THE STORM
Captain Tunis Latham, pacing the deck of the _Seamew_, had come to a
conclusion which was by no means complimentary to his own
self-respect. During his manifold duties and the business bothers
connected with the sailing of the undermanned schooner, his mind had
seized upon and grappled with a train of ideas which brought him
logically to the decision that he was playing a weak and piffling
part.
Strong in most things, Tunis Latham had allowed his better sense to
be throttled and his purpose balked in the thing which meant more to
him than the schooner, his business success, or anything else in
life. The broader the rift grew between Sheila and himself, the
clearer he saw that without her he was a ship without a rudder and
that nothing could come of his life save wreck and disaster.
She had renounced him for his own good, as she believed, and he had
tacitly consented to her ruling. He might be slow of thought
regarding such things, but once having made up his mind--and it was
made up now--he was of the kind that obstacles do not frighten.
Not only did he realize that by bowing to the girl's will he had
been weak, but he was determined to take matters in the future into
his own hands. He should not have allowed Sheila, in the first
place, to shoulder the responsibility of handling the emergency of
the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at Big Wreck Cove.
Sheila, in an attempt to save his reputation, to save his
self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in
general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him
and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man
to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself--as he had told
her--behind her skirts?
Tunis believed that Cap'n Ira and Prudence, when once the shock of
the girl's revelation was past, loved her so dearly that they would
forgive Sheila if they knew all the truth--if they knew the girl as
he knew her. He was not so sure of Aunt Lucretia. He had feared to
tell her the night before that Sheila had gone to live in the old
fisherman's cabin, in spite of the sympathy Lucretia had previously
shown him. But he believed his silent aunt fully appreciated the
better qualities of the girl she had seen on but one occasion, and
that she would, in time, admit that Sheila was more than worthy of
her nephew's love.
In any event he had his own life to make or mar. Without Sheila he
knew it would be utterly fruitless and without an object. Rather
than lose Sheila he would sell the schooner, cut himself off from
friends and home, and, with her, face the world anew. He was
determined, if Sheila left Big Wreck Cove, that he would go with
her. Nobody--not even the girl herself--could shake this
determination now born in the mind of the captain of the _Seamew_.
Sheila had borne his reputation upon her heart from the beginning,
but he should have at first thought of her good name and the opinion
the world must needs hold of Sheila Macklin. She had been unfairly
accused. She had been abused, ill-treated, punished for a sin which
was not hers. It was not enough that he had tried to help her hide
away from those who knew of her persecution. The only right thing to
do--the only sane course, and the one which should have been pursued
from the start--was to attempt to disprove the accusation under
which the girl had suffered and set her right not only before Big
Wreck Cove folk, but before the whole world.
The poignant feeling of sin committed, with which Sheila herself was
now burdened, did not influence Tunis Latham. It was the logic of
the idea which convinced him that they had been totally wrong in
what they had done. He should have married Sheila on the night they
had met in Boston and set about first of all tracing back her
trouble and disproving the flimsy evidence which must have convicted
her of stealing from Hoskin & Marl's.
He told himself it was not piety, but hard common sense which
suggested this as the only and practical way to handle the matter.
It was, in truth, the awakened hope in a loving heart.
Tunis had been able to keep scarcely enough of his crew to handle
the _Seamew_ in fair weather; and the barometer was falling, with
every indication in sea and sky of the approach of bad weather. He
feared the few hands he had would desert when they reached Boston.
Zebedee Pauling was a young host in himself--far and away a better
seaman than Orion Latham, as well as a better fellow. But the
schooner could not be sailed with good will.
Tunis' mind, however, remained fixed upon Sheila's troubles rather
than upon his own; and as soon as the schooner docked, he went up
into the town and wended his way directly to the great department
store in which he had once interviewed the troublesome Ida May
Bostwick.
* * * * *
The cargo was out, and the _Seamew_ had already been warped into
another wharf where freight was awaiting her when the skipper
returned to the water front that afternoon. The three men remaining
of the forecastle crew were still at work, assisted by Zebedee and
Horry Newbegin. They had not had a regular cook for two trips now.
But a new complication had arisen. Mason Chapin stood at the rail
waiting his return, and a taxicab had been summoned. The mate
carried a bag.
"A telegram from Doctor Norris. My wife's worse, Mr. Latham. I've
got to go back just as fast as steam will get me there," was his
greeting to the skipper of the _Seamew_.
This was according to the agreement Mason Chapin had made in the
beginning. His wife was sorely ill, and surely Tunis would not stand
between a man and his sick wife!
But it left a very serious situation upon the schooner when the mate
drove away in the taxicab. Six men, forward and aft, to handle a
suit of sails which equaled those of any seagoing racing yacht. If
it had not been for the freight--some of which was perishable--the
master of the _Seamew_ would have laid up until he could have got
together a more numerous crew at least.
But instead of going to the seamen's employment offices, Tunis had
to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered
down the hatchway of the schooner. It was near evening when the
hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock
and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled
blessing in midstream.
All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas
spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared
supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette
on this voyage, that was sure.
But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis
seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he
had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in
life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of
as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship's
officers.
"I'll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I
lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a
bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is
she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself
sits on her bowsprit!"
There was wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that
before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast,
and the _Seamew_ went roaring away on her course under reefed
canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht.
But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it
impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first
of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next
morning. By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged
to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage.
Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being
discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard
the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in
his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition
of utter amazement.
"What's to do now?" demanded the skipper.
"They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put
foot on the _Seamew's_ deck again. That--that confounded 'Rion--"
"What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was
well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?"
"Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what
it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows
say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship
and they won't try to work her no further."
Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint
blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar
before--leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in
Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.
"What in thunder!"
He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into
the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression
which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could
scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was
plain that superstition had him by the throat.
"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?"
Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful _Seamew_ was
once the _Marlin B._? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out
of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak?
I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had
something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me,
who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."
"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively.
"That's a fact."
"Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed
Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man?
Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some
silly letters burned into it?"
The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple
explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so
convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a
true and just man.
"I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when
his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from
that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely
to desert his son."
"How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_.
"I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I
been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about
it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and
that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee."
"I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of
a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some
other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by
to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us
out. I tried while I was uptown."
Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.
"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail
and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was
ever in in my life," he said.
"She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd,"
muttered Horry.
"Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't
any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the _Seamew_.
"But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?"
They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save
reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not
hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was,
his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt
fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the
rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was
not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the _Seamew_
should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there
was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The
breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a
real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming.
This was no place for a schooner of the _Seamew's_ size to ride out
the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the
Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the
trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better
chance.