By noon the sun shone on Cod Lead wanly between ragged clouds. But
its smile did not warm Cap'n Sproul's feelings. Weariness,
rheumatism, resentment that became bitterer the more he pondered on
the loss of the _Dobson_, and gnawing hunger combined to make a single
sentiment of sullen fury; the spectacle of Colonel Ward busy with
his schemes on the neighboring pinnacle sharpened his anger into
something like ferocity.
The wind had died into fitful breaths. The sea still beat furiously
on the outer ledges of the island, but in the reach between the island
and the distant main there was a living chance for a small boat. It
was not a chance that unskilful rowers would want to venture upon,
but given the right crew the Cap'n reflected that he would be willing
to try it.
Evidently Mr. Butts, being an able seaman, was reflecting upon
something of the same sort. The Portuguese sailors, the last one of
the departing four dodging a kick launched at him by Mr. Butts, went
down to the shore, pulled the abandoned dingy upon the sand, and
emptied the water out of it. They fished the oars out of the flotsam
in the cove. Then they sat down on the upturned boat, manifestly under
orders and awaiting further commands.
"Then ye're goin' to let 'em do it, be ye?" huskily asked Hiram.
"Goin' to let him get to the bank and stop payment on that check?
I tell you the boys can get that boat away from 'em! It better be
smashed than used to carry Gid Ward off'm this island."
But Cap'n Sproul did not interrupt his bitter ruminations to reply.
He merely shot disdainful glance at the Smyrna men, still busy among
the mussels.
It was apparent that Mr. Butts had decided that he would feel more
at ease upon his pinnacle until the hour arrived for embarkation.
In the game of stone-throwing, should Cap'n Sproul accept that gage
of battle, the beach was too vulnerable a fortress, and, like a
prudent commander, Mr. Butts had sent a forlorn hope onto the
firing-line to test conditions. This was all clear to Cap'n Sproul.
As to Mr. Butts's exact intentions relative to the process of getting
safely away, the Cap'n was not so clear.
"Portygees!" he muttered over and over. "There's men that knows winds,
tides, rocks, shoals, currents, compass, and riggin' that don't know
Portygees. It takes a master mariner to know Portygees. It takes
Portygees to know a master mariner. They know the language. They know
the style. They get the idee by the way he looks at 'em. It's what
he says and the way he says it. Second mates ain't got it. P'r'aps
I ain't got it, after bein' on shore among clodhoppers for two years.
But, by Judas Iscarrot, I'm goin' to start in and find out! Portygees!
There's Portygees! Here's me that has handled 'em--batted brains
into 'em as they've come over the side, one by one, and started 'em
goin' like I'd wind up a watch! And a belayin'-pin is the key!"
He arose with great decision, buttoned his jacket, cocked his cap
to an angle of authority on his gray hair, and started down the hill
toward the boat.
"He's goin' to call in his bunko-men and take that boat," bleated
Mr. Butts to Colonel Ward.
"Wild hosses couldn't drag him into a boat again with those human
toadstools, and I've heard him swear round here enough to know it,"
scoffed the Colonel. "He's just goin' down to try to wheedle your
sailors like he tried to wheedle you, and they're your men and he
can't do it."
And in the face of this authority and confidence in the situation
Mr. Butts subsided, thankful for an excuse to keep at a respectful
distance from Cap'n Aaron Sproul.
That doughty expert on "Portygees" strode past the awed crew with
an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the
quarter-deck. Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the
swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris. He took
one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the
flood-gates of his language. And they instinctively recognized that
as quarter-deck, too. They knew that no mere mate could possess that
quality of utterance and redundancy of speech.
He had a name for each one as he hit him. It was a game of "Tag, you're
it!" that made him master, in that moment of amazement, from the mere
suddenness of it. A man with less assurance and slighter knowledge
of sailorman character might have been less abrupt--might have given
them a moment in which to reflect. Cap'n Aaron Sproul kept them
going--did their thinking for them, dizzied their brains by thwacks
of the pins, deafened their ears by his terrific language.
In fifteen seconds they had run the dingy into the surf, had shipped
oars, and were lustily pulling away--Cap'n Sproul in the stern
roaring abuse at them in a way that drowned the howls of Mr. Butts,
who came peltering down the hill.
But Hiram Look was even more nimble than that protesting seaman.
Before the little craft was fairly under way he plunged into the surf
waist-deep and scrambled over the stern, nearly upsetting the Cap'n
as he rolled in.
And Imogene, the elephant, a faithful and adoring pachyderm, pursued
her lord and master into the sea.
Cap'n Sproul, recovering his balance and resuming his interrupted
invective, was startled by the waving of her trunk above his head,
and his rowers quit work, squealing with terror, for the huge beast
was making evident and desperate attempts to climb on board and join
her fleeing owner. It was a rather complicated crisis even for a
seaman, accustomed to splitting seconds in his battling with
emergencies. An elephant, unusual element in marine considerations,
lent the complication.
But the old sea-dog who had so instantly made himself master of men
now made himself master of the situation, before the anxious Imogene
had got so much as one big foot over the gunwale. He picked up the
late-arriving Jonah, and, in spite of Hiram's kicks and curses,
jettisoned him with a splash that shot spray over the pursuing
elephant and blinded her eyes.
"Row--row, you blue-faced sons of Gehenna, or she'll eat all four
of you!" shrieked the Cap'n; and in that moment of stress they rowed!
Rowed now not because Cap'n Sproul commanded--nor ceased from rowing
because Mr. Butts countermanded. They rowed for their own lives to
escape the ravening beast that had chased them into the sea.
Cap'n Sproul, watching his chance, took a small wave after the
seventh big roller, let it cuff his bow to starboard, and made for
the lee of Cod Lead, rounding the island into the reach. He was safely
away and, gazing into the faces of the Portuguese, he grimly
reflected that for impressed men they seemed fully as glad to be away
as he. They rowed now without further monition, clucking, each to
himself, little prayers for their safe deliverance from the beast.
It was not possible, with safety, to cut across the reach straight
for the main, so the Cap'n quartered his course before the wind and
went swinging down the seas, with little chance of coming soon to
shore, but confident of his seamanship.
But that seamanship was not sufficient to embolden him into an
attempt to dodge a steamer with two masts and a dun funnel that came
rolling out from behind Eggemoggin and bore toward him up the reach.
He was too old a sailor not to know that she was the patrol cutter
of the revenue service; wind and sea forced him to keep on across
her bows.
She slowed her engines and swung to give him a lee. Cap'n Sproul swore
under his breath, cursed aloud at his patient rowers, and told them
to keep on. And when these astonishing tactics of a lonely dingy in
a raging sea were observed from the bridge of the cutter, a red-nosed
and profane man, who wore a faded blue cap with peak over one ear,
gave orders to lower away a sponson boat, and came himself as coxswain,
as though unwilling to defer the time of reckoning with such
recalcitrants.
"What in billy-be-doosen and thunderation do you mean, you
weevil-chawers, by not coming alongside when signalled--and us with
a dozen wrecks to chase 'longshore?" he demanded, laying officious
hand on the tossing gunwale of the dingy.
"We're attendin' strictly to our own business, and the United States
Govvument better take pattern and go along and mind its own,"
retorted Cap'n Sproul, with so little of the spirit of gratitude that
a shipwrecked mariner ought to display that the cutter officer glared
at him with deep suspicion.
"What were you mixed up in--mutiny or barratry?" he growled. "We'll
find out later. Get in here!"
"This suits me!" said Cap'n Sproul, stubbornly.
The next moment he and his Portuguese were yanked over the side of
the boat into the life-craft--a dozen sturdy chaps assisting the
transfer.
"Let the peapod go afloat," directed the gruff officer. "It's off
the _Polyhymnia_--name on the stern-sheets--evidence enough--notice,
men!"
"I'm not off the _Polyhymnia_," protested Cap'n Sproul, indignantly.
"I was goin' along 'tendin' to my own business, and you can't--"
"Business?" sneered the man of the faded blue cap. "I thought you
were out for a pleasure sail! You shut up!" he snapped, checking
further complaints from the Cap'n. "If you've got a story that will
fit in with your crazy-man actions, then you can wait and tell it
to the court. As for me, I believe you're a gang of mutineers!" And
after that bit of insolence the Cap'n was indignantly silent.
The cutter jingled her full-speed bell while the tackle was still
lifting the sponson boat.
"They're ugly, and are hiding something," called the man of the faded
cap, swinging up the bridge-ladder. "No good to pump more lies out
of them. We'll go where they came from, and we'll get there before
we can ask questions and get straight replies."
Cap'n Sproul, left alone on the cutter's deck, took out his big wallet,
abstracted that fifteen-thousand-dollar check signed by Gideon Ward,
and seemed about to fling it into the sea.
"Talk about your hoodoos!" he gritted. "Talk about your banana skins
of Tophet! Twice I've slipped up on it and struck that infernal island.
Even his name written on a piece of paper is a cuss to the man that
lugs it!"
But after hale second thought he put the check back into his wallet
and the wallet into his breast pocket and buttoned his coat securely.
And the set of his jaws and the wrinkling of his forehead showed that
the duel between him and Colonel Ward was not yet over.
As the steamer with the dun smoke-stack approached Cod Lead he noted
sourly the frantic signallings of the marooned. He leaned on the rail
and watched the departure of the officer of the faded blue cap with
his crew of the sponson boat. He observed the details of the animated
meeting of the rescuers and the rescued. Without great astonishment
he saw that Hiram, of all the others, remained on shore, leaning
disconsolately against the protecting bulk of Imogene.
"It's most a wonder he didn't try to load that infernal elephant onto
that life-boat," he muttered. "If I couldn't travel through life
without bein' tagged by an old gob of meat of that size, I'd hire
a museum and settle down in it."
Cap'n Sproul, still leaning on the rail, paid no attention to the
snort that Colonel Ward emitted as he passed on his way to the
security of the steamer's deck. He resolutely avoided the
reproachful starings of the members of the Smyrna fire department
as they struggled on board. Mr. Butts came last and attempted to say
something, but retreated promptly before the Cap'n's fiendish snarl
and clicking teeth.
"That man there, with the elephant, says he can't leave her,"
reported Faded Cap to the wondering group on the bridge.
"A United States cutter isn't sent out to collect menageries
accompanied by dry-nurses," stated the commander. "What is this job
lot, anyway--a circus in distress?"
"Says the elephant can swim out if we'll rig a tackle and hoist her
on board. Says elephant is used to it."
Something in the loneliness of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have
appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about
elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering
chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the
embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs
which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was
accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast on
further errands of mercy.
And then the Cap'n turned and gazed on Hiram, and the showman gazed
on the Cap'n. The latter spoke first.
"Hiram," he said, "it ain't best for you and me to talk this thing
over, just as it stands now--not till we get back to Smyrna and set
down on my front piazzy. P'r'aps things won't look so skeow-wowed
then to us as they do now. We won't talk till then."
But the captain of the cutter was not as liberal-minded. In the
process of preparing his report he attempted to interview both the
Cap'n and Colonel Ward at the same time in his cabin, and at the height
of the riot of recriminations that ensued was obliged to call in some
deck-hands and have both ejected. Then he listened to them separately
with increasing interest.
"When you brought this family fight down here to sprinkle salt water
on it," he said at last, having the two of them before him again,
with a deck-hand restraining each, "you didn't get it preserved well
enough to keep it from smelling. I don't reckon I'll stir it. It
doesn't seem to be a marine disaster. The United States Government
has got other things to attend to just now besides settling it.
Listen!"
He held up a forefinger.
"Smyrna isn't so far away from the seashore but what I've had plenty
of chances to hear of Colonel Gideon Ward and his general dealings
with his neighbors. For myself, I'd rather have less money and a
reputation that didn't spread quite so far over the edges. As for
you, Cap'n Sproul, as a seaman I can sympathize with you about getting
cheated by land-pirates in that timber-land deal and in other things.
But as a representative of the Government I'm not going to help you
make good to the extent of fifteen thousand dollars on a hole and
a Cap Kidd treasure fake. Hands off for me, seeing that it's a matter
strictly in the family! This cutter is due to round to in Portland
harbor to-morrow morning a little after nine o'clock. I'll send the
two of you in my gig to Commercial Wharf, see that both are landed
at the same time, and then--well"--the commander turned quizzical
gaze from one to the other with full appreciation of the
situation--"it then depends on what you do, each of you, and how quick
you do it."
The Cap'n walked out of the room, his hand on his breast pocket.
Colonel Ward followed, closing and unclosing his long fingers as if
his hands itched to get at that pocket.
At the first peep of dawn Cap'n Aaron Sproul was posted at the
cutter's fore windlass, eyes straight ahead on the nick in the low,
blue line of coast that marked the harbor's entrance. His air was
that of a man whose anxiety could not tolerate any post except the
forepeak. And to him there came Hiram Look with tremulous eagerness
in his voice and the weight of a secret in his soul.
"I heard him and Butts talkin' last night, Cap'n Aaron," he announced.
"It was Butts that thought of it first. The telefoam. 'Run into the
first place and grab a telefoam,' says Butts. 'Telefoam 'em at the
bank to stop payment. It will take him ten minutes to run up from
the wharf. Let him think you're right behind him. He's got to go to
the bank,' says Butts. 'He can't telefoam 'em to pay the check.'"
The Cap'n's hand dropped dispiritedly from his clutch at his pocket.
"I knowed something would stop me," he mourned. "The whole plot is
a hoodoo. There I was fired back twice onto Cod Lead! Here he is,
landin' the same time as I do! And when he stops that check it throws
it into law--and I've got the laborin'-oar."
"It ain't throwed into law yet, and you ain't got no laborin'-oar,"
cried Hiram, with a chuckle that astonished the despondent Cap'n.
"He can't telefoam!"
"Can't what?"
"Why, stayin' out in that rain-storm has give him the most jeeroosly
cold there's been sence Aunt Jerushy recommended thoroughwort tea!
It's right in his thro't, and he ain't got so much voice left as wind
blowing acrost a bottle. Can't make a sound! The bank folks ain't
goin' to take any one's say-so for him. Not against a man like you
that's got thutty thousand dollars in the same bank, and a man that
they know! By the time he got it explained to any one so that they'd
mix in, you can be at the bank and have it all done."
"Well, he ain't got cold in his legs, has he?" demanded the Cap'n,
failing to warm to Hiram's enthusiasm. "It stands jest where it has
been standin'. There ain't no reason why he can't get to that bank
as quick as I can. Yes, quicker! I ain't built up like an ostrich,
the way he is."
"Well," remarked Hiram, after a time, "a fair show and an even start
is more'n most folks get in this life--and you've got that. The boss
of this boat is goin' to give you that much. So all you can do is
to take what's given you and do the best you can. And all I can do
is stay back here and sweat blood and say the only prayer that I know,
which is 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'"
And after this bit of consolation he went back amidships to comfort
the hungry Imogene, who had been unable to find much in the cuisine
of a revenue cutter that would satisfy the appetite of elephants.
At half-past nine in the forenoon the cutter swept past Bug Light
and into the inner harbor. Hardly had the steamer swung with the tide
at her anchorage before the captain's gig was proceeding briskly
toward Commercial Wharf, two men rowing and the man of the faded blue
cap at the helm. The antagonists in the strange duello sat back to
back, astraddle a seat. At this hateful contact their hair seemed
fairly to bristle.
"Now, gents," said Faded Cap, as they approached the wharf, "the
skipper said he wanted fair play. No scrougin' to get out onto the
ladder first. I'm goin' to land at the double ladder at the end of
the wharf, and there's room for both of you. I'll say 'Now!' and then
you start."
"You fellers are gettin' a good deal of fun out this thing," sputtered
Cap'n Sproul, angrily, "but don't you think I don't know it and resent
it. Now, don't you talk to me like you were startin' a foot-race!"
"What is it, if it ain't a foot-race?" inquired Faded Cap, calmly.
"They don't have hacks or trolley-cars on that wharf, and you'll
either have to run or fly, and I don't see any signs of wings on you."
Colonel Ward did not join in this remonstrance. He only worked his
jaws and uttered a few croaks.
When the gig surged to the foot of the ladder, Colonel Ward attempted
a desperate play, and an unfair one. He was on the outside, and leaped
up, stepped on Cap'n Sproul, and sprang for the ladder. The Cap'n
was quick enough to grab his legs, yank him back into the boat, and
mount over him in his turn. The man of the faded cap was nearly stunned
by Ward falling on him, and the rowers lost their oars.
When the Colonel had untangled himself from the indignant seamen and
had escaped up the ladder, Cap'n Sproul was pelting up the wharf at
a most amazing clip, considering his short legs. Before Ward had
fairly gathered himself for the chase his fifteen-thousand-dollar
check and the man bearing it had disappeared around a corner into
the street.
But the squat and stubby old sailor stood little show in a foot-race
with his gaunt and sinewy adversary. It was undoubtedly Colonel
Ward's knowledge of this that now led him to make the race the test
of victory instead of depending on an interpreter over the telephone.
A little more than a block from the wharf's lane he came up with and
passed his adversary. Men running for trolley-cars and steamboats
were common enough on the busy thoroughfare, and people merely made
way for the sprinters.
But when Colonel Ward was a few lengths ahead of the Cap'n, the latter
made use of an expedient that the voiceless Colonel could not have
employed even if he had thought of it.
With all the force of his seaman's lungs he bellowed: "Stop thief!"
and pounded on behind, reiterating the cry vociferously. At first
he had the pursuit all to himself, for bystanders merely ducked to
one side. But earnest repetition compels attention, and attention
arouses interest, and interest provokes zeal. In a little while a
dozen men were chasing the Colonel, and when that gentleman went
lashing around the corner into Congress Street he--by an entirely
natural order of events--ran into a policeman, for the policeman was
running in the opposite direction to discover what all that
approaching hullabaloo was about.
Cap'n Sproul, prudently on the outskirts of the gathering crowd,
noted with rising hope that the policeman and the Colonel were
rolling over each other on the ground, and that even when officious
hands had separated them the facial contortions of the voiceless
tyrant of Smyrna were not making any favorable impression on the
offended bluecoat.
Cap'n Sproul started away for the bank at a trot. But he began to
walk when he heard the policeman shout: "Aw, there's enough of ye'r
moonkey faces at me. Yez will coome along to th' station, and talk
it on yer fingers to th' marshal!"
At the bank door the Cap'n halted, wiped his face, composed his
features, set on his cap at an entirely self-possessed angle, and
then marched in to the wicket.
"Will you have this transferred to your account, Captain Sproul?"
inquired the teller, with the deference due to a good customer.
The Cap'n anxiously bent a stubbed finger around a bar of the grating.
Sudden anxiety as to leaving the money there beset him. After his
perils and his toils he wanted to feel that cash--to realize that
he had actually cashed in that hateful check.
"I'll take the real plasters," he said, huskily; "big ones as you've
got. I--I want to pay for some vessel property!" He reflected that
the few hundreds that the loss of the ancient _Dobson_ called for
lifted this statement out of the cheap level of prevarication.
When he hurried out of the bank with various thick packets stowed
about his person, he headed a straight course for the police-station.
In the marshal's office he found Colonel Gideon Ward, voiceless,
frantic, trembling--licking at the point of a stubby lead-pencil
that had been shoved into his grasp, and trying to compose his soul
sufficiently to write out some of the information about himself, with
which he was bursting.
"There ain't no call for this man to write out the story of his life,"
declared Cap'n Sproul, with an authority in his tones and
positiveness in his manner that did not fail to impress the marshal.
"He is my brother-in-law, he is Colonel Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, a
man with more'n a hundred thousand dollars, and any one that accuses
him of bein' a thief is a liar, and I stand here to prove it."
And to think there was no one present except the Colonel to appreciate
the cryptic humor of that remark!
The Cap'n avoided the demoniacal gaze that Ward bent on him and
disregarded the workings of that speechless mouth. Sproul shoved his
hand deep into his trousers pocket and pulled out a roll of bills
on which the teller's tape had not been broken. At this sight the
Colonel staggered to his feet.
"Here!" cried the Cap'n, shoving money into the hand of the officer
who had made the arrest. "There's something to pay for your muddy
clothes. Now you'd better go out and find the man that started all
this touse about a leadin' citizen. I'll sue this city as a relative
of his if you don't let him go this minute."
And they let him go, with an apology that Colonel Ward treated with
perfectly insulting contempt.
Cap'n Sproul faced him on the street outside the prison, standing
prudently at guard, for he perfectly realized that just at that
moment Colonel Gideon Ward had all the attributes of a lunatic.
"You can see it bulgin' all over me," said the Cap'n, "all tied up
in bundles. I don't say my way was the best way to get it. But I've
got it. I suppose I might have gone to law to get it, but that ain't
my way. Of course you can go to law to get it back; but for reasons
that you know just as well as I, I'd advise you not to--and that advice
don't cost you a cent."
For a full minute Colonel Ward stood before him and writhed his gaunt
form and twisted his blue lips and waggled his bony jaws. But not
a sound could he utter. Then he whirled and signalled a trolley-car
and climbed on board. With intense satisfaction the Cap'n noted that
the car was marked "Union Station."
"Well, home is the best place for him," muttered the Cap'n; "home
and a flaxseed poultice on his chist and complete rest of mind and
body. Now I'll settle for that schooner, hunt up Hime Look and that
pertickler and admirin' friend of his, that infernal elephant, and
then I reckon I'll--eraow-w-w!" he yawned. "I'll go home and rest
up a little, too."
That repose was not disturbed by Colonel Gideon Ward. The Colonel
had decided that affairs in his timber tracts needed his attention
during that autumn.