IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER
The _Seamew_ sailed next day, short-handed. Not only had Tony, the
boy, left, but one of the foremast hands did not put in an
appearance. A grinning Portygee boy came to the wharf and announced
that "Paul, he iss ver' seek."
Tunis knew it would be useless to go after the man, just as it had
been useless to go after Tony. He had been unable to ship another
boy in Tony's place, and when he let it be known among the dock
laborers and loungers about Luiz Wharf that there was a berth open
in the _Seamew's_ forecastle, nobody applied for it.
"What is the matter with those fellows?" the skipper asked Mason
Chapin. "They were tumbling over each other a few weeks ago to join
us, and now there isn't an offer."
"Some Portygee foolishness," grumbled the mate.
"I wonder," muttered Tunis.
"You wonder if it's so?" queried the mate. "You know how silly
these people are once they get a crazy notion in their heads."
"What's the crazy notion, Mr. Chapin?"
The mate flung up his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
"A haunt--a jinx--_something_. The Lord knows!"
"I wonder if it is a Portygee notion or something else," said Tunis
Latham, his eyes fixed on the back of Orion, busy, for once, at the
other rail.
"Whatever it is, Captain Latham," said Mason Chapin with gravity, "I
suggest you fill your berths at Boston."
"Guess I'll have to. But the offscourings of the city docks! They
will be worse than these Portygees."
It was not a prospect he welcomed. He well knew the sort of dock
rats he must put up with if he wished to make up his crew with city
hands for a short trip. The sea tramps who are within reach of
coasting skippers are the same kind of worthless material that
shiftless farmers must depend upon in harvest time.
Even the lack of one man forward, to say nothing of the cook's boy,
made a considerable difference in the working of the schooner. 'Rion
Latham loudly proclaimed that he was being imposed upon when he was
forced to work with the captain's watch. He had shipped as
supercargo and clerk, he had! This treatment was an imposition.
"You know what you can do about it, 'Rion, if you like," the skipper
said to him calmly, but aside. "I wouldn't want to feel that I was
holding you to a job that you did not like. You can leave the
_Seamew_ any time you want."
"Huh! The rats will be doing that soon enough," growled 'Rion.
But he did not say this where Captain Latham could hear. It was
Horry Newbegin who heard him.
"It strikes me, young feller, that if I quarreled with my victuals
and drink the way you do, I'd get me another berth and get shet of
all this." And the old salt wagged his head. "I don't get you at
all, 'Rion."
"You wait," growled the younger man. "I'll leave at the right time.
And if things go as I expect, everybody else will leave him flat,
too."
"You're taking a chance talking that way," admonished the old man.
"It's just as much mutiny as though you turned and hit the skipper
or the mate."
"It is, is it? I'll show him!"
"Show who?" asked Horry, in some wonder at the other's spitefulness.
"That dratted cousin of mine. Thinks he owns the earth and sea, as
well as this hoodooed tub of a schooner. Gets the best of
everything. But he won't always. He never ought to have got the
money to buy this old tub."
"You said you wouldn't have her for a gift," chuckled the old man.
"But that don't make it any the more right that he should have her.
And she is hoodooed. You know she is, Horry."
The old mariner was silent. 'Rion craftily went on:
"Look what a number of things have happened since he put this derned
schooner into commission. We broke an anchor chain in Paulmouth
Harbor, didn't we? And the old mud hook lies there to this day. Did
you ever see so many halyards snap in your life, and in just a
capful of wind? Didn't we have a tops'l carried away--clean--in that
squall off Swampscott? And now the hands are leaving her."
"Guess you know something about that," growled Horry.
'Rion grinned.
"Maybe I do. I don't say 'no' and I don't say 'yes.' However, we've
all got to work like dogs to make up for being short-handed."
"Nobody is kicking much but you," said the older man.
"That's all right. I've got pluck enough not to stand being imposed
upon. Them Portygees--well, there's no figuring on what they will
do."
"I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise
trouble," Newbegin said, shaking his head once more.
"What do you expect? You know the _Seamew_ is hoodooed. Huh!
_Seamew_! That ain't no more her rightful name than it is mine."
"I wouldn't say that."
"I would!" snapped 'Rion. "She's the _Marlin B._, out o' Salem. No
matter what he says, or anybody else. She's the murder ship. If he
sailed her over that place outside o' Salem Harbor where those poor
fellows was drowned, they'd rise again and curse the schooner and
all aboard her."
The old man shuddered. He turned his face away and spat reflectively
over the rail. The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even
then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost
electric shock. 'Rion watched him slyly. He knew the impression he
was making on the old man's superstitious mind. He played upon it as
he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen.
So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm
frame of mind. Although he had no words with 'Rion, and really no
trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing.
And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to
avert.
It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even
from the offscourings of the docks. It was a time when dock labor
was at a premium. And short voyages never did interest good
sailormen. In addition, knowing that the _Seamew_ sailed from her
home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with
her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end.
These men wondered about Captain Latham, too. They judged that
infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with
the schooner. He was, perhaps, a driver--too quick with his fist or
the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed
answers--and answers from those members of the _Seamew's_ crew who
were not friendly to the skipper.
In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had
forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went
to and fro that the _Seamew_ was haunted. If she ever sailed off
Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack
would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would
follow those who sailed aboard her--either for'ard or in the
afterguard--for all time. In consequence of this the only man who
applied for the empty berth aboard the _Seamew_ was more than a
little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him
come over the rail.
Nor could the young shipmaster give much time to looking up hands.
He had freight ready for his return trip. It must be got aboard,
stowed properly, and advantage taken of the tide and a fair wind to
get back to the Cape. He had not been in the habit of going up into
the city at all of late. If that girl behind the lace counter of
Hoskin & Marl's had expected to see Tunis Latham again, she had been
disappointed. Her warm invitation to him to call on her--possibly to
take her again to lunch--had borne only Dead Sea fruit. He had
accepted her decision regarding the Balls and Cape Cod as final and
irrevocable. At least, he had had no intention of ever going back
and discussing the suggestion again.
The possibility of the real Ida May Bostwick changing her mind and
reconsidering her refusal to communicate with the Balls or visit
Wreckers' Head never once entered Tunis' mind, if it had Sheila
Macklin's. He had seen how scornfully the cheap little shop-girl had
refused the kind offer extended to her by her old relatives. He
could not have imagined her thinking of the old people and their
home and Big Wreck Cove in any different way.
He was quite right in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked
upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born
and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like
herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on
pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the
slave of a pair of old fogies.
Not for her! She would not think of it. Indeed, this phase of the
offer Tunis had brought her really made Ida May Bostwick angry. What
did he think she was, anyway? In fact, she was inclined to think
that that seafaring person had almost insulted her. Although she had
deliberately spoken of him as her "Cousin Tunis" to the girls who
were her confidantes in the store and to her landlady, who was
likewise curious about him, Ida May Bostwick was much pleased by the
thought of him.
Then she began to compare Tunis with the young men she knew in
Boston. She knew that the young men she got acquainted with were
either very light minded or downright objectionable. If any of them
contemplated marriage at all, they knew it could not be undertaken
upon the meager salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork,
with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then
working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and
her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light
housekeeping.
Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered
these all-too-evident facts. She said:
"I bet _that_ fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace
counter and take the sass of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as
lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is
a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my
claws on him again--"
Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did
not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good
deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May
Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's.
It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt
Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be.
But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought
up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had
lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a
degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives
down on the Cape.
Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any
wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was
something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a
good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed
"soft" and "easy."
"A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it
right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder
how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up
here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a
city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My
goodness! Why not?
"There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures
are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed
somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they
are sick. Ma was _awful_. I can remember it. And there was pa, when
he was cripped with rheumatism before he died."
This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put
the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind--or tried to. Yet
that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls
had come back and related all their adventures--those that had
actually happened and those that they had imagined.
"Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked.
At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape."
"You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me
that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss
Leary.
"I know you _said_ he took you there."
"Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin--of course, not too close."
And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding."
"I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary.
Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed.
"I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see
that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays
you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it
did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole."