by--a bird of paradise indeed. Her languishing glances at Tunis
flashed in their change to suspicious glares at the girl waiting in
the roadway.
"You have a guest, Tunis Latham?" she asked with a composure which
scarcely hid her jealousy and doubt.
"I'm taking her up to the Balls'. She's Mrs. Ball's niece, Eunez,"
Tunis said good-naturedly. He was always friendly with these
Portygees. That was why he got along so well with them and they
liked to work for him. Many of the Big Wreck Cove folk looked upon
them even now as "furriners" who had to be shouted at if one would
make them understood.
"What does she come for?" asked Eunez sharply.
"They need her up there. Mrs. Ball is feeble and so is the captain.
She is going to live with them right along."
"Ah-ha!" whispered Eunez, as he passed her to step outside the house
again. She seized his arm and swung him around to face her, for she
was strong. "You think she is pretty, Tunis?" she demanded.
"Eh? What's eating on you, Eunez? I never stopped to think whether
she was or not?"
But he flushed, and she saw it. Eunez smiled in a way which might
have puzzled Tunis Latham had he stopped to consider it. But he
joined the girl who was waiting for him, and they went on up the
road and out of the town without his giving a backward glance or
thought to the fiery Portygee girl.
When they mounted to the windswept headland the visitor looked about
with glowing eyes, breathing deeply. The flush of excitement rose in
her cheek. He knew that as far as the physical aspect of the place
went, she was more rejoiced than ever she had expected to be.
"Beautiful--and free," she whispered.
"You've said it, now, Ida May," he agreed. "From up here it looks
like the whole world was freer and a whole lot brighter. It is a
great outlook."
"And is that the house?" the girl asked, for in approaching the Ball
homestead from this angle it looked different from its appearance as
viewed standing on the deck of the inbound _Seamew_.
"That is the Ball house, and Aunt Prue taking in her wash," Tunis
replied. "I suppose she had John-Ed Williams' wife over to wash for
her, but Myra will have gone home before this to get the supper.
Tush! Aunt Prue ought not to try to do that."
The fresh wind blowing over the headland filled every garment on the
lines like ballooning sails. The frail, little old woman had to
stand on tiptoe to get each article unpinned from the line. The
wind wickedly sought to drag the linen from her grasp.
Cap'n Ira, hobbling around from the front of the house, hailed his
wife in some rancor:
"I don't see why you have to do that. Don't we pay that woman for
washing them clothes? And ain't she supposed to take 'em down off'n
the halyards? I swan! You'll be inter that basket headfirst, yet,
like ye was inter the grain chist. Look out!"
"They wasn't all dry when Myra Williams went home, Ira. And I don't
dare leave 'em out all night. Half of 'em would blow over the edge
of the bluff. The wind is terrible strong."
It was much too strong for her frail arms, that was sure. The
captain turned in anger to look for help about the open common. He
saw the two figures briskly moving up the road toward the house.
"I swan! Who's this here?" he exclaimed. "Tunis Latham, and--and Ida
May!"
His face broadened into a delighted smile. He had seen the _Seamew_
come in, and had prayerfully hoped her master had brought the girl
that he believed would be their salvation. This person with the
captain of the _Seamew_ could only be Ida May Bostwick!
At the moment Prudence was taking down her own starched, blue house
dress from the line. It was hung like a pirate in chains by its
sleeves, was blown out as round as a barrel, and was as stiff as a
board. Just as the pins came out an extra heavy puff of wind
shrieked around the corner of the house, as though it had been lying
in wait for just this opportunity.
The dress was whipped out of Aunt Prue's hands. She herself, as
Cap'n Ira had warned her, was cast, face downward, into the
half-filled clothes basket. The blue dress was whirled high in the
air, skirt downward. Before the old man was warned by Prudence's
muffled scream that something had gone wrong, the starched dress
plumped down over his head and shoulders, and he was bound fast and
blinded in its folds.
"Drat the thing! What did I tell ye?" bawled Cap'n Ira. "Take this
here thing off'n me! Want to make me more of an old Betty than I be
a'ready--a-dressin' me in women's clothes? I swan!"