"She sails about like a clam-shell in a puddle of Porty Reek
m'lasses," remarked Cap'n Aaron Sproul, casting contemptuous eye
into the swell of the dingy mainsail, and noting the crawl of the
foam-wash under the counter of the _Aurilla P. Dobson_.
But he could not infect Hiram Look with his dissatisfaction. The
ex-circus man sat on the deck with his back against the port bulwark,
his knees doubled high before his face as a support for a blank-book
in which he was writing industriously. He stopped to lick the end
of his pencil, and gazed at the Cap'n.
"I was just thinkin' we was havin' about as pleasant a sail as I ever
took," he said. "Warm and sunny, our own fellers on board havin' a
good time, and a complicated plot worked out to the queen's taste."
The Cap'n, glancing behind, noted that a certain scraggly island had
once more slid into view from behind a wooded head. With his knee
propped against the wheel, he surveyed the island's ridged backbone.
"Plot seems to be still workin'," he remarked, grimly. "If it was
all worked they'd be out there on them ledges jumpin' about twenty
feet into the air, and hollerin' after us."
"Let's whoa here and wait for 'em to show in sight," advised Hiram,
eagerly. "It will be worth lookin' at."
"Hain't no need of slackin' sail," snorted the skipper. "It's about
like bein' anchored, tryin' to ratch this old tin skimmer away from
anywhere. You needn't worry any about our droppin' that island out
of sight right away."
"For a man that's just got even with Colonel Gideon Ward to the tune
of fifteen thousand dollars, and with the check in your pocket, you
don't seem to be enjoyin' the comforts of religion quite as much as
a man ought to," remonstrated Hiram.
"It's wadin' a puddle navigatin' this way," complained the Cap'n,
his eyes on the penning shores of the reach; "and it makes me homesick
when I think of my old four-sticker pilin' white water to her
bowsprit's scroll and chewin' foam with her jumper-guys. Deep water,
Hiram! Deep water, with a wind and four sticks, and I'd show ye!"
"There's something the matter with a man that can't get fun out of
anything except a three-ring circus," said his friend, severely.
"I'm contented with one elephant these days. It's all the
responsibility I want." His eyes dwelt fondly on the placid Imogene,
couchant amidships. Then he lighted a cigar, using his plug hat for
a wind-break, and resumed his labors with the pencil.
"What be ye writin'--a novel or only a pome?" inquired Cap'n Sproul
at last.
"Log," replied the unruffled Hiram. "This is the first sea trip I
ever made, and whilst I don't know how to reeve the bowsprit or clew
up the for'rad hatch, I know that a cruise without a log is like
circus-lemonade without a hunk of glass to clink in the mix bowl.
Got it up to date! Listen!"
He began to read, displaying much pride in his composition:
"September the fifteen. Got word that Cap'n Aaron Sproul had been
cheated out of wife's interest in timber lands by his brother-in-law,
Colonel Gideon Ward."
"What in Josephus's name has that got to do with this trip?" demanded
the Cap'n, with rising fire, at this blunt reference to his
humiliation.
"If it wa'n't for that we wouldn't be on this trip," replied Hiram,
with serene confidence in his own judgment.
"Well, I don't want that set down."
"You can keep a log of your own, and needn't set it down." Hiram's
tone was final, and he went on reading:
"Same date. Discovered Eleazar Bodge and his divinin'-rod. Bought
option on Bodge and his secret of Cap'n Kidd's buried treasure on
Cod Lead Nubble. September the fifteen to seventeen. Thought up plot
to use Bodge to get even with Ward. September the twenty-three.
Raised crew in Smyrna for cruise to Cod Lead, crew consistin' of men
to be depended on for what was wanted--"
"Not includin' sailin' a vessel," sneered the Cap'n, squinting
forward with deep disfavor to where the members of the Smyrna Ancient
and Honorable Firemen's Association were contentedly fishing over
the side of the sluggish _Dobson_. "Here, leave hands off'm that
tops'l downhaul!" he yelled, detecting Ludelphus Murray slashing at
it with his jack-knife. "My Gawd, if he ain't cut it off!" he groaned.
Murray, the Smyrna blacksmith, growled back something about not
seeing what good the rope did, anyway.
Cap'n Sproul turned his back on the dim gleam of open sea framed by
distant headlands.
"I'm ashamed to look the Atlantic Ocean in the face, with that bunch
of barn-yarders aboard," he complained.
"Shipped crew," went on Hiram, who had not paused in his reading.
"Took along my elephant to h'ist dirt. Found Cod Lead Nubble. Began
h'istin' dirt. Dug hole twenty feet deep. Me and L. Murray made fake
treasure-chist cover out of rotten planks. Planted treasure-chist
cover. Let E. Bodge and G. Ward discover same, and made believe we
didn't know of it. Sold out E. Bodge and all chances to G. Ward for
fifteen thousand and left them to dig, promisin' to send off packet
for them. Sailed with crew and elephant to cash check before G. Ward
can get ashore to stop payment. Plot complicated, but it worked, and
has helped to pass away time."
"That ain't no kind of a ship's log," objected the Cap'n, who had
listened to the reading with an air too sullen for a man who had
profited as much by the plot. "There ain't no mention of wind nor
weather nor compass nor--"
"You can put 'em all in if you want to," broke in Hiram. "I don't
bother with things I don't know anything about. What I claim is,
here's a log, brief and to the point, and covers all details of plot.
And I'm proud of it. That's because it's my own plot."
The Cap'n, propping the wheel with his knee, pulled out his wallet,
and again took a long survey of Colonel Ward's check. "For myself,
I ain't so proud of it," he said, despondently. "It seems sort of
like stealin' money."
"It's a good deal like it," assented Hiram, readily. "But he stole
from you first." He took up the old spy-glass and levelled it across
the rail.
"That's all of log to date," he mumbled in soliloquy. "Now if I could
see--"
He uttered an exclamation and peered into the tube with anxiety.
"Here!" he cried. "You take it, Cap'n. I ain't used to it, and it
wobbles. But it's either them or gulls a-flappin'."
Cap'n Sproul's brown hands clasped the rope-wound telescope, and he
trained its lens with seaman's steadiness.
"It's them," he said, with a chuckle of immense satisfaction. They're
hoppin' up and down on the high ridge, and slattin' their arms in
the air. It ain't no joy-dance, that ain't. I've seen Patagonian
Injuns a war-dancin'. It's like that. They've got that plank cover
pried up. I wisht I could hear what they are sayin'."
"I can imagine," returned Hiram, grimly. "Hold it stiddy, so's I can
look. Them old arms of Colonel Gid is goin' some," he observed, after
a pause. "It will be a wonder if he don't shake his fists off."
"There certainly is something cheerful about it--lookin' back and
knowin' what they must be sayin'," observed the Cap'n, losing his
temporary gloom. "I reckon I come by this check honest, after all,
considerin' what he done to me on them timber lands."
"Well, it beats goin' to law," grinned Hiram. "Here you be, so afraid
of lawyers--and with good reason--that you'd have let him get away
with his plunder before you'd have gone to law--and he knew it when
he done you. You've taken back what's your own, in your own way,
without havin' to give law-shysters the biggest part for gettin' it.
Shake!" And chief plotter and the benefited clasped fists with
radiant good-nature. The Cap'n broke his grip in order to twirl the
wheel, it being necessary to take a red buoy to port.
"We're goin' to slide out of sight of 'em in a few minutes," he said,
looking back over his shoulder regretfully. "I wisht I had a crew!
I could stand straight out through that passage on a long tack to
port, fetch Half-way Rock, and slide into Portland on the starboard
tack, and stay in sight of 'em pretty nigh all day. It would keep
'em busy thinkin' if we stayed in sight."
"Stand out," advised Hiram, eagerly. "We ain't in any hurry. Let's
rub it into 'em. Stand out."
"With them pea-bean pullers to work ship?" He pointed to the devoted
band of Smyrna fire-fighters, who were joyously gathering in with
varying luck a supply of tomcod and haddock to furnish the larder
inshore. "When I go huntin' for trouble it won't be with a gang of
hoss-marines like that."
Hiram, as foreman of the Ancients, felt piqued at this slighting
reference to his men, and showed it.
"They can pull ropes when you tell 'em to," he said. "Leastways, when
it comes to brains, I reckon they'll stack up better'n them Portygees
you used to have."
"I never pretended that them Portygees had any brains at all," said
the Cap'n, grimly. "They come aboard without brains, and I took a
belayin'-pin and batted brains into 'em. I can't do that to these
critters here. It would be just like 'em to misunderstand the whole
thing and go home and get me mixed into a lot of law for assaultin'
'em."
"Oh, if you're afraid to go outside, say so!" sneered Hiram. "But
you've talked so much of deep water, and weatherin' Cape Horn, and--"
"Afraid? Me afraid?" roared the Cap'n, spatting his broad hand on
his breast. "Me, that kicked my dunnage-bag down the fo'c's'le-hatch
at fifteen years old? I'll show you whether I'm afraid or not."
He knotted a hitch around the spokes of the wheel and scuffed hastily
forward.
"Here!" he bawled, cuffing the taut sheets to point his meaning,
"when I get back to the wheel and holler 'Ease away!' you fellers
get hold of these ropes, untie 'em, and let out slow till I tell you
stop. And then tie 'em just as you find 'em."
They did so clumsily, Cap'n Sproul swearing under his breath, and
at last the _Dobson_ got away on the port tack.
"Just think of me--master of a four-sticker at twenty-seven--havin'
to stand here in the face and eyes of the old Atlantic Ocean and yell
about untyin' ropes and tyin' 'em up like I was givin' off orders
in a cow-barn!"
"Well, they done it all right--and they done it pretty slick, so far
as I could see," interjected Hiram.
"Done it!" sneered the Cap'n. "Eased sheets here in this puddle, in
a breeze about stiff enough to winnow oats! Supposin' it was a blow,
with a gallopin' sea! Me runnin' around this deck taggin' gool on
halyards, lifts, sheets, and downhauls, and them hoss-marines
follerin' me up. Davy Jones would die laughin', unless some one
pounded him on the back to help him get his breath."
Now that his mariner's nose was turned toward the sea once again after
his two years of landsman's hebetude, all his seaman's instinct, all
his seaman's caution, revived. His nose snuffed the air, his eyes
studied the whirls of the floating clouds. There was nothing
especially ominous in sight.
The autumn sun was warm. The wind was sprightly but not heavy. And
yet his mariner's sense sniffed something untoward.
The _Dobson_, little topmast hooker, age-worn and long before
relegated to the use of Sunday fishing-parties "down the bay," had
for barometer only a broken affair that had been issued to advertise
the virtues of a certain baking-powder. It was roiled permanently
to the degree marked "Tornado."
"Yes," remarked Hiram, nestling down once more under the bulwark,
after viewing the display of amateur activity, "of course, if you're
afraid to tackle a little deep water once more, just for the sake
of an outin', then I've no more to say. I've heard of railro'd
engineers and sea-capt'ns losin' their nerve. I didn't know but it
had happened to you."
"Well, it ain't," snapped the Cap'n, indignantly. And yet his sailor
instinct scented menace. He couldn't explain it to that cynical old
circus-man, intent on a day's outing. Had it not been for Hiram's
presence and his taunt, Cap'n Sproul would have promptly turned tail
to the Atlantic and taken his safe and certain way along the reaches
and under shelter of the islands. But reflecting that Hiram Look,
back in Smyrna, might circulate good-natured derogation of his
mariner's courage, Cap'n Sproul set the _Dobson's_ blunt nose to the
heave of the sea, and would not have quailed before a tidal wave.
The Smyrna contingent hailed this adventuring into greater depths
as a guarantee of bigger fish for the salt-barrel at home, and
proceeded to cut bait with vigor and pleased anticipation.
Only the Cap'n was saturnine, and even lost his interest in the
animated figures on distant Cod Lead Nubble, though Hiram could not
drag his eyes from them, seeing in their frantic gestures the
denouement of his plot.
Shortly after noon they were well out to sea, still on the port tack,
the swells swinging underneath in a way that soothed the men of Smyrna
rather than worried them. So steady was the lift and sweep of the
long roll that they gave over fishing and snored wholesomely in the
sun on deck. Hiram dozed over his cigar, having paid zestful
attention to the dinner that Jackson Denslow had spread in the
galley.
Only Cap'n Sproul, at the wheel, was alert and awake. With some
misgivings he noted that the trawl fishers were skimming toward port
in their Hampton boats. A number of smackmen followed these. Later
he saw several deeply laden Scotiamen lumbering past on the starboard
tack, all apparently intent on making harbor.
"Them fellers has smelt something outside that don't smell good,"
grunted the Cap'n. But he still stood on his way. "I reckon I've got
softenin' of the brain," he muttered; "livin' inshore has given it
to me. 'Cause if I was in my right senses I'd be runnin' a race with
them fellers to see which would get inside Bug Light and to a safe
anchorage first. And yet I'm standin' on with this old bailin'-dish
because I'm afraid of what a landlubber will say to folks in Smyrna
about my bein' a coward, and with no way of my provin' that I ain't.
All that them hoss-marines has got a nose for is a b'iled dinner when
it's ready. They couldn't smell nasty weather even if 'twas daubed
onto their mustaches."
At the end of another hour, during which the crew of the _Dobson_
had become thoroughly awake and aware of the fact that the coast-line
was only a blue thread on the northern horizon, Cap'n Sproul had
completely satisfied his suspicions as to a certain bunch of slaty
cloud.
There was a blow in it--a coming shift of wind preceded by flaws that
made the Cap'n knot his eyebrows dubiously.
"There!" he blurted, turning his gaze on Hiram, perched on the
grating. "If you reckon you've got enough of a sail out of this, we'll
put about for harbor. But I want it distinctly understood that I ain't
sayin' the word 'enough.' I'd keep on sailin' to the West Injies if
we had grub a-plenty to last us."
"There ain't grub enough," suggested Jackson Denslow, who came up
from the waist with calm disregard of shipboard etiquette. "The boys
have all caught plenty of fish, and we want to get in before dark.
So gee her round, Cap'n."
"Don't you give off no orders to me!" roared the Cap'n. "Go back
for'ard where you belong."
"That's the sense of the boys, just the same," retorted Denslow,
retreating a couple of steps. "'Delphus Murray is seasick, and two
or three of the boys are gettin' so. We ain't enlisted for no
seafarin' trip."
"Don't you realize that we're on the high seas now and that you're
talkin' mutiny, and that mutiny's a state-prison crime?" clamored
the irate skipper. "I'd have killed a Portygee for sayin' a quarter
as much. I'd have killed him for settin' foot abaft the
gratin'--killed him before he opened his mouth."
"We ain't Portygees," rejoined Denslow, stubbornly. "We ain't no
sailors."
"Nor I ain't liar enough to call you sailors," the Cap'n cried, in
scornful fury.
"If ye want to come right down to straight business," said the
refractory Denslow, "there ain't any man got authority over us except
Mr. Look there, as foreman of the Smyrna Ancients and Honer'bles."
Mr. Denslow, mistaking the Cap'n's speechlessness for conviction,
proceeded:
"We was hired to take a sail for our health, dig dirt, and keep our
mouths shut. Same has been done and is bein' done--except in so far
as we open 'em to remark that we want to get back onto dry ground."
Hiram noted that the Cap'n's trembling hands were taking a half-hitch
with a rope's end about a tiller-spoke. He understood this as meaning
that Cap'n Sproul desired to have his hands free for a moment. He
hastened to interpose.
"We're goin' to start right back, Denslow. You can tell the boys for
me."
"All right, Chief!" said the faithful member of the Ancients, and
departed.
"We be goin' back, hey?" The Cap'n had his voice again, and turned
on Hiram a face mottled with fury. "This firemen's muster is runnin'
this craft, is it? Say, look-a-here, Hiram, there are certain things
'board ship where it's hands off! There is a certain place where
friendship ceases. You can run your Smyrna fire department on shore,
but aboard a vessel where I'm master mariner, by the wall-eyed
jeehookibus, there's no man but me bosses! And so long as a sail is
up and her keel is movin' I say the say!"
In order to shake both fists under Hiram's nose, he had surrendered
the wheel to the rope-end. The _Dobson_ paid off rapidly, driven by
a sudden squall that sent her lee rail level with the foaming water.
Those forward howled in concert. Even the showman's face grew pale
as he squatted in the gangway, clutching the house for support.
"Cut away them ropes! She's goin' to tip over!" squalled Murray, the
big blacksmith. Between the two options--to take the wheel and bring
the clumsy hooker into the wind, or to rush forward and flail his
bunglers away from the rigging--Cap'n Sproul shuttled insanely,
rushing to and fro and bellowing furious language. The language had
no effect. With axes and knives the willing crew hacked away every
rope forward that seemed to be anything supporting a sail, and down
came the foresail and two jibs. The Cap'n knocked down the two men
who tried to cut the mainsail halyards. The next moment the _Dobson_
jibed under the impulse of the mainsail, and the swinging boom
snapped Hiram's plug hat afar into the sea, and left the showman flat
on his back, dizzily rubbing a bump on his bald head.
For an instant Cap'n Sproul was moved by a wild impulse to let her
slat her way to complete destruction, but the sailorman's instinct
triumphed, and he worked her round, chewing a strand of his beard
with venom.
"I don't pretend to know as much about ship managin' as you do," Hiram
ventured to say at last, "but if that wa'n't a careless performance,
lettin' her wale round that way, then I'm no judge."
He got no comment from the Cap'n.
"I don't suppose it's shipshape to cut ropes instead of untie 'em,"
pursued Hiram, struggling with lame apology in behalf of the others,
"but I could see for myself that if them sails stayed up we were goin'
to tip over. It's better to sail a little slower and keep right side
up."
He knotted a big handkerchief around his head and took his place on
the grating once more.
"What can we do now?" bawled Murray.
"You're the one that's issuin' orders 'board here now," growled the
Cap'n, bending baleful gaze on the foreman of the Ancients. "Go
for'ard and tell 'em to chop down both masts, and then bore some holes
in the bottom to let out the bilge-water. Then they can set her on
fire. There might be something them blasted Ancients could do to a
vessel on fire."
"I don't believe in bein' sarcastic when people are tryin' to do the
best they can," objected Hiram. He noted that the _Dobson_ was once
again setting straight out to sea. She was butting her snub nose
furiously into swelling combers. The slaty bench of clouds had lifted
into the zenith. Scud trailed just over the swaying masts. The shore
line was lost in haze. "Don't be stuffy any longer, Cap'n," he pleaded.
"We've gone fur enough. I give up. You are deep-water, all right!"
Cap'n Sproul made no reply. Suddenly catching a moment that seemed
favorable, he lashed the wheel, and with mighty puffing and grunting
"inched" in the main-sheet. "She ought to have a double reef," he
muttered. "But them petrified sons of secos couldn't take in a week's
wash."
"You can see for yourself that the boys are seasick," resumed Hiram,
when the Cap'n took the wheel again. "If you don't turn 'round--"
"Mr. Look," grated the skipper, "I've got just a word or two to say
right now." His sturdy legs were straddled, his brown hands clutched
the spokes of the weather-worn wheel. "I'm runnin' this packet from
now on, and it's without conversation. Understand? Don't you open
your yap. And you go for'ard and tell them steer calves that I'll
kill the first one that steps foot aft the mainmast."
There was that in the tones and in the skipper's mien of dignity as
he stood there, fronting and defying once again his ancient foe, the
ocean, which took out of Hiram all his courage to retort. And after
a time he went forward, dragging himself cautiously, to join the
little group of misery huddled in the folds of the fallen canvas.
"A cargo of fools to save!" growled Cap'n Sproul, his eyebrows
knotted in anxiety. "Myself among 'em! And they don't know what the
matter is with 'em. We've struck the line gale--that's what we've
done! Struck it with a choppin'-tray for a bo't and a mess of
rooty-baggy turnips for a crew! And there's only one hole to crawl
out of."