Another fishfly (or was it the same that had droned accompaniment to Cap'n' Abe's story-telling upon a former occasion?) boomed against the dusty panes of the window while the fretful, sand-laden wind swept searchingly about the store on the Shell Road.
It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset. In the silence punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharpswish, swishof the sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly.
"We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the last to enter and bang the store door. "She's pullin' 'round into the no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while. Won't be no clams shipped fromtheseflats to-morrow."
"High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper. "Howdryye'll be,Milt, remains to be seen."
"In-side, oraout?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for
Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel.
Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner. "This wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said. "They was makin' some fillums over there on the wreck of theGoldrock, that's laid out four year or so in Ham Cove———"
"Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts.
"You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup.
"Well," said Amiel, "fourorfive. The heave of her made ha'f of 'em sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an' 'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned. I cal'latehe'sgot enough."
"The gale that brought theGoldrockashore had just such another beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively. "But she'd never been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right. They mutineed, you know."
"The sculpins!" ejaculated the storekeeper briskly. "Can't excuse that. Anything but a crew that'll turn on the afterguard that they've signed on for to obey!"
"That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab. "Ye say a true word."
"An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper. "I've had experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down the old scar upon his jaw.
"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in MiltBaker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?"
"Yep."
"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup, she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."
"So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I speak of turned pirates, and they held me—the only one of the afterguard left alive—to navigate the ship.
"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of theGalatea?" went on the narrator unblushingly.
His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it—yes. But you don't mean to say you sailed onher, Am'zon?"
"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her—she carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn—a hermaphrodite brig she was; and—she—could—sail!
"But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin' smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.
"They was a hard crew I allow—them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might say.
"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin' aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast.Theylived well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck.
"I got knocked out first thing—there's the scar of it," and the captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child. "Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin' down from N'York.
"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard, they begun to see they needed me to navigate theGalatea. They give me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator—the bloody crew o' pirates!"
"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.
"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our first prize—an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para all right, I heard afterward.
"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we looted her of everything wuth while. Then——"
The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky, half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:
"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"
"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.
"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin' spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."
"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for the door.
The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all directions were the neighbors—both men and women. The possibility of a wreck—the great tragedy of long-shore existence—would bring everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.
He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already halfway to the shore. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the motion picture company were running excitedly about.
"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder where that schooner is."
He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers high upon the strand.
But suddenly the man remembered that he wasnotCap'n Abe! He stood here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the rough and ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years.
What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from the scene of excitement at such a time? He turned back into the store for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door. Then he shuffled down the road.
At first he closed his eyes—squeezing the lids tight so as not to see the gale-ridden sea. But finally, stumbling, he opened them. Far away where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses, their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale. Black was the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.
Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks. A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.
The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road. Scattered in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril. Here a group of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened down upon their heads. Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the possibility of making a film of the scene. Farther away huddled a party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and children at their skirts. Beyond them the people from the cottages on the bluff were hurrying to the spot—women in silk attire and men in the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear.
The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this. He stood squarely up to the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand. With his other hand he stroked the scar along his jaw. He had a feeling that he had been cheated. That story of the mutiny of theGalateawas destined to be one of his very best narratives.
He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe. He had heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own. He could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it.
And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a narrative. Cap'n Abe did not like it.
His keen vision swept the outlook once more. How darkly the clouds lowered! And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut shrewdly. It would be a wild night. Casually he thought of his cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all.
"Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't at sea in a blow like this."
It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing. Her poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging.
She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that rolled in from the horizon line. Now and then a curling wave-crest hid even her topmasts. Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks shrouded her.
For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks. Unless the wind shifted—and that soon—she must batter her hull to bits upon the reef.
The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation. When the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion, it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four hours' duration.
"She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly.
The might of the sea made him tremble. The thought of what was about to happen to the schooner—a fate that naught could avert—sickened him. Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers, the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred.
It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches. Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening—was leaving lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with her. But on that point Louise had been firm.
"No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said. "I shall wait for daddy-prof and theCurlewto arrive at Boston. Then I shall either go there to meet him, or he will come here. I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married."
"Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror. "How can you say such a thing!"
"I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips.
"You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie declared. "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for those Tapps. They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push themselves into the society of their betters."
"Perhaps," sighed Louise. "But consider, auntie. This is a free and more or less independent republic. After all, money is the only recognized mark of aristocracy."
"Money!"
"Yes. How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them—or the Standishes'—or the Graylings'—without money? And consider our own small beginnings. Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of the yardstick and sold molasses by the quart."
"You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her ears. "I will not listen to you. It is sacrilegious."
"It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from molasses to taffy. And it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other."
So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise, too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of the bluff.
This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank into the full sweep of the gale.
"Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?"
The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face. He glared at her as though he did not hear what she said. In his hand he clutched an envelope.
"Ha! That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled. "Seen Ford?"
"No. Is he at home?"
"He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder. "I supposed he'd come over to see you."
"Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly. "He is a very faithful knight."
"He's a perfect ninny, ifthat'swhat you mean," snapped the Taffy King. "He's made a fool of me, too. I shouldn't wonder if he knew this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled.
"You arouse my curiosity," Louise said. "I hope Lawford has done nothing more to cause you vexation."
"I don't know whether he has or not. The young upstart! I feel like punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat to him, Miss Grayling. D'you know what he's done?"
"Something really fine, I hope. I do not think you wholly appreciateLawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly.
"Ha! No. I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be appreciated," he snarled.
But at that Louise merely laughed. "You don't tell me what he has done," she urged.
"Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled us candy makers for years. I'm having a new cutting machine built after his suggestions."
"I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she interrupted. "You know, he and I are going to need the money."
"Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again. "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes to a contract. He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will."
"I'm so glad!" cried Louise.
"You are, eh? What for?"
"Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him.
I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her.
"So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Right in my very teeth?"
"I—I hope you won't beveryangry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly."You see—we love each other."
"Love!" began I. Tapp. Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over and over in his hand. "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh. "Perhaps there is something in that. Seems to be. I set my heart on having my fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson—and see what's come of it."
He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand.
"Look at that!"
With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure. Before she could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention.
"What can it be?" Louise cried. "The lifesavers!"
"And their gear—lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed. "Must be a wreck——"
His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm. "There! Don't you see her? A vessel in distress sure enough. She's drifting in upon Gull Rocks. Bad business, Miss Grayling."
"Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise. "He's with the surfmen!"
Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf. The bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water.
Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.
"I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got this invitation to her wedding."
Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the making of Lawford," she said calmly.
"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."
"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him softly.
They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold together long after she struck the reef.
Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts, whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.
Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was doomed.
That might be theCurlewout there—the schooner her father was aboard—instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she and her uncle had figured out theCurlew'scourse homeward-bound from her last port of call. She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and the lighthouse any day now.
The thought sobered Louise. Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat.
The sea beyond the line of surf—between the strand and the reef—was foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water. The captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into that wild waste.
If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner struck, a breeches buoy could be rigged with less danger and, perhaps, with a better chance of bringing the ship's company safely ashore.
"'Tis a woeful pickle of water," Washy Gallup shrieked in Louise's ear. "And the wind a-risin'. 'Tis only allowed by law to shoot a sartain charge o' powder in the pottery little gun. Beyond that, is like to burst her. But mebbe they can make it. Cap'n Jim Trainor knows his work; and 'tis cut out for him this day."
Gradually the seriousness of the situation began to affect all the lighter-minded spectators. Louise saw the group of moving picture actors at one side. The men dropped their cigarettes and strained forward as they watched the schooner drive in to certain destruction.
It was like a play. The schooner, rearing on each succeeding wave, drew nearer and nearer. A hawser parted and they saw her bows swing viciously shoreward, the jib-boom thrusting itself seemingly into the very sky as she topped a huge breaker.
The crew had to slip the cable of the second anchor. The foremast came crashing down before she struck. Then, with a grinding thud those on the shore could not hear, but could keenly sense, the fated craft rebounded on the reef.
A gasping cry—the intake of a chorused breath—arose from the throng of spectators. The fishermen and sailors recoiled from the cart and left an open space in which the life-saving crew could handle their gear.
Cap'n Trainor, the grizzled veteran of the crew, had already loaded the gun and now aimed it. The shot to which was attached the line was slipped into the muzzle.
"Back!" the old man ordered, and waved his hand. Then he pulled the lanyard.
The line fled out of the box with a speed that made it smoke. But the shot fell short.
"'Tis too much wind, skipper," squealed Washy Gallup. "You be a-shootin' into the wind's eye. An' she's risin' ev'ry minute."
His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor. The latter loaded the gun again, and yet again. The last time he waited for every one to get well back before he fired the cannon. When she went off she did not burst as they half expected—she turned a double back somersault.
"'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands together. "We must try the boat. But that's a hell's broth out there, and no two ways about it."
The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef. They could see men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging. Louise, between bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures.
"It may be theCurlew!" she cried to the Taffy King. "Father told me in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft. He may be out there!" and the girl shuddered.
"No, no," said I. Tapp. "Not possible. Don't think of such a thing, my girl. But whoever they are, they are to be pitied."
There rose a shout at the edge of the surf. The fringe of fishermen had rushed in to aid in launching the boat. Anscomb and his camera man had taken up a good position with the machine. The director was going to get some "real stuff."
Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers. The lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their places in the boat. Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his steering oar. On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf.
"Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director. "Action! Camera!Go!"
There was something unreal about it—it was like a play. And yet out there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was run through the bursting surf.
The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea. Then the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen pulled out.
Lawford and his mates staggered back with the gear. The lifeboat lifted to meet the onrolling breakers. The men tugged at the oars.
Somebody screamed. Those ashore saw the white gash of a split oar. The man in the bow went overboard, not being strapped to the seat. His mate reached for him and the banging broken oar handle hit him on the head.
The boat swung broadside and the next instant was rolling over and over in the surf, the crew half smothered.
The spectators ran together in a crowd. But Lawford and some of the men who had helped to launch the boat rushed into the surf and dragged the overturned craft and her crew out upon the beach.
"One of the crew with a broken arm; another knocked out complete with that crack on the head," sputtered Cap'n Jim Trainor. "Two of my very best men. Come on, boys! Who'll take their places?"
Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one of the injured surfmen. The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about, shouted:
"Ford! Ford! Don't dare do that! I forbid you!"
Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week, dad. I am my own boss."
A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply.Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:
"Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp. Don't say another word to him. My—my heart is breaking; but I am glad—oh, I am so glad!—that he is a real man."
Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him.After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"—weaklings likeMilt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and WashyGallup.
Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the crowd—one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments, but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was happening.
"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you."
The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.
He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar land-locked water.
His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the wreck.
But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea, and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.
Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness of this present catastrophe.
Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of spectators on the sands. So enthralled were his neighbors by what was going forward that they did not notice his appearance.
And well they did not. This character of the bluff and ready master mariner that Cap'n Abe had builded—a new order of Frankenstein—and with which he had deceived the community for these many weeks, came near to being wrecked right here and now.
He all but screamed aloud in fear when the lifeboat was overturned. Pallid, shaking, panting for every breath he drew, he was slipping out of the unnoticing crowd when Cap'n Jim Trainor of the lifeboat crew called to him.
"You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you."
For the space of a breath the storekeeper "hung in the wind." He had been poised for flight and the shock of the lifeboat captain's call almost startled him into running full speed up the beach.
Then the thought smote upon his harassed mind that Cap'n Trainor was not speaking to Cap'n Abe, storekeeper. The call for aid was addressed to Cap'n Amazon Silt.
It was to Cap'n Amazon, the man who had been through all manner of perils by sea and land, who had suffered stress of storm and shipwreck himself, whose reputation for courage the Shell Road storekeeper had builded so long.
Should all this fall in a moment? Should he show the coward's side of the shield after all his effort toward vicarious heroism? Another moment of hesitancy and as Cap'n Amazon Silt he would never be able to hold up his head in the company of Cardhaven folk again.
Cursed by the horror his mother had felt for the cruel sea that had taken her husband before her very eyes, Cap'n Abe had ever shrunk from any actual venture upon deep water. But Cap'n Amazon must be true to his manhood—must uphold by his actions the character the storekeeper had builded for him.
He buttoned his coat tightly across his chest and pushed through the group. Men and women alike made way for him, and in his ringing ears he heard such phrases as:
"He'sthe man to do it!"
"That's Cap'n Am'zon for ye!"
"There'soneSilt ain't afraid of salt water, whatever Cap'n Abe may be!"
"Will you come, Cap'n Am'zon?" called the skipper of the life-saving crew.
"I'm coming," mumbled the storekeeper, and held up his arms that MiltBaker might fasten the belt about his body.
Afterward Milt was fond of declaring that the look on Cap'n Amazon's face at that moment prophesied the tragedy that was to follow. "He seen death facin' him—an' he warn't afraid," Milt said reverently.
"In with you, boys!" shouted the skipper. "And hook your belts—every man of you! If she overturns again I want to be able to count noses when we come right side up. Now!"
A shuddering cry from the women, in which Louise found herself joining; a "Yo! heave-ho!" from the men who launched the craft. Then the lifeboat was in the surf again, her crew laboring like the sons of Hercules they were to keep her head to the wind and to the breakers.
The storekeeper was no weakling; rowing was an accomplishment he had excelled in from childhood. It was the single activity in any way connected with the sea that he had learned and maintained.
At first he kept his eyes shut—tight shut. A strange thrill went through him, however. All these years he had shrunk from an unknown, an unexperienced, peril. Was it that Cap'n Abe had been frightened by a bogey, after all?
He opened his eyes, pulling rhythmically with the oar—never missing a stroke. His gaze rested on the face of that old sea-dog, Cap'n Jim Trainor. The fierce light of determination dwelt there. The skipper meant to get to the wrecked schooner. He had no doubt of accomplishing this, and Cap'n Abe caught fire of courage from the skipper's transfigured countenance.
As for Lawford Tapp, no member of Cap'n Trainor's crew pulled a better oar than he. With the bow ash he drove on like a young giant. Fear did not enter intohisemotions.
There was nobody to notice the pallor of the storekeeper's visage. Every man's attention was centered on his own oar, while the skipper gazed ahead at the wave-beaten schooner grounded hard and fast upon the reef.
There was no lull in the gale. Indeed, it seemed as though the strength of the wind steadily rose. The lifeboat only crept from the shore on its course to Gull Rocks. Each yard must be fought for by the earnest crew.
Occasionally Cap'n Trainor called an encouraging sentence at them. For the most part, however, only the ravening sea roared malice in their ears.
Around them the hungry waves leaped and fought for their lives; but the buoyant boat, held true to her course by the skipper, bore up nobly under the strain. They won on, foot by foot.
The thunder of the breakers over the reef finally deafened them. The rocking schooner, buffeted by waves that could not drive her completely over the reef, towered finally above the heads of the men in the lifeboat.
Cap'n Trainor's straining eyes deciphered her name painted on the bow. He threw a hand upward in a surprised gesture, still clinging to the steering oar with his other hand, and shrieked aloud:
"TheCurlew! By mighty! who'd ha' thought it? 'Tis theCurlew."He, too, knew of Cap'n Abe's supposed voyage on the seaweed ship.
The oarsmen read the word upon the skipper's lips rather than heard his voice. Two, at least, were shocked by the announcement—Lawford and the storekeeper. There was no opportunity for comment upon this wonder.
Skillfully the lifeboat was brought around under the lee of the wreck. Already most of her crew had crept down to the rail and were waiting, half submerged, to drop into the lifeboat. But one figure was still visible high up in the shrouds.
When the waves sucked out from under her the keel of the lifeboat almost scratched the reef. Then it rose on a swell to the very rail of the wreck, wedged so tightly on the rock.
The castaways came inboard rapidly, bringing their injured skipper with them. The lifeboat was quickly overburdened with human freight.
"No more! No more!" shouted Cap'n Trainor. "We'll have to make another trip."
"Where's the professor? Bring down the professor! There he is!" yelled the mate of theCurlew, who had given his attention to the injured master of the wrecked craft. "Who lashed him fast up there?"
There was a movement forward. The storekeeper had got up and pulled a stout-armed member of theCurlew'screw into his place.
"Take my oar!" commanded Cap'n Abe. "I got a niece—he's her father.Hi-mighty! I just got to get him aboard!"
With an agility that belied his years he leaped for the schooner's rail as the next surge rose. He swarmed inboard and started up the shrouds. Those below remained silent while he climbed.
He reached the helpless man, whipped out his knife, cut the lashings. Slight as the storekeeper seemed, his muscles were of steel. As though the half-conscious professor were a child, he lowered him to the slanting deck.
"Only room for one o' you!" roared Cap'n Trainor. "Only one! We're overloaded as 'tis. Better wait."
"You'll takehim!" shouted Cap'n Abe, and dropped his burden atLawford Tapp's feet.
The next moment the lifeboat shot away from the side of the wreck, leaving the Man Who Was Afraid marooned upon her deck.
That was a perilous journey for the overladen boat. Only the good management of Cap'n Trainor could have brought her safely to shore. And when she banged upon the beach it was almost a miracle that she did not start all her bottom boards.
Many willing hands hauled the heavy boat up upon the sands. The rescued crew of the schooner tumbled out and lifted their injured captain ashore. But it was Lawford who brought in Professor Grayling. Louise had watched with the Taffy King all through the battle of the lifeboat with the sea, suffering pangs of terror for Lawford's safety, yet feeling, too, unbounded pride in his achievement.
Now she pressed down to meet him at the edge of the sea and found that the drenched, dazed man Lawford bore up in his arms was her own father!
The meeting served to rouse the professor. He stared searchingly over the group of rescued men.
"Where's the man who cut my lashings and helped me down to the deck? I don't see him," he said. "Louise, my dear, this is a very, very strange homecoming. And all my summer's work gone for nothing! But that man——"
"Cap'n Amazon Silt," said Lawford. "He stayed behind. There wasn't room in the boat."
"Cap'n Am'zon!" exclaimed several excited voices. But only one—and that Louise Grayling's—uttered another name:
"Cap'n Abe! Isn'thewith you? Didn't you bring him ashore?"
"By heaven! that's so, Louise!" groaned Lawford. "They must both be out there. The two brothers are marooned on that rotten wreck!"
Already the kindly neighbors were hurrying the castaways in groups of twos and threes to the nearer dwellings. Anscomb was getting foot after foot of "the real stuff." The moving picture actors and the cottagers hung on the outskirts of the throng of natives, wide-eyed and marveling. They had all, on this day, gained a taste of the stern realities of life as it is along the shore.
Louise was desirous of getting her father to the store, for he was exhausted. Lawford turned back toward the group of life-saving men standing about the beached boat.
"If they can get her launched again they'll need me," he shouted back over his shoulder. "Poor Cap'n Abe and Cap'n Amazon———"
"You've done enough, boy," his father declared, clinging to the sleeve of Lawford's guernsey. "Don't risk your life again."
"Don't worry, dad. A fellow has to do his bit, you know."
Betty Gallup came to the assistance of Louise and helped support the professor. The woman's countenance was all wrinkled with trouble.
"He must be out there, too," she murmured to Louise. "Ain't none o' these chaps off theCurlewjest right yet—scar't blue, or suthin'. They don't seem to rightly sense that Cap'n Abe was with 'em all the time aboard that schooner."
"Poor Cap'n Abe!" groaned Louise again.
"And that old pirate's with him," said Betty. But her tone lacked its usual venom in speaking of Cap'n Amazon. "Who'd ha' thought it? I reckoned he was nothing but a bag o' wind, with all his yarns of bloody murder an' the like. But he is a Silt; no gettin' around that. And Cap'n Abe allus did say the Silts were proper seamen."
"Poor, poor Cap'n Abe!" sobbed Louise.
"Now, now!" soothed Betty. "Don't take on so, deary. They'll get 'em both. Never fear."
But the rising gale forbade another launching of the lifeboat for hours. The night shut down over the wind-ridden sea and shore, and by the pallid light fitfully playing over the tumbling waters the watchers along the sands saw the strickenCurlewbeing slowly wrenched to pieces by the waves that wolfed about and over her.
Stretched upon the couch in the living-room behind the store, with Diddimus purring beside him, Professor Grayling heard that evening the story of Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Betty Gallup had gone back to the beach and Louise could talk freely to her father.
"And he saved me, for your sake!" murmured the professor. "He gave me his place in the lifeboat! Ah, my dear Lou! there is something besides physical courage in this world. And I don't see but that your uncle has plenty of both kinds of bravery. Really, he is a wonderful man."
"Hewasa wonderful man," said Louise brokenly.
"I do not give up hope of his ultimate safety, my dear. The gale will blow itself out by morning. Captain Ripley is so badly hurt that he is being taken to Boston to-night, and the crew go with him. But if there is interest to be roused in the fate of the last man left upon the wreck——"
"Oh, I am sure the neighbors will do everything in their power. AndLawford, too!" she cried.
"The schooner is not likely to break up before morning. The departure of her crew to-night will make it all the easier for Mr. Abram Silt's secret to be kept," the professor reminded her.
"Yes. We will keep his secret," sighed Louise. "Poor Uncle Abram! After all, he can gain a reputation for courage only vicariously. It will be Cap'n Amazon Silt who will go down in the annals of Cardhaven as the brave man who risked his life for another, daddy-prof."
Aunt Euphemia did not leave The Beaches on this evening, as she had intended. Even she was shaken out of her usual marble demeanor by the wreck and the incidents connected with it. She came to the store after dinner and welcomed her brother with a most subdued and chastened spirit.
"You have been mercifully preserved, Ernest," she said, wiping her eyes. "I saw young Lawford Tapp bring you ashore. A really remarkable young man, and so I told Mrs. Perriton just now. So brave of him to venture out in the lifeboat as a volunteer.
"I have just been talking to his father. Quite a remarkable man—I. Tapp. One of these rough diamonds, you know, Ernest. And he is so enthusiastic about Louise. He has just pointed out to me the spot on the bluff where he intends to build a cottage for Lawford and Louise."
"What's this?" demanded Professor Grayling, sitting up so suddenly on the couch that Diddimus spat and jumped off in haste and anger.
"I—I was just going to tell you about Lawford," Louise said in a small voice.
"Oh, yes! A little thing like your having a lover slipped your mind, I suppose?" demanded her father.
"And a young man of most excellent character," put in the surprising Mrs. Conroth. "Perhaps his family is not all that might be desired; but I. Tapp is e-nor-mously wealthy and I understand he will settle a good income upon Ford. Besides, the young man has some sort of interest in the manufacturing of candies."
Trust the Lady from Poughkeepsie to put the best foot forward when it became necessary to do so. The professor was gazing quizzically at the flushed face of his daughter.
"So that is what you have been doing this summer, is it?" he said.
"That—and looking after Cap'n Abe," confessed Louise.
"I'll have to look into this further."
"Isn't it terrible?" interrupted Mrs. Conroth. "They say the two brothers are out on that wreck and they cannot be reached until the gale subsides. And then it will be too late to save them. Well, Louise, that old sailor was certainly a brave man. I am really sorry I spoke so harshly about him. They tell me it was he who put your father in the boat. I hope there is some way you can fittingly show your appreciation, Ernest."
"I hope so," said Professor Grayling grimly.
Lawford came to the store before bedtime—very white and serious-looking. He had tried with the patrol crew to launch the boat again and go to the rescue of the two old men supposed to be upon the wreck. But the effort had been fruitless. Until the gale fell and the tide turned they could not possibly get out to Gull Rocks.
"A brave man is Cap'n Amazon," Lawford Tapp said. "And if Cap'n Abe was in the schooner's crew——Why, Professor Grayling! surely you must remember him? Not a big man, but with heavy gray beard and mustache—and very bald. Mild blue eyes and very gentle-spoken. Don't you remember him in the crew of theCurlew?"
"It would seem quite probable that he was aboard," Professor Grayling returned, "minding his p's and q's," as Louise had warned him. "But you see, Mr. Tapp, being only a passenger, I had really little association with the men forward. You know how it is aboard ship—strict discipline, and all that."
"Yes, sir; I see. And, after all, Cap'n Abe was a man that could easily be overlooked. Not assertive at all. Not like Cap'n Amazon. Quite timid and retiring by nature. Don't you say so, Louise?"
"Oh, absolutely!" agreed the girl. "And yet, when you come to think of it, Uncle Abram is a wonderful man."
"I don't see how you can say so," the young man said. "It's Cap'n Amazon who is wonderful. There were other men down on the beach better able to handle an oar than he. But he took the empty seat in the lifeboat when he was called without saying 'yes or no'! And he pulled with the best of us."
"He is no coward, of that I am sure," said Professor Grayling. "He gave me his place in the boat. We can but pray that the lifeboat will get to him in the morning."
That hope was universal. All night driftwood fires burned on the sands and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the schooner on the reef.
The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear and deck lumber. Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of the wreck held together.
It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that the lifeboat could be launched again. Wellriver station owned no motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap'n Jim Trainor and his men would have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale.
It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of the battered schooner. Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring her to the reef. Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her.
One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered aboard. Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle.
"Here's one of 'em, sure 'nough!" he sang out.
Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a minute the spot where the unfortunate lay. The man had washed back and forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled. The rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash.
He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache.
"Why, by golly!" yelled the surfman. "This here's Cap'n Abe Silt!"
"Ain't his brother Am'zon there?"
"No, I don't see his brother nowhere."
"Take a good look."
"Trust me to do that," answered the surfman.
But the search was useless. Nobody ever saw Cap'n Amazon again. He had gone, as he had come—suddenly and in a way to shock the placid thoughts of Cardhaven people. A stone in the First Church graveyard is all the visible reminder there remains of Cap'n Amazon Silt, who for one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road.
The life-savers brought Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the wreck, the last survivor of theCurlew'screw. He was in rather bad shape, for his night's experience on the wreck had been serious indeed.
They put him to bed, and Louise and Betty Gallup took turns in nursing him, while Cap'n Joab Beecher puttered about the store, trying to wait on customers and keep things straight.
At first, as he lay in his "cabin," Cap'n Abe did not have much to say—not even to Louise. But after a couple of days, on an occasion when she was feeding him broth, he suddenly sputtered and put away the spoon with a vexed gesture.
"What's the matter, Uncle Abram?" she asked him. "Isn't it good?"
"The soup's all right, Niece Louise. 'Tain't so fillin' as chowder, I cal'late, but it'll keep a feller on deck for a spell. That ain't it. I was just a-thinkin'."
"Of what?"
"Hi-mighty! It's all over, ain't it?" he said in desperation. "Can't never bring forward Cap'n Am'zon again, can I? Igotto be Cap'n Abe hereafter, whether I want to be or not. It's a turrible dis'pointment, Louise—turrible!
"I ain't sorry I went out there in that boat. No. For I got your father off, an' he'd been carried overboard if he'd been let stay in them shrouds.
"But land sakes! Ididfancy bein' Cap'n Am'zon 'stead o' myself. And the worst of it is, Niece Louise, I can't have nothin' new to tell 'bout Cap'n Am'zon's adventures. He's drowned, an' he can't never go rovin' no more."
"But think of what you've done, Cap'n Abe," Louise urged. "You feared the sea—and you overcame that fear. All your life you shrank from venturing on the water; yet you went out in that lifeboat and played the hero. Oh, I think it is fine, Cap'n Abe! It's wonderful!"
"Wonderful?" repeated Cap'n Abe. "P'r'aps 'tis. Mebbe I've been too timid all my life. P'r'aps I could ha' been a sailor and cruised in foreign seas if I'd justhadto.
"But mother allus was opposed. She kept talkin' against it when I was a boy—and later, too. She told how scar't she was when Cap'n Josh and theBravowent down in sight of her windows. And mebbe I ketched it more from her talkin' than aught else.
"But I never realized that stress of circumstances could push me into it an' make a man of me. I had a feelin' that I'd swoon away an' fall right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was t'other day.
"And see! Nothing of the kind happened! I knew I'd got to make good Cap'n Am'zon's character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again. I don't dispute I've been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise. But—but it's sort o' made a man o' me for once, don't ye think?
"I dunno. Good comes out o' bad sometimes. Bitter from the sweet as well. And when a man's got a repertation to maintain——There was that feller Hanks, on theLunette, out o' Nantucket. I've heard Cap'n Am'zon tell it——"
"Cap'n Abe!" gasped Louise.
"Hi-mighty! There I go again," said the storekeeper mournfully. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks—nor break him of them he's l'arned!"
Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until Cap'n Abe was up and about again. Then they could safely leave him to the ministrations of Betty Gallup.
"Somehow," confessed that able seaman, "he don't seem just like he used to. He speaks quicker and sharper—more like that old pirate, Am'zon Silt, though I shouldn't be sayin' nothin' harsh of the dead, I s'pose. I don't dispute that Cap'n Am'zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to think on't.
"But Cap'n Abe's more to my taste. Now the place seems right again with him in the house. Cap'n Abe's as easy as an old shoe. And, land sakes! I ain't locked out o'hisbedroom when I want to clean!
"One thing puzzles me, Miss Lou. I thought Cap'n Abe would take on c'nsiderable about Jerry. But when I told him the canary was dead he up and said that mebbe 'twas better so, seem' the old bird couldn't see no more. Now, who would ha' told him Jerry was blind?"
There were a few other things about the returned Cap'n Abe that might have amazed his neighbors. He seemed to possess an almost uncanny knowledge of what had happened during the summer. Besides, he seemed to have achieved Cap'n Amazon's manner of "looking down" a too inquisitive inquirer into personal affairs and refusing to answer.
Because of this, perhaps, nobody was ever known to ask the storekeeper why he had filled his sea chest with bricks and useless dunnage when he shipped it to Boston. That mystery was never explained.
Before Louise and her father were ready to leave Cardhaven most of the summer residents along The Beaches, including Aunt Euphemia, had gone. And the moving picture company had also flown.
With the latter went Gusty Durgin, bravely refusing to have her artistic soul trammeled any longer by the claims of hungry boarders at the Cardhaven Inn.
"I don't never expect to be one of these stars on the screen," she confided to Louise. "But I can make a good livin', an' ma's childern by her second husband, Mr. Vleet, has got to be eddicated.
"I'm goin' to make me up a fancy name and make a repertation. They ain't goin' to call me 'Dusty Gudgeon' no more. Miss Louder tells me I can 'bant'—whatever that is—to take down my flesh, and mebbe you'll see me some day, Miss Lou, in a re'l ladylike part. An' I can always cry. Even Mr. Bane says I'm wuth my wages when it comes to the tearful parts."
The Tapps were flitting to Boston, Mrs. Tapp and the girls sure of "getting in" with the proper set at last. Their summer's campaign, thanks to Louise, had been successful to that end.
Louise and Lawford walked along the strand below the cottages. The candy cutting machine had proved a success and Lawford was giving his attention to a new "mechanical wrapper" for salt water taffy that would do away with much hand labor.
On the most prominent outlook of Tapp Point were piles of building material and men at work. The pudgy figure of I. Tapp was visible walking about, importantly directing the workmen.
"It's going to be a most, wonderful house, Louise dear," sighed Lawford. "Do you suppose you can stand it? The front elevation looks like a French chateau of the Middle Ages, and there ought to be a moat and a portcullis to make it look right."
"Never mind," she responded cheerfully. "We won't have to live in it—much. See. We have all this to live in," with a wide gesture. "The sea and the shore. Cape Cod forever! I shall never be discontented here, Lawford."
They wandered back to the store on the Shell Road. There was a chill in the fall air and Cap'n Abe had built a small fire in the rusty stove. About it were gathered the usual idlers. A huge fishfly droned on the window pane.
"It's been breedin' a change of weather for a week," said Cap'n Joab.
"Right ye air, sir," agreed Washy Gallup, wagging his head.
"I 'member hearin' Cap'n Am'zon tell 'bout a dry spell like this," began Cap'n Abe, leaning his hairy fists upon the counter. "Twas when he was ashore once at Teneriffe——"
"Don't I hear Mandy a-callin' me?" Milt Baker suddenly demanded, making for the door.
"I gotter git over home myself," said Cap'n Joab apologetically.
"Me, too," said Washy, rising. "'Tis chore time."
Cap'n Abe clamped his jaws shut for a minute and his eyes blazed. Only the mild and inoffensive Amiel was left of his audience.
"Huh!" he growled. "Ain't goin' to waste my breath onyou, AmielPerdue. Go git me a scuttle of coal."
Then, when the young fellow had departed, the storekeeper grinned ruefully and whispered in his niece's ear:
"Hi-mighty! Cap'n Amazon's cut the sand out from under my feet. They think he told them yarns so much better'n I do that they won't even stay to hear me. Hard lines. Niece Louise, hard lines. But mebbe I deserve it!"