CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIVA VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGOAs the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in the sunshine, screwing up his leathery, shrewd, humorous face, and from under a thin palm squinting across the harbor.“Ain’t sighted him yit, cap’n?” demanded he, in a cracked voice. “It’s past six bells o’ the aft’noon watch. You’d oughta be sightin’ him pretty soon, now, seems like.”“I think so, too,” the captain answered. “He wrote they’d leave Boston this morning early. Seems as if they should have made Endicutt Harbor by now.”“Right, cap’n. But don’t you worry none. They can’t of fell foul o’ nothin’. Master Hall, he’s an A1 man. He’ll make port afore night, cap’n, never you fear. He’sgotta! Ain’t I got a leg o’ lamb on to roast, an’ ain’t I made his favorite plum-cake with butter-an’-sugar sauce? Aye, he’ll tie up at Snug Haven afore sundown, never you fear!”The captain only grunted; and old Trefethen, after careful but fruitless examination of the harbor, went back into the house again, very much like those figures on toy barometers that come out in good weather and retire in bad.Left alone once more, the captain drew deeply at his pipe and glanced with satisfaction at his cozy domain. A pleasant place it was, indeed, and trimly eloquent of the hand of an old seafaring man. Theprecision wherewith the hedge was cut, the whitewashed spotlessness of the front gate—a gate on the “port” post of which was fastened a red ship’s-lantern, with a green one on the “starboard”—and even the sanded walks, edged with conch-shells, all spelled “shipshape.”Trailing woodbine covered the fences to right and left, and along these fences grew thrifty berry bushes. Apple-trees, whereon green buttons of fruit had already set, shaded the lawn, interspersed with flower-beds edged with whitewashed rocks—flower-beds bright with hollyhocks, peonies and poppies.Back of the house a vegetable-garden gave promise of great increase; and in the hen-yard White Leghorns and Buff Orpingtons pursued the vocations of all well-disposed poultry. A Holstein cow, knee-deep in daisies on the gentle hill-slope behind Snug Haven, formed part of the household; and last of all came the bees, denizens of six hives not far from the elm-shaded well.But the captain’s special pride centered in the gleaming white flagpole, planted midway of the front lawn—a pole from which flew the Stars and Stripes, together with a big blue house-flag bearing a huge “B” of spotless white. This flag and a little cannon of gleaming brass, from which on every holiday the captain fired a salute, formed his chief treasures; by which token you shall read the heart of the old man, and see that, for all his faring up and down the world, a certain curious simplicity had at the end developed itself in him.Thus that June afternoon, sitting in state amid his possessions, the captain waited. Waited, dressed in his very best, for the homecoming of the boy on whom was concentrated all the affection of a nature now powerful to love, as in the old and evil days ithad been violent to hate. His face, as he sat there, was virile, patriarchal, dignified with that calm nobility of days when old age is “frosty but kindly.” With placid interest he watched a robin on the lawn, and listened to the chickadees’ piping monotone in the huge maple by the gate. Those notes seemed to blend with the metallic music of hammer and anvil somewhere down the village street.Tunk-tunk! Clink-clank-clink!sang the hammer from the shop of Peter Trumett, as Peter forged new links for the anchor-chain of theLucy Bell, now in port for repairs. Then a voice, greeting the captain from the rock-nubbled roadway, drew the old man’s gaze.“How do, cap’n?” called a man from the top of a slow-moving load of kelp. “I’m goin’ up-along. Anythin’ I kin do fer you?”“Nothing, Jacob,” answered Briggs. “Thank you, just the same. Oh, Jacob! Wait a minute!”“Hoa,s-h-h-h-h!” commanded the kelp-gatherer. “What is it, cap’n?”The old man arose, placed his telescope carefully in the rocking-chair, and slowly walked down toward the gate. The Airedale followed close. The dog’s rusty-brown muzzle touched the captain’s hand. Briggs fondled the animal and smiling said:“I’m not going to leave you, Ruddy. None of us can go anywhere to-day. Hal’s coming home. Know that? We mustn’t be away when he comes!” The captain advanced once more. Half-way down the walk he paused, picked up a snail that had crawled out upon the distressful sand. He dropped the snail into the sheltering grass and went forward again. At the gate he stopped, leaned his crossed arms on the clean top-board, and for a moment peered at Jacob perched on the load of kelp that overflowed the time-worn, two-wheeled cart.“What is it, cap’n?” Jacob queried. “Somethin’ I kin do fer you?”“No, nothing you can do for me, but something you can do for Uncle Everett and for yourself, if you will.”At sound of that name the kelp-gatherer stiffened with sudden resentment.“Nothin’ fer him, cap’n!” he ejaculated. “He’s been accommodatin’ as a hog on ice to me, an’ the case is goin’ through. Nothin’ at all fer that damned—”“Wait! Hold on, Jacob!” the old man pleaded, raising his hand. “You can’t gain anything by violence and hate. I know you think he’s injured you grievously. He thinks the same of you. In his heart I know he’s sorry. You and he were friends for thirty years till this petty little quarrel came up. Jacob, is the whole boat worth cutting the cables of good understanding and letting yourselves drift on the reefs of hate? Is it, now?”“You been talkin’ with him ’bout me?” demanded Jacob irefully.“Well, maybe I have said a few words to Uncle Everett,” admitted the captain. “Uncle’s willing to go half-way to meet you.”“He’ll meet me nowheres ’cept in the court-room down to ’Sconset!” retorted Jacob with heat. “He done me a smart trick that time. I’ll rimrackhim!”“We’ve all done smart tricks one time or another,” soothed the old captain. The sun through the arching elms flecked his white hair with moving bits of light; it narrowed the keen, earnest eyes of blue. “That’s human. It’s better than human to be sorry and to make peace with your neighbor. Uncle Everett’s not a bad man at heart, any more than you are. Half a dozen words from you would caulk upthe leaking hull of your friendship. You’re not going to go on hating uncle, are you, when youcouldshake hands with him and be friends?”“Oh, ain’t I, huh?” demanded Jacob. “Why ain’t I?”“Because you’re a man and can think!” the captain smiled. “Harkness and Bill Dodge were bitter as gall six months ago, and Giles was ready to cut Burnett’s heart out, but I found they were human, after all.”“Yes, but they ain’tme!”“Are you less a man than they were?”“H-m! H-m!” grunted Jacob, floored. “I—I reckon not. Why?”“I’ve got nothing more to say for now,” the captain answered. “Good-by, Jacob!”The kelp-gatherer pushed back his straw hat, scratched his head, spat, and then broke out:“Mebbe it’d be cheaper, after all, to settle out o’ court rather ’n’ to law uncle. But shakin’ hands, an’ bein’ neighbors with that—that—”“Good day, Jacob!” the captain repeated. “One thing at a time. And if you come up-along to-morrow, lay alongside, and have another gam with me, will you?”To this Jacob made no answer, but slapped his reins on the lean withers of his horse. Creakingly the load of seaweed moved away, with Jacob atop, rather dazed. The captain remained there at the gate, peering after him with a smile, kindly yet shrewd.“Just like the others,” he murmured. “Can’t make port all on one tack. Got to watch the wind, and wear about and make it when you can. But if I know human nature, a month from to-day Jacob Plummer will be smoking his pipe down at Uncle Everett’s sail-loft.”The sound of piping voices, beyond the blacksmith-shop, drew the old captain’s attention thither. He assumed a certain expectancy. Into the pocket of his square-cut blue jacket he slid a hand. Along the street he peered—the narrow, rambling street sheltered by great elms through which, here and there, a glint of sunlit harbor shimmered blue.He had not long to wait. Round the bend by the smithy two or three children appeared; and after these came others, with a bright-haired girl of twenty or thereabout. The children had school-bags or bundles of books tightly strapped. Keeping pace with the teacher a little girl on either side held her hands. You could not fail to see the teacher’s smile, as wholesome, fresh and winning as that June day itself.At sight of the captain the boys in the group set up a joyful shout and some broke into a run.“Hey, lookit! There’s cap’n!” rose exultant cries. “There’s Cap’n Briggs!”Then the little girls came running, too; and all the children captured him by storm. Excited, the Airedale set up a clamorous barking.The riot ended only when the captain had been despoiled of the peppermints he had provided for such contingencies. Meanwhile the teacher, as trimly pretty a figure as you could meet in many a day’s journeying, was standing by the gate, and with a little heightened flush of color was casting a look or two, as of expectancy, up at Snug Haven.The old captain, smiling, shook his head.“Not yet, Laura,” he whispered. “He’ll be here before night, though. You’re going to let me keep him a few minutes, aren’t you, before taking him away from me?”She found no answer. Something about the captain’s smile seemed to disconcert her. A warm flushcrept from her throat to her thickly coiled, lustrous hair. Then she passed on, down the shaded street; and as the captain peered after her, still surrounded by the children, a little moisture blurred his eyes.“God has been very good to me in spite of all!” he murmured. “Very, very good, and ‘the best is yet to be’!”He turned and was about to start back toward the house when thecloppa-cloppa-clopof hoofs along the street arrested his attention. Coming into view, past Laura and her group of scholars, an old-fashioned buggy, drawn by a horse of ripe years, was bearing down toward Snug Haven.In the buggy sat an old, old man, wizen and bent. With an effort he reined in the aged horse. The captain heard his cracked tones on the still afternoon air:“Pardon me, but can you tell me where Captain Briggs lives—Captain Alpheus Briggs?”A babel of childish voices and the pointing of numerous fingers obliterated any information Laura tried to give. The old man, with thanks, clucked to his horse, and so the buggy came along once more to the front gate of Snug Haven. There it stopped.Out of it bent a feeble, shrunken figure, with flaccid skin on deep-lined face, with blinking eyes behind big spectacles.“Is that you, captain?” asked a shaking voice that pierced to the captain’s heart with a stab of poignant recollection. “Oh, Captain—Captain Briggs—is that you?”The captain, turning pale, steadied himself by gripping at the whitewashed gate. For a moment his staring eyes met the eyes of the old, withered man in the buggy. Then, in strange, husky tones he cried:“God above! It—it can’t be you, doctor? It can’t be—Dr. Filhiol?”CHAPTER XVTWO OLD MEN“Yes, yes, it’s Dr. Filhiol!” the little old man made answer. “I’m Filhiol. And you—Yes, I’d know you anywhere. Captain Alpheus Briggs, so help me!”He took up a heavy walking-stick, and started to clamber down out of the buggy. Captain Briggs, flinging open the gate, reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing in the road, for the doctor’s feeble strength was all exhausted with the long journey he had made to South Endicutt, with the drive from the station five miles away, and with the nervous shock of once more seeing a man on whom, in fifty years, his eyes had never rested.“Steady, doctor, steady!” the captain admonished with a stout arm about him. “There, there now, steady does it!”“You—you’ll have to excuse me, captain, for seeming so unmanly weak,” the doctor proffered shakily. “But I’ve come a long way to see you, and it’s such a hot day—and all. My legs are cramped, too. I’m not what I used to be, captain. None of us are, you know, when we pass the eightieth milestone!”“None of us are what we used to be; right for you, doctor,” the captain answered with deeper meaning than on the surface of his words appeared. “You needn’t apologize for being a bit racked in the hull.Every craft’s seams open up a bit at times. I understand.”He tightened his arm about the shrunken body, and with compassion looked upon the man who once had trod his deck so strongly and so well. “Come along o’ me, now. Up to Snug Haven, doctor. There’s good rocking-chairs on the piazza and a good little drop of something to take the kinks out. The best of timber needs a little caulking now and then. Good Lord above! Dr. Filhiol again—after fifty years!”“Yes, that’s correct—after fifty years,” the doctor answered. “Here, let me look at you a moment!” He peered at Briggs through his heavy-lensed spectacles. “It’s you all right, captain. You’ve changed, of course. You were a bull of a man in those days, and your hair was black as black;—but still you’re the same. I—well, I wish I could say that about myself!”“Nonsense!” the captain boomed, drawing him toward the gate. “Wait till you’ve got a little tonic under your hatches, ’midships. Wait till you’ve spliced the main brace a couple of times!”“The horse!” exclaimed Filhiol, bracing himself with his stout cane. He peered anxiously at the animal. “I hired him at the station, and if he should run away and break anything—”“I’ll have Ezra go aboard that craft and pilot it into port,” the captain reassured him. “We won’t let it go on the rocks. Ezra, he’s my chief cook and bottle-washer. He can handle that cruiser of yours O. K.” The captain’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the dejected animal. “Come along o’ me, doctor. Up to the quarterdeck with you, now!”Half-supported by the captain, old Dr. Filhiol limped up the white-sanded path. As he went, as if in a kind of daze he kept murmuring:“Captain Briggs again! Who’d have thought I could really find him? Half a century—a lifetime—Captain Alpheus Briggs!”“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!” the captain hailed. Carefully he helped the aged doctor up the steps. Very feebly the doctor crept up; his cane clumped hollowly on the boards. Ezra appeared.“Aye, aye, sir?” he queried, a look of wonder on his long, thin face. “What’s orders, sir?”“An old-time friend of mine has come to visit me, Ezra. It’s Dr. Filhiol, that used to sail with me, way back in the ’60’s. I’ve got some of his fancy-work stitches in my leg this minute. A great man he was with the cutting and stitching; none better. I want you men to shake hands.”Ezra advanced, admiration shining from his honest features. Any man who had been a friend of his captain, especially a man who had embroidered his captain’s leg, was already taken to the bosom of his affections.“Doctor,” said the captain, “this is Ezra Trefethen. When you get some of the grub from his galley aboard you, you’ll be ready to ship again for Timbuctoo.”“I’m very glad to know you, Ezra,” the doctor said, putting out his left hand—the right, gnarled and veinous, still gripped his cane. “Yes, yes, we were old-time shipmates, Captain Briggs and I.” His voice broke pipingly, “turning again toward childish treble,” so that pity and sorrow pierced the heart of Alpheus Briggs. “It’s been a sad, long time since we’ve met. And now, can I get you to look out for my horse? If he should run away and hurt anybody, I’m sure that would be very bad.”“Righto!” Ezra answered, his face assuming an air of high seriousness as he observed the aged animal half asleep by the gate, head hanging, spavined kneesbent. “I’ll steer him to safe moorin’s fer you, sir. We got jest the handiest dock in the world fer him, up the back lane. He won’t git away fromme, sir, never you fear.”“Thank you, Ezra,” the doctor answered, much relieved. The captain eased him into a rocker, by the table. “There, that’s better. You see, captain, I’m a bit done up. It always tires me to ride on a train; and then, too, the drive from the station was exhausting. I’m not used to driving, you know, and—”“I know, I know,” Briggs interrupted. “Just sit you there, doctor, and keep right still. I’ll be back in half a twinkling.”And, satisfied that the doctor was all safe and sound, he stumped into the house; while Ezra whistled to the dog and strode away to go aboard the buggy as navigating officer of that sorry equipage.Even before Ezra had safely berthed the horse in the stable up the lane, bordered with sweetbrier and sumacs, Captain Briggs returned with a tray, whereon was a bottle of his very best Jamaica, now kept exclusively for sickness or a cold, or, it might be, for some rare and special guest. The Jamaica was flanked with a little jug of water, with glasses, lemons, sugar. At sight of it the doctor left off brushing his coat, all powdered with the gray rock-dust of the Massachusetts north shore, and smiled with sunken lips.“I couldn’t have prescribed better, myself,” said he.“Correct, sir,” agreed the captain. He set the tray on the piazza table. “I don’t hardly ever touch grog any more. But it’s got its uses, now and then. You need a stiff drink, doctor, and I’m going to join you, for old times’ sake. Surely there’s no sin in that, after half a century that we haven’t laid eyes on one another!”Speaking, he was at work on the manufacture of a brace of drinks.“It’s my rule not to touch it,” he added. “But I’ve got to make an exception to-day. Sugar, sir? Lemon? All O. K., then. Well, doctor, here goes. Here’s to—to—”“To fifty years of life!” the doctor exclaimed. He stood up, raising the glass that Briggs had given him. His eye cleared; for a moment his aged hand held firm.“To fifty years!” the captain echoed. And so the glasses clinked, and so they drank that toast, bottoms-up, those two old men so different in the long ago, so very different now.When Filhiol had resumed his seat, the captain drew a chair up close to him, both facing the sea. Through the doctor’s spent tissues a little warmth began to diffuse itself. But still he found nothing to say; nor, for a minute or two, did the captain. A little silence, strangely awkward, drew itself between them, now that the first stimulus of the meeting had spent itself. Where, indeed, should they begin to knit up so vast a chasm?Each man gazed on the other, trying to find some word that might be fitting, but each muted by the dead weight of half a century. Filhiol, the more resourceful of wit, was first to speak.“Yes, captain, we’ve both changed, though you’ve held your own better than I have. I’ve had a great deal of sickness. And I’m an older man than you, besides. I’ll be eighty-four, sir, if I live till the 16th of next October. A man’s done for at that age. And you’ve had every advantage over me in strength and constitution. I was only an average man, at best. You were a Hercules, and even to-day you look as if you might be a pretty formidable antagonist.In a way, I’ve done better than most, captain. Yes, I’ve done well in my way,” he repeated. “Still, I’m not the man you are to-day. That’s plain to be seen.”“We aren’t going to talk about that, doctor,” the captain interposed, his voice soothing, as he laid a strong hand on the withered one of Filhiol, holding the arm of the rocker. “Let all that pass. I’m laying at anchor in a sheltered harbor here. What breeze bore you news of me? Tell me that, and tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. What kind of a voyage have you made of life? And where are you berthed, and what cargo of this world’s goods have you got in your lockers?”“Tell me about yourself, first, captain. You have a jewel of a place here. What else? Wife, family, all that?”“I’ll tell you, after you’ve answered my questions,” the captain insisted. “You’re aboard my craft, here, sitting on my decks, and so you’ve got to talk first. Come, come, doctor—let’s have your log!”Thus urged, Filhiol began to speak. With some digressions, yet in the main clearly enough and even at times with a certain dry humor that distantly recalled his mental acuity of the long ago, he outlined his life-story.Briefly he told of his retirement from the sea, following a wreck off the coast of Chile, in 1876—a wreck in which he had taken damage from which he had never fully recovered—and narrated his establishing himself in practice in New York. Later he had had to give up the struggle there, and had gone up into a New Hampshire village, where life, though poor, had been comparatively easy.Five years ago he had retired, with a few hundred dollars of pitiful savings, and had bought his way into the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Home, at Salem, Massachusetts.He had never married; had never known the love of a wife, nor the kiss of children. His whole life, the captain could see, had been given unhesitatingly to the service of his fellow-men. And now mankind, when old age had paralyzed his skill, was passing him by, as if he had been no more than a broken-up wreck on the shores of the sea of human existence.Briggs watched the old man with pity that this once trim and active man should have faded to so bloodless a shadow of his former self. Close-shaven the doctor still was, and not without a certain neatness in his dress, despite its poverty; but his bent shoulders, his baggy skin, the blinking of his eyes all told the tragedy of life that fades.With a pathetic moistening of the eyes, the doctor spoke of this inevitable decay; and with a heartfelt wish that death might have laid its summons on him while still in active service, turned to a few words of explanation as to how he had come to have news again of Captain Briggs.Chance had brought him word of the captain. A new attendant at the home had mentioned the name Briggs; and memories had stirred, and questions had very soon brought out the fact that it was really Captain Alpheus Briggs, who now was living at South Endicutt. The attendant had told him something more—and here the doctor hesitated, feeling for words.“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Briggs. “You needn’t be afraid to speak it right out. It’s true, doctor. Ihavechanged. God knows I’ve suffered enough, these long years, trying to forget what kind of a man I started out to be; trying to forget, and not always able to. If repentance and trying to sail a straight course now can wipe out that score, maybeit’s partly gone. I hope so, anyhow; I’ve done my best—no man can do more than that, now, can he?”“I don’t see how he can,” answered the doctor slowly.“He can’t,” said the captain with conviction. “Of course I can’t give back the lives I took, but so far as I’ve been able, I’ve made restitution of all the money I came by wrongfully. What I couldn’t give back directly I’ve handed over to charity.“My undoing,” he went on, then paused, irresolute. “My great misfortune—was—”“Well, what?” asked Filhiol. And through his glasses, which seemed to make his eyes so strangely big and questioning, he peered at Captain Briggs.CHAPTER XVITHE CAPTAIN SPEAKSThe captain clenched his right fist, and turned it to and fro, studying it with rueful attention.“My undoing was the fact that nature gave me brute strength,” said he. “Those were hard, bad days, and I had a hard, bad fist; and together with the hot blood in me, and the Old Nick, things went pretty far. Lots of the things I did were needless, cruel, and beyond all condemnation. If I could only get a little of the guilt and sorrow off my mind, that would be something.”“You’re morbid, captain,” answered Filhiol. “You’ve made all the amends that anybody can. Let’s forget the wickedness, now, and try to remember the better part. You’ve changed, every way. What changed you?”“Just let me have another look through the glass, and I’ll tell you what I can.”Briggs raised his telescope and with it swept the harbor.“H-m!” said he. “Nothing yet.”“Expecting some one, captain?”“My grandson, Hal.”“Grandson! That’s fine! The only one?”“The only one.” Briggs lowered his glass with disappointment. “He’s the sole surviving member of the family, beside myself. All the rest are up there, doctor, in that little cemetery on the hilltop.”Filhiol’s eyes followed the captain’s pointing hand,as it indicated the burial-ground lying under the vagrant cloud-shadows of the fading afternoon, peaceful and “sweet with blade and leaf and blossom.” In a pine against the richly luminous sky a bluejay was scolding. As a contrabass to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer, the booming murmur of the sea trembled across the summer air. The captain went on:“I’ve had great losses, doctor. Bitter and hard to bear. After I fell in love and changed my way of life, and married and settled here, I thought maybe fate would be kind to me, but it wasn’t. One by one my people were taken away from me—my wife, and then my son’s wife, and last of all, my son. Three, I’ve lost, and got one left. Yet it isn’t exactly as if I’d really lost them. I’m not one that can bury love, and forget it. My folks aren’t gone. They’re still with me, in a way.“I don’t see how people can let their kin be buried in strange places and forgotten. I want to keep mine always near me, where I can look out for them, and where I know they won’t feel lonesome. I want them to be right near home, doctor, where it’s all so friendly and familiar. Maybe that’s an old man’s foolish notion, but that’s the way I feel, and that’s the way I’ve had it.”“I—think I understand,” the doctor answered. “Go on.”“They aren’t really gone,” continued Briggs. “They’re still up there, very, very near to me. There’s nothing mournful in the lot; nothing sad or melancholy. No, Ezra and I have made it cheerful, with roses and petunias and zinnias and all kinds of pretty flowers and bushes and vines. You can see some of those vines now on the monument.” He pointed once more. “That one, off to starboard of the bigelm. It’s a beautiful place, really. The breeze is always cool up there, doctor, and the sun stays there longest of any spot round here. It strikes that hill first thing in the morning, and stays till last thing at night. We’ve got a bench there, a real comfortable one I made myself; not one of those hard, iron things they usually put in cemeteries. I’ve given Hal lots of his lessons, reading and navigation, up there. I go up every day a spell, and take the dog with me, and Ezra goes, too; and we carry up flowers and put ’em in jars, and holystone the monument and the headstones, and make it all shipshape. It’s all as bright as a button, and so it’s going to be, as long as I’m on deck.”“I think you’ve got the right idea, captain,” murmured Filhiol. “Death, after all, is quite as natural a process, quite as much to be desired at the proper time, as life. I used to fear it, when I was young; but now I’m old, I’m not at all afraid. Are you?”“Never! If I can only live to see Hal launched and off on his life journey, with colors flying and everything trig aloft and alow, I’ll be right glad to go. That’s what I’ve often told my wife and the others, sitting up there in the sunshine, smoking my pipe. You know, that’s where I go to smoke and think, doctor. Ezra goes too, and sometimes we take the old checkerboard and have a game or so. We take the telescopes and sextant up, too, and make observations there. It kind of scandalizes some of the stiff-necked old Puritans, but Lord love you! I don’t see any harm in it, do you? It all seems nice and sociable; it makes the death of my people seem only a kind of temporary going away, as if they’d gone on a visit, like, and as if Hal and Ezra and I were just waiting for ’em to come back.“I tell you, doctor, it’s as homy and comfortable as anything you ever saw. I’m truly very happy, upthere. Yes, in spite of everything, I reckon I’m a happy man. I’ve got no end of things to be thankful for. I’ve prospered. Best of all,themain thing without which, of course, everything else wouldn’t be worth a tinker’s dam, I’ve got my grandson, Hal!”“I see. Tell me about him, captain.”“I will. He’s been two years in college already, and he’s more than made good. He’s twenty-one, and got shoulders on him like Goliath. You ought to see him at work in the gym he’s fitted up in the barn! Oh, doctor, he’s a wonder! His rating is A1, all through.”“I don’t doubt it. And you say he’s coming home to-day?”“To-day—which makes this day a great, wonderful day for his old grandfather, and that’s the living truth. Yes, he’s coming home for as long as he’ll stay with me, though he’s got some idea of going out with the fishing-fleet, for what he calls local color. He’s quite a fellow to make up stories; says he wants to go to sea a while, so he can do it right. Though, Lord knows, he’s full enough of sea-lore and sea-skill. That’s his grandfather’s blood cropping out again, I suppose, that love for blue water. That’s what you call heredity, isn’t it, doctor?”“H-m! yes, I suppose so,” answered Filhiol, frowning a little. “Though heredity’s peculiar. We don’t always know just what it is, or how it acts. Still, if a well-marked trait comes out in the offspring, we call it heredity. So he’s got your love of the sea, has he?”“He surely has. There’s salt inhisblood, all right enough!”“H-m! You don’t notice any—any other traits in him that—remind you of your earlier days?”“If you mean strength and activity, and the love of hard work, yes. Now see, for example. Anyother boy would have come home by train, and lots of ’em would have traveled in the smoker, with a pack of cigarettes and a magazine. Does Hal come home that way? He does not! He writes me he’s going to work his way up on a schooner, out of Boston, for experience. That’s why I’m keeping my glass on the harbor. He told me the name of the schooner. It’s theSylvia Fletcher. The minute she sticks her jib round Truxbury Light, I’ll catch her.”“Sylvia Fletcher?” asked the doctor. “That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”“What is?”“Why, just look at those initials, captain.Sylvia Fletcher—S.F.”“Well, what about ’em?”“Silver Fleece.That was S.F., too.”The captain turned puzzled eyes on his guest. He passed a hand over his white hair, and pondered a second or two. Then said he:“Thatisodd, doctor, but what about it? There must be hundreds of vessels afloat, with those initials.”“By all means. Of course it can’t mean anything. As you say, S.F. must be common enough initials among ships. So then, Hal’s amphibious already, is he? What’s he going to be? A captain like yourself?”“I’d like him to be. I don’t hardly think so, though,” Briggs answered, a little distraught. Something had singularly disturbed him. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the withered little man in the chair beside him.“It’s going to be his own choice, his profession is,” he went on. “He’s got to settle that for himself. But I know this much—anything he undertakes, he’ll make a success of. He’ll carry it out to the last inch. He’s a wonder, Hal is. Ah, a fellowto warm the heart! He’s none of your mollycoddles, in spite of all the high marks and prizes he’s taken. No, no, nothing at all of the molly-coddle.”The captain’s face lighted up with pride and joy and a profound eagerness.“There isn’t anything that boy can’t do, doctor,” he continued. “Athletics and all that; and he’s gone in for some of the hardest studies, too, and beaten men that don’t do anything but get round-shouldered over books. He’s taken work outside the regular course—strange Eastern languages, doctor. I hear there neverwasa boy like Hal. You don’t wonder I’ve been sitting here all afternoon with my old spy-glass, do you?”“Indeed I don’t,” Filhiol answered, a note of envy in his feeble voice. “You’ve had your troubles, just as we all have, but you’ve got something still to live for, and that’s more thanIcan say. You’ve got everything, everything! It never worked out on you, after all, the curse—the black curse that was put on you fifty years ago. It was all nonsense, of course, and I knew it wouldn’t. All that stuff is pure superstition and humbug—”“Of course! Why, you don’t believe such rubbish! I’ve lived that all down half a lifetime ago. Two or three times, when death took away those I loved, I thought maybe the curse of old Dengan Jouga was really striking me, but it wasn’t. For that curse saideverythingI loved would be taken away, and there was always something left to live for; and even when I’d been as hard hit as a man ever was, almost, after a while I could get my bearings again and make sail and keep along on my course. Because, you see, I always had Hal to love and pin my hopes to. I’ve got him now. He’s all I’ve got—but, God! how wonderfully much he is!”“Yes, yes, you’re quite right,” the doctor answered. “He must be a splendid chap, all round. What does he look like?”“I’m going to answer you in a peculiar way,” said Briggs. “That boy, sir, that grandson of mine, he’s the living spit and image of what I was, fifty-five or sixty years ago!”“Eh, what? What’s that you say?”“It’s wonderful, I tell you, to see the resemblance. His father—my son—didn’t show it at all. A fine, handsome man he was, doctor, and a good man, too. Everybody liked him; he never did a bad thing in his life. He sailed a straight course, and went under his own canvas, all the way; and I loved him for an honest, upright man. But he wasn’t brilliant. He never set the world on fire. He was just a plain, good, average man.“But, Hal! Hal—ah, now thereissomething for you! He’s got all the physique I ever had, at my best, and he’s got a hundred per cent. more brains than ever I had. It’s as if I could see myself, my youth and strength, rise up out of the grave of the past, all shining and splendid, doctor, and live again and make my soul sing with the morning stars, for gladness, like it says in the Bible or somewhere, sir!”The old captain, quite breathless with his unaccustomed eloquence, pulling out a huge handkerchief, wiped his forehead where the sweat had started. He winked eyes wet with sudden moisture. Filhiol peered at him with a strange, brooding expression.“You say he’s just like you, captain?” asked he. “He’s just the way you used to be, in the old days?”“Why—no, not in all ways. God forbid! But in size and strength he’s the equal of me at my best, or even goes ahead of that. And as I’ve told you before, he’s got no end more brains than ever I had.”“How’s the boy’s temper?”“Temper?”“Ever have any violent spells?” The doctor seemed as if diagnosing a case. Briggs looked at him, none too well pleased.“Why—no. Not as I know of,” he answered, though without any emphatic denial. “Of course all boys sometimes slip their anchors, and run foul of whatever’s in the way. That’s natural for young blood. I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for a boy that had no guts, would you?”“No, no. Of course not. It’s natural for—”“Ship ahoy!” the captain joyfully hailed. His keen old eye had just caught sight of something, far in the offing, which had brought the glass to his eye in a second. “There she is, doctor! There’s theSylvia Fletcher, sure as guns!”“He’s coming, then?”“Almost here! See, right to south’ard o’ the light? That’s theSylvia, and my boy’s aboard her. She’ll be at Hadlock’s Wharf in half an hour. He’s almost home. Hal’s almost home again!”The captain stood up and faced the doctor, radiant. Joy, pride, anticipation beamed from his weather-beaten old face; his eyes sparkled, blue, with pure happiness. He said:“Well, I’m going down to meet him. Do you want to go, too, doctor?”“How far is it?”“Mile, or a little better. I’ll make it, easy, afore theSylviagets in. I’ll be on the wharf, all right, to welcome Hal.”“I—I think I’ll stay here, captain,” the other answered. “I’m lame, you know. I couldn’t walk that far.”“How about the horse? Ezra’ll hitch up for you.”“No, no. It tires me to ride. I’m not used to so much excitement and activity. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just sit here and wait. Give me a book, or something, and I’ll wait for you both.”“All right, doctor, suit yourself,” the captain assented. The relief in his voice was not to be concealed. Despite his most friendly hospitality, something in the doctor’s attitude and speech had laid a chill upon his heart. The prospect of getting away from the old man and of meeting Hal quite alone, allured him. “I’ll give you books enough for a week, or anything you like. And here in this drawer,” as he opened one in the table, “you’ll find a box of the best Havanas.”“No, no, I’ve given up smoking, long ago,” the doctor smiled, thinly. “My heart wouldn’t stand it. But thank you, just the same.”The figure of Ezra loomed in the doorway, and, followed by the dog, came out upon the porch.“Sighted him, cap’n?” asked the old man joyfully. “I heered you hailin’. That’s him, sure?”“There’s theSylvia Fletcher,” Briggs made answer. “You’ll see Hal afore sundown.”“Gosh, ain’t that great, though?” grinned Ezra, his leathery face breaking into a thousand wrinkles. “If I’d of went an’ made that there cake, an’ fixed that lamb, an’ he hadn’t of made port—”“Well, it’s all right, Ezra. Now I’m off. Come, Ruddy,” he summoned the Airedale. “Master’s coming!”As the dog got up, the doctor painfully rose from his chair. Cane in hand, he limped along the porch.“It’s just a trifle chilly out here, captain,” said he, shivering slightly. “May I go inside?”“Don’t ask, doctor. Snug Haven’s yours, all yours, as long as you want it. Make yourself at home!Books, papers, everything in the library—my cabin, I call it. And if you want, Ezra’ll start a fire for you in the grate, and get you tea or coffee—”“No, no, thank you. My nerves won’t stand them. But a little warm milk and a fire will do me a world of good.”“Ezra’ll mix you an egg-nog that will make you feel like a fighting-cock. Now I must be going. Hal mustn’t come ashore and not find me waiting. Come, Ruddy! Good-by, doctor. Good-by, Ezra; so long!”“Tell Master Hal about the plum-cake an’ the lamb!” called the faithful one, as Captain Briggs, a brave and sturdy figure in his brass-buttoned coat of blue and his gold-laced cap tramped down the sandy walk. “Don’t fergit to tell him I got it special!”At the gate, Briggs waved a cheery hand. The doctor, peering after him with strange, sad eyes, shook a boding head. He stood leaning on his stick, till Briggs had skirted the box-hedge and disappeared around the turn by the smithy. Then, shivering again—despite the brooding warmth of the June afternoon—he turned and followed Ezra into the house.“After fifty years,” he murmured, as he went. “I wonder if it could be—after fifty years?”CHAPTER XVIIVISIONS OF THE PASTComfortably installed in a huge easy-chair beside the freshly built fire in the “cabin” of Snug Haven and with one of Ezra Trefethen’s most artful egg-nogs within easy reach, the aged doctor leaned back, and sighed deeply.“Maybe the captain’s right,” said he. “Maybe the boy’s all right. It’s possible; but I don’t know, I don’t know.”Blinking, his eyes wandered about the room, which opened off from an old-fashioned hallway lighted by glass panels at the sides of the front door, and by a leaded fanlight over the lintel; a hallway with a curved stairway that would have delighted the heart of any antiquarian. The cabin itself showed by its construction and furnishing that the captain had spent a great deal of thought and time and money. At first glance, save that the fireplace was an incongruous note, one would have thought one’s self aboard ship, so closely had the nautical idea been carried out.To begin with, the windows at the side, which opened out upon the orchard, were circular and rimmed with shining brass, and had thick panes inward-swinging like ships’ portholes. A polished fir column, set a trifle on a slant, rose from floor to ceiling, which was supported on white beams, the form and curve of which exactly imitated marine architecture. This column measured no less than a foot and a half in diameter, and gave precisely the impression of a ship’smast. On it hung a chronometer, boxed in a case of polished mahogany, itself the work of the captain’s own hand.All the lamps were hung in gimbals, as if the good captain expected Snug Haven at any moment to set sail and go pitching away over storm-tossed seas. The green-covered table bore a miscellany of nautical almanacs; it accommodated, also, a variety of charts, maps and meteorological reports. The captain’s own chair at that table was a true swinging-chair, screwed to the floor; and this floor, you understand, was uncarpeted, so that the holystoned planking shone in immaculate cleanliness as the declining sun through the portholes painted long, reddish stripes across it. Brass instruments lay on the table, and from them the sun flecked little high-lights against the clean, white paint of the cabin.At the left of the table stood a binnacle, with compass and all; at the right, a four-foot globe, its surface scored with numerous names, dates and memoranda, carefully written in red ink. The captain’s log-book, open on the table, also showed writing in red. No ordinary diary sufficed for Alpheus Briggs; no, he would have a regulation ship’s log to keep the record of his daily life, or he would have no record at all.In a rack at one side rested two bright telescopes, with an empty place for the glass now out on the piazza. Beneath this rack a sextant hung; and at one side the daily government weather-report was affixed to a white-painted board.A sofa-locker, quite like a ship’s berth, still showed the impress of the captain’s body, where he had taken his after-dinner nap. One almost thought to hear the chanting of sea-winds in cordage, aloft, and the creak and give of seasoned timbers. A curious, a wonderful room, indeed! And as Dr. Filhiol studied it, his faceexpressed a kind of yearning eagerness; for to his fading life this connotation of the other, braver days brought back memories of things that once had been, that now could never be again.Yet, analyzing everything, he put away these thoughts. Many sad years had broken the spirit in him and turned his thoughts to the worse aspects of everything. He shook his head again dubiously, and his thin lips formed the words:“This is very, very strange. This is some form of mental aberration, surely. No man wholly sane would build and furnish any such grotesque place. It’s worse, worse than I thought.”Contemplatively he sipped the egg-nog and continued his observations, while from the kitchen—no, the galley—sounded a clink of coppers, mingled with the piping song of old Ezra, interminably discoursing on the life and adventures of the unfortunate Reuben Ranzo, whose chantey is beknown to all seafaring men. The doctor’s eyes, wandering to the wall nearest him, now perceived a glass-fronted cabinet, filled with a most extraordinaryomnium gatherumof curios.Corals, sponges, coir, nuts, pebbles and dried fruits, strange puffy and spiny fishes, specimens in alcohol, a thousand and one oddments jostled each other on the shelves.Nor was this all to excite the doctor’s wonder. For hard by the cabinet he now perceived the door of a safe, set into the wall, its combination flush with the white boards.“The captain can’t be so foolish as to keep his money in his house,” thought Filhiol. “Not when there are banks that offer absolute security. But then, with a man like Captain Briggs, anything seems possible.”He drank a little more of Ezra’s excellent concoction, and turned his attention to the one remainingside of the cabin, almost filled by the huge-throated fireplace and by the cobbled chimney.“More junk!” said Dr. Filhiol unsympathetically.Against the cobble-stones, suspended from hooks screwed into the cement, hung a regular arsenal of weapons: yataghans, scimitars, sabers and muskets—two of them rare Arabian specimens with long barrels and silver-chased stocks. Pistols there were, some of antique patterns bespeaking capture or purchase from half-civilized peoples. Daggers and stilettos had been worked into a kind of rough pattern. A bow and arrows, a “Penang lawyer,” and a couple of boomerangs were interspersed between some knobkerries from Australia, and a few shovel-headed spears and African pigmies’ blow-guns. All the weapons showed signs of wear or rust. In every probability, all had taken human life.Odd, was it not, that the captain, now so mild a man of peace, should have maintained so grim a reliquary? But, perhaps (the doctor thought), Briggs had preserved it as a kind of strange, contrasting reminder of his other days, just as more than one reformed drunkard has been known to keep the favorite little brown jug that formerly was his undoing.Filhiol, however, very deeply disapproved of this collection. Old age and infirmity had by no means rendered his disposition more suave. He muttered words of condemnation, drank off a little more of the egg-nog, and once again fell to studying the collection. And suddenly his attention concentrated, fixing itself with particular intentness on a certain blade that until then had escaped his scrutiny.This blade, a Malay kris with a beautifully carved lotus-bud on the handle, seemed to occupy a sort of central post of honor, toward which the other knives converged. The doctor adjusted his spectacles andstudied it for a long minute, as if trying to bring back some recollections not quite clear. Then he arose lamely, and squinted up at the blade.“That’s a kris,” said he slowly. “A Malay kris. Good Lord, it couldn’t be—thekris, could it?”He remained a little while, observing the weapon. The sunlight, ever growing redder as the sun sank over Croft Hill and the ancient cemetery, flicked lights from the brass instruments on the table, and for a moment seemed to crimson the vicious, wavy blade of steel. The doctor raised a lean hand to touch the kris, then drew back.“Better not,” said he. “That’s the one, all right enough. There’s the groove, the poison groove. There couldn’t be two exactly alike. I remember that groove especially. And curaré lasts for years; it’s just as fatal now, as when it was first put on. That kris is mighty good to let alone!”A dark, rusty stain on the blade set him shuddering. Blood, was it—blood, from the long ago? Who could say? The kris evoked powerful memories. The battle of Motomolo Strait rose up before him. The smoke from the fire in the grate seemed, all at once, that of the burning proa, drifting over the opalescent waters of that distant sea. The illusion was extraordinary. Dr. Filhiol closed his eyes, held tightly to the edge of the mantel, and with dilated nostrils sniffed the smoke. He remained there, transfixed with poignant emotions, trembling, afraid.It seemed to him as if the shadowy hand of some malignantjinneehad reached out of the bleeding past, and had laid hold on him—a hand that seized and shook his heart with an envenomed, bony clutch.“God!” he murmured. “What a time that was—what a ghastly, terrible time!”He tried to shake off this obsessing vision, openedhis eyes, and sank down into the easy-chair. Unnerved, shaking, he struck the glass still holding some of the egg-nog, and knocked it to the floor.The crash of the breaking glass startled him as if it had been the crack of a rifle. Quivering, he stared down at the liquor, spreading over the holystoned floor. Upon it the red sunlight gleamed; and in a flash he beheld once more the deck of the oldSilver Fleece, smeared and spotted with blood.Back he shrank, with extended hands, superstitious fear at his heart. Something nameless, cold and terrible fingered at the latchets of his soul. It was all irrational enough, foolish enough; but still it caught him in its grip, that perfectly unreasoning, heart-clutching fear.Weakly he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes. With bloodless lips he quavered:“After fifty years, my God! After fifty years!”

CHAPTER XIVA VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGOAs the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in the sunshine, screwing up his leathery, shrewd, humorous face, and from under a thin palm squinting across the harbor.“Ain’t sighted him yit, cap’n?” demanded he, in a cracked voice. “It’s past six bells o’ the aft’noon watch. You’d oughta be sightin’ him pretty soon, now, seems like.”“I think so, too,” the captain answered. “He wrote they’d leave Boston this morning early. Seems as if they should have made Endicutt Harbor by now.”“Right, cap’n. But don’t you worry none. They can’t of fell foul o’ nothin’. Master Hall, he’s an A1 man. He’ll make port afore night, cap’n, never you fear. He’sgotta! Ain’t I got a leg o’ lamb on to roast, an’ ain’t I made his favorite plum-cake with butter-an’-sugar sauce? Aye, he’ll tie up at Snug Haven afore sundown, never you fear!”The captain only grunted; and old Trefethen, after careful but fruitless examination of the harbor, went back into the house again, very much like those figures on toy barometers that come out in good weather and retire in bad.Left alone once more, the captain drew deeply at his pipe and glanced with satisfaction at his cozy domain. A pleasant place it was, indeed, and trimly eloquent of the hand of an old seafaring man. Theprecision wherewith the hedge was cut, the whitewashed spotlessness of the front gate—a gate on the “port” post of which was fastened a red ship’s-lantern, with a green one on the “starboard”—and even the sanded walks, edged with conch-shells, all spelled “shipshape.”Trailing woodbine covered the fences to right and left, and along these fences grew thrifty berry bushes. Apple-trees, whereon green buttons of fruit had already set, shaded the lawn, interspersed with flower-beds edged with whitewashed rocks—flower-beds bright with hollyhocks, peonies and poppies.Back of the house a vegetable-garden gave promise of great increase; and in the hen-yard White Leghorns and Buff Orpingtons pursued the vocations of all well-disposed poultry. A Holstein cow, knee-deep in daisies on the gentle hill-slope behind Snug Haven, formed part of the household; and last of all came the bees, denizens of six hives not far from the elm-shaded well.But the captain’s special pride centered in the gleaming white flagpole, planted midway of the front lawn—a pole from which flew the Stars and Stripes, together with a big blue house-flag bearing a huge “B” of spotless white. This flag and a little cannon of gleaming brass, from which on every holiday the captain fired a salute, formed his chief treasures; by which token you shall read the heart of the old man, and see that, for all his faring up and down the world, a certain curious simplicity had at the end developed itself in him.Thus that June afternoon, sitting in state amid his possessions, the captain waited. Waited, dressed in his very best, for the homecoming of the boy on whom was concentrated all the affection of a nature now powerful to love, as in the old and evil days ithad been violent to hate. His face, as he sat there, was virile, patriarchal, dignified with that calm nobility of days when old age is “frosty but kindly.” With placid interest he watched a robin on the lawn, and listened to the chickadees’ piping monotone in the huge maple by the gate. Those notes seemed to blend with the metallic music of hammer and anvil somewhere down the village street.Tunk-tunk! Clink-clank-clink!sang the hammer from the shop of Peter Trumett, as Peter forged new links for the anchor-chain of theLucy Bell, now in port for repairs. Then a voice, greeting the captain from the rock-nubbled roadway, drew the old man’s gaze.“How do, cap’n?” called a man from the top of a slow-moving load of kelp. “I’m goin’ up-along. Anythin’ I kin do fer you?”“Nothing, Jacob,” answered Briggs. “Thank you, just the same. Oh, Jacob! Wait a minute!”“Hoa,s-h-h-h-h!” commanded the kelp-gatherer. “What is it, cap’n?”The old man arose, placed his telescope carefully in the rocking-chair, and slowly walked down toward the gate. The Airedale followed close. The dog’s rusty-brown muzzle touched the captain’s hand. Briggs fondled the animal and smiling said:“I’m not going to leave you, Ruddy. None of us can go anywhere to-day. Hal’s coming home. Know that? We mustn’t be away when he comes!” The captain advanced once more. Half-way down the walk he paused, picked up a snail that had crawled out upon the distressful sand. He dropped the snail into the sheltering grass and went forward again. At the gate he stopped, leaned his crossed arms on the clean top-board, and for a moment peered at Jacob perched on the load of kelp that overflowed the time-worn, two-wheeled cart.“What is it, cap’n?” Jacob queried. “Somethin’ I kin do fer you?”“No, nothing you can do for me, but something you can do for Uncle Everett and for yourself, if you will.”At sound of that name the kelp-gatherer stiffened with sudden resentment.“Nothin’ fer him, cap’n!” he ejaculated. “He’s been accommodatin’ as a hog on ice to me, an’ the case is goin’ through. Nothin’ at all fer that damned—”“Wait! Hold on, Jacob!” the old man pleaded, raising his hand. “You can’t gain anything by violence and hate. I know you think he’s injured you grievously. He thinks the same of you. In his heart I know he’s sorry. You and he were friends for thirty years till this petty little quarrel came up. Jacob, is the whole boat worth cutting the cables of good understanding and letting yourselves drift on the reefs of hate? Is it, now?”“You been talkin’ with him ’bout me?” demanded Jacob irefully.“Well, maybe I have said a few words to Uncle Everett,” admitted the captain. “Uncle’s willing to go half-way to meet you.”“He’ll meet me nowheres ’cept in the court-room down to ’Sconset!” retorted Jacob with heat. “He done me a smart trick that time. I’ll rimrackhim!”“We’ve all done smart tricks one time or another,” soothed the old captain. The sun through the arching elms flecked his white hair with moving bits of light; it narrowed the keen, earnest eyes of blue. “That’s human. It’s better than human to be sorry and to make peace with your neighbor. Uncle Everett’s not a bad man at heart, any more than you are. Half a dozen words from you would caulk upthe leaking hull of your friendship. You’re not going to go on hating uncle, are you, when youcouldshake hands with him and be friends?”“Oh, ain’t I, huh?” demanded Jacob. “Why ain’t I?”“Because you’re a man and can think!” the captain smiled. “Harkness and Bill Dodge were bitter as gall six months ago, and Giles was ready to cut Burnett’s heart out, but I found they were human, after all.”“Yes, but they ain’tme!”“Are you less a man than they were?”“H-m! H-m!” grunted Jacob, floored. “I—I reckon not. Why?”“I’ve got nothing more to say for now,” the captain answered. “Good-by, Jacob!”The kelp-gatherer pushed back his straw hat, scratched his head, spat, and then broke out:“Mebbe it’d be cheaper, after all, to settle out o’ court rather ’n’ to law uncle. But shakin’ hands, an’ bein’ neighbors with that—that—”“Good day, Jacob!” the captain repeated. “One thing at a time. And if you come up-along to-morrow, lay alongside, and have another gam with me, will you?”To this Jacob made no answer, but slapped his reins on the lean withers of his horse. Creakingly the load of seaweed moved away, with Jacob atop, rather dazed. The captain remained there at the gate, peering after him with a smile, kindly yet shrewd.“Just like the others,” he murmured. “Can’t make port all on one tack. Got to watch the wind, and wear about and make it when you can. But if I know human nature, a month from to-day Jacob Plummer will be smoking his pipe down at Uncle Everett’s sail-loft.”The sound of piping voices, beyond the blacksmith-shop, drew the old captain’s attention thither. He assumed a certain expectancy. Into the pocket of his square-cut blue jacket he slid a hand. Along the street he peered—the narrow, rambling street sheltered by great elms through which, here and there, a glint of sunlit harbor shimmered blue.He had not long to wait. Round the bend by the smithy two or three children appeared; and after these came others, with a bright-haired girl of twenty or thereabout. The children had school-bags or bundles of books tightly strapped. Keeping pace with the teacher a little girl on either side held her hands. You could not fail to see the teacher’s smile, as wholesome, fresh and winning as that June day itself.At sight of the captain the boys in the group set up a joyful shout and some broke into a run.“Hey, lookit! There’s cap’n!” rose exultant cries. “There’s Cap’n Briggs!”Then the little girls came running, too; and all the children captured him by storm. Excited, the Airedale set up a clamorous barking.The riot ended only when the captain had been despoiled of the peppermints he had provided for such contingencies. Meanwhile the teacher, as trimly pretty a figure as you could meet in many a day’s journeying, was standing by the gate, and with a little heightened flush of color was casting a look or two, as of expectancy, up at Snug Haven.The old captain, smiling, shook his head.“Not yet, Laura,” he whispered. “He’ll be here before night, though. You’re going to let me keep him a few minutes, aren’t you, before taking him away from me?”She found no answer. Something about the captain’s smile seemed to disconcert her. A warm flushcrept from her throat to her thickly coiled, lustrous hair. Then she passed on, down the shaded street; and as the captain peered after her, still surrounded by the children, a little moisture blurred his eyes.“God has been very good to me in spite of all!” he murmured. “Very, very good, and ‘the best is yet to be’!”He turned and was about to start back toward the house when thecloppa-cloppa-clopof hoofs along the street arrested his attention. Coming into view, past Laura and her group of scholars, an old-fashioned buggy, drawn by a horse of ripe years, was bearing down toward Snug Haven.In the buggy sat an old, old man, wizen and bent. With an effort he reined in the aged horse. The captain heard his cracked tones on the still afternoon air:“Pardon me, but can you tell me where Captain Briggs lives—Captain Alpheus Briggs?”A babel of childish voices and the pointing of numerous fingers obliterated any information Laura tried to give. The old man, with thanks, clucked to his horse, and so the buggy came along once more to the front gate of Snug Haven. There it stopped.Out of it bent a feeble, shrunken figure, with flaccid skin on deep-lined face, with blinking eyes behind big spectacles.“Is that you, captain?” asked a shaking voice that pierced to the captain’s heart with a stab of poignant recollection. “Oh, Captain—Captain Briggs—is that you?”The captain, turning pale, steadied himself by gripping at the whitewashed gate. For a moment his staring eyes met the eyes of the old, withered man in the buggy. Then, in strange, husky tones he cried:“God above! It—it can’t be you, doctor? It can’t be—Dr. Filhiol?”

A VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGO

As the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in the sunshine, screwing up his leathery, shrewd, humorous face, and from under a thin palm squinting across the harbor.

“Ain’t sighted him yit, cap’n?” demanded he, in a cracked voice. “It’s past six bells o’ the aft’noon watch. You’d oughta be sightin’ him pretty soon, now, seems like.”

“I think so, too,” the captain answered. “He wrote they’d leave Boston this morning early. Seems as if they should have made Endicutt Harbor by now.”

“Right, cap’n. But don’t you worry none. They can’t of fell foul o’ nothin’. Master Hall, he’s an A1 man. He’ll make port afore night, cap’n, never you fear. He’sgotta! Ain’t I got a leg o’ lamb on to roast, an’ ain’t I made his favorite plum-cake with butter-an’-sugar sauce? Aye, he’ll tie up at Snug Haven afore sundown, never you fear!”

The captain only grunted; and old Trefethen, after careful but fruitless examination of the harbor, went back into the house again, very much like those figures on toy barometers that come out in good weather and retire in bad.

Left alone once more, the captain drew deeply at his pipe and glanced with satisfaction at his cozy domain. A pleasant place it was, indeed, and trimly eloquent of the hand of an old seafaring man. Theprecision wherewith the hedge was cut, the whitewashed spotlessness of the front gate—a gate on the “port” post of which was fastened a red ship’s-lantern, with a green one on the “starboard”—and even the sanded walks, edged with conch-shells, all spelled “shipshape.”

Trailing woodbine covered the fences to right and left, and along these fences grew thrifty berry bushes. Apple-trees, whereon green buttons of fruit had already set, shaded the lawn, interspersed with flower-beds edged with whitewashed rocks—flower-beds bright with hollyhocks, peonies and poppies.

Back of the house a vegetable-garden gave promise of great increase; and in the hen-yard White Leghorns and Buff Orpingtons pursued the vocations of all well-disposed poultry. A Holstein cow, knee-deep in daisies on the gentle hill-slope behind Snug Haven, formed part of the household; and last of all came the bees, denizens of six hives not far from the elm-shaded well.

But the captain’s special pride centered in the gleaming white flagpole, planted midway of the front lawn—a pole from which flew the Stars and Stripes, together with a big blue house-flag bearing a huge “B” of spotless white. This flag and a little cannon of gleaming brass, from which on every holiday the captain fired a salute, formed his chief treasures; by which token you shall read the heart of the old man, and see that, for all his faring up and down the world, a certain curious simplicity had at the end developed itself in him.

Thus that June afternoon, sitting in state amid his possessions, the captain waited. Waited, dressed in his very best, for the homecoming of the boy on whom was concentrated all the affection of a nature now powerful to love, as in the old and evil days ithad been violent to hate. His face, as he sat there, was virile, patriarchal, dignified with that calm nobility of days when old age is “frosty but kindly.” With placid interest he watched a robin on the lawn, and listened to the chickadees’ piping monotone in the huge maple by the gate. Those notes seemed to blend with the metallic music of hammer and anvil somewhere down the village street.Tunk-tunk! Clink-clank-clink!sang the hammer from the shop of Peter Trumett, as Peter forged new links for the anchor-chain of theLucy Bell, now in port for repairs. Then a voice, greeting the captain from the rock-nubbled roadway, drew the old man’s gaze.

“How do, cap’n?” called a man from the top of a slow-moving load of kelp. “I’m goin’ up-along. Anythin’ I kin do fer you?”

“Nothing, Jacob,” answered Briggs. “Thank you, just the same. Oh, Jacob! Wait a minute!”

“Hoa,s-h-h-h-h!” commanded the kelp-gatherer. “What is it, cap’n?”

The old man arose, placed his telescope carefully in the rocking-chair, and slowly walked down toward the gate. The Airedale followed close. The dog’s rusty-brown muzzle touched the captain’s hand. Briggs fondled the animal and smiling said:

“I’m not going to leave you, Ruddy. None of us can go anywhere to-day. Hal’s coming home. Know that? We mustn’t be away when he comes!” The captain advanced once more. Half-way down the walk he paused, picked up a snail that had crawled out upon the distressful sand. He dropped the snail into the sheltering grass and went forward again. At the gate he stopped, leaned his crossed arms on the clean top-board, and for a moment peered at Jacob perched on the load of kelp that overflowed the time-worn, two-wheeled cart.

“What is it, cap’n?” Jacob queried. “Somethin’ I kin do fer you?”

“No, nothing you can do for me, but something you can do for Uncle Everett and for yourself, if you will.”

At sound of that name the kelp-gatherer stiffened with sudden resentment.

“Nothin’ fer him, cap’n!” he ejaculated. “He’s been accommodatin’ as a hog on ice to me, an’ the case is goin’ through. Nothin’ at all fer that damned—”

“Wait! Hold on, Jacob!” the old man pleaded, raising his hand. “You can’t gain anything by violence and hate. I know you think he’s injured you grievously. He thinks the same of you. In his heart I know he’s sorry. You and he were friends for thirty years till this petty little quarrel came up. Jacob, is the whole boat worth cutting the cables of good understanding and letting yourselves drift on the reefs of hate? Is it, now?”

“You been talkin’ with him ’bout me?” demanded Jacob irefully.

“Well, maybe I have said a few words to Uncle Everett,” admitted the captain. “Uncle’s willing to go half-way to meet you.”

“He’ll meet me nowheres ’cept in the court-room down to ’Sconset!” retorted Jacob with heat. “He done me a smart trick that time. I’ll rimrackhim!”

“We’ve all done smart tricks one time or another,” soothed the old captain. The sun through the arching elms flecked his white hair with moving bits of light; it narrowed the keen, earnest eyes of blue. “That’s human. It’s better than human to be sorry and to make peace with your neighbor. Uncle Everett’s not a bad man at heart, any more than you are. Half a dozen words from you would caulk upthe leaking hull of your friendship. You’re not going to go on hating uncle, are you, when youcouldshake hands with him and be friends?”

“Oh, ain’t I, huh?” demanded Jacob. “Why ain’t I?”

“Because you’re a man and can think!” the captain smiled. “Harkness and Bill Dodge were bitter as gall six months ago, and Giles was ready to cut Burnett’s heart out, but I found they were human, after all.”

“Yes, but they ain’tme!”

“Are you less a man than they were?”

“H-m! H-m!” grunted Jacob, floored. “I—I reckon not. Why?”

“I’ve got nothing more to say for now,” the captain answered. “Good-by, Jacob!”

The kelp-gatherer pushed back his straw hat, scratched his head, spat, and then broke out:

“Mebbe it’d be cheaper, after all, to settle out o’ court rather ’n’ to law uncle. But shakin’ hands, an’ bein’ neighbors with that—that—”

“Good day, Jacob!” the captain repeated. “One thing at a time. And if you come up-along to-morrow, lay alongside, and have another gam with me, will you?”

To this Jacob made no answer, but slapped his reins on the lean withers of his horse. Creakingly the load of seaweed moved away, with Jacob atop, rather dazed. The captain remained there at the gate, peering after him with a smile, kindly yet shrewd.

“Just like the others,” he murmured. “Can’t make port all on one tack. Got to watch the wind, and wear about and make it when you can. But if I know human nature, a month from to-day Jacob Plummer will be smoking his pipe down at Uncle Everett’s sail-loft.”

The sound of piping voices, beyond the blacksmith-shop, drew the old captain’s attention thither. He assumed a certain expectancy. Into the pocket of his square-cut blue jacket he slid a hand. Along the street he peered—the narrow, rambling street sheltered by great elms through which, here and there, a glint of sunlit harbor shimmered blue.

He had not long to wait. Round the bend by the smithy two or three children appeared; and after these came others, with a bright-haired girl of twenty or thereabout. The children had school-bags or bundles of books tightly strapped. Keeping pace with the teacher a little girl on either side held her hands. You could not fail to see the teacher’s smile, as wholesome, fresh and winning as that June day itself.

At sight of the captain the boys in the group set up a joyful shout and some broke into a run.

“Hey, lookit! There’s cap’n!” rose exultant cries. “There’s Cap’n Briggs!”

Then the little girls came running, too; and all the children captured him by storm. Excited, the Airedale set up a clamorous barking.

The riot ended only when the captain had been despoiled of the peppermints he had provided for such contingencies. Meanwhile the teacher, as trimly pretty a figure as you could meet in many a day’s journeying, was standing by the gate, and with a little heightened flush of color was casting a look or two, as of expectancy, up at Snug Haven.

The old captain, smiling, shook his head.

“Not yet, Laura,” he whispered. “He’ll be here before night, though. You’re going to let me keep him a few minutes, aren’t you, before taking him away from me?”

She found no answer. Something about the captain’s smile seemed to disconcert her. A warm flushcrept from her throat to her thickly coiled, lustrous hair. Then she passed on, down the shaded street; and as the captain peered after her, still surrounded by the children, a little moisture blurred his eyes.

“God has been very good to me in spite of all!” he murmured. “Very, very good, and ‘the best is yet to be’!”

He turned and was about to start back toward the house when thecloppa-cloppa-clopof hoofs along the street arrested his attention. Coming into view, past Laura and her group of scholars, an old-fashioned buggy, drawn by a horse of ripe years, was bearing down toward Snug Haven.

In the buggy sat an old, old man, wizen and bent. With an effort he reined in the aged horse. The captain heard his cracked tones on the still afternoon air:

“Pardon me, but can you tell me where Captain Briggs lives—Captain Alpheus Briggs?”

A babel of childish voices and the pointing of numerous fingers obliterated any information Laura tried to give. The old man, with thanks, clucked to his horse, and so the buggy came along once more to the front gate of Snug Haven. There it stopped.

Out of it bent a feeble, shrunken figure, with flaccid skin on deep-lined face, with blinking eyes behind big spectacles.

“Is that you, captain?” asked a shaking voice that pierced to the captain’s heart with a stab of poignant recollection. “Oh, Captain—Captain Briggs—is that you?”

The captain, turning pale, steadied himself by gripping at the whitewashed gate. For a moment his staring eyes met the eyes of the old, withered man in the buggy. Then, in strange, husky tones he cried:

“God above! It—it can’t be you, doctor? It can’t be—Dr. Filhiol?”

CHAPTER XVTWO OLD MEN“Yes, yes, it’s Dr. Filhiol!” the little old man made answer. “I’m Filhiol. And you—Yes, I’d know you anywhere. Captain Alpheus Briggs, so help me!”He took up a heavy walking-stick, and started to clamber down out of the buggy. Captain Briggs, flinging open the gate, reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing in the road, for the doctor’s feeble strength was all exhausted with the long journey he had made to South Endicutt, with the drive from the station five miles away, and with the nervous shock of once more seeing a man on whom, in fifty years, his eyes had never rested.“Steady, doctor, steady!” the captain admonished with a stout arm about him. “There, there now, steady does it!”“You—you’ll have to excuse me, captain, for seeming so unmanly weak,” the doctor proffered shakily. “But I’ve come a long way to see you, and it’s such a hot day—and all. My legs are cramped, too. I’m not what I used to be, captain. None of us are, you know, when we pass the eightieth milestone!”“None of us are what we used to be; right for you, doctor,” the captain answered with deeper meaning than on the surface of his words appeared. “You needn’t apologize for being a bit racked in the hull.Every craft’s seams open up a bit at times. I understand.”He tightened his arm about the shrunken body, and with compassion looked upon the man who once had trod his deck so strongly and so well. “Come along o’ me, now. Up to Snug Haven, doctor. There’s good rocking-chairs on the piazza and a good little drop of something to take the kinks out. The best of timber needs a little caulking now and then. Good Lord above! Dr. Filhiol again—after fifty years!”“Yes, that’s correct—after fifty years,” the doctor answered. “Here, let me look at you a moment!” He peered at Briggs through his heavy-lensed spectacles. “It’s you all right, captain. You’ve changed, of course. You were a bull of a man in those days, and your hair was black as black;—but still you’re the same. I—well, I wish I could say that about myself!”“Nonsense!” the captain boomed, drawing him toward the gate. “Wait till you’ve got a little tonic under your hatches, ’midships. Wait till you’ve spliced the main brace a couple of times!”“The horse!” exclaimed Filhiol, bracing himself with his stout cane. He peered anxiously at the animal. “I hired him at the station, and if he should run away and break anything—”“I’ll have Ezra go aboard that craft and pilot it into port,” the captain reassured him. “We won’t let it go on the rocks. Ezra, he’s my chief cook and bottle-washer. He can handle that cruiser of yours O. K.” The captain’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the dejected animal. “Come along o’ me, doctor. Up to the quarterdeck with you, now!”Half-supported by the captain, old Dr. Filhiol limped up the white-sanded path. As he went, as if in a kind of daze he kept murmuring:“Captain Briggs again! Who’d have thought I could really find him? Half a century—a lifetime—Captain Alpheus Briggs!”“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!” the captain hailed. Carefully he helped the aged doctor up the steps. Very feebly the doctor crept up; his cane clumped hollowly on the boards. Ezra appeared.“Aye, aye, sir?” he queried, a look of wonder on his long, thin face. “What’s orders, sir?”“An old-time friend of mine has come to visit me, Ezra. It’s Dr. Filhiol, that used to sail with me, way back in the ’60’s. I’ve got some of his fancy-work stitches in my leg this minute. A great man he was with the cutting and stitching; none better. I want you men to shake hands.”Ezra advanced, admiration shining from his honest features. Any man who had been a friend of his captain, especially a man who had embroidered his captain’s leg, was already taken to the bosom of his affections.“Doctor,” said the captain, “this is Ezra Trefethen. When you get some of the grub from his galley aboard you, you’ll be ready to ship again for Timbuctoo.”“I’m very glad to know you, Ezra,” the doctor said, putting out his left hand—the right, gnarled and veinous, still gripped his cane. “Yes, yes, we were old-time shipmates, Captain Briggs and I.” His voice broke pipingly, “turning again toward childish treble,” so that pity and sorrow pierced the heart of Alpheus Briggs. “It’s been a sad, long time since we’ve met. And now, can I get you to look out for my horse? If he should run away and hurt anybody, I’m sure that would be very bad.”“Righto!” Ezra answered, his face assuming an air of high seriousness as he observed the aged animal half asleep by the gate, head hanging, spavined kneesbent. “I’ll steer him to safe moorin’s fer you, sir. We got jest the handiest dock in the world fer him, up the back lane. He won’t git away fromme, sir, never you fear.”“Thank you, Ezra,” the doctor answered, much relieved. The captain eased him into a rocker, by the table. “There, that’s better. You see, captain, I’m a bit done up. It always tires me to ride on a train; and then, too, the drive from the station was exhausting. I’m not used to driving, you know, and—”“I know, I know,” Briggs interrupted. “Just sit you there, doctor, and keep right still. I’ll be back in half a twinkling.”And, satisfied that the doctor was all safe and sound, he stumped into the house; while Ezra whistled to the dog and strode away to go aboard the buggy as navigating officer of that sorry equipage.Even before Ezra had safely berthed the horse in the stable up the lane, bordered with sweetbrier and sumacs, Captain Briggs returned with a tray, whereon was a bottle of his very best Jamaica, now kept exclusively for sickness or a cold, or, it might be, for some rare and special guest. The Jamaica was flanked with a little jug of water, with glasses, lemons, sugar. At sight of it the doctor left off brushing his coat, all powdered with the gray rock-dust of the Massachusetts north shore, and smiled with sunken lips.“I couldn’t have prescribed better, myself,” said he.“Correct, sir,” agreed the captain. He set the tray on the piazza table. “I don’t hardly ever touch grog any more. But it’s got its uses, now and then. You need a stiff drink, doctor, and I’m going to join you, for old times’ sake. Surely there’s no sin in that, after half a century that we haven’t laid eyes on one another!”Speaking, he was at work on the manufacture of a brace of drinks.“It’s my rule not to touch it,” he added. “But I’ve got to make an exception to-day. Sugar, sir? Lemon? All O. K., then. Well, doctor, here goes. Here’s to—to—”“To fifty years of life!” the doctor exclaimed. He stood up, raising the glass that Briggs had given him. His eye cleared; for a moment his aged hand held firm.“To fifty years!” the captain echoed. And so the glasses clinked, and so they drank that toast, bottoms-up, those two old men so different in the long ago, so very different now.When Filhiol had resumed his seat, the captain drew a chair up close to him, both facing the sea. Through the doctor’s spent tissues a little warmth began to diffuse itself. But still he found nothing to say; nor, for a minute or two, did the captain. A little silence, strangely awkward, drew itself between them, now that the first stimulus of the meeting had spent itself. Where, indeed, should they begin to knit up so vast a chasm?Each man gazed on the other, trying to find some word that might be fitting, but each muted by the dead weight of half a century. Filhiol, the more resourceful of wit, was first to speak.“Yes, captain, we’ve both changed, though you’ve held your own better than I have. I’ve had a great deal of sickness. And I’m an older man than you, besides. I’ll be eighty-four, sir, if I live till the 16th of next October. A man’s done for at that age. And you’ve had every advantage over me in strength and constitution. I was only an average man, at best. You were a Hercules, and even to-day you look as if you might be a pretty formidable antagonist.In a way, I’ve done better than most, captain. Yes, I’ve done well in my way,” he repeated. “Still, I’m not the man you are to-day. That’s plain to be seen.”“We aren’t going to talk about that, doctor,” the captain interposed, his voice soothing, as he laid a strong hand on the withered one of Filhiol, holding the arm of the rocker. “Let all that pass. I’m laying at anchor in a sheltered harbor here. What breeze bore you news of me? Tell me that, and tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. What kind of a voyage have you made of life? And where are you berthed, and what cargo of this world’s goods have you got in your lockers?”“Tell me about yourself, first, captain. You have a jewel of a place here. What else? Wife, family, all that?”“I’ll tell you, after you’ve answered my questions,” the captain insisted. “You’re aboard my craft, here, sitting on my decks, and so you’ve got to talk first. Come, come, doctor—let’s have your log!”Thus urged, Filhiol began to speak. With some digressions, yet in the main clearly enough and even at times with a certain dry humor that distantly recalled his mental acuity of the long ago, he outlined his life-story.Briefly he told of his retirement from the sea, following a wreck off the coast of Chile, in 1876—a wreck in which he had taken damage from which he had never fully recovered—and narrated his establishing himself in practice in New York. Later he had had to give up the struggle there, and had gone up into a New Hampshire village, where life, though poor, had been comparatively easy.Five years ago he had retired, with a few hundred dollars of pitiful savings, and had bought his way into the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Home, at Salem, Massachusetts.He had never married; had never known the love of a wife, nor the kiss of children. His whole life, the captain could see, had been given unhesitatingly to the service of his fellow-men. And now mankind, when old age had paralyzed his skill, was passing him by, as if he had been no more than a broken-up wreck on the shores of the sea of human existence.Briggs watched the old man with pity that this once trim and active man should have faded to so bloodless a shadow of his former self. Close-shaven the doctor still was, and not without a certain neatness in his dress, despite its poverty; but his bent shoulders, his baggy skin, the blinking of his eyes all told the tragedy of life that fades.With a pathetic moistening of the eyes, the doctor spoke of this inevitable decay; and with a heartfelt wish that death might have laid its summons on him while still in active service, turned to a few words of explanation as to how he had come to have news again of Captain Briggs.Chance had brought him word of the captain. A new attendant at the home had mentioned the name Briggs; and memories had stirred, and questions had very soon brought out the fact that it was really Captain Alpheus Briggs, who now was living at South Endicutt. The attendant had told him something more—and here the doctor hesitated, feeling for words.“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Briggs. “You needn’t be afraid to speak it right out. It’s true, doctor. Ihavechanged. God knows I’ve suffered enough, these long years, trying to forget what kind of a man I started out to be; trying to forget, and not always able to. If repentance and trying to sail a straight course now can wipe out that score, maybeit’s partly gone. I hope so, anyhow; I’ve done my best—no man can do more than that, now, can he?”“I don’t see how he can,” answered the doctor slowly.“He can’t,” said the captain with conviction. “Of course I can’t give back the lives I took, but so far as I’ve been able, I’ve made restitution of all the money I came by wrongfully. What I couldn’t give back directly I’ve handed over to charity.“My undoing,” he went on, then paused, irresolute. “My great misfortune—was—”“Well, what?” asked Filhiol. And through his glasses, which seemed to make his eyes so strangely big and questioning, he peered at Captain Briggs.

TWO OLD MEN

“Yes, yes, it’s Dr. Filhiol!” the little old man made answer. “I’m Filhiol. And you—Yes, I’d know you anywhere. Captain Alpheus Briggs, so help me!”

He took up a heavy walking-stick, and started to clamber down out of the buggy. Captain Briggs, flinging open the gate, reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing in the road, for the doctor’s feeble strength was all exhausted with the long journey he had made to South Endicutt, with the drive from the station five miles away, and with the nervous shock of once more seeing a man on whom, in fifty years, his eyes had never rested.

“Steady, doctor, steady!” the captain admonished with a stout arm about him. “There, there now, steady does it!”

“You—you’ll have to excuse me, captain, for seeming so unmanly weak,” the doctor proffered shakily. “But I’ve come a long way to see you, and it’s such a hot day—and all. My legs are cramped, too. I’m not what I used to be, captain. None of us are, you know, when we pass the eightieth milestone!”

“None of us are what we used to be; right for you, doctor,” the captain answered with deeper meaning than on the surface of his words appeared. “You needn’t apologize for being a bit racked in the hull.Every craft’s seams open up a bit at times. I understand.”

He tightened his arm about the shrunken body, and with compassion looked upon the man who once had trod his deck so strongly and so well. “Come along o’ me, now. Up to Snug Haven, doctor. There’s good rocking-chairs on the piazza and a good little drop of something to take the kinks out. The best of timber needs a little caulking now and then. Good Lord above! Dr. Filhiol again—after fifty years!”

“Yes, that’s correct—after fifty years,” the doctor answered. “Here, let me look at you a moment!” He peered at Briggs through his heavy-lensed spectacles. “It’s you all right, captain. You’ve changed, of course. You were a bull of a man in those days, and your hair was black as black;—but still you’re the same. I—well, I wish I could say that about myself!”

“Nonsense!” the captain boomed, drawing him toward the gate. “Wait till you’ve got a little tonic under your hatches, ’midships. Wait till you’ve spliced the main brace a couple of times!”

“The horse!” exclaimed Filhiol, bracing himself with his stout cane. He peered anxiously at the animal. “I hired him at the station, and if he should run away and break anything—”

“I’ll have Ezra go aboard that craft and pilot it into port,” the captain reassured him. “We won’t let it go on the rocks. Ezra, he’s my chief cook and bottle-washer. He can handle that cruiser of yours O. K.” The captain’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the dejected animal. “Come along o’ me, doctor. Up to the quarterdeck with you, now!”

Half-supported by the captain, old Dr. Filhiol limped up the white-sanded path. As he went, as if in a kind of daze he kept murmuring:

“Captain Briggs again! Who’d have thought I could really find him? Half a century—a lifetime—Captain Alpheus Briggs!”

“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!” the captain hailed. Carefully he helped the aged doctor up the steps. Very feebly the doctor crept up; his cane clumped hollowly on the boards. Ezra appeared.

“Aye, aye, sir?” he queried, a look of wonder on his long, thin face. “What’s orders, sir?”

“An old-time friend of mine has come to visit me, Ezra. It’s Dr. Filhiol, that used to sail with me, way back in the ’60’s. I’ve got some of his fancy-work stitches in my leg this minute. A great man he was with the cutting and stitching; none better. I want you men to shake hands.”

Ezra advanced, admiration shining from his honest features. Any man who had been a friend of his captain, especially a man who had embroidered his captain’s leg, was already taken to the bosom of his affections.

“Doctor,” said the captain, “this is Ezra Trefethen. When you get some of the grub from his galley aboard you, you’ll be ready to ship again for Timbuctoo.”

“I’m very glad to know you, Ezra,” the doctor said, putting out his left hand—the right, gnarled and veinous, still gripped his cane. “Yes, yes, we were old-time shipmates, Captain Briggs and I.” His voice broke pipingly, “turning again toward childish treble,” so that pity and sorrow pierced the heart of Alpheus Briggs. “It’s been a sad, long time since we’ve met. And now, can I get you to look out for my horse? If he should run away and hurt anybody, I’m sure that would be very bad.”

“Righto!” Ezra answered, his face assuming an air of high seriousness as he observed the aged animal half asleep by the gate, head hanging, spavined kneesbent. “I’ll steer him to safe moorin’s fer you, sir. We got jest the handiest dock in the world fer him, up the back lane. He won’t git away fromme, sir, never you fear.”

“Thank you, Ezra,” the doctor answered, much relieved. The captain eased him into a rocker, by the table. “There, that’s better. You see, captain, I’m a bit done up. It always tires me to ride on a train; and then, too, the drive from the station was exhausting. I’m not used to driving, you know, and—”

“I know, I know,” Briggs interrupted. “Just sit you there, doctor, and keep right still. I’ll be back in half a twinkling.”

And, satisfied that the doctor was all safe and sound, he stumped into the house; while Ezra whistled to the dog and strode away to go aboard the buggy as navigating officer of that sorry equipage.

Even before Ezra had safely berthed the horse in the stable up the lane, bordered with sweetbrier and sumacs, Captain Briggs returned with a tray, whereon was a bottle of his very best Jamaica, now kept exclusively for sickness or a cold, or, it might be, for some rare and special guest. The Jamaica was flanked with a little jug of water, with glasses, lemons, sugar. At sight of it the doctor left off brushing his coat, all powdered with the gray rock-dust of the Massachusetts north shore, and smiled with sunken lips.

“I couldn’t have prescribed better, myself,” said he.

“Correct, sir,” agreed the captain. He set the tray on the piazza table. “I don’t hardly ever touch grog any more. But it’s got its uses, now and then. You need a stiff drink, doctor, and I’m going to join you, for old times’ sake. Surely there’s no sin in that, after half a century that we haven’t laid eyes on one another!”

Speaking, he was at work on the manufacture of a brace of drinks.

“It’s my rule not to touch it,” he added. “But I’ve got to make an exception to-day. Sugar, sir? Lemon? All O. K., then. Well, doctor, here goes. Here’s to—to—”

“To fifty years of life!” the doctor exclaimed. He stood up, raising the glass that Briggs had given him. His eye cleared; for a moment his aged hand held firm.

“To fifty years!” the captain echoed. And so the glasses clinked, and so they drank that toast, bottoms-up, those two old men so different in the long ago, so very different now.

When Filhiol had resumed his seat, the captain drew a chair up close to him, both facing the sea. Through the doctor’s spent tissues a little warmth began to diffuse itself. But still he found nothing to say; nor, for a minute or two, did the captain. A little silence, strangely awkward, drew itself between them, now that the first stimulus of the meeting had spent itself. Where, indeed, should they begin to knit up so vast a chasm?

Each man gazed on the other, trying to find some word that might be fitting, but each muted by the dead weight of half a century. Filhiol, the more resourceful of wit, was first to speak.

“Yes, captain, we’ve both changed, though you’ve held your own better than I have. I’ve had a great deal of sickness. And I’m an older man than you, besides. I’ll be eighty-four, sir, if I live till the 16th of next October. A man’s done for at that age. And you’ve had every advantage over me in strength and constitution. I was only an average man, at best. You were a Hercules, and even to-day you look as if you might be a pretty formidable antagonist.In a way, I’ve done better than most, captain. Yes, I’ve done well in my way,” he repeated. “Still, I’m not the man you are to-day. That’s plain to be seen.”

“We aren’t going to talk about that, doctor,” the captain interposed, his voice soothing, as he laid a strong hand on the withered one of Filhiol, holding the arm of the rocker. “Let all that pass. I’m laying at anchor in a sheltered harbor here. What breeze bore you news of me? Tell me that, and tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. What kind of a voyage have you made of life? And where are you berthed, and what cargo of this world’s goods have you got in your lockers?”

“Tell me about yourself, first, captain. You have a jewel of a place here. What else? Wife, family, all that?”

“I’ll tell you, after you’ve answered my questions,” the captain insisted. “You’re aboard my craft, here, sitting on my decks, and so you’ve got to talk first. Come, come, doctor—let’s have your log!”

Thus urged, Filhiol began to speak. With some digressions, yet in the main clearly enough and even at times with a certain dry humor that distantly recalled his mental acuity of the long ago, he outlined his life-story.

Briefly he told of his retirement from the sea, following a wreck off the coast of Chile, in 1876—a wreck in which he had taken damage from which he had never fully recovered—and narrated his establishing himself in practice in New York. Later he had had to give up the struggle there, and had gone up into a New Hampshire village, where life, though poor, had been comparatively easy.

Five years ago he had retired, with a few hundred dollars of pitiful savings, and had bought his way into the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Home, at Salem, Massachusetts.He had never married; had never known the love of a wife, nor the kiss of children. His whole life, the captain could see, had been given unhesitatingly to the service of his fellow-men. And now mankind, when old age had paralyzed his skill, was passing him by, as if he had been no more than a broken-up wreck on the shores of the sea of human existence.

Briggs watched the old man with pity that this once trim and active man should have faded to so bloodless a shadow of his former self. Close-shaven the doctor still was, and not without a certain neatness in his dress, despite its poverty; but his bent shoulders, his baggy skin, the blinking of his eyes all told the tragedy of life that fades.

With a pathetic moistening of the eyes, the doctor spoke of this inevitable decay; and with a heartfelt wish that death might have laid its summons on him while still in active service, turned to a few words of explanation as to how he had come to have news again of Captain Briggs.

Chance had brought him word of the captain. A new attendant at the home had mentioned the name Briggs; and memories had stirred, and questions had very soon brought out the fact that it was really Captain Alpheus Briggs, who now was living at South Endicutt. The attendant had told him something more—and here the doctor hesitated, feeling for words.

“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Briggs. “You needn’t be afraid to speak it right out. It’s true, doctor. Ihavechanged. God knows I’ve suffered enough, these long years, trying to forget what kind of a man I started out to be; trying to forget, and not always able to. If repentance and trying to sail a straight course now can wipe out that score, maybeit’s partly gone. I hope so, anyhow; I’ve done my best—no man can do more than that, now, can he?”

“I don’t see how he can,” answered the doctor slowly.

“He can’t,” said the captain with conviction. “Of course I can’t give back the lives I took, but so far as I’ve been able, I’ve made restitution of all the money I came by wrongfully. What I couldn’t give back directly I’ve handed over to charity.

“My undoing,” he went on, then paused, irresolute. “My great misfortune—was—”

“Well, what?” asked Filhiol. And through his glasses, which seemed to make his eyes so strangely big and questioning, he peered at Captain Briggs.

CHAPTER XVITHE CAPTAIN SPEAKSThe captain clenched his right fist, and turned it to and fro, studying it with rueful attention.“My undoing was the fact that nature gave me brute strength,” said he. “Those were hard, bad days, and I had a hard, bad fist; and together with the hot blood in me, and the Old Nick, things went pretty far. Lots of the things I did were needless, cruel, and beyond all condemnation. If I could only get a little of the guilt and sorrow off my mind, that would be something.”“You’re morbid, captain,” answered Filhiol. “You’ve made all the amends that anybody can. Let’s forget the wickedness, now, and try to remember the better part. You’ve changed, every way. What changed you?”“Just let me have another look through the glass, and I’ll tell you what I can.”Briggs raised his telescope and with it swept the harbor.“H-m!” said he. “Nothing yet.”“Expecting some one, captain?”“My grandson, Hal.”“Grandson! That’s fine! The only one?”“The only one.” Briggs lowered his glass with disappointment. “He’s the sole surviving member of the family, beside myself. All the rest are up there, doctor, in that little cemetery on the hilltop.”Filhiol’s eyes followed the captain’s pointing hand,as it indicated the burial-ground lying under the vagrant cloud-shadows of the fading afternoon, peaceful and “sweet with blade and leaf and blossom.” In a pine against the richly luminous sky a bluejay was scolding. As a contrabass to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer, the booming murmur of the sea trembled across the summer air. The captain went on:“I’ve had great losses, doctor. Bitter and hard to bear. After I fell in love and changed my way of life, and married and settled here, I thought maybe fate would be kind to me, but it wasn’t. One by one my people were taken away from me—my wife, and then my son’s wife, and last of all, my son. Three, I’ve lost, and got one left. Yet it isn’t exactly as if I’d really lost them. I’m not one that can bury love, and forget it. My folks aren’t gone. They’re still with me, in a way.“I don’t see how people can let their kin be buried in strange places and forgotten. I want to keep mine always near me, where I can look out for them, and where I know they won’t feel lonesome. I want them to be right near home, doctor, where it’s all so friendly and familiar. Maybe that’s an old man’s foolish notion, but that’s the way I feel, and that’s the way I’ve had it.”“I—think I understand,” the doctor answered. “Go on.”“They aren’t really gone,” continued Briggs. “They’re still up there, very, very near to me. There’s nothing mournful in the lot; nothing sad or melancholy. No, Ezra and I have made it cheerful, with roses and petunias and zinnias and all kinds of pretty flowers and bushes and vines. You can see some of those vines now on the monument.” He pointed once more. “That one, off to starboard of the bigelm. It’s a beautiful place, really. The breeze is always cool up there, doctor, and the sun stays there longest of any spot round here. It strikes that hill first thing in the morning, and stays till last thing at night. We’ve got a bench there, a real comfortable one I made myself; not one of those hard, iron things they usually put in cemeteries. I’ve given Hal lots of his lessons, reading and navigation, up there. I go up every day a spell, and take the dog with me, and Ezra goes, too; and we carry up flowers and put ’em in jars, and holystone the monument and the headstones, and make it all shipshape. It’s all as bright as a button, and so it’s going to be, as long as I’m on deck.”“I think you’ve got the right idea, captain,” murmured Filhiol. “Death, after all, is quite as natural a process, quite as much to be desired at the proper time, as life. I used to fear it, when I was young; but now I’m old, I’m not at all afraid. Are you?”“Never! If I can only live to see Hal launched and off on his life journey, with colors flying and everything trig aloft and alow, I’ll be right glad to go. That’s what I’ve often told my wife and the others, sitting up there in the sunshine, smoking my pipe. You know, that’s where I go to smoke and think, doctor. Ezra goes too, and sometimes we take the old checkerboard and have a game or so. We take the telescopes and sextant up, too, and make observations there. It kind of scandalizes some of the stiff-necked old Puritans, but Lord love you! I don’t see any harm in it, do you? It all seems nice and sociable; it makes the death of my people seem only a kind of temporary going away, as if they’d gone on a visit, like, and as if Hal and Ezra and I were just waiting for ’em to come back.“I tell you, doctor, it’s as homy and comfortable as anything you ever saw. I’m truly very happy, upthere. Yes, in spite of everything, I reckon I’m a happy man. I’ve got no end of things to be thankful for. I’ve prospered. Best of all,themain thing without which, of course, everything else wouldn’t be worth a tinker’s dam, I’ve got my grandson, Hal!”“I see. Tell me about him, captain.”“I will. He’s been two years in college already, and he’s more than made good. He’s twenty-one, and got shoulders on him like Goliath. You ought to see him at work in the gym he’s fitted up in the barn! Oh, doctor, he’s a wonder! His rating is A1, all through.”“I don’t doubt it. And you say he’s coming home to-day?”“To-day—which makes this day a great, wonderful day for his old grandfather, and that’s the living truth. Yes, he’s coming home for as long as he’ll stay with me, though he’s got some idea of going out with the fishing-fleet, for what he calls local color. He’s quite a fellow to make up stories; says he wants to go to sea a while, so he can do it right. Though, Lord knows, he’s full enough of sea-lore and sea-skill. That’s his grandfather’s blood cropping out again, I suppose, that love for blue water. That’s what you call heredity, isn’t it, doctor?”“H-m! yes, I suppose so,” answered Filhiol, frowning a little. “Though heredity’s peculiar. We don’t always know just what it is, or how it acts. Still, if a well-marked trait comes out in the offspring, we call it heredity. So he’s got your love of the sea, has he?”“He surely has. There’s salt inhisblood, all right enough!”“H-m! You don’t notice any—any other traits in him that—remind you of your earlier days?”“If you mean strength and activity, and the love of hard work, yes. Now see, for example. Anyother boy would have come home by train, and lots of ’em would have traveled in the smoker, with a pack of cigarettes and a magazine. Does Hal come home that way? He does not! He writes me he’s going to work his way up on a schooner, out of Boston, for experience. That’s why I’m keeping my glass on the harbor. He told me the name of the schooner. It’s theSylvia Fletcher. The minute she sticks her jib round Truxbury Light, I’ll catch her.”“Sylvia Fletcher?” asked the doctor. “That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”“What is?”“Why, just look at those initials, captain.Sylvia Fletcher—S.F.”“Well, what about ’em?”“Silver Fleece.That was S.F., too.”The captain turned puzzled eyes on his guest. He passed a hand over his white hair, and pondered a second or two. Then said he:“Thatisodd, doctor, but what about it? There must be hundreds of vessels afloat, with those initials.”“By all means. Of course it can’t mean anything. As you say, S.F. must be common enough initials among ships. So then, Hal’s amphibious already, is he? What’s he going to be? A captain like yourself?”“I’d like him to be. I don’t hardly think so, though,” Briggs answered, a little distraught. Something had singularly disturbed him. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the withered little man in the chair beside him.“It’s going to be his own choice, his profession is,” he went on. “He’s got to settle that for himself. But I know this much—anything he undertakes, he’ll make a success of. He’ll carry it out to the last inch. He’s a wonder, Hal is. Ah, a fellowto warm the heart! He’s none of your mollycoddles, in spite of all the high marks and prizes he’s taken. No, no, nothing at all of the molly-coddle.”The captain’s face lighted up with pride and joy and a profound eagerness.“There isn’t anything that boy can’t do, doctor,” he continued. “Athletics and all that; and he’s gone in for some of the hardest studies, too, and beaten men that don’t do anything but get round-shouldered over books. He’s taken work outside the regular course—strange Eastern languages, doctor. I hear there neverwasa boy like Hal. You don’t wonder I’ve been sitting here all afternoon with my old spy-glass, do you?”“Indeed I don’t,” Filhiol answered, a note of envy in his feeble voice. “You’ve had your troubles, just as we all have, but you’ve got something still to live for, and that’s more thanIcan say. You’ve got everything, everything! It never worked out on you, after all, the curse—the black curse that was put on you fifty years ago. It was all nonsense, of course, and I knew it wouldn’t. All that stuff is pure superstition and humbug—”“Of course! Why, you don’t believe such rubbish! I’ve lived that all down half a lifetime ago. Two or three times, when death took away those I loved, I thought maybe the curse of old Dengan Jouga was really striking me, but it wasn’t. For that curse saideverythingI loved would be taken away, and there was always something left to live for; and even when I’d been as hard hit as a man ever was, almost, after a while I could get my bearings again and make sail and keep along on my course. Because, you see, I always had Hal to love and pin my hopes to. I’ve got him now. He’s all I’ve got—but, God! how wonderfully much he is!”“Yes, yes, you’re quite right,” the doctor answered. “He must be a splendid chap, all round. What does he look like?”“I’m going to answer you in a peculiar way,” said Briggs. “That boy, sir, that grandson of mine, he’s the living spit and image of what I was, fifty-five or sixty years ago!”“Eh, what? What’s that you say?”“It’s wonderful, I tell you, to see the resemblance. His father—my son—didn’t show it at all. A fine, handsome man he was, doctor, and a good man, too. Everybody liked him; he never did a bad thing in his life. He sailed a straight course, and went under his own canvas, all the way; and I loved him for an honest, upright man. But he wasn’t brilliant. He never set the world on fire. He was just a plain, good, average man.“But, Hal! Hal—ah, now thereissomething for you! He’s got all the physique I ever had, at my best, and he’s got a hundred per cent. more brains than ever I had. It’s as if I could see myself, my youth and strength, rise up out of the grave of the past, all shining and splendid, doctor, and live again and make my soul sing with the morning stars, for gladness, like it says in the Bible or somewhere, sir!”The old captain, quite breathless with his unaccustomed eloquence, pulling out a huge handkerchief, wiped his forehead where the sweat had started. He winked eyes wet with sudden moisture. Filhiol peered at him with a strange, brooding expression.“You say he’s just like you, captain?” asked he. “He’s just the way you used to be, in the old days?”“Why—no, not in all ways. God forbid! But in size and strength he’s the equal of me at my best, or even goes ahead of that. And as I’ve told you before, he’s got no end more brains than ever I had.”“How’s the boy’s temper?”“Temper?”“Ever have any violent spells?” The doctor seemed as if diagnosing a case. Briggs looked at him, none too well pleased.“Why—no. Not as I know of,” he answered, though without any emphatic denial. “Of course all boys sometimes slip their anchors, and run foul of whatever’s in the way. That’s natural for young blood. I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for a boy that had no guts, would you?”“No, no. Of course not. It’s natural for—”“Ship ahoy!” the captain joyfully hailed. His keen old eye had just caught sight of something, far in the offing, which had brought the glass to his eye in a second. “There she is, doctor! There’s theSylvia Fletcher, sure as guns!”“He’s coming, then?”“Almost here! See, right to south’ard o’ the light? That’s theSylvia, and my boy’s aboard her. She’ll be at Hadlock’s Wharf in half an hour. He’s almost home. Hal’s almost home again!”The captain stood up and faced the doctor, radiant. Joy, pride, anticipation beamed from his weather-beaten old face; his eyes sparkled, blue, with pure happiness. He said:“Well, I’m going down to meet him. Do you want to go, too, doctor?”“How far is it?”“Mile, or a little better. I’ll make it, easy, afore theSylviagets in. I’ll be on the wharf, all right, to welcome Hal.”“I—I think I’ll stay here, captain,” the other answered. “I’m lame, you know. I couldn’t walk that far.”“How about the horse? Ezra’ll hitch up for you.”“No, no. It tires me to ride. I’m not used to so much excitement and activity. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just sit here and wait. Give me a book, or something, and I’ll wait for you both.”“All right, doctor, suit yourself,” the captain assented. The relief in his voice was not to be concealed. Despite his most friendly hospitality, something in the doctor’s attitude and speech had laid a chill upon his heart. The prospect of getting away from the old man and of meeting Hal quite alone, allured him. “I’ll give you books enough for a week, or anything you like. And here in this drawer,” as he opened one in the table, “you’ll find a box of the best Havanas.”“No, no, I’ve given up smoking, long ago,” the doctor smiled, thinly. “My heart wouldn’t stand it. But thank you, just the same.”The figure of Ezra loomed in the doorway, and, followed by the dog, came out upon the porch.“Sighted him, cap’n?” asked the old man joyfully. “I heered you hailin’. That’s him, sure?”“There’s theSylvia Fletcher,” Briggs made answer. “You’ll see Hal afore sundown.”“Gosh, ain’t that great, though?” grinned Ezra, his leathery face breaking into a thousand wrinkles. “If I’d of went an’ made that there cake, an’ fixed that lamb, an’ he hadn’t of made port—”“Well, it’s all right, Ezra. Now I’m off. Come, Ruddy,” he summoned the Airedale. “Master’s coming!”As the dog got up, the doctor painfully rose from his chair. Cane in hand, he limped along the porch.“It’s just a trifle chilly out here, captain,” said he, shivering slightly. “May I go inside?”“Don’t ask, doctor. Snug Haven’s yours, all yours, as long as you want it. Make yourself at home!Books, papers, everything in the library—my cabin, I call it. And if you want, Ezra’ll start a fire for you in the grate, and get you tea or coffee—”“No, no, thank you. My nerves won’t stand them. But a little warm milk and a fire will do me a world of good.”“Ezra’ll mix you an egg-nog that will make you feel like a fighting-cock. Now I must be going. Hal mustn’t come ashore and not find me waiting. Come, Ruddy! Good-by, doctor. Good-by, Ezra; so long!”“Tell Master Hal about the plum-cake an’ the lamb!” called the faithful one, as Captain Briggs, a brave and sturdy figure in his brass-buttoned coat of blue and his gold-laced cap tramped down the sandy walk. “Don’t fergit to tell him I got it special!”At the gate, Briggs waved a cheery hand. The doctor, peering after him with strange, sad eyes, shook a boding head. He stood leaning on his stick, till Briggs had skirted the box-hedge and disappeared around the turn by the smithy. Then, shivering again—despite the brooding warmth of the June afternoon—he turned and followed Ezra into the house.“After fifty years,” he murmured, as he went. “I wonder if it could be—after fifty years?”

THE CAPTAIN SPEAKS

The captain clenched his right fist, and turned it to and fro, studying it with rueful attention.

“My undoing was the fact that nature gave me brute strength,” said he. “Those were hard, bad days, and I had a hard, bad fist; and together with the hot blood in me, and the Old Nick, things went pretty far. Lots of the things I did were needless, cruel, and beyond all condemnation. If I could only get a little of the guilt and sorrow off my mind, that would be something.”

“You’re morbid, captain,” answered Filhiol. “You’ve made all the amends that anybody can. Let’s forget the wickedness, now, and try to remember the better part. You’ve changed, every way. What changed you?”

“Just let me have another look through the glass, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

Briggs raised his telescope and with it swept the harbor.

“H-m!” said he. “Nothing yet.”

“Expecting some one, captain?”

“My grandson, Hal.”

“Grandson! That’s fine! The only one?”

“The only one.” Briggs lowered his glass with disappointment. “He’s the sole surviving member of the family, beside myself. All the rest are up there, doctor, in that little cemetery on the hilltop.”

Filhiol’s eyes followed the captain’s pointing hand,as it indicated the burial-ground lying under the vagrant cloud-shadows of the fading afternoon, peaceful and “sweet with blade and leaf and blossom.” In a pine against the richly luminous sky a bluejay was scolding. As a contrabass to the rhythm of the blacksmith’s hammer, the booming murmur of the sea trembled across the summer air. The captain went on:

“I’ve had great losses, doctor. Bitter and hard to bear. After I fell in love and changed my way of life, and married and settled here, I thought maybe fate would be kind to me, but it wasn’t. One by one my people were taken away from me—my wife, and then my son’s wife, and last of all, my son. Three, I’ve lost, and got one left. Yet it isn’t exactly as if I’d really lost them. I’m not one that can bury love, and forget it. My folks aren’t gone. They’re still with me, in a way.

“I don’t see how people can let their kin be buried in strange places and forgotten. I want to keep mine always near me, where I can look out for them, and where I know they won’t feel lonesome. I want them to be right near home, doctor, where it’s all so friendly and familiar. Maybe that’s an old man’s foolish notion, but that’s the way I feel, and that’s the way I’ve had it.”

“I—think I understand,” the doctor answered. “Go on.”

“They aren’t really gone,” continued Briggs. “They’re still up there, very, very near to me. There’s nothing mournful in the lot; nothing sad or melancholy. No, Ezra and I have made it cheerful, with roses and petunias and zinnias and all kinds of pretty flowers and bushes and vines. You can see some of those vines now on the monument.” He pointed once more. “That one, off to starboard of the bigelm. It’s a beautiful place, really. The breeze is always cool up there, doctor, and the sun stays there longest of any spot round here. It strikes that hill first thing in the morning, and stays till last thing at night. We’ve got a bench there, a real comfortable one I made myself; not one of those hard, iron things they usually put in cemeteries. I’ve given Hal lots of his lessons, reading and navigation, up there. I go up every day a spell, and take the dog with me, and Ezra goes, too; and we carry up flowers and put ’em in jars, and holystone the monument and the headstones, and make it all shipshape. It’s all as bright as a button, and so it’s going to be, as long as I’m on deck.”

“I think you’ve got the right idea, captain,” murmured Filhiol. “Death, after all, is quite as natural a process, quite as much to be desired at the proper time, as life. I used to fear it, when I was young; but now I’m old, I’m not at all afraid. Are you?”

“Never! If I can only live to see Hal launched and off on his life journey, with colors flying and everything trig aloft and alow, I’ll be right glad to go. That’s what I’ve often told my wife and the others, sitting up there in the sunshine, smoking my pipe. You know, that’s where I go to smoke and think, doctor. Ezra goes too, and sometimes we take the old checkerboard and have a game or so. We take the telescopes and sextant up, too, and make observations there. It kind of scandalizes some of the stiff-necked old Puritans, but Lord love you! I don’t see any harm in it, do you? It all seems nice and sociable; it makes the death of my people seem only a kind of temporary going away, as if they’d gone on a visit, like, and as if Hal and Ezra and I were just waiting for ’em to come back.

“I tell you, doctor, it’s as homy and comfortable as anything you ever saw. I’m truly very happy, upthere. Yes, in spite of everything, I reckon I’m a happy man. I’ve got no end of things to be thankful for. I’ve prospered. Best of all,themain thing without which, of course, everything else wouldn’t be worth a tinker’s dam, I’ve got my grandson, Hal!”

“I see. Tell me about him, captain.”

“I will. He’s been two years in college already, and he’s more than made good. He’s twenty-one, and got shoulders on him like Goliath. You ought to see him at work in the gym he’s fitted up in the barn! Oh, doctor, he’s a wonder! His rating is A1, all through.”

“I don’t doubt it. And you say he’s coming home to-day?”

“To-day—which makes this day a great, wonderful day for his old grandfather, and that’s the living truth. Yes, he’s coming home for as long as he’ll stay with me, though he’s got some idea of going out with the fishing-fleet, for what he calls local color. He’s quite a fellow to make up stories; says he wants to go to sea a while, so he can do it right. Though, Lord knows, he’s full enough of sea-lore and sea-skill. That’s his grandfather’s blood cropping out again, I suppose, that love for blue water. That’s what you call heredity, isn’t it, doctor?”

“H-m! yes, I suppose so,” answered Filhiol, frowning a little. “Though heredity’s peculiar. We don’t always know just what it is, or how it acts. Still, if a well-marked trait comes out in the offspring, we call it heredity. So he’s got your love of the sea, has he?”

“He surely has. There’s salt inhisblood, all right enough!”

“H-m! You don’t notice any—any other traits in him that—remind you of your earlier days?”

“If you mean strength and activity, and the love of hard work, yes. Now see, for example. Anyother boy would have come home by train, and lots of ’em would have traveled in the smoker, with a pack of cigarettes and a magazine. Does Hal come home that way? He does not! He writes me he’s going to work his way up on a schooner, out of Boston, for experience. That’s why I’m keeping my glass on the harbor. He told me the name of the schooner. It’s theSylvia Fletcher. The minute she sticks her jib round Truxbury Light, I’ll catch her.”

“Sylvia Fletcher?” asked the doctor. “That’s an odd coincidence, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Why, just look at those initials, captain.Sylvia Fletcher—S.F.”

“Well, what about ’em?”

“Silver Fleece.That was S.F., too.”

The captain turned puzzled eyes on his guest. He passed a hand over his white hair, and pondered a second or two. Then said he:

“Thatisodd, doctor, but what about it? There must be hundreds of vessels afloat, with those initials.”

“By all means. Of course it can’t mean anything. As you say, S.F. must be common enough initials among ships. So then, Hal’s amphibious already, is he? What’s he going to be? A captain like yourself?”

“I’d like him to be. I don’t hardly think so, though,” Briggs answered, a little distraught. Something had singularly disturbed him. Now and then he cast an uneasy glance at the withered little man in the chair beside him.

“It’s going to be his own choice, his profession is,” he went on. “He’s got to settle that for himself. But I know this much—anything he undertakes, he’ll make a success of. He’ll carry it out to the last inch. He’s a wonder, Hal is. Ah, a fellowto warm the heart! He’s none of your mollycoddles, in spite of all the high marks and prizes he’s taken. No, no, nothing at all of the molly-coddle.”

The captain’s face lighted up with pride and joy and a profound eagerness.

“There isn’t anything that boy can’t do, doctor,” he continued. “Athletics and all that; and he’s gone in for some of the hardest studies, too, and beaten men that don’t do anything but get round-shouldered over books. He’s taken work outside the regular course—strange Eastern languages, doctor. I hear there neverwasa boy like Hal. You don’t wonder I’ve been sitting here all afternoon with my old spy-glass, do you?”

“Indeed I don’t,” Filhiol answered, a note of envy in his feeble voice. “You’ve had your troubles, just as we all have, but you’ve got something still to live for, and that’s more thanIcan say. You’ve got everything, everything! It never worked out on you, after all, the curse—the black curse that was put on you fifty years ago. It was all nonsense, of course, and I knew it wouldn’t. All that stuff is pure superstition and humbug—”

“Of course! Why, you don’t believe such rubbish! I’ve lived that all down half a lifetime ago. Two or three times, when death took away those I loved, I thought maybe the curse of old Dengan Jouga was really striking me, but it wasn’t. For that curse saideverythingI loved would be taken away, and there was always something left to live for; and even when I’d been as hard hit as a man ever was, almost, after a while I could get my bearings again and make sail and keep along on my course. Because, you see, I always had Hal to love and pin my hopes to. I’ve got him now. He’s all I’ve got—but, God! how wonderfully much he is!”

“Yes, yes, you’re quite right,” the doctor answered. “He must be a splendid chap, all round. What does he look like?”

“I’m going to answer you in a peculiar way,” said Briggs. “That boy, sir, that grandson of mine, he’s the living spit and image of what I was, fifty-five or sixty years ago!”

“Eh, what? What’s that you say?”

“It’s wonderful, I tell you, to see the resemblance. His father—my son—didn’t show it at all. A fine, handsome man he was, doctor, and a good man, too. Everybody liked him; he never did a bad thing in his life. He sailed a straight course, and went under his own canvas, all the way; and I loved him for an honest, upright man. But he wasn’t brilliant. He never set the world on fire. He was just a plain, good, average man.

“But, Hal! Hal—ah, now thereissomething for you! He’s got all the physique I ever had, at my best, and he’s got a hundred per cent. more brains than ever I had. It’s as if I could see myself, my youth and strength, rise up out of the grave of the past, all shining and splendid, doctor, and live again and make my soul sing with the morning stars, for gladness, like it says in the Bible or somewhere, sir!”

The old captain, quite breathless with his unaccustomed eloquence, pulling out a huge handkerchief, wiped his forehead where the sweat had started. He winked eyes wet with sudden moisture. Filhiol peered at him with a strange, brooding expression.

“You say he’s just like you, captain?” asked he. “He’s just the way you used to be, in the old days?”

“Why—no, not in all ways. God forbid! But in size and strength he’s the equal of me at my best, or even goes ahead of that. And as I’ve told you before, he’s got no end more brains than ever I had.”

“How’s the boy’s temper?”

“Temper?”

“Ever have any violent spells?” The doctor seemed as if diagnosing a case. Briggs looked at him, none too well pleased.

“Why—no. Not as I know of,” he answered, though without any emphatic denial. “Of course all boys sometimes slip their anchors, and run foul of whatever’s in the way. That’s natural for young blood. I wouldn’t give a brass farthing for a boy that had no guts, would you?”

“No, no. Of course not. It’s natural for—”

“Ship ahoy!” the captain joyfully hailed. His keen old eye had just caught sight of something, far in the offing, which had brought the glass to his eye in a second. “There she is, doctor! There’s theSylvia Fletcher, sure as guns!”

“He’s coming, then?”

“Almost here! See, right to south’ard o’ the light? That’s theSylvia, and my boy’s aboard her. She’ll be at Hadlock’s Wharf in half an hour. He’s almost home. Hal’s almost home again!”

The captain stood up and faced the doctor, radiant. Joy, pride, anticipation beamed from his weather-beaten old face; his eyes sparkled, blue, with pure happiness. He said:

“Well, I’m going down to meet him. Do you want to go, too, doctor?”

“How far is it?”

“Mile, or a little better. I’ll make it, easy, afore theSylviagets in. I’ll be on the wharf, all right, to welcome Hal.”

“I—I think I’ll stay here, captain,” the other answered. “I’m lame, you know. I couldn’t walk that far.”

“How about the horse? Ezra’ll hitch up for you.”

“No, no. It tires me to ride. I’m not used to so much excitement and activity. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just sit here and wait. Give me a book, or something, and I’ll wait for you both.”

“All right, doctor, suit yourself,” the captain assented. The relief in his voice was not to be concealed. Despite his most friendly hospitality, something in the doctor’s attitude and speech had laid a chill upon his heart. The prospect of getting away from the old man and of meeting Hal quite alone, allured him. “I’ll give you books enough for a week, or anything you like. And here in this drawer,” as he opened one in the table, “you’ll find a box of the best Havanas.”

“No, no, I’ve given up smoking, long ago,” the doctor smiled, thinly. “My heart wouldn’t stand it. But thank you, just the same.”

The figure of Ezra loomed in the doorway, and, followed by the dog, came out upon the porch.

“Sighted him, cap’n?” asked the old man joyfully. “I heered you hailin’. That’s him, sure?”

“There’s theSylvia Fletcher,” Briggs made answer. “You’ll see Hal afore sundown.”

“Gosh, ain’t that great, though?” grinned Ezra, his leathery face breaking into a thousand wrinkles. “If I’d of went an’ made that there cake, an’ fixed that lamb, an’ he hadn’t of made port—”

“Well, it’s all right, Ezra. Now I’m off. Come, Ruddy,” he summoned the Airedale. “Master’s coming!”

As the dog got up, the doctor painfully rose from his chair. Cane in hand, he limped along the porch.

“It’s just a trifle chilly out here, captain,” said he, shivering slightly. “May I go inside?”

“Don’t ask, doctor. Snug Haven’s yours, all yours, as long as you want it. Make yourself at home!Books, papers, everything in the library—my cabin, I call it. And if you want, Ezra’ll start a fire for you in the grate, and get you tea or coffee—”

“No, no, thank you. My nerves won’t stand them. But a little warm milk and a fire will do me a world of good.”

“Ezra’ll mix you an egg-nog that will make you feel like a fighting-cock. Now I must be going. Hal mustn’t come ashore and not find me waiting. Come, Ruddy! Good-by, doctor. Good-by, Ezra; so long!”

“Tell Master Hal about the plum-cake an’ the lamb!” called the faithful one, as Captain Briggs, a brave and sturdy figure in his brass-buttoned coat of blue and his gold-laced cap tramped down the sandy walk. “Don’t fergit to tell him I got it special!”

At the gate, Briggs waved a cheery hand. The doctor, peering after him with strange, sad eyes, shook a boding head. He stood leaning on his stick, till Briggs had skirted the box-hedge and disappeared around the turn by the smithy. Then, shivering again—despite the brooding warmth of the June afternoon—he turned and followed Ezra into the house.

“After fifty years,” he murmured, as he went. “I wonder if it could be—after fifty years?”

CHAPTER XVIIVISIONS OF THE PASTComfortably installed in a huge easy-chair beside the freshly built fire in the “cabin” of Snug Haven and with one of Ezra Trefethen’s most artful egg-nogs within easy reach, the aged doctor leaned back, and sighed deeply.“Maybe the captain’s right,” said he. “Maybe the boy’s all right. It’s possible; but I don’t know, I don’t know.”Blinking, his eyes wandered about the room, which opened off from an old-fashioned hallway lighted by glass panels at the sides of the front door, and by a leaded fanlight over the lintel; a hallway with a curved stairway that would have delighted the heart of any antiquarian. The cabin itself showed by its construction and furnishing that the captain had spent a great deal of thought and time and money. At first glance, save that the fireplace was an incongruous note, one would have thought one’s self aboard ship, so closely had the nautical idea been carried out.To begin with, the windows at the side, which opened out upon the orchard, were circular and rimmed with shining brass, and had thick panes inward-swinging like ships’ portholes. A polished fir column, set a trifle on a slant, rose from floor to ceiling, which was supported on white beams, the form and curve of which exactly imitated marine architecture. This column measured no less than a foot and a half in diameter, and gave precisely the impression of a ship’smast. On it hung a chronometer, boxed in a case of polished mahogany, itself the work of the captain’s own hand.All the lamps were hung in gimbals, as if the good captain expected Snug Haven at any moment to set sail and go pitching away over storm-tossed seas. The green-covered table bore a miscellany of nautical almanacs; it accommodated, also, a variety of charts, maps and meteorological reports. The captain’s own chair at that table was a true swinging-chair, screwed to the floor; and this floor, you understand, was uncarpeted, so that the holystoned planking shone in immaculate cleanliness as the declining sun through the portholes painted long, reddish stripes across it. Brass instruments lay on the table, and from them the sun flecked little high-lights against the clean, white paint of the cabin.At the left of the table stood a binnacle, with compass and all; at the right, a four-foot globe, its surface scored with numerous names, dates and memoranda, carefully written in red ink. The captain’s log-book, open on the table, also showed writing in red. No ordinary diary sufficed for Alpheus Briggs; no, he would have a regulation ship’s log to keep the record of his daily life, or he would have no record at all.In a rack at one side rested two bright telescopes, with an empty place for the glass now out on the piazza. Beneath this rack a sextant hung; and at one side the daily government weather-report was affixed to a white-painted board.A sofa-locker, quite like a ship’s berth, still showed the impress of the captain’s body, where he had taken his after-dinner nap. One almost thought to hear the chanting of sea-winds in cordage, aloft, and the creak and give of seasoned timbers. A curious, a wonderful room, indeed! And as Dr. Filhiol studied it, his faceexpressed a kind of yearning eagerness; for to his fading life this connotation of the other, braver days brought back memories of things that once had been, that now could never be again.Yet, analyzing everything, he put away these thoughts. Many sad years had broken the spirit in him and turned his thoughts to the worse aspects of everything. He shook his head again dubiously, and his thin lips formed the words:“This is very, very strange. This is some form of mental aberration, surely. No man wholly sane would build and furnish any such grotesque place. It’s worse, worse than I thought.”Contemplatively he sipped the egg-nog and continued his observations, while from the kitchen—no, the galley—sounded a clink of coppers, mingled with the piping song of old Ezra, interminably discoursing on the life and adventures of the unfortunate Reuben Ranzo, whose chantey is beknown to all seafaring men. The doctor’s eyes, wandering to the wall nearest him, now perceived a glass-fronted cabinet, filled with a most extraordinaryomnium gatherumof curios.Corals, sponges, coir, nuts, pebbles and dried fruits, strange puffy and spiny fishes, specimens in alcohol, a thousand and one oddments jostled each other on the shelves.Nor was this all to excite the doctor’s wonder. For hard by the cabinet he now perceived the door of a safe, set into the wall, its combination flush with the white boards.“The captain can’t be so foolish as to keep his money in his house,” thought Filhiol. “Not when there are banks that offer absolute security. But then, with a man like Captain Briggs, anything seems possible.”He drank a little more of Ezra’s excellent concoction, and turned his attention to the one remainingside of the cabin, almost filled by the huge-throated fireplace and by the cobbled chimney.“More junk!” said Dr. Filhiol unsympathetically.Against the cobble-stones, suspended from hooks screwed into the cement, hung a regular arsenal of weapons: yataghans, scimitars, sabers and muskets—two of them rare Arabian specimens with long barrels and silver-chased stocks. Pistols there were, some of antique patterns bespeaking capture or purchase from half-civilized peoples. Daggers and stilettos had been worked into a kind of rough pattern. A bow and arrows, a “Penang lawyer,” and a couple of boomerangs were interspersed between some knobkerries from Australia, and a few shovel-headed spears and African pigmies’ blow-guns. All the weapons showed signs of wear or rust. In every probability, all had taken human life.Odd, was it not, that the captain, now so mild a man of peace, should have maintained so grim a reliquary? But, perhaps (the doctor thought), Briggs had preserved it as a kind of strange, contrasting reminder of his other days, just as more than one reformed drunkard has been known to keep the favorite little brown jug that formerly was his undoing.Filhiol, however, very deeply disapproved of this collection. Old age and infirmity had by no means rendered his disposition more suave. He muttered words of condemnation, drank off a little more of the egg-nog, and once again fell to studying the collection. And suddenly his attention concentrated, fixing itself with particular intentness on a certain blade that until then had escaped his scrutiny.This blade, a Malay kris with a beautifully carved lotus-bud on the handle, seemed to occupy a sort of central post of honor, toward which the other knives converged. The doctor adjusted his spectacles andstudied it for a long minute, as if trying to bring back some recollections not quite clear. Then he arose lamely, and squinted up at the blade.“That’s a kris,” said he slowly. “A Malay kris. Good Lord, it couldn’t be—thekris, could it?”He remained a little while, observing the weapon. The sunlight, ever growing redder as the sun sank over Croft Hill and the ancient cemetery, flicked lights from the brass instruments on the table, and for a moment seemed to crimson the vicious, wavy blade of steel. The doctor raised a lean hand to touch the kris, then drew back.“Better not,” said he. “That’s the one, all right enough. There’s the groove, the poison groove. There couldn’t be two exactly alike. I remember that groove especially. And curaré lasts for years; it’s just as fatal now, as when it was first put on. That kris is mighty good to let alone!”A dark, rusty stain on the blade set him shuddering. Blood, was it—blood, from the long ago? Who could say? The kris evoked powerful memories. The battle of Motomolo Strait rose up before him. The smoke from the fire in the grate seemed, all at once, that of the burning proa, drifting over the opalescent waters of that distant sea. The illusion was extraordinary. Dr. Filhiol closed his eyes, held tightly to the edge of the mantel, and with dilated nostrils sniffed the smoke. He remained there, transfixed with poignant emotions, trembling, afraid.It seemed to him as if the shadowy hand of some malignantjinneehad reached out of the bleeding past, and had laid hold on him—a hand that seized and shook his heart with an envenomed, bony clutch.“God!” he murmured. “What a time that was—what a ghastly, terrible time!”He tried to shake off this obsessing vision, openedhis eyes, and sank down into the easy-chair. Unnerved, shaking, he struck the glass still holding some of the egg-nog, and knocked it to the floor.The crash of the breaking glass startled him as if it had been the crack of a rifle. Quivering, he stared down at the liquor, spreading over the holystoned floor. Upon it the red sunlight gleamed; and in a flash he beheld once more the deck of the oldSilver Fleece, smeared and spotted with blood.Back he shrank, with extended hands, superstitious fear at his heart. Something nameless, cold and terrible fingered at the latchets of his soul. It was all irrational enough, foolish enough; but still it caught him in its grip, that perfectly unreasoning, heart-clutching fear.Weakly he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes. With bloodless lips he quavered:“After fifty years, my God! After fifty years!”

VISIONS OF THE PAST

Comfortably installed in a huge easy-chair beside the freshly built fire in the “cabin” of Snug Haven and with one of Ezra Trefethen’s most artful egg-nogs within easy reach, the aged doctor leaned back, and sighed deeply.

“Maybe the captain’s right,” said he. “Maybe the boy’s all right. It’s possible; but I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Blinking, his eyes wandered about the room, which opened off from an old-fashioned hallway lighted by glass panels at the sides of the front door, and by a leaded fanlight over the lintel; a hallway with a curved stairway that would have delighted the heart of any antiquarian. The cabin itself showed by its construction and furnishing that the captain had spent a great deal of thought and time and money. At first glance, save that the fireplace was an incongruous note, one would have thought one’s self aboard ship, so closely had the nautical idea been carried out.

To begin with, the windows at the side, which opened out upon the orchard, were circular and rimmed with shining brass, and had thick panes inward-swinging like ships’ portholes. A polished fir column, set a trifle on a slant, rose from floor to ceiling, which was supported on white beams, the form and curve of which exactly imitated marine architecture. This column measured no less than a foot and a half in diameter, and gave precisely the impression of a ship’smast. On it hung a chronometer, boxed in a case of polished mahogany, itself the work of the captain’s own hand.

All the lamps were hung in gimbals, as if the good captain expected Snug Haven at any moment to set sail and go pitching away over storm-tossed seas. The green-covered table bore a miscellany of nautical almanacs; it accommodated, also, a variety of charts, maps and meteorological reports. The captain’s own chair at that table was a true swinging-chair, screwed to the floor; and this floor, you understand, was uncarpeted, so that the holystoned planking shone in immaculate cleanliness as the declining sun through the portholes painted long, reddish stripes across it. Brass instruments lay on the table, and from them the sun flecked little high-lights against the clean, white paint of the cabin.

At the left of the table stood a binnacle, with compass and all; at the right, a four-foot globe, its surface scored with numerous names, dates and memoranda, carefully written in red ink. The captain’s log-book, open on the table, also showed writing in red. No ordinary diary sufficed for Alpheus Briggs; no, he would have a regulation ship’s log to keep the record of his daily life, or he would have no record at all.

In a rack at one side rested two bright telescopes, with an empty place for the glass now out on the piazza. Beneath this rack a sextant hung; and at one side the daily government weather-report was affixed to a white-painted board.

A sofa-locker, quite like a ship’s berth, still showed the impress of the captain’s body, where he had taken his after-dinner nap. One almost thought to hear the chanting of sea-winds in cordage, aloft, and the creak and give of seasoned timbers. A curious, a wonderful room, indeed! And as Dr. Filhiol studied it, his faceexpressed a kind of yearning eagerness; for to his fading life this connotation of the other, braver days brought back memories of things that once had been, that now could never be again.

Yet, analyzing everything, he put away these thoughts. Many sad years had broken the spirit in him and turned his thoughts to the worse aspects of everything. He shook his head again dubiously, and his thin lips formed the words:

“This is very, very strange. This is some form of mental aberration, surely. No man wholly sane would build and furnish any such grotesque place. It’s worse, worse than I thought.”

Contemplatively he sipped the egg-nog and continued his observations, while from the kitchen—no, the galley—sounded a clink of coppers, mingled with the piping song of old Ezra, interminably discoursing on the life and adventures of the unfortunate Reuben Ranzo, whose chantey is beknown to all seafaring men. The doctor’s eyes, wandering to the wall nearest him, now perceived a glass-fronted cabinet, filled with a most extraordinaryomnium gatherumof curios.

Corals, sponges, coir, nuts, pebbles and dried fruits, strange puffy and spiny fishes, specimens in alcohol, a thousand and one oddments jostled each other on the shelves.

Nor was this all to excite the doctor’s wonder. For hard by the cabinet he now perceived the door of a safe, set into the wall, its combination flush with the white boards.

“The captain can’t be so foolish as to keep his money in his house,” thought Filhiol. “Not when there are banks that offer absolute security. But then, with a man like Captain Briggs, anything seems possible.”

He drank a little more of Ezra’s excellent concoction, and turned his attention to the one remainingside of the cabin, almost filled by the huge-throated fireplace and by the cobbled chimney.

“More junk!” said Dr. Filhiol unsympathetically.

Against the cobble-stones, suspended from hooks screwed into the cement, hung a regular arsenal of weapons: yataghans, scimitars, sabers and muskets—two of them rare Arabian specimens with long barrels and silver-chased stocks. Pistols there were, some of antique patterns bespeaking capture or purchase from half-civilized peoples. Daggers and stilettos had been worked into a kind of rough pattern. A bow and arrows, a “Penang lawyer,” and a couple of boomerangs were interspersed between some knobkerries from Australia, and a few shovel-headed spears and African pigmies’ blow-guns. All the weapons showed signs of wear or rust. In every probability, all had taken human life.

Odd, was it not, that the captain, now so mild a man of peace, should have maintained so grim a reliquary? But, perhaps (the doctor thought), Briggs had preserved it as a kind of strange, contrasting reminder of his other days, just as more than one reformed drunkard has been known to keep the favorite little brown jug that formerly was his undoing.

Filhiol, however, very deeply disapproved of this collection. Old age and infirmity had by no means rendered his disposition more suave. He muttered words of condemnation, drank off a little more of the egg-nog, and once again fell to studying the collection. And suddenly his attention concentrated, fixing itself with particular intentness on a certain blade that until then had escaped his scrutiny.

This blade, a Malay kris with a beautifully carved lotus-bud on the handle, seemed to occupy a sort of central post of honor, toward which the other knives converged. The doctor adjusted his spectacles andstudied it for a long minute, as if trying to bring back some recollections not quite clear. Then he arose lamely, and squinted up at the blade.

“That’s a kris,” said he slowly. “A Malay kris. Good Lord, it couldn’t be—thekris, could it?”

He remained a little while, observing the weapon. The sunlight, ever growing redder as the sun sank over Croft Hill and the ancient cemetery, flicked lights from the brass instruments on the table, and for a moment seemed to crimson the vicious, wavy blade of steel. The doctor raised a lean hand to touch the kris, then drew back.

“Better not,” said he. “That’s the one, all right enough. There’s the groove, the poison groove. There couldn’t be two exactly alike. I remember that groove especially. And curaré lasts for years; it’s just as fatal now, as when it was first put on. That kris is mighty good to let alone!”

A dark, rusty stain on the blade set him shuddering. Blood, was it—blood, from the long ago? Who could say? The kris evoked powerful memories. The battle of Motomolo Strait rose up before him. The smoke from the fire in the grate seemed, all at once, that of the burning proa, drifting over the opalescent waters of that distant sea. The illusion was extraordinary. Dr. Filhiol closed his eyes, held tightly to the edge of the mantel, and with dilated nostrils sniffed the smoke. He remained there, transfixed with poignant emotions, trembling, afraid.

It seemed to him as if the shadowy hand of some malignantjinneehad reached out of the bleeding past, and had laid hold on him—a hand that seized and shook his heart with an envenomed, bony clutch.

“God!” he murmured. “What a time that was—what a ghastly, terrible time!”

He tried to shake off this obsessing vision, openedhis eyes, and sank down into the easy-chair. Unnerved, shaking, he struck the glass still holding some of the egg-nog, and knocked it to the floor.

The crash of the breaking glass startled him as if it had been the crack of a rifle. Quivering, he stared down at the liquor, spreading over the holystoned floor. Upon it the red sunlight gleamed; and in a flash he beheld once more the deck of the oldSilver Fleece, smeared and spotted with blood.

Back he shrank, with extended hands, superstitious fear at his heart. Something nameless, cold and terrible fingered at the latchets of his soul. It was all irrational enough, foolish enough; but still it caught him in its grip, that perfectly unreasoning, heart-clutching fear.

Weakly he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes. With bloodless lips he quavered:

“After fifty years, my God! After fifty years!”

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