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Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper: A Story of Cape Cod

by James A. Cooper · English · Gutenberg #13982 · 426,096 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper: A Story of Cape Cod

Author: James A. Cooper


        
Release date: November 8, 2004 [eBook #13982]
                Most recently updated: July 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13982

Credits: E-text prepared by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAP'N ABE, STOREKEEPER: A STORY OF CAPE COD ***




CAP'N ABE, STOREKEEPER

A Story of Cape Cod

by

JAMES A. COOPER

1917




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

      I.  A CHOICE
     II.  CAP'N ABE
    III.  IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM
     IV.  THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS
      V.  WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT
     VI.  BOARDED BY PIRATES
    VII.  UNDER FIKE
   VIII.  SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY
     IX.  SUSPICION HOVERS
      X.  WHAT LOUISE THINKS
     XI.  THE LEADING MAN
    XII.  THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA
   XIII.  WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY
    XIV.  A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS
     XV.  THE UNEXPECTED
    XVI.  A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
   XVII.  THE ODDS AGAINST HIM
  XVIII.  SOMETHING BREAKS
    XIX.  MUCH ADO
     XX.  THE SUN WORSHIPERS
    XXI.  DISCOVERIES
   XXII.  SHOCKING NEWS
  XXIII.  BETWEEN THE FIRES
   XXIV.  GRAY DAYS
    XXV.  AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT
   XXVI.  AT LAST
  XXVII.  SARGASSO
 XXVIII.  STORM CLOUDS THREATEN
   XXIX.  THE SCAR
    XXX.  WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT
   XXXI.  AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL
  XXXII.  ON THE ROLL OF HONOR




CHAPTER I

A CHOICE

"Of course, my dear, there is nobody but your Aunt Euphemia for you to go
to!"

"Oh, daddy-professor!  Nobody?  Can we rake or scrape up no other
relative on either side of the family who will take in poor little me for
the summer?  You will be home in the fall, of course."

"That is the supposition," Professor Grayling replied, his lips pursed
reflectively.  "No.  Dear me! there seems nobody."

"But Aunt Euphemia!"

"I know, Lou, I know.  She expects you, however.  She writes----"

"Yes.  She has it all planned," sighed Louise Grayling dejectedly.
"Every move at home or abroad Aunt Euphemia has mapped out for me.  When
I am with her I am a mere automaton--only unlike a real marionette I can
feel when she pulls the strings!"

The professor shook his head.  "There's--there's only your poor mother's
half-brother down on the Cape."

"What half-brother?" demanded Louise with a quick smile that matched the
professor's quizzical one.

"Why----Well, your mother, Lou, had an older half-brother, a Mr. Silt.
He keeps a store at Cardhaven.  You know, I met your mother down that way
when I was hunting seaweed for the Smithsonian Institution.  Your
grandmother was a Bellows and her folks lived on the Cape, too.  Her
family has died out and your grandfather was dead before I married your
mother.  The half-brother, this Mr. Silt--Captain Abram Silt--is the only
individual of that branch of the family left alive, I believe."

"Goodness!" gasped the girl.  "What a family tree!"

Again the professor smiled whimsically.  "Only a few of the branches.
But they all reach back to the first navigators of the world."

"The first navigators?"

"I do not mean to the Phoenicians," her father said.  "I mean that the
world never saw braver nor more worthy sailors than those who called the
wind-swept hamlets of Cape Cod their home ports.  The Silts were all
master-mariners.  This Captain Abe is a bachelor, I believe.  You could
not very well go there."

Louise sighed.  "No; I couldn't go there--I suppose.  I couldn't go
there----"  Her voice wandered off into silence.  Then suddenly, almost
explosively, it came back with the question: "Why couldn't I?"

"My dear Lou!  What would your aunt say?" gasped the professor.

He was a tall, rather soldierly looking man--the result of military
training in his youth--with a shock of perfectly white hair and a
sweeping mustache that contrasted clearly with his pink, always cleanly
shaven cheeks and chin.  Without impressing the observer with his
muscular power.  Professor Grayling was a better man on a long hike and
possessed more reserve strength than many more beefy athletes.

His daughter had inherited his springy carriage and even the clean
pinkness of his complexion--always looking as though she were fresh from
her shower.  But there was nothing mannish about Lou Grayling--nothing at
all, though she had other attributes of body and mind for which to thank
her father.

They were the best of chums.  No father and daughter could have trod the
odd corners of the world these two had visited without becoming so
closely attached to each other that their processes of thought, as well
as their opinions in most matters, were almost in perfect harmony.
Although Mrs. Euphemia Conroth was the professor's own sister he could
appreciate Lou's attitude in this emergency.  While the girl was growing
up there had been times when it was considered best--usually because of
her studies--for Lou to live with Aunt Euphemia.  Indeed, that good lady
believed it almost a sin that a young girl should attend the professor on
any of his trips into "the wilds," as she expressed it.  Aunt Euphemia
ignored the fact that nowadays the railroad and telegraph are in Thibet
and that turbines ply the headwaters of the Amazon.

Mrs. Conroth dwelt in Poughkeepsie--that half-way stop between New York
and Albany; and she was as exclusive and opinionated a lady as might be
found in that city of aristocracy and learning.

The college in the shadow of which Aunt Euphemia's dwelling basked, was
that which had led the professor's daughter under the lady's sway.
Although the girls with whom Lou associated within the college walls were
up-to-the-minute--if not a little ahead of it--she found her aunt, like
many of those barnacles clinging to the outer reefs of learning in
college towns, was really a fossil.  If one desires to meet the
ultraconservative in thought and social life let me commend him to this
stratum of humanity within stone's throw of a college.  These barnacles
like Aunt Euphemia are wedded to a manner of thought, gained from their
own school experiences, that went out of fashion inside the colleges
thirty years ago.

Originally, in Lou Grayling's case, when she first lived with Aunt
Euphemia and was a day pupil at an exclusive preparatory school, it had
been drilled into her by the lady that "children should be seen but not
heard!"  Later, although she acknowledged the fact that young girls were
now taught many things that in Aunt Euphemia's maidenhood were scarcely
whispered within hearing of "the young person," the lady was quite
shocked to hear such subjects discussed in the drawing-room, with her
niece as one of the discussers.

The structure of man and the lower animals, down to the number of their
ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party.  It made
Aunt Euphemia gasp.  Anatomy was Lou's hobby.  She was an excellent and
practical taxidermist, thanks to her father.  And she had learned to name
the bones of the human frame along with her multiplication table.

However, there was little about Louise Grayling to commend her among, for
instance, the erudite of Boston.  She was sweet and wholesome, as has
been indicated.  She had all the common sense that a pretty girl should
have--and no more.

For she was pretty and, as well, owned that charm of intelligence without
which a woman is a mere doll.  Her father often reflected that the man
who married Lou would be playing in great luck.  He would get a _mate_.

So far as Professor Grayling knew, however (and he was as keenly
observant of his daughter and her development as he was of scientific
matters), there was as yet no such man in sight.  Lou had escaped the
usual boy-and-girl entanglements which fret the lives of many young folk,
because of her association with her father in his journeys about the
world.  Being a perfectly normal, well-balanced girl, black boys, brown
boys, yellow boys, or all the hues and shades of boys to be met with in
those odd corners of the earth where the white man is at a premium, did
not interest Lou Grayling in the least.

Without being ultraconservative like Aunt Euphemia, she was the sort of
girl whom one might reckon on doing the sensible--perhaps the
obvious--thing in almost any emergency.  Therefore, after that single
almost awed exclamation from the professor--his sole homage to Mrs.
Grundy--he added:

"My dear, do as you like.  You are old enough and wise enough to choose
for yourself--your aunt's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.  Only,
if you don't mind----"

"What is it, daddy-prof?" she asked him with a smile, yet still
reflective.

"Why, if you don't mind," repeated the professor, "I'd rather you didn't
inform me where you decide to spend your summer until I am off.  I--I
don't mind knowing after I am at sea--and your aunt cannot get at me."

She laughed at him gaily.  "You take it for granted that I am going to
Cape Cod," she cried accusingly.

"No--o.  But I know how sorely I should be tempted myself, realizing your
aunt's trying disposition."

"Perhaps this--this half-uncle may be quite as trying."

"Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply.

"What?" she cried.  "Traitor to the family fame?"

"You do not know Cape Cod folk.  I do," he told her rather seriously.
"Some of them are quaint and peculiar.  I suppose there are just as many
down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New
England.  But your mother's people, as I knew them, were the very salt of
the earth.  Our wanderings were all that kept you from knowing the old
folk before they passed away."

"You tempt me," was all Louise said.  Then the conversation lapsed.

It was the day following that the professor was to go to Boston
preparatory to sailing.  At the moment of departure his daughter,
smiling, tucked a sealed note into his pocket.

"Don't open it, daddy-prof, till you are out of sight of Cohasset Rocks,"
she said.  "Then you will not know where I am going to spend the time of
your absence until it is too late--either to oppose or to advise."

"You can't worry me," he told her, with admiration in his glance.  "I've
every confidence in you, my dear.  Have a good time if you can."

She watched him down the long platform between the trains.  When she saw
him assisted into the Pullman by the porter she turned with a little
sigh, and walked up the rise toward Forty-second Street.  She could
almost wish she were going with him, although seaweed and mollusk
gathering was a messy business, and the vessel he sailed in was an
ancient converted coaster with few comforts for womenkind.  Louise
Grayling had been hobbled by city life for nearly a year now and she
began to crave new scenes.

There were some last things to do at the furnished apartment they were
giving up.  Some trunks were to go to the storehouse.  Her own baggage
was to be tagged and sent to the Fall River boat.

For, spurred by curiosity as well as urged by a desire to escape Aunt
Euphemia for a season, Louise was bent upon a visit to Cape Cod.  At
least, she would learn what manner of person her only other living
relative was--her mother's half-brother, Captain Abram Silt.

In the train the next day, which wandered like an erratic caterpillar
along the backbone of the Cape, she began to wonder if, after all, she
was displaying that judgment which daddy-professor praised so highly.  It
was too early in the season for the "millionaire's special" to be
scheduled, in which those wealthy summer folk who have "discovered" the
Cape travel to and from Boston.  Lou was on a local from Fall River that
stopped at every pair of bars and even hesitated at the pigpens along the
right of way.

Getting aboard and getting off again at the innumerable little stations,
were people whose like she had never before seen.  And their speech,
plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her,
and sometimes puzzled her.  Some of the men who rode short distances in
the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys.  They called the conductor
"skipper," and hailed each other in familiar idioms.

The women were not uncomely, nor did they dress in outlandish manner.
Great is the sway of the modern Catalogue House!  But their speech was
blunt and the three topics of conversation most popular were the fish
harvest, clamming, and summer boarders.

"Land sakes! is that you, Em'line Scudder?  What sent you cruisin' in
these waters?  I thought you never got away from the Haven."

"Good-day, Mrs. Eldredge.  You're fairin' well?  I just _had_ to come
over to Littlebridge for some fixin's.  My boarders will be 'long and I
got to freshen the house up a little."

"You goin' to have the same folks you had last year, Em'line?"

"Oh, yes.  They're real nice---for city people.  I tell Barzillai----"

"How is Barzillai?"

"Middlin'.  His leg ain't never been just right since he was helpin' ice
the _Tryout_, come two summers ago.  You know, one o' them big cakes from
the ice fact'ry fell on him. . . .  I tell Barzillai the city folks are a
godsend to us Cape Codders in summer time, now that sea-goin' don't seem
so pop'lar with the men as it useter be."

"I dunno.  Some of these city folks don't seem to be sent by the Lord,
but by the other feller!" was the grim rejoinder.  "I had tryin' times
with my crowd last summer; and the children with 'em was a
visitation--like the plagues of Egypt!"

Louise was an amused yet observant listener.  She began thus early to
gain what these good people themselves would call a "slant" upon their
characters and their outlook on life.

Aside from her interest in her fellow-travelers, there were other things
to engage the girl's attention.  New places always appealed to her more
than unfamiliar human beings; perhaps because she had seen so many of the
latter in all quarters of the globe and found so little variety in their
characters.  There were good people and bad people everywhere, Louise had
found.  Greedy, generous, morose, and laughing; faithful and treacherous,
the quick and the stupid; those likable at first meeting as well as those
utterly impossible.  Of whatever nation and color they might be, she had
learned that under their skins they were all just human beings.

But Nature--ah! she was ever changing.  This girl who had seen so much of
the world had never seen anything quite like the bits of scene she
observed from the narrow window of the car.  Not beautiful, perhaps, but
suggestive and provocative of genre pictures which would remain in her
memory long afterward.  There were woods and fields, cranberry bogs and
sand dunes, between the hamlets; and always through the open window the
salt tang of the air delighted her.  She was almost prepared to say she
was glad she had ventured when she left the train at Paulmouth and saw
her trunks put off upon the platform.

A teetering stage, with a rack behind for light baggage, drawn by a pair
of lean horses, waited beside the station.  The stage had been freshened
for the season with a thin coat of yellow paint.  The word "_Cardhaven_"
was painted in bright blue letters on the doors of this ancient coach.

"No, ma'am!  I can't possibly take your trunks," the driver said,
politely explanatory.  "Ye see, miss, I carry the mail this trip an' the
parcel-post traffic is right heavy, as ye might say. . . .  Belay that,
Jerry!" he observed to the nigh horse that was stamping because of the
pest of flies.  "We'll cast off in a minute and get under way. . . .  No,
miss, I can't take 'em; but Perry Baker'll likely go over to the Haven
to-night and he'll fetch 'em for ye.  I got all the cargo I can load."

Soon the horses shacked out of town.  The sandy road wandered through the
pine woods where the hot June sunshine extracted the scent of balsam
until its strength was almost overpowering.  Louise, alone in the
interior of the old coach, found herself pitching and tossing about as
though in a heavy sea.

"It is fortunate I am a good sailor," she told herself, somewhat ruefully.

The driver was a large man in a yellow linen duster.  He was not
especially communicative--save to his horses.  He told them frankly what
he thought of them on several occasions!  But "city folks" were evidently
no novelty for him.  As he put Louise and her baggage into the vehicle he
had asked:

"Who you cal'latin' to stop with, miss?"

"I am going to Mr. Abram Silt's," Louise had told him.

"Oh!  Cap'n Abe.  Down on the Shell Road.  I can't take ye that
fur--ain't allowed to drive beyond the tavern.  But 'tain't noways a fur
walk from there."

He expressed no curiosity about her, or her business with the Shell Road
storekeeper.  That surprised Louise a little.  She had presumed all these
people would display Yankee curiosity.

It was not a long journey by stage, for which she was thankful.  The
noonday sun was hot and the interior of the turnout soon began to take on
the semblance of a bake-oven.  They came out at last on a wind-swept
terrace and she gained her first unobstructed view of the ocean.

She had always loved the sea--its wideness, its mystery, its ever
changing face.  She watched the sweep of a gull following the crested
windrow of the breakers on a near-by reef, busy with his fishing.  All
manner of craft etched their spars and canvas on the horizon, only bluer
than the sea itself.  Inshore was a fleet of small fry--catboats, sloops,
dories under sail, and a smart smack or two going around to Provincetown
with cargoes from the fish pounds.

"I shall like it," she murmured after a deeper breath.

They came to the outlying dwellings of Cardhaven; then to the head of
Main Street that descended gently to the wharves and beaches of the inner
harbor.  Halfway down the hill, just beyond the First Church and the
post-office, was the rambling, galleried old structure across the face of
which, and high under its eaves, was painted the name "_Cardhaven Inn_."
A pungent, fishy smell swept up the street with the hot breeze.  The tide
was out and the flats were bare.

The coach stopped before the post-office, and Louise got out briskly with
her bag.  The driver, backing down from his seat, said to her:

"If ye wait till I git out the mail I'll drive ye inter the tavern yard
in style.  I bait the horses there."

"Oh, I'll walk," she told him brightly.  "I can get dinner there, I
suppose?"

"Warn't they expectin' you at Cap'n Abe's?" the stage driver asked.  "I
want to know!  Oh, yes.  You can buy your dinner at the tavern.  But
'tain't a long walk to Cap'n Abe's.  Not fur beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

Louise thanked him.  A young man was coming down the steps of the
post-office.  He was a more than ordinarily good-looking young fellow,
deeply tanned, with a rather humorous twist to his shaven lips, and with
steady blue eyes.  He was dressed in quite common clothing: the jersey,
high boots, and sou'wester of a fisherman.

He looked at Louise, but not offensively.  He did not remove his hat as
he spoke.

"I heard Noah say you wished to go to Cap'n Abe's store," he observed
with neither an assumption of familiarity nor any bucolic embarrassment.
"I am bound that way myself."

"Thank you!" she said with just enough dignity to warn him to keep his
distance if he chanced to be contemplating anything familiar.  "But I
shall dine at the hotel first."

A brighter color flooded into his cheeks and Louise felt that she might
have been too sharp with him.  She mended this by adding:

"You may tell me how to get to the Shell Road and Mr. Silt's, if you will
be so kind."

He smiled at that.  Really, he was an awfully nice-looking youth!  She
had no idea that these longshore fishermen would be so gentlemanly and so
good looking.

"Oh, you can't miss it.  Take the first left-hand street, and keep on it.
Cap'n Abe's store is the only one beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

"Thank you," she said again and mounted the broad steps of the Inn.  The
young fellow hesitated as though he were inclined to enter too.  But when
Louise reached the piazza and glanced quickly down at him, he was moving
on.

The cool interior of a broad hall with a stairway mounting out of it and
a screened dining-room at one side, welcomed the girl.  A bustling young
woman in checked gingham, which fitted her as though it were a mold for
her rather plump figure, met the visitor.

"How-do!" she said briskly.  "Goin' to stop?"

"Only for dinner," Louise said, smiling--and when she smiled her gray
eyes made friends.

"Almost over.  But I'll run an' tell the cook to dish you up something
hot.  Come right this way an' wash.  I'll fix you a table where it's
cool.  This is 'bout the first hot day we've had."

She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away.
Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders
having departed.

"My name's Gusty Durgin," she volunteered.  "I reckon you're one o' them
movin' picture actresses they say are goin' to work down to The Beaches
this summer."

"What makes you think so?" asked Louise, somewhat amused.

"Why--you kinder look it.  I should say you had 'screen charm.'  Oh!  I
been readin' up about you folks for a long time back.  I subscribed to
_The Fillum Universe_ that tells all about you.  I'd like to try actin'
before the cam'ra myself.  But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen
charm,'" the waitress added seriously.  "I'm too fat.  And I wouldn't do
none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of
it.  But you must take lovely photographs."

"I'm not sure that I do," laughed Louise.

"Land sakes!  Course you do.  Them big eyes o' yourn must just look
fetchin' in a picture.  I don't believe I've ever seen you in a movie,
have I, Miss------?"

"Grayling."

"'Grayling'!  Ain't that pretty?" Gusty Durgin gave an envious sigh.  "Is
it your honest to goodness, or just your fillum name?"

"My 'honest to goodness,'" the visitor confessed, bubbling with laughter.

"Land sakes!  I should have to change mine all right.  The kids at school
useter call me 'Dusty Gudgeon.'  Course, my right name's Augusta; but
nobody ever remembers down here on the Cape to call anybody by such a
long name.  Useter be a boy in our school who was named 'Christopher
Columbus George Washington Marquis de Lafayette Gallup.'  His mother
named him that.  But everybody called him 'Lafe'--after Lafayette, ye see.

"Land sakes!  I should just have to change my name if I acted in the
pictures.  Your complexion's real, too, ain't it?" pursued this waitress
with histrionic ambitions.  "Real pretty, too, if 'tis high colored.  I
expect you have to make up for the pictures, just the same."

"I suppose I should.  I believe it is always necessary to accentuate the
lights and shadows for the camera."

"'Accentuate'--yep.  That's a good word.  I'll remember that," said
Gusty.  "You goin' to stay down to The Beaches long---and will you like
it?"

"The Beaches?"

"That's where you'll work.  At the Bozewell house.  Swell bungalow.  All
the big bugs live along The Beaches."

"I am not sure just how long I shall stay," confessed Louise Grayling;
"but I know I am going to like it."




CHAPTER II

CAP'N ABE

"I see by the _Globe_ paper," Cap'n Abe observed, pushing up from his
bewhiskered visage the silver-bowed spectacles he really did not need,
"that them fellers saved from the wreck of the _Gilbert Gaunt_ cal'late
they went through something of an adventure."

"And they did," rejoined Cap'n Joab Beecher, "if they seen ha'f what they
tell about."

"I dunno," the storekeeper went on reflectively, staring at a huge
fishfly booming against one of the dusty window panes.  "I dunno.  Cap'n
Am'zon was tellin' me once't about what he and two others went through
with after the _Posy Lass,_ out o' Bangor, was smashed up in a big blow
off Hat'ras.  What them fellers in the _Globe_ paper tell about ain't a
patch on what Cap'n Am'zon suffered."

There was an uncertain, troubled movement among Cap'n Abe's hearers.
Even the fishfly stopped droning.  Cap'n Beecher looked longingly through
the doorway from which the sea could be observed as well as a strip of
that natural breakwater called "The Neck," a barrier between the tumbling
Atlantic and the quiet bay around which the main village of Cardhaven was
set.

All the idlers in the store on this June afternoon were not natives.
There were several young fellows from The Beaches--on the Shell Road to
which Cap'n Abe's store was a fixture.  In sight of The Beaches the
wealthy summer residents had built their homes--dwellings ranging in
architectural design from the mushroom-roofed bungalow to a villa in the
style of the Italian Renaissance.

The villa in question had been built by I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy
King, and Lawford Tapp, only son of the house, was one of the audience in
Cap'n Abe's store.

"Cap'n Amazon said," boomed the storekeeper a good deal like the
fishfly--"Cap'n Amazon said the _Posy Lass_ was loaded with lumber and
her cargo's 'bout all that kep' her afloat as fur as Hat'ras.  Then the
smashin' big seas that come aboard settled her right down like a wounded
duck.

"The deck load went o' course; and about ev'rything else was cleaned off
the decks that warn't bolted to 'em.  The seas rose up and picked off the
men, one after t'other, like a person'd clean off a beach plum bush."

"I shouldn't wonder," spoke up Cap'n Beecher, "if we seen some weather
'fore morning."

He was squinting through the doorway at an azure and almost speckless
sky.  There was an uneasy shuffling of boots.  One of the boys from The
Beaches giggled.  Cap'n Abe--and the fishfly--boomed on together, the
storekeeper evidently visualizing the scene he narrated and not the
half-lighted and goods-crowded shop.  At its best it was never well
illumined.  Had the window panes been washed there was little chance of
the sunshine penetrating far save by the wide open door.  On either hand
as one entered were the rows of hanging oilskins, storm boots,
miscellaneous clothing and ship chandlery that made up only a part of
Cap'n Abe's stock.

There were blue flannel shirts dangling on wooden hangers to show all
their breadth of shoulder and the array of smoked-pearl buttons.  Brown
and blue dungaree overalls were likewise displayed--grimly, like men
hanging in chains.  At the end of one row of these quite ordinary
habiliments was one dress shirt with pleated bosom and cuffs as stiff as
a board.  Lawford Tapp sometimes speculated on that shirt--how it chanced
to be in Cap'n Abe's stock and why it had hung there until the flies had
taken title to it!

Centrally located was the stove, its four heavily rusted legs set in a
shallow box which was sometimes filled with fresh sawdust.  The
stovepipe, guyed by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the chimney behind
Cap'n Abe.

He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy
fists on the brown, hacked plank--the notches of the yard-stick and
fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge--his pale eyes sparkling as
he talked.

"There she wallered," went on the narrator of maritime disaster, "her
cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs.  She was
wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman's hands.  She no longer
mounted the waves; she bored through 'em.  'Twas a serious time--to hear
Cap'n Am'zon tell it."

"I guess it must ha' been, Abe," Milt Baker put in hastily.  "Gimme a
piece o' that Brown Mule chewin' tobacker."

"I'll _sell_ it to ye, Milt," the storekeeper said gently, with his hand
on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase.

"That's what I mean," rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the
required nickel.

"For fourteen days while the _Posy Lass_ was drivin' off shore before an
easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the
fo'mast, _ex_-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves
picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes.  And five raw potaters was all they had
to eat in all that endurin' time!"

"Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried.  "For three men?  And for fourteen
days?  Good-_night_!"

Cap'n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of
indignation.  "Young man," he said tartly, "you should hear Cap'n Am'zon
himself tell it.  You wouldn't cast no doubts upon his statement."

Cap'n Joab snorted and turned his back again.  Young Tapp felt somewhat
abashed.

"Yes, sir!" proceeded Cap'n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his
stories, "they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them
potaters--scraping 'em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin' 'em
like they was jewels.  One of 'em went mad."

"One o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue.

"_Who_ went crazy--your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully.  He
had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the
storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides
the Brown Mule.

Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the
other feller lashed the poor chap--han's _an_' feet--and so kep' him from
goin' overboard.  But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all.  When they
was rescued from the _Posy Lass_, her decks awash and her slowly breakin'
up, there warn't nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his
mind.  He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port.

"Now, them fellers saved from the _Gilbert Gaunt_ didn't go through
nothin' like that, it stands to reason.  Cap'n Am'zon----"

Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply
tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust.

"I declare!  I'd love to see this wonderful brother of his.  He must have
Baron Munchausen lashed to the post," the young man whispered.

"Never heard tell of that Munchausen feller," Cap'n Joab reflected.
"Reckon he didn't sail from any of the Cape ports.  But you let Abe tell
it, Cap'n Am'zon Silt is the greatest navigator an' has the
rip-snortin'est adventoors of airy deep-bottom sailor that ever chawed
salt hoss."

"Did you ever see him?" Lawford asked.

"See who?"

"Cap'n Amazon?"

"No.  I didn't never see him.  But I've heard Cap'n Abe talk about
him--standin' off an' on as ye might say--for twenty year and more."

"Odd you never met him, isn't it?"

"No.  I never happened on Cap'n Am'zon when I was sea-farin'.  And he
ain't never been to Cardhaven to my knowledge."

"Never been here?" murmured Lawford Tapp more than a little surprised.
"Wasn't he born and brought up here?"

"No.  Neither was Cap'n Abe.  The Silts flourish, as ye might say--or,
useter 'fore the fam'ly sort o' petered out--down New Bedford way.  Cap'n
Abe come here twenty-odd year back and opened this store.  He's as salt
as though he'd been a haddocker since he was weaned.  But he's always
stuck mighty close inshore.  Nobody ever seen him in a boat--'ceptin' out
in a dory fishin' for tomcod in the bay, and on a mighty ca'm day at
that."

"How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked,
impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper.

The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically.  "It's easy 'nough
to pick up skipper's title longshore.  'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of
a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft--or 'doughter be.
But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough."

"How?" urged Lawford.

"When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking
comp'nies left on the Cape.  Why, 'tain't been ten years since the
Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the _Mary Benson_ that went onto Sanders Reef
all standin'.  They made a good speck out o' the job, too.

"Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies--was the heaviest stockholder,
in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n.  He never headed no crew--not as I ever
heard on.  But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it."

"But about his brother--this Captain Amazon?"  The line of Cap'n Joab
Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed,
and he wagged his head slowly.  "I don't know what to make of all this
talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply.

Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper.  He certainly looked
to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years
had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop.  He
was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon.  His eyes were too mild
for that--save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his
interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.

Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a
mariner could be.  No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too
remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences.
Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper
had told over and over again until they were threadbare.

Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue
jersey.  He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had
made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth.  Under the bulk
of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the
observer could not easily judge.  And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's
sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.

Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell
Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a
lonely life.  Twenty years' residence meant little to Cardhaven folk.
Cap'n Abe was still an outsider to people who were so closely married and
intermarried that every human being within five miles of the Haven (not
counting the aristocrats of The Beaches) could honestly call each of the
others cousin in some degree.

The house and store was set on a lonely stretch of road.  It was
unlighted at night, for the last street lamp had been fixed by the town
fathers at the Mariner's Chapel, as though they said to all mundane
illumination as did King Canute to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou come and
no farther."

Betty Gallup came cross lots each day to "rid up" Mr. Silt's living-room,
which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead.  She was gone
home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last
lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself.  He
declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder,
anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of
"blood-ends," she was all at sea.  He intimated that there were digestive
reasons for her husband's death at the early age of sixty-eight.

Milt Baker had successfully introduced another topic of conversation, far
removed it would seem from any adventurous happening connected with Cap'n
Amazon Silt's career.

"I hear tell," said Milt, chewing Brown Mule with gusto, "that them folks
cavortin' down on The Beaches for a week past is movin' picture actors.
That so, Lawford?"

"There's a camera man and a director, and several handy men arrived," the
son of the Salt Water Taffy King replied.  "They are going to use
Bozewell's house for some pictures.  The Bozewells are in Europe."

"But ain't none of the actorines come?" demanded Milt, who was a sad
dog--let him tell it!  He had been motorman on a street car in Providence
for a couple of winters before he married Mandy Card, and now tried to
keep green his reputation for sophistication.

"I believe not," Lawford answered, with reflection.  "I presume the
company will come later.  The director is taking what he calls 'stills'
of the several localities they propose using when the films are really
made."

"One of 'em told me," chuckled Amiel Perdue, "that they was hopin' for a
storm, so's to get a real wreck in the picture."

"Hoh!" snorted Cap'n Joab.  "Fine time o' year to be lookin' for a
no'theaster on the Cape."

"And do they reckon a craft'll drift right in here if there is a storm
an' wrack herself to please 'em?" piped up Washy Gallup--no relation to
Betty save through interminable cross-currents of Card and Baker blood.

"Sometimes them fillum fellers buy a boat an' wreck it a-purpose.  Look
what they did to the old _Morning Star_," Milt said.  "I read once of a
comp'ny putting two locomotives on one track an' running 'em full-tilt
together so's to get a picture of the smashup."

"Crazy critters!" muttered Cap'n Joab.

"But wait till ye see the fillum actresses," Milt chuckled.  "Tell ye
what, boys, some of 'em 'll make ye open your eyes!"

"Ye better go easy.  Milt, 'bout battin' your eyes," advised Amiel
Perdue.  "Mandy ain't lost her eyesight none either."

Washy's thin whine broke through the guffaw: "I seen a picture at
Paulmouth once't about a feller and a girl lost in the woods o' Borneo.
It was a stirrin' picture.  They was chased by headhunters, and one o'
these here big man-apes tackled 'em--what d'ye call that critter now?
Suthin' like ringin' a bell."

"Orang-outang," suggested Lawford.

"That's it.  Sounds jest like the Baptist Meetin' House bell.  It's
cracked."

"Them orang-outangs don't sound like no bell--not when they holler," put
in Cap'n Abe, leaning on his counter and staring at the tireless fishfly
again.  "Cap'n Am'zon Silt, when he was ashore once't in Borneo, met one
o' them critters."

"Gosh all fishhooks!" ejaculated Milt.  "Ain't there no place on this
green airth that brother o' yourn ain't been, Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't never been in jail, Milt," said the storekeeper mildly, and the
assembly broke into an appreciative chuckle.  It was well known that on
the last Fourth of July Milt Baker had been shut into the calaboose at
Paulmouth to sober up.

"As I was sayin'," pursued Cap'n Abe reflectively, "Cap'n Amazon went up
country with a Dutchman--a trader, I b'lieve he said the man was--and
they got into a part where the orang-outangs was plentiful."

"Jest as thick as sandpipers along The Beaches, I shouldn't wonder," put
in Cap'n Joab, at last tempted beyond his strength.

"No; nor like mackerel when ye get a full seine-haul," responded the
storekeeper, unruffled, "but thicker'n you'd want sand fleas to be if the
fleas measured up to the size of orang-outangs."

Lawford Tapp burst into open laughter.  "They can't catch you, can they,
Cap'n Abe?" he said.  "If that brother of yours has gone through one-half
the perils by land and sea I've heard you tell about, he's beat out most
sailors from old Noah down to Admiral Dewey."

Cap'n Abe's brows came together in pronounced disapproval.  "Young man,"
he said, "if Cap'n Am'zon was here now ye wouldn't darst cast any
aspersions on his word.  He ain't the man to stand for't."

"Well, I'd like to see Cap'n Amazon," Lawford said lightly, "if only for
the sake of asking him a question or two."

"You'll likely get your wish," returned the storekeeper tartly.

"What d'ye mean?" drawled Milt Baker, who always bobbed up serenely.  "Ye
don't say Cap'n Am'zon's likely to show up here at Cardhaven after all
these years?"

There was barely a second's hesitation on Mr. Silt's part.  Then he said:
"That's exactly what I mean.  I got a--ahem!--a letter from Cap'n Am'zon
only lately."

"And he's comin' to see ye?" gasped Cap'n Joab, turning from the door to
stare like the others at the storekeeper.

"Yes," the latter confessed.  "And he's likely to stay quite a spell when
he does come.  Says suthin' 'bout settlin' down.  He's gettin' along in
years like the rest of us.  Mebbe I'll let him keep store for me this
summer whilst I take a vacation," added Cap'n Abe more briskly, "like I
been wantin' to do for a long spell back."

"You took a vacation of a week or more about--was it ten year ago?"
demanded Cap'n Joab.  "I looked after the place for ye then."

"Ahem!  I mean a real vacation," Cap'n Abe declared, still staring at the
fishfly now feebly butting its head against the pane.  "That week was
when I went to the--'hem--buryin' of my a'nt, Joab.  I'll go this time
mebbe for two-three months.  Take a v'y'ge somewhere, I've always wanted
to."

"Land sakes!" exploded Cap'n Joab.  "I know ye been talkin' 'bout
cruisin' around--to see your folks, or the like--for the longest spell.
But I didn't s'pose ye re'lly meant it.  And your brother comin', too!
Well!"

"If he can tell of his adventures as well as you relate them," laughed
Lawford, "Cap'n Amazon should be an addition to the Cardhaven social
whirl."

"You take my advice, young man," Cap'n Abe said, with sternness, "and
belay that sort o' talk afore Cap'n Am'zon when he does come.  He's lived
a rough sort o' life.  He's nobody's tame cat.  Doubt his word and he's
jest as like as not to take ye by the scruff of the neck and duck ye in
the water butt."

There was a general laugh.  Almost always the storekeeper managed to turn
the tables in some way upon any doubting Thomas that drifted into his
shop.  Because of his ability in this particular he had managed to hold
his audience all these years.

Lawford could think of no reply with which to turn the laugh.  His wit
was not of a nimble order.  He turned to the door again and suddenly a
low ejaculation parted his lips.

"There's that girl again!"

Milt Baker screwed his neck around for a look.  "See who's come!" he
cackled.  "I bet it's one o' them moving picture actresses."

Lawford cast on the ribald Milt a somewhat angry glance.  Yet he did not
speak again for a moment.

"Tidy craft," grunted Cap'n Joab, eying the young woman who was
approaching the store along the white road.

"I saw her get out of Noah's ark when he landed at the post-office this
noon," Lawford explained to Cap'n Joab.  "She looks like a nice girl."

"Trim as a yacht," declared the old man admiringly.

She was plainly city bred--and city gowned--and she carried her light
traveling bag by a strap over her shoulder.  Her trim shoes were dusty
from her walk and her face was pink under her wide hat brim.

Lawford stepped out upon the porch.  His gaze was glued again to this
vision of young womanhood; but as he stood at one side she did not appear
to see him as she mounted the steps.

The heir of the Salt Water Taffy King was twenty-four, his rather
desultory college course behind him; and he thought his experience with
girls had been wide.  But he had never seen one just like Louise
Grayling.  He was secretly telling himself this as she made her entrance
into Cap'n Abe's store.




CHAPTER III

IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM

Louise came into the store smiling and the dusty, musty old place seemed
actually to brighten in the sunshine of her presence.  Her big gray eyes
(they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective mood) now
sparkled as her glance swept Cap'n Abe's stock-in-trade--the shelves of
fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with soap, and starch, and
half a hundred other kitchen goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham,
"turkey red," and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps and boxes of
sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns, coils of rope, boathooks,
tholepins hanging in wreaths; bailers, clam hoes, buckets, and the
thousand and one articles which made the store on the Shell Road a museum
that later was sure to engage the interest of the girl.

Now, however, the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting notice from
Louise.  Her gaze almost immediately fastened upon the figure of the
bewhiskered old man, with spectacles and sou'wester both pushed back on
his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her--his smile somehow impressing
Louise Grayling as almost childish, it was so kindly.

Cap'n Joab had dodged through the door after Lawford Tapp.  The other
boys from The Beaches followed their leader.  Old Washy Gallup and Amiel
Perdue suddenly remembered that it was almost chore time as this radiant
young woman said:

"I wish to see Mr. Abram Silt--Captain Silt.  Is he here?"

"I'm him, miss," Cap'n Abe returned politely.

Milt Baker surely would have remained of all the crowd of idlers, gaping
oilily at the visitor across the top of the rusty stove, had not a shrill
feminine voice been heard outside the store,

"Is Milt Baker there?  Ain't none o' you men seen him?  Land sakes! he's
as hard to hold as the greased pig on Fourth o' July--an' jest 'bout as
useful."

"Milt," said Cap'n Abe suggestively, "I b'lieve I hear Mandy callin' you."

"I'm a-comin'!--I'm a-comin', Mandy!" gurgled Milt, cognizant of the
girl's gay countenance turned upon him.

"What did you want, miss?" asked Cap'n Abe, as the recreant husband of
the militant Mandy stumbled over his own feet getting out of the store.

Louise bubbled over with laughter; she could not help it.  Cap'n Abe's
bearded countenance broke slowly into an appreciative grin.

"Yes," he said, "she does have him on a leadin' string.  I do admit
Mandy's a card."

The girl, quick-witted as she was bright looking, got his point almost at
once.  "You mean she was a Card before she married him?"

"And she's a Card yet," Cap'n Abe said, nodding.  "Guess you know a thing
or two, yourself.  What can I do for you?"

"You can say: 'Good-evening, Niece Louise,'" laughed the girl, coming
closer to the counter upon which the storekeeper still leaned.

"Land sakes!"

"My mother was a Card.  That is how I came to see your joke, Uncle Abram."

"Land sakes!"

"Don't you believe me?"

"I--I ain't got but one niece in the world," mumbled Cap'n Abe.
"An'--an' I never expected to see _her_."

"Louise Grayling, daughter of Professor Ernest Grayling and Miriam
Card--your half-sister's child.  See here--and here."  She snapped open
her bag, resting it on the counter, and produced an old-fashioned
photograph of her mother, a letter, yellowed by time, that Cap'n Abe had
written Professor Grayling long before, and her own accident policy
identification card which she always carried.

Cap'n Abe stretched forth a hairy hand, and it closed on Lou's as a
sunfish absorbs its prey.  The girl's hand to her wrist was completely
lost in the grip; but despite its firmness Cap'n Abe's handclasp was by
no means painful.  He released her and, leaning back, smiled benignly.

"Land sakes!" he said again.  "I'm glad to see little Mirry's girl.  An'
you do favor her a mite.  But I guess you take mostly after the
Graylings."

"People say I am like my father."

"An' a mighty nice lookin' man--an' a pleasant--as I remember him," Cap'n
Abe declared.

"Come right in here, into my sittin'-room, Niece Louise, an' lemme take a
look at you.  Land sakes!"

He lifted the flap in the counter to let her through.  The doorway beyond
gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the
living-room.  The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back.  The table in the
big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth
and set with heavy chinaware for a meal.  A huge caster graced the center
of the table, containing glass receptacles for salt, red and black
pepper, catsup, vinegar, and oil.  Knives, forks, and spoons for two--all
of utilitarian style--were arranged with mathematical precision beside
each plate.

In one window hung a pot with "creeping Jew" and inchplant, the tendrils
at least a yard long.  In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in
a cage.  A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion
in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork
coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on
the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at least two feet
tall.

"Sit down," said Cap'n Abe heartily.  "Drop your dunnage right down
there," as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder.  "Take
that big rocker.  Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your
place."

"Oh, don't bother him, Uncle Abram.  What a beauty he is," Louise said,
as the tortoise-shell--without otherwise moving--opened one great, yellow
eye.

"He's a lazy good-for-nothing," Cap'n Abe said mildly.  "Friends with all
the mice on the place, I swan!  But sometimes he's the only human critter
I have to talk to.  'Cept Jerry."

"Jerry?"

"The bird," explained Cap'n Abe, easing himself comfortably into a chair,
his guest being seated, and resting his palms on his knees as he gazed at
her out of his pale blue eyes.  "He's a lot of comfort--Jerry.  An' he
useter be a great singer.  Kinder gittin' old, now, like the rest of us.

"Does seem too bad," went on Cap'n Abe reflectively, "how a bird like him
has got to live in a cage all his endurin' days.  Jerry's a
prisoner--like I been.  _I_ ain't never had the freedom I wanted,
Miss------?

"Louise, please.  Uncle Abram.  Lou Grayling," the girl begged, but
smiling.

"Then just you call me Cap'n Abe.  I'm sort o' useter that," the
storekeeper said.

"Of course I will.  But why haven't you been free?" she asked, reverting
to his previous topic.  "Seems to me--down here on the Cape where the sea
breezes blow, and everything is open----"

"Yes, 'twould seem so," Cap'n Abe said, but he said it with hesitation.
"I been some hampered all my life, as ye might say.  'Tis something that
was bred in me.  But as for Jerry------

"Jerry was give to me by a lady when he was a young bird.  After a while
I got thinkin' a heap about him bein' caged, and one sunshiny day--it was
a marker for days down here on the Cape, an' we have lots on 'em!  One
sunshiny day I opened his door and opened the window, and I says: 'Scoot!
The hull world's yourn!'"

"And didn't he go?" asked the girl, watching the rapt face of the old man.

"Did he go?  Right out through that window with a song that'd break your
heart to hear, 'twas so sweet.  He pitched on the old apple tree
yonder--the August sweet'nin'--and I thought he'd bust his throat
a-tellin' of how glad he was to be free out there in God's sunshine an'
open air."

"He came back, I see," said Louise thoughtfully.

"That's just it!" cried Cap'n Abe, shaking his head till the tarpaulin
fell off and he forgot to pick it up.  "That's just it.  He come back of
his own self.  I didn't try to ketch him.  When it grew on toward sundown
an' the air got kinder chill, I didn't hear Jerry singin' no more.  I'd
seen him, off'n on, flittin' 'bout the yard all day.  When I come in here
to light the hangin'-lamp cal'latin' to make supper, I looked over there
at the window.  I'd shut it.  There was Jerry on the window sill, humped
all up like an old woman with the tisic."

"The poor thing!" was Lou's sympathetic cry.

"Yes," said Cap'n Abe, nodding.  "He warn't no more fit to be let loose
than nothin' 'tall.  And I wonder if _I_ be," added the storekeeper.
"I've been caged quite a spell how.

"But now tell me, Niece Louise," he added with latent curiosity, "how did
you find your way here?"

"Father says--'Daddy-professor,' you know is what I call him.  He says if
we had not always been traveling when I was not at school, I should have
known you long ago.  He thinks very highly of my mother's people."

"I wanter know!"

"He says you are the 'salt of the earth'--that is his very expression."

"Yes.  We're pretty average salt, I guess," admitted Cap'n Abe.  "I never
seen your father but once or twice.  You see, Louise, your mother was a
lot younger'n me an' Am'zon."

"Who?"

"Cap'n Am'zon.  Oh! _I_ ain't the only uncle you got," he said, watching
her narrowly.  "Cap'n Am'zon Silt----"

"Have I another relative?  How jolly!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her
hands.

"Ye-as.   Ain't it?  Jest," Cap'n Abe said.  "Ahem! your father never
spoke of Cap'n Am'zon?".

"I don't believe daddy-prof even knew there was such a person."

"Mebbe not.  Mebbe not," Cap'n Abe agreed hastily.  "And not to be
wondered at.  You see, Am'zon went to sea when he was only jest a boy."

"Did he?"

"Yep.  Ran away from home--like most boys done in them days, for their
mothers warn't partial to the sea--and shipped aboard the whaler _South
Sea Belle_.  He tied his socks an' shirt an' a book o' navigation he
owned, up in a handkerchief, and slipped out over the shed roof one
night, and away he went."  Cap'n Abe told the girl this with that
far-away look on his face that usually heralded one of his tales about
Cap'n Amazon.

"I can remember it clear 'nough.  He walked all the way to New Bedford.
We lived at Rocky Head over against Bayport.  Twas quite a step to
Bedford.  The _South Sea Belle_ was havin' hard time makin' up her crew.
She warn't a new ship.  Am'zon was twelve year old an' looked fifteen.
An' he was fifteen 'fore he got back from that v'y'ge.  Mebbe I'll tell
ye 'bout it some time--or Cap'n Am'zon will.  He's been a deep-bottom
sailor from that day to this."

"And where is he now?" asked Louise.

"Why--mebbe!--he's on his way here.  I shouldn't wonder.  He might step
in at that door any minute," and Cap'n Abe's finger indicated the store
door.

There was the sound of a footstep entering the store as he spoke.  The
storekeeper arose.  "I'll jest see who 'tis," he said.

While he was absent Louise laid aside her hat and made a closer
inspection of the room and its furniture.  Everything was homely but
comfortable.  There was a display of marine art upon the walls.  All the
ships were drawn exactly, with the stays, spars, and all rigging in
place, line for line.  They all sailed, too, through very blue seas, the
crest of each wave being white with foam.

Flanking the model of the brigantine on the mantle were two fancy shell
pieces--works of art appreciated nowhere but on the coast.  The designs
were ornate; but what they could possibly represent Louise was unable to
guess.

She tried to interest the canary by whistling to him and sticking her
pink finger between the wires of his cage.  He was ruffled and dull-eyed
like all old birds of his kind, and paid her slight attention.  When she
turned to Diddimus she had better success.  He rolled on his side, stuck
all his claws out and drew them in again luxuriously, purring meanwhile
like a miniature sawmill.

When Cap'n Abe came back the girl asked:

"Wasn't your customer a young man I saw on the porch as I came in?"

"Yep.  Lawford Tapp.  Said he forgot some matches and a length o'
ropeyarn.  I reckon you went to that young man's head.  And his top
hamper ain't none too secure, Niece Louise."

"Oh, did I?" laughed the girl, understanding perfectly.  "How nice."

"Nice?  That's how ye take it.  Lawford Tapp ain't a fav'rite o' mine."

"But he seemed very accommodating to-day when I asked him how to reach
your store."

"So you met him up town?"

"Yes, Uncle Abe."

"He's perlite enough," scolded the storekeeper.  "But I don't jest fancy
the cut of his jib.  Wanted to know if you was goin' to stop here."

"Oh!" exclaimed Louise.  "That is what I want to know myself.  Am I?"




CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS

Cap'n Abe reached for his spectacles and pulled them down upon his nose
to look at his guest through the lenses.  Not that they aided his sight
in the least; but the act helped to cover the fact that he was startled.

"Stop here?" he repeated.  "Where's your father?  Ain't he with you up
to the Inn?"

"No, Cap'n Abe.  He is in Boston to-day.  But he will sail to-morrow
for a summer cruise with a party for scientific research.  I am all
alone.  So I came down here to Cape Cod."

Louise said it directly and as simply as the storekeeper himself might
have spoken.  Yet it seemed really difficult for Cap'n Abe to get her
meaning into his head.

"You mean you was intendin' to cast anchor here--with _me_?"

"If it is agreeable.  Of course I'll pay my board if you'll let me.
You have a room to spare, haven't you?"

"Land sakes, yes!"

"And I am not afraid to use my hands.  I might even be of some slight
use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled
and amazed though he evidently was by her determination.  "I've roughed
it a good deal with daddy-prof.  I can cook--some things.  And I can do
housework----"

"Bet Gallup does that," interposed Cap'n Abe, finally getting his
bearings.  "Hi-mighty, ye did take me aback all standin', Niece Louise!
Ye did, for a fac'.   But why not?  Land sakes, there's room enough,
an' to spare!  Ye don't hafter put them pretty han's to housework.
Betty Gallup'll do all that.  An' you don't have to pay no board money.
As for cookin'----That remin's me.  I'd better git to work on our
supper.  We'll be sharp for it 'fore long."

"And--and I may stay?" asked Louise, with some little embarrassment
now.  "You are sure it won't inconvenience you?"

"Bless you, no!  I cal'late it's more likely to inconvenience _you_,"
and Cap'n Abe chuckled mellowly.  "I don't know what sort o' 'roughin'
it' you've done with your pa; but if there's anything much rougher than
an ol' man's housekeepin' down here on the Cape, it must be pretty
average rough!"

She laughed gayly.  "You can't scare me!"

"Ain't a-tryin' to," he responded, eying her admiringly.  "You're an
able seaman, I don't dispute.  An' we'll git along fine.  Hi-mighty!
there's Am'zon!"

Louise actually turned around this time to look at the door, expecting
to see the mariner in question enter.   Then she said, half doubtfully:

"Do you suppose your brother will object if he does come, Cap'n Abe?"

"Land sakes, no!" the storekeeper quickly assured her.  "'Tain't that.
But I cal'lated 'bout soon's Am'zon anchored here I'd cast off moorin's
myself."

"Go away?" Louise demanded.

"Yes.  Like poor old Jerry, mebbe," said Cap'n Abe, looking at the
caged bird.  "Mebbe I'll be glad to come back again--and in a hurry.
But while Cap'n Am'zon is here I can take a vacation that I've long
hankered for, Niece Louise.  I--I got my plans all made."

"Don't for one moment think of changing them on my account," Louise
said briskly.  "I shall like Uncle Amazon immensely if he's anything
like you, Cap'n Abe."

"He--he ain't so _much_ like me," confessed the storekeeper.  "Not in
looks he ain't.  But hi-mighty!  I know he'll be as pleased as Punch to
see ye."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Wait till you see how he takes to ye," declared her reassuring uncle.
"Now, lemme git my apern on and set to work on supper."

"Can't I help, Cap'n Abe?"

"In them things?" the storekeeper objected.

"Well--I'll have plenty of house dresses when my trunks come.  I left
my checks at the station for a man named Perry Baker.  They said he'd
bring them over to-night."

"He will," Cap'n Abe assured her.  But he stopped a moment, stock-still
in the middle of the room, and stared at her unseeingly.  Evidently his
mind was fixed upon an idea suddenly suggested by her speech.  "He
will," he repeated.  Then:

"I'll get the fat kettle over an' the fry-cage ready.  Amiel brought me
a likely cod.  'Tain't been out o' the water two hours."

"I love fish," confessed Louise, following him to the kitchen door.

"Lucky you do, if you're going to stay a spell on Cape Cod.  For that's
what you'll eat mornin', noon, and night.  Fish and clams, an' mebbe a
pot o' baked beans on a Saturday, or a chicken for Sunday's dinner.  I
don't git much time to cook fancy."

"But can't this woman who comes to do the work cook for you?"

"She can't cook for me," snorted Cap'n Abe.  "I respect my stomach too
much to eat after Bet Gallup.  She's as good a man afore the mast as
airy feller in Cardhaven.  An' that's where she'd oughter be.  But
never let her in the galley."

"Oh, well," Louise said cheerfully.  "I'm a dab at camp cooking myself,
as I told you.  Uncle Amazon and I will make out--if he comes."

"Oh!  Ah!  'Hem!" said Cap'n Abe, clearing his throat.  He stooped to
pick up a dropped potlid and came up very red in the face.  "You
needn't borrow any trouble on that score, Cap'n Am'zon's as good a cook
as I be."

Only twice did Cap'n Abe make forced trips into the shop.  The supper
hour of Cardhaven was well established and the thoughtful housewives
did not seek to make purchases while the fat was hot in Cap'n Abe's
skillet.  One of these untimely customers was a wandering child with a
penny.  "I might have waited on him, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared.

"Land sakes!  so you might," the storekeeper agreed.  "Though if he'd
seen you behind my counter I reckon that young 'un of 'Liathel
Grummet's would have been struck dumber than nature made him in the
fust place."

The other customer was a gangling, half-grown youth after a ball of
seine twine and the girl heard him say in a shocked whisper to Cap'n
Abe:

"Say! is it true there's one o' them movin' picture actresses goin' to
stop here with you, Cap'n Abe?  Ma heard so."

"You tell your ma," Cap'n Abe said sternly, "that if she keeps on
stretchin' her ears that a-way, she'll hear the kambuoy over Bartell
Shoals in a dead calm!"

Cap'n Abe's bald poll began to shine with minute beads of perspiration.
He looked over the bib of his voluminous apron like a bewhiskered gnome
very busy at some mysterious task.  Louise noticed that his movements
about the kitchen were remarkably deft.

"All hands called!" he called out at length.  "I'm about to dish up."

"Shall I put on another plate, Cap'n Abe?  You expected somebody else
to supper?"

"Nope.  All set.  I'm always ready for a messmate; but 'tain't often
one boards me 'cept Cap'n Joab now and then.  His woman likes to git
him out from under foot.  You see, when a woman's been useter seein'
her husband only 'twixt v'y'ges for forty year, I 'spect 'tis something
of a cross to have him litterin' up the house ev'ry day," he confessed.
"But as I can't leave the shop myself to go visitin' much in return,
Joab acks offish.  We Silts was always bred to be hospitable.  Poor or
rich, we could share what we had with another.  So I keep an extry
plate on the table.

"I've had occasion," pursued the philosophical storekeeper, drawing up
his own chair across the table from the girl, "to be at some folks'
houses at meal time and had 'em ask me to set up and have a bite.  But
it never looked to me as if they meant it 'nless there was already an
extry plate there.

"Just like having a spare bedroom.  If you can say: 'Stay all night, we
got a room for ye,' then that's what I call hospitality.  I wouldn't
live in a house that warn't big enough to have at least one spare room."

"I believe I must be very welcome here, Cap'n Abe," Louise said,
smiling at the kindly old man.

"Land sakes, I sh'd hope ye felt so!" ejaculated Cap'n Abe.  "Now, if
you don't mind, Niece Louise."  He dropped his head suddenly and closed
his eyes in reverence.  "For what we are about to partake of, Lord,
make us duly thankful.  Amen!"  His countenance became animated again.
"Try them biscuit.  I made 'em this morning 'twixt Marcy Coe selectin'
that piece of gingham for a new dress and John Peckham buying cordage
for his smack.  But they warmed up right nice in the oven."

Meanwhile he heaped her plate with codfish and fried potatoes cooked to
a delicate brown.  There was good butter, fat doughnuts, and beach-plum
preserve.  It was a homely meal but Louise ate it graciously.  Already
the air of Cardhaven had sharpened her appetite.

"Lend me your apron," insisted the girl when they had finished, "and I
will wash these dishes."

"I us'ally let them go till Betty Gallup comes in the morning," the
storekeeper said rather ruefully.  "It don't look right to me that you
should mess with these greasy dishes jest as we get under way, as ye
might say."

"You must not make company of me, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared.  "There,
I hear a customer in the store," and she gave him a little pat on the
shoulder as he delivered the huge apron into her hand.

"I dunno," he said, smiling upon her quizzically, "as I shall really
want to cast off if Cap'n Am'zon _does_ come.  Seems to me 'twould be
hi-mighty nice to have a girl like you around the place, Louise."

"Then don't go," she said, briskly beginning to clear off.  "_I_
sha'n't mind having two of you for me to boss.  Two captains!  Think of
it."

"Yes.  I know.  But I got all my plans laid," he murmured, and then
went slowly into the store.

There seemed to be some briskness in the after-supper trade, and Louise
suspected that it was founded upon the news of her arrival at Cap'n
Abe's store.  Several of his rather tart rejoinders reached her ears as
she went from kitchen to livingroom and back again.  Finally removing
the apron, her task done, she seated herself with Diddimus in her lap
within the radiance of the lamp and within hearing of all that was said
in the store.

"No.  I dunno's I ever did tell ye quite all my business, Joab.  Some
things I missed, includin' the list of my relations."

"Yes, I hear tell most of these movin' picture actresses are pretty,
Miz' Peckham.  They pick 'em for that puppose, I shouldn't wonder.  I
didn't ask her what part she was goin' to play--_if_ any."

"Land sakes, Mandy, she's just got here!  I ain't no idee how long
she'll stay.  If you think there's any danger of Milt not tendin' to
his clammin' proper whilst she's here you'd better send him on a cruise
with Cap'n Durgin.  The _Tryout_ sails for the Banks to-morrow, I
understand."

"No, Washy.  That was my A'nt Matildy I went away to help bury ten
years ago.  She's still dead--an' this ain't her daughter.  This is my
ha'f sister's child, she that was Miriam Card.  She got married to a
scientific chap that works for the government, I guess when you write
to Washington for your garden seeds next spring, you better ask about
him, if ye want to know more'n _I_ can tell ye."

"You got it right for once't, Joab.  I do expect Cap'n Am'zon.  Mebbe
to-night.  He may come over from the depot with Perry Baker--I can't
tell.  What'll I do with the girl?  Land sakes! ain't Cap'n Am'zon just
as much her uncle as _I_ be?  Some o' you fellers better stow your
jaw-tackle if Cap'n Am'zon does heave to here.  For he ain't no tame
cat, like I told you."

"You back again, Lawford Tapp?  Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time?
Fishhooks?  Goin' fishin', be you?  Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin'
your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say.  Even
chummin' won't sarve ye.  _Good_-night!"

After getting rid of this importunate customer, Cap'n Abe closed his
door and put out his store lights--an hour earlier than usual--and came
back to sit down with Louise.  His visage was red and determination sat
on his brow.

"I snum!" he emphatically observed.  "Cardhaven folks seem bit with
some kind o' bug.  Talk 'bout curiosity!  'Hem!  I dunno what Cap'n
Am'zon'll think of 'em."

"_I_ think they are funny," Louise retorted, her laughter bubbling up
again.

"Likely it looks so to you," said Cap'n Abe.  "They're pretty average
funny I do guess to a stranger, as ye might say.  But after you've
summered 'em and wintered 'em for twenty-odd years like I have, land
sakes! the humor's worn hi-mighty thin!"




CHAPTER V

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT

Cap'n Abe produced a pipe.  He looked at his niece tentatively.
"Do--do you mind tobacker smoke?"

"Daddy-prof is an inveterate," she laughed.

"Huh?  An--an invet'rate _what_?"

"Smoker.  I don't begrudge a man smoking tobacco as long as we women
have our tea.  A nerve tonic in both cases."

"I dunno for sure that I've got any nerves," Cap'n Abe said, the
corners of his eyes wrinkling.  "Mebbe I was behind the door when they
was given out.  But a pipeful o' tobacker this time o' the evening
_does_ seem sort o' satisfyin'.  That, and knittin'."

Having filled his pipe and lit it, he puffed a few times to get it well
alight and then reached for a covered basket that Louise had noticed on
a small stand under Jerry's cage.  He drew from this a half-fashioned
gray stocking that was evidently intended for his own foot and the
needles began to click in his strong, capable hands.

"Supprise you some, does it, Louise?" Cap'n Abe said.  "Cap'n Am'zon
taught me.  Most old whalers knit.  That, an' doin' scrimshaw work, was
'bout all that kep' 'em from losing their minds on them long v'y'ges
into the Pacific.  An' I've seen the time myself when I was hi-mighty
glad I'd l'arned to count stitches.

"Land sakes!  Some o' them whalin' v'y'ges lasted three-four years.
Cap'n Am'zon was in the old bark _Neptune's Daughter_ when she was
caught in the ice and drifted pretty average close't to the south pole.

"You know," said Cap'n Abe reflectively, "the Antarctic regions ain't
like the Arctic.  'Cause why?  There ain't no folks there.  Cap'n
Am'zon says there ain't 'nough land at the south pole to make Marm
Scudder's garden--and they say she didn't need more'n what her
patchwork quilt would cover.  Where there's land there's folks.  And if
there was land in the Antarctic there'd be Eskimos like there is up
North.

"'Hem!  Well, that wasn't what I begun on, was it?  This knitting.
Cap'n Am'zon says that many's the time he's thanked his stars he knowed
how to knit."

"I shall be glad to meet him," said Louise.

"If he comes," Cap'n Abe rejoined, "an' I go away as I planned to,
'twon't make a mite o' difference to you, Niece Louise.  You feel right
at home here--and so'll Cap'n Am'zon, though he ain't never been to
Cardhaven yet.  He'll be a lot better company for you than I'd be."

"Oh, Cap'n Abe, I can scarcely believe that!" cried the girl.

"You don't know Cap'n Am'zon," the storekeeper said.  "I tell ye fair:
he's ev'rything that I ain't!   As a boy--'hem!--Am'zon was always
leadin' an' me follerin'.  I kinder took after my mother, I guess.
She was your grandmother.  Your grandfather was a Card--and a nice man
he was.

"Our father--me an' Am'zon's--was Cap'n Joshua Silt of the schooner
_Bravo_.  Hi-mighty trim and taut craft she was, from all accounts.
I--I warn't born when he died," added Cap'n Abe, hesitatingly.

"You were a posthumous child!" said Louise.

"Er--I guess so.  Kinder 'pindlin', too.  Yes!  yes!  Cap'n Am'zon's
ahead o' me--in ev'ry way.  When father died 'twas pretty average hard
on mother," Cap'n Abe pursued.  "We was llvin' at Rocky Head, I guess I
told you b'fore?"

"Yes," Louise said, interested.

"The _Bravo_ was makin' reg'lar trips from Newport to Bangor, Maine.
Short-coastin' v'y'ges paid well in them days.  There come a big storm
in the spring--onexpected.  Mother'd got a letter from Cap'n
Josh--father he'd put out o' Newport with a sartain tide.  He warn't
jest a fair-weather skipper.  Cap'n Am'zon gits his pluck an' darin'
from Cap'n Josh.

"Well, mother knowed he must be out o' sight of Fort Adams and the
Dumplin's when the storm burst, and that he'd take the inside passage,
the wind bein' what it was.  She watched from Rocky Head and she seen
what she knowed to be the _Bravo_ heave in sight.

"There warn't no foolin' her," pursued Cap'n Abe, whose pipe had gone
out but whose knitting needles twinkled the faster.  "No.  She knowed
the schooner far's she could glim her.  She watched the Bravo caught in
the cross-current when the gale dropped sudden, and tryin' to claw off
shore.

"But no use!  She was doomed!  There warn't no help for the schooner.
She went right on to Toll o' Death Reef and busted up in an hour.  Not
a body ever was beached, for the current, tide, _an_' gale was all off
shore.  And it happened in plain sight of our windows.

"Two months later," Cap'n Abe said reflectively, "I come into the
world.  Objectin', of course, like all babies.  Funny thing that.  We
all come into it makin' all kinds of a hullabaloo against anchorin'
here; and we most of us kick just as hard against slippin' our moorin's
to get out of it.

"Land sakes!" he exclaimed in conclusion.  "There ye be.  I guess my
mother hated the sea 'bout as much as any longshore woman ever did.
And there's a slew of 'em detest it worse'n cats.  Why, ye couldn't
hire some o' these Cape Cod females to get into a boat.  Their men for
generations was drowned and more'n forty per cent.  of the stones in
the churchyards along the coast, sacred to the mem'ry of the men of the
fam'lies, have on 'em: '_Lost at sea_.'

"Can't blame the women.  Old Ella Coffin that lives on Narrer P'int
over yonder ain't been to the main but once't in fifteen years.  That
was when an off-shore gale blew all the water out o' the breach 'twixt
the p'int and the mainland.

"Ye see," said Cap'n Abe, smiling again, "Narrer P'int is re'lly an
island, even at low water.  But _then_ a hoss an' buggy can splatter
across't  the breach.  But it makes Marm Coffin seasick even to ride
through water in a buggy.  Marked, she is, as you might say.

"Well, now, Louise, child," the storekeeper added, "I'm a-gassin' 'bout
things that don't much int'rest you, I cal'late.  I'll light a lamp an'
show you up to your room.  When Perry Baker comes by and by, I'll help
him in with your trunks.  You needn't worry about 'em."

It had been foggy on the Sound the night before and Louise had not
slept until the boat had rounded Point Judith.  So she was not averse
to retiring at this comparatively early hour.

Cap'n Abe led her upstairs to a cool, clean, and comfortable chamber.
The old four-posted, corded bedstead stood in the middle of the room,
covered with a blue-and-white coverlet, with sheets and pillow cases as
white as foam.  It could not be doubted that Cap'n Abe had carried out
his idea of hospitality.  The spare room was always ready for the
possible guest.

"Good-night, uncle," she said, smiling at him as he handed her the
lamp.  "I believe I am going to have a delightful time here."

"Of course you be!  Of course!" he exclaimed.  "An' if I ain't here,
Cap'n Am'zon will show you a better time than I could.  Good-night.
Sleep well, Louise."

He kissed her on the forehead.  But she, impulsively, pressed her fresh
lips to the storekeeper's weather-beaten cheek.  Before she closed the
door of the bedroom she heard him clumping downstairs in his heavy
boots.

After that he must have removed his footgear for, although she heard
doors open and close, she could not distinguish his steps.

"I'm glad I came!" she told herself with enthusiasm as she prepared to
retire.  "What a delightful old place it is!  And Uncle Abram--why,
he's a _dear_!  Daddy-prof was not half enthusiastic enough about the
Cape Cod folk.  It has been a distinct loss to me that I was never here
before."

She laid out her toilet requisites upon the painted pine bureau and
hung her negligee over the back of a chair.  As she retied the ribbon
in one of the sleeves of her nightgown she thought:

"And that Tapp boy came back a second time!  Some fisherman's son, I
suppose.  But exceedingly nice looking!"

A little later the feather bed had taken her into its arms and she
almost instantly fell asleep.  Occasionally through the night she was
roused by unfamiliar sounds.  There was a fog coming in from the sea
and the siren at the lighthouse on the Neck began to bellow like a
bereft cow.

There were movements downstairs.  Once she heard a wagon stop, and
voices.  Then the bumping of heavy boxes on the side porch.  Her
trunks.  Voices below in the living-room--gruff, yet subdued.  Creaking
footsteps on the stair; then Louise realized that they were carrying
something heavy down and out to the waiting wagon.  She was just
dropping to sleep when the wagon was driven away.

There came a heavy summons on her door while it was still dark.  But a
glance at her watch assured Lou Grayling that it was the fog that made
the light so dim.

"Yes, Cap'n Abe?" she called cheerfully, for even early rising could
not quench her good spirits.

"'Tain't time to get up yet, Niece Louise," he told her behind the thin
panel of the door.  "Don't disturb yourself.  Cap'n Amazon's come an'
I'm off."

"You're what?" gasped the girl sitting up in her nest of feathers.

"I'm a-goin' to Boston.  Jest got time to ketch the clam-train at the
depot.   Don't you bother; Cap'n Am'zon's here and he'll take care of
you till I get back.  Betty Gallup'll be here by six or a little after
to do the work.  You can have her stop at night, if you want to."

"But, Uncle----"

"Must hurry, Louise," hastily said Cap'n Abe as he heard the bedcords
creak and the patter of the girl's feet on the matting.  "Cap'n Am'zon
knows of a craft that'll sail to-day from Boston and I must jine her
crew.  Good-bye!"

He was gone.  Louise, throwing on the negligee, hurried to the screened
window.  The fog had breathed upon the wires and clouded them.  She
heard the door open below, a step on the porch, and then a muffled:

"Bye, Am'zon.  Don't take no wooden money.  I'm off."

A shrouded figure passed up the road and was quickly hidden by the fog.




CHAPTER VI

BOARDED BY PIRATES

Louise could not go back to sleep.  She drew the ruffles of the
negligee about her throat and removed the sliding screen the better to
see into the outer world.

There was a movement in the fog, for the rising breeze ruffled, it.
Full daybreak would bring its entire dissipation.  Already the mist
held a luster heralding the sun.  The "hush-hush" of the surf along The
Beaches was more insistent now than at any time since Louise had come
to Cap'n Abe's store, while the moan of the breakers on the outer reefs
was like the deep notes of a distant organ.

A cock crew, and at his signal outdoor life seemed to awaken.  Other
chanticleers sounded their alarms; a colt whistled in a paddock and his
mother neighed softly from her stall; a cow lowed; then, sweet and
clear as a mountain stream, broke forth the whistle of a wild bird in
the marsh.  This matin of the feathered songster rose higher and higher
till he reached the very top note of his scale and then fell again, by
cadences, until it mingled with the less compelling calls of other
birds.

There was a warm pinkness spreading through the fog in one direction,
and Louise knew it must be the reflection of the light upon the eastern
horizon.  The sun would soon begin a new day's journey.

The fog was fast thinning, for across the road she could see a spiral
of blue smoke, mounting through it from the chimney of a neighbor.  The
kitchen fire there had just been lighted.

Below, and from the living-rooms behind the store, the girl heard some
faint noises as though the early morning tasks of getting in wood and
filling the coal scuttle were under way.  Uncle Amazon must be "takin'
holt" just as Cap'n Abe said he would.

Louise was curious to see the returned mariner; but it was too early to
go down yet.  She might really have another nap before she dressed, she
thought, yawning behind a pink palm.

There was a step in the store.  Her room overlooked by two windows the
roof of the front porch and she could hear what went on below plainly.
The step was lighter than Cap'n Abe's.  The bolts of the two-leaved
door rattled and it was set wide; she heard the iron wedges kicked
under each to hold it open.  Then a smell of pipe smoke was wafted to
her nostrils.

A footstep on the Shell Road announced the approach of somebody from
The Beaches.  Louise yawned again and was on the point of creeping into
bed once more when she descried the figure coming through the fog.  She
saw only the boots and legs of the person at first; but the fog was
fast separating into wreaths which the rising breeze hurried away, and
the girl at the window soon saw the full figure of the approaching
man--and recognized him.

At almost the same moment Lawford Tapp raised his eyes and saw her; and
his heart immediately beat the call to arms.  Louise Grayling's morning
face, framed by the sash and sill of her bedroom window, was quite the
sweetest picture he had ever seen.

It was only for a moment he saw her, her bare and rounded forearm on
the sill, the frilly negligee so loosened that he could see the column
of her throat.  Her gray eyes looked straight into his--then she was
gone.

"Actress, or not," muttered the son of the Salt Water Taffy King,
"there's nothing artificial about her.  And she's Cap'n Abe's niece.
Well!"

He saw the figure on the porch, smoking, and hailed it:

"Hey, Cap'n Abe!  Those fishhooks you sold me last evening aren't what
I wanted--and there's the _Merry Andrew_ waiting out there for me now.
I want----"

The figure in the armchair turned its head.  It was not Cap'n Abe at
all!

"Mornin', young feller," said the stranger cordially.  "You'll have to
explain a leetle about them hooks.  I ain't had a chance to overhaul
much of Abe's cargo yet.  I don't even know where he stows his small
tackle.  Do you?"

Fully a minute did Lawford Tapp keep him waiting for an answer while he
stared at the stranger.  He was not a big man, but he somehow gave the
impression of muscular power.  He was dressed in shabby
clothing--shirt, dungaree trousers, and canvas shoes such as sailors
work and go aloft in.  The pipe he smoked was Cap'n Abe's--Lawford
recognized it.

There was not, however, another thing about this man to remind one of
the old storekeeper.  This stranger was burned to a rich mahogany hue.
Not alone his shaven face, but his bared forearms and his chest where
the shirt was left unbuttoned seemed stained by the tropical sun.
Under jet-black brows the eyes that gazed upon Lawford Tapp seemed dark.

His sweeping mustache was black; and such hair as was visible showed
none of the iron gray of advancing age in it.  He wore gold rings in
his ears and to cap his piratical-looking figure was a red bandana worn
turbanwise upon his head.

"What's the matter with you, young feller?  Cat got your tongue?"
demanded the stranger.

"Well, of all things!" finally gasped Lawford.  "I thought you were
Cap'n Abe.  But you're not.  You must be Cap'n Amazon Silt."

"That's who I be," agreed the other.

"His brother!"

"Ain't much like Abe, eh?" and Cap'n Amazon smiled widely.

"Only your voice.  That is a little like Cap'n Abe's.  Well, I
declare!" repeated Lawford, coming deliberately up the steps.

Cap'n Amazon rose briskly and led the way into the store.  The fog was
clearing with swiftness and a ray of sunlight slanted through a dusty
window with sufficient strength to illumine the shelves behind the
counter.

"Those boxes yonder are where Cap'n Abe keeps his fishhooks.  But isn't
he here?"

"He's off," Cap'n Amazon replied.  "Up anchor'd and sailed 'bout soon's
I come.  Been ready to go quite a spell, I shouldn't wonder.  Had his
chest all packed and sent it to the depot by a wagon.  Walked over
himself airly to ketch the train.  These the hooks, son?"

"But where's he _gone_?"

"On a v'y'ge," replied Cap'n Amazon.  "Why shouldn't he?  Seems he's
been lashed here, tight and fast, for c'nsider'ble of a spell.  He and
this store of hisn was nigh 'bout spliced.  I don't see how he _has_
weathered it so long."

"Gone away!" murmured Lawford.

Cap'n Amazon eyed him with a tilt to his head and possibly a twinkle of
amusement in his eye.  "Young man, what's your name?" he asked bluntly.
Lawford told him.  "Wal, it strikes me," Cap'n Amazon said, "that your
tops'ls air slattin' a good deal.  You ain't on the wind."

"I am upset, I declare!"

"Sure you got the right hooks this time?"

"Yes.  I believe so."

"Then if your _Merry Andrew_--what is she, cat-rigged or----"

"Sloop."

"Then if your _Merry Andrew_ sloop's a-waiting for you, _that's_ the
way out," said Cap'n Amazon coolly, pointing with his pipestem to the
door.  "Come again--when you want to buy anything in Abe's stock.  Good
day!"

Lawford halted a moment at the door to look back at the bizarre figure
behind the counter, leaning on the scarred brown plank just as Cap'n
Abe so often did.  The amazing difference between the storekeeper's
well remembered appearance and that of his substitute grew more
startling.

As Cap'n Amazon stood there half stooping, leaning on his hairy fists,
the picture rose in Lawford Tapp's mind of a pirate, cutlass in teeth
and his sash full of pistols, swarming over the rail of a doomed ship.
The young man had it in his mind to ask a question about that
wonderfully pretty girl above.  But, somehow, Cap'n Amazon did not
appear to be the sort of person to whom one could put even a mildly
impudent question.

The young man walked slowly down the road toward the shore where his
boat was beached.  He had no idea that a pair of gray eyes watched him
from that window where he had glimpsed the vision of girlish beauty
only a few minutes before.

The neighborhood was stirring now and Louise had not gone back to bed.
Instead, she dressed as simply as she could until it would be possible
to get at her trunks.

While thus engaged she observed the neighborhood as well as she could
see it from the windows of her chamber.  Down the Shell Road, in the
direction of the sea, there were but two or three houses--small
dwellings in wind-swept yards where beach grass was about all the
verdure that would grow.

Across the road from the store, however, and as far as she could see
toward Cardhaven, were better homes, some standing in the midst of
tilled fields and orchards.  Sandy lanes led to these homesteads from
the highway.  She could see the blunt spire of the Mariner's Chapel.
Yet Cap'n Abe's house and store stood quite alone, for none of the
other dwellings were close to the road.

She set her chamber door ajar and suddenly heard the clash of voices.
The one that seemed nearest to the stair was gruff, but feminine.

"That must be Betty Gallup," thought Louise.  "It is nearly six.  I'll
go down and interview the lady who Cap'n Abe said ought to sail before
the mast."

The foot of the stairway was in the back entry which itself opened upon
the rear porch.  As she came lightly down the stairs Louise saw a
squat, square figure standing in the open doorway.  It was topped by a
man's felt hat and was dressed in a loose, shapeless coat and a scant
skirt down to the tops of a pair of men's shoes.

Over the shoulder of this queer looking person--of whose sex it was
hard to be sure--Louise could see an open letter that was evidently
being perused not for the first time.

The hands that held the letter were red and hard and blunt-fingered,
but not large.  They did not look feminine, however; not in the least.

The light tap of the girl's heels as she stepped on the bare floor at
the foot of the stairway aroused this person, who turned, revealing a
rather grim, weather-beaten face, lit by little sharp brown eyes that
proceeded to stare at Louise Grayling with frank curiosity.

"Humph!" ejaculated the woman.

Oh, it was a woman, Louise could now see, although Betty Gallup boasted
a pronounced mustache and a voice both deep and hoarse, while she
looked every inch the able seaman she was.

"Humph!" she exclaimed again.  "You don't look much like a pirate,
that's one comfort!"

Louise burst into gay laughter--she could not help it.

"I see by this letter Cap'n Abe left for me that you're his niece--his
ha'f sister's child--name, Louise Grayling; and that you've come to
stay a spell."

"Yes," the girl rejoined, still dimpling.  "And I know you must be Mrs.
Gallup!"

"Bet Gallup.  Yep.  Ain't much chance of mistaking me," the woman said,
still staring at Louise.  "Humph! you're pretty 'nough not to need
m'lasses to ketch flies.  Why didn't Cap'n Abe stay to home when you
come visiting him?"

"Why, he had his plans all laid to go away, if Uncle Amazon came."

"Ya-as.  That's so.  You are _his_ niece, too, I s'pose."

"Whose niece?  Uncle Amazon's?  I suppose I am," Louise gayly replied,
"though when I came I had no idea there was a second uncle down here on
the Cape."

"What's that?" demanded Betty Gallup, her speech crackling like a rifle
shot.

"I had not heard before of Cap'n Amazon," the girl explained.  "You
see, for several reasons, I have known very little about my mother's
kinfolk.  She died when I was a baby.  We have traveled a good deal,
father and I."

"I see.  I been told you worked for them movin' pictures.  Mandy Card
was over to my house last night.  Well!  what do you think of your
Uncle Am'zon?"

"I can express no opinion until I have met him," Louise returned, again
dimpling.

"Haven't ye seen him?" gasped Betty in astonishment.

"Not yet."

"Ye didn't see him when he came last night?"

"I was in bed."

"Then how--how d'ye know Cap'n Abe's gone?  Or that this man is Am'zon
Silt?  Nobody ever seen this critter 'round Cardhaven before," Betty
Gallup declared with strong conviction.

"Oh, no; Uncle Amazon has never been here to visit Cap'n Abe before.
Cap'n Abe told me all about it," the girl explained, fearing that
scandal was to take root here and now if she did not discourage it.
"Of course Uncle Abe went away.  He came to my door and bade me
good-bye."

Louise was puzzled.  She saw an expression in Betty Gallup's face that
she could not interpret.

"Ye heard Cap'n Abe _say_ he was goin'," muttered Betty.  "_His_ voice
sounds mighty like Cap'n Abe's.  But mebbe Abe Silt didn't go after
all--not rightly."

"What _do_ you mean, Mrs. Gallup?" demanded Louise in bewilderment.

"Well, if you ask me, I should say we'd been boarded by pirates.  Go
take a look at that Uncle Am'zon of yourn.  He's in the store."




CHAPTER VII

UNDER FIRE

"Uncle Amazon?" burst out Louise.  "A pirate?"

"That's what he looks like," repeated Betty Gallup, nodding her head on
which the man's hat still perched.  "I never saw the beat!  Why, that
man give me the shock of my life when I came in here just now!"

"What _do_ you mean?" the amazed girl asked,

"Why, as I come in--I was a lettle early, knowin' you was here--I heard
as I s'posed Cap'n Abe in the sittin'-room.  I saw this letter, sealed
and directed to me, on the dresser there.  'Humph!' says I, 'Who's
writin' billy-doos to _me_, I'd admire to know?'  And I up and opened
it and see it's in Cap'n Abe's hand.  Just then I heard him behind
me----"

"Heard _who_?  Not Cap'n Abe?"

"No, no!  This other feller--this Cap'n Am'zon Silt, as he calls
himself.  But I _thought_ 'twas Cap'n Abe's step I heard.  He says:
'Oh! you've found the letter?'  I declare I thought 'twas your uncle's
voice!"

"But it was my uncle's voice, of course," Louise reminded her, much
amused, "Cap'n Amazon Silt is my uncle, too."

"Humph!  I s'pose so.  Looks to be.  If 'tis him.  Anyhow," pursued the
jerkily speaking Betty Gallup, "I turned 'round when he spoke spectin'
to see Cap'n Abe--for I hadn't read this letter then--_and there he
warn't_!  Instead--of all the lookin' critters!  There! you go take a
peek at him and see what you think yourself.  I'll put the breakfast on
the table.  He's made coffee and the mush is in the double-biler and
the biscuits in the oven are just browning.  I reckon he's as handy
'round the kitchen as Cap'n Abe is.  Lots of these old sailors be."

"Fancy! an uncle who is a pirate!" giggled Louise and she ran through
the living-room and the dividing hall to the door of the store.  First
she saw Cap'n Amazon from the rear.  The red bandana swathing his bead,
below which was a lank fringe of black hair, was the only bizarre thing
she noticed about her new-found relative.  He seemed to have very quick
hearing for almost instantly he swung smartly around to face her.

"Oh!" was expelled from the girl's lips, for she was as startled as
Lawford Tapp and Betty Gallup had been.

Compared with the mild-appearing, heavily whiskered Cap'n Abe, this
brother of the storekeeper was in looks what Betty had pronounced him.
His dark complexion, the long mustache, as black and glossy as a crow's
wing, the gold rings in his ears, with the red handkerchief to top it
all, made Cap'n Amazon Silt as romantic a figure as ever peered out of
a Blackbeard or a Henry Morgan legend.

There were intricate traceries on his forearms in red and blue ink;
beneath the open collar of his shirt the girl gained a glimpse of other
tattooing.  There was a faint scar traced along his right jaw, almost
from ear to chin, which added a certain grimness to his expression.

Yet his was not at all a sinister face.  His eyes twinkled at her
kindly--almost like Cap'n Abe's eyes--and the huge mustache lifted in a
smile.

"Ahoy!" he cried jovially.  "So this is my niece, Louise, is it?  Well,
to be sure!  Abe didn't overpraise you.  You _be_ a pretty tidy craft."

The girl dimpled, coming forward to give him her hand.  As on the day
before, her hand was lost in a warm, firm clasp, while her uncle
continued to look her over with approval.

"Yes, sir!" he ejaculated.  "You look to me like one o' the tidiest
craft I ever clapped eyes on.  I don't scarcely see how Abe could go
away and leave you.  Dunno's he's got an eye for a pretty woman like
me.  Bless you!  I been a slave to the women all my life."

"Yet never married, Uncle Amazon?" she cried roguishly.

"Tell you how 'twas," he whispered hoarsely, his hand beside his mouth.
"I never could decide betwixt and between 'em.  No, sir!  They are all
so desir'ble that I couldn't make up my mind.  So I stayed single."

"Perhaps you showed wisdom, Uncle Amazon," laughed the girl.
"Still--when you grow old----"

"Oh! there's plenty of sailors' snug harbors," he hastened to say.
"And time enough to worry about that when I _be_ old."

"I thought----Why! you look younger than Cap'n Abe," she said.

"Ain't it a fact?  He's let himself run to seed and get old lookin'.
That's from stayin' ashore all his life.  It's the feel of a heavin'
deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man's wishbone.  Yes,
sir!  Abe's all right--good man and all that--but he's no sailor,"
Cap'n Amazon added, shaking his head.

"Now, here!" he went on briskly, "we ought to have breakfast, hadn't
we?  I left that woman Abe has pokin' around here, to dish up; and it's
'most six bells.  Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise."

"I'll run to see if the biscuits are done," said the girl; and she
hurried to the kitchen ahead of him.  Betty Gallup was waiting for her.

"What d'ye think of him?" she whispered anxiously.

"Why, he's splendid!" the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter.
"He's a _character_!"

"Humph!  Mebbe.  But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now
he ain't a man I'd trust.  Nothin' a-tall like Cap'n Abe!"

"I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram."

"Humph!  How long you knowed Abram Silt?  Come here yesterday for the
fust time.  Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we've knowed Cap'n Abe
around here for twenty year and more.  Course, he ain't Cardhaven born;
but we know him.  He's as diff'rent from this pirate that calls himself
Cap'n Am'zon Silt as chalk is from cheese."

The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap'n Amazon from the store.
They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe
the evening before.  She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was
going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had.  But no, he began
spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth.

Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat.
Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a
stranger to turn.  The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe
always sat.  He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap.

"Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon.  "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?"

Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into
the face of the captain.  Louise could see the cat actually stiffen
with surprise.  Then, with a "p-sst-maow!" he leaped down and ran out
of the room at high speed.

"What--what do you think of that?" gasped Cap'n Amazon.  "The cat's
gone crazy!"

The girl was in a gale of laughter.  "Of course he hasn't," she said.
"He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face.  You
can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon."

Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation.  "You
got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe.  I must have surprised
the critter.  And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt."

"Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise.

"There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the
cage hanging in the sunlit window.  "What's Abe call him?"

"Jerry."

"And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary.  Wouldn't
trust nobody else, he said, to feed and water him."  He rose from the
table, leaving his breakfast.  "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?"

He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires
of the cage.  Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped
along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger,
sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings.

"There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief.  "_He_ takes to me all
right."

"That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway.  She had
removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching
seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be
completely hidden when she had the hat on her head.  "That don't show
nothin'," she repeated grimly.

Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why
don't it, I want to know?"

"'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind."

"Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone.

"It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again.

"I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced.  "Didn't want
to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird.  Jerry's
used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the
slats of the cage for him to perch on.  He just thinks you're Cap'n
Abe."

She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes.  Cap'n
Amazon came slowly back to his chair.  "Blind!" he repeated.  "I want
to know!  Both his deadlights out.  Too bad!  Too bad!"

He did not seem to care for any more breakfast.

Footsteps in the store soon brought the substitute shopkeeper to his
feet again.

"I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the
seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled.  "I'd ought to hauled in the
gang-plank when we set down."

He disappeared into the store and almost at once a shrill feminine
voice greeted him as "Cap'n Abe."  Vastly abused, Louise arose and
softly followed to the store.

"Give me coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe.
I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra
Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em
for markers in their garden.  I want--land sakes!  Who--what----
_Where's_ Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't here just now," Cap'n Amazon replied.  "I'm his brother.
You'll have to pick out the needle you want.  I can find and count the
clothespins, I guess.  Two dozen, you say?"

"Land sakes!  Cap'n Abe gone away?  Don't seem possible."

"There's a hull lot of seemin' impossible things in this world that
come to pass just the same," the substitute storekeeper made answer,
with some tartness.  "Here's the needle drawer.  Find what you want,
ma'am."

Louise was frankly spying.  She saw that the customer was a lanky young
woman in a sunbonnet.  When she dropped the bonnet back upon her narrow
shoulders with an impatient jerk, the better to see the needles, it was
revealed that her thin, light hair was drawn so tightly back from her
face that it actually seemed to make her pop-eyed.

She had a rather pretty pink and white complexion, and aside from the
defect of hairdressing might have been attractive.  She possessed a
thin and aquiline nose, however, the nostrils fairly quivering with
eagerness and curiosity.

"Land sakes!" she was saying.  "I know Cap'n Abe's been talkin' of
goin' away--the longest spell!  But so suddent--'twixt night and
mornin' as ye might say------"

"Exactly," said Cap'n Amazon dryly, and went on counting the pins from
the box into a paper sack.

"What 'bout the girl that's come here?  That movie actress?" asked the
young woman with added sharpness in her tone.  "What you going to do
with _her_?"

Cap'n Amazon came back to the counter and even his momentary silence
was impressive.  He favored the customer with a long stare.

"Course, 'tain't none o' my business.  I was just askin'----"

"You made an int'restin' discovery, then, ma'am," he said.  "It _ain't_
any of your business.  Me and my niece'll get along pretty average
well, I shouldn't wonder.  Anything else, ma'am?  I see the needle's
two cents and the pins two cents a dozen.  Six cents in all."

"Well, I run a book with Cap'n Abe.  I ain't got no money with me,"
said the young woman defiantly.

"Le's see; what did you say your name was?" and Cap'n Amazon drew from
the cash drawer a long and evidently fully annotated list of customers'
names, prepared by Cap'n Abe.

"I'm Mandy Baker--she 'twas Mandy Card."

"Yes.  I find you here all right.  Your bill o' ladin' seems good.
Good-mornin', ma'am.  Call again."

Mandy Baker looked as though she desired to continue the conversation.
But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech
that impressed Mrs. Baker--as it had Lawford Tapp--that here was a very
different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe.  Mandy sniffed,
jerked her sunbonnet forward, and departed with her purchases.

Cap'n Amazon's quick eye caught sight of Louise's amused face in the
doorway.

"Kind of a sharp craft that," he observed, watching' Mandy cross the
road.  "Reminds me some o' one o' them Block Island double-enders they
built purpose for sword-fishing.  When you strike on to a sword-fish
you are likely to want to back water 'bout as often as shove ahead.  I
cal'late this here Mandy Baker is some spry in her maneuvers.  And I
bet she's got one o' the laziest husbands in this whole town.  'Most
always happens that way," concluded the captain, who seemed quite as
homely philosophical and observant as his brother.

As a stone thrown into a quiet pool drives circling ripples farther and
farther away from the point of contact, so the news of Cap'n Abe's
secret departure and the appearance of the strange brother in his
place, spread through the neighborhood.

The coming of Louise to the store on the Shell Road had also set the
tongues to clacking.  Mandy Baker, who took her husband's rating in
women's eyes at his own valuation, was up in arms.  A pretty girl, and
an actress at that!--for until recent years that was a word to be only
whispered in polite society on the Cape--was considered by such as
Mandy to be under suspicion right from the start.

The mystery of Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about
Louise.  Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came
on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt.  Women
left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for
something considered suddenly essential to their work.  Some of the
clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon.
Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that
strange, red-kerchief-topped figure behind Cap'n Abe's counter.

Cap'n Joab Beecher was one of the earliest arrivals.  Cap'n Joab had
been as close to Cap'n Abe as anybody in Cardhaven.  There had been
some little friction between him and the storekeeper on the previous
evening.  Cap'n Joab felt almost as though Cap'n Abe's sudden departure
was a thrust at him.

But when he introduced himself to Cap'n Amazon the latter seized the
caller's hand in a seaman's grip, and said heartily: "I want to know
Cap'n Joab Beecher, of the old _Sally Noble_.  I knowed the bark well,
though I never happened to clap eyes on _you_, sir.  Abe give me a
letter for you.  Here 'tis.  Said you was a good feller and might help
wise me to things in the store here till I'd l'arned her riggin' and
how to sail her proper."

Cap'n Joab was frankly pleased by this.  He spelled out the note Cap'n
Abe had addressed to him slowly, being without his reading glasses, and
then said:

"I'm yours to command, Cap'n Silt.  Land sakes!  I s'pose your brother
had a puffict right to go away.  He'd talked about goin' enough.
Where's he gone?"

"On a v'y'ge," said Cap'n Amazon.

"No!  Gone to sea?"

"Yes.  Sailing to-day--out o' Boston."

"I want to know!  Abe Silt gone to sea!  Wouldn't never believed it.
Always 'peared to be afraid of gettin' his paws wet--same's a cat,"
ruminated Cap'n Joab.  "What craft's he sailin' in?"

The Boston morning paper lay before Cap'n Amazon, opened at the page
containing the shipping news.  His glance dropped to the sailing
notices and with scarcely a moment's hesitancy he said:

"_Curlew_, Ripley, master, out o' Boston.  I knowed of her--knowed
Cap'n Ripley," and he pointed to the very first line of the sailing
list.  "If Abe got there in time he like enough j'ined her crew."

"Shipped before the mast?" exploded Cap'n Joab.

"Well," Cap'n Amazon returned sensibly, "if you were skipper about
where would you expect a lubber like Abe Silt to fit into your crew?"

"I swanny, that's so!" agreed Cap'n Joab.  "But it's goin' to be hard
lines for a man of his years--and no experience."

Cap'n Amazon sniffed.  "I guess he'll get along," he said, seemingly
less disturbed by his brother's plight than other people.  "Three
months of summer sailin' won't do him no harm."

That he was under fire he evidently felt, and resented it.  His
brother's old neighbors and friends desired to know altogether too much
about his business and that of Cap'n Abe.  He told Louise before night:

"I tell you what, Abe's got the best of it!  If I'd knowed I was goin'
to be picked to pieces by a lot of busybodies the way I be, I'd never
agreed to stay by the ship till Abe got back.  No, sir!  These folks
around here are the beatenest I ever see."

Yet Louise noticed that he seemed able to hold his own with the curious
ones.  His tongue was quite as nimble as Cap'n Abe's had been.  On the
day of her arrival, Lou Grayling had believed she would be amused at
Cardhaven.  Ere the second twenty-four hours of her stay were rounded
out, she knew she would be.




CHAPTER VIII

SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY

During the day Cap'n Amazon and Amiel Perdue carried Louise's trunks
upstairs and into the storeroom, handy to her own chamber.  It seems
Cap'n Amazon had not brought his own sea chest; only a "dunnage bag,"
as he called it.

"But there's plenty of Abe's duds about," he said; "and we're about of
a size."

When Louise went to unpack her trunks she found a number of things in
the storeroom more interesting even than her own pretty summer frocks.
There were shells, corals, sea-ivory--curios, such as are collected by
seamen the world over.  Cap'n Abe was an indefatigable gatherer of such
wares.  There was a green sea chest standing with its lid wide open,
tarred rope handles on its ends, that may have been around the world a
score of times.  It was half filled with old books.

All the dusty, musty volumes in the chest seemed to deal with the sea
and sea-going.  Many of them, long since out of print and forgotten,
recounted strange and almost unbelievable romances of nautical
life--stories of wrecks, fires, battles with savages and pirates,
discoveries of lone islands and marvelous explorations in lands which,
since the date of publication, have become semi-civilized or altogether
so.

Here were narratives of men who had sailed around the world in tiny
craft like Captain Slocum; stories of seamen who had become chiefs of
cannibal tribes, like the famous Larry O'Brien; several supposedly
veracious narratives of the survivors of the Bounty; stories of Arctic
and Antarctic discovery and privation.  There were also several
scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of nautical wonders--many of
these clipped from New Bedford and Newport papers which at one time
were particularly rich in whalers' yarns.

Interested in skimming these wonderful stories, Lou Grayling spent most
of the afternoon.  Here was a fund of entertainment for rainy days--or
wakeful nights, if she chanced to suffer such.  She carried one of the
scrapbooks into her bedroom that it might be under her hand if she
desired such amusement.

In arranging her possessions in closet and bureau, she found no time on
this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The
Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n
Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open
back door while her uncle was sweeping the store.

The sun was but then opening a red eye above the horizon.  The ocean,
away out to this line demarcating sea and sky, was perfectly flat.
Unlike the previous dawn, this was as clear as a bell's note.

Louise had been wise enough to wear high shoes, so the sands above
high-water mark did not bother her.  The waves lapped in softly,
spreading over the dimpling gray beach, their voice reduced to a
whispering murmur.

Along the crescent of the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the
homes of the summer residents--those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at
the hotel, termed "the big bugs."  On the farthest point visible in
this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and
boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of
small craft.  Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried
a swift craft coming from this anchorage.

She saw, by sweeping it with her glance, that not a soul but herself
was on the shore--neither in the direction of the summer colony nor on
the other hand where the beach curved sharply out to the lighthouse at
the end of the Neck.  The motor boat was fast approaching the spot
where Louise stood.

It being the single moving object on the scene, save the gulls, she
began to watch it.  There was but one person in the motor boat.  He was
hatless and was dressed in soiled flannels.  It was the young man,
Lawford Tapp, of whom Cap'n Abe did not altogether approve.

"He must work for those people over there," Louise Grayling thought.
"He is nice looking."

It could not be possible that Lawford Tapp had descried and recognized
the figure of the girl from the Tapp anchorage!

He no longer wore his hip boots.  After shutting off his engine, he
guided the sharp prow of the launch right up into the sand and leaped
into shallow water, bringing ashore the bight of the painter to throw
over a stub sunk above high-water mark.

"Good-morning!  What do you think of it?" he asked Louise, with a
cordial smile that belonged to him.

"It is lovely!" she said.  "Really wonderful!  I suppose you have lived
here so long it does not appeal to you as strongly as to the
new-beholder?"

"I don't know about that.  It's the finest place in the world; I think.
There's no prettier shore along the Atlantic coast than The Beaches."

"Perhaps you are right.  I do not know much about the New England
coast," she confessed.  "And that--where the spray dashes up so high,
even on this calm morning?"

"Gull Rocks.  The danger spot of all danger spots along the outer line
of the Cape.  In rough weather all one can see out there is a cauldron
of foam."

Before she could express herself again the purr of a swiftly moving
motor car attracted her attention, and she turned to see a low gray
roadster coming toward them from the north.  The Shell Road, before
reaching the shore, swerved northward and ran along the bluffs on which
the bungalows and summer cottages were built.  These dwellings faced
the smooth white road, the sea being behind them.

As Louise looked the car slowed down and stopped, the engine still
throbbing.  A girl was at the wheel.  She was perhaps fifteen, without
a hat and with two plaits of yellow hair lying over her slim shoulders.

"Hey, Ford!" she shouted to the young man, "haven't you been up to
Cap'n Abe's yet?  Daddy's down at the dock now and he's in a tearing
hurry."

She gazed upon Lou Grayling frankly but made no sign of greeting.  She
did not wait, indeed, for a reply from the young man but threw in the
clutch and the car shot away.

"I've got to go up to the store," he said.  "L'Enfant Terrible is
evidently going to Paulmouth to meet the early train.  Must be somebody
coming."

Louise looked at him quickly, her expression one of perplexity.  She
supposed this child in the car was the daughter of Lawford's employer.
But whoever before heard a fisherman speak just as he did?  Had Cap'n
Abe been at home she certainly would have tapped that fount of local
knowledge for information regarding Lawford.  He did not look so much
the fisherman type without his jersey and high boots.

"How do you like the old fellow up at the store?" Lawford asked, as
they strolled along together.  "Isn't he a curious old bird?"

"You mean my Uncle Amazon?"

"Goodness!  He _is_ your uncle, too, isn't he?" and a flush of
embarrassment came into his bronzed cheek.  "I had forgotten he was
Cap'n Abe's brother.  He is so different!"

"Isn't he?" responded Louise demurely.  "He doesn't look anything like
Uncle Abram, at least."

"I should say not!" ejaculated Lawford.  "Do you know, he's an
awfully--er--romantic looking old fellow.  Looks just as though he had
stepped out of an old print"

"The frontispiece of a book about buccaneers, for instance?" she
suggested gleefully.

"Well," and he smiled down upon her from his superior height, "I wasn't
sure you would see it that way."

"Do you know," she told him, still laughing, "that Betty Gallup calls
him nothing but 'that old pirate.'  She has taken a decided dislike to
him and I have to keep smoothing her ruffled feathers.  And, really,
Cap'n Amazon is the nicest man."

"I bet he's seen some rough times," Lawford rejoined with vigor.  "We
used to think Cap'n Abe told some stretchers about his brother; but
Cap'n Amazon looks as though he had been through all that Cap'n Abe
ever told about--and more."

"Oh, he's not so very terrible, I assure you," Louise said, much amused.

"Did you notice the scar along his jaw?  Looks like a cutlass stroke to
me.  I'd like to know how he came by it.  It must have been some fight!"

"You will make him out a much more terrible character than he can
possibly be."

"Never mind.  If he's anything at all like Cap'n Abe, we'll get it all
out of him.  I bet he can tell us some hair-raisers."

"I tell you he's a nice old man, and I won't have you talk so about
him," Louise declared.  "We must change the subject."

"We'll talk about _you_," said Lawford quickly.  "I'm awfully curious.
When does your--er--work begin down here?"

"My work?"  Then she understood him and dimpled.  "Oh, just now is my
playtime."

"Making pictures must be interesting."

"I presume it looks so to the outsider," she admitted.  It amused her
immensely that he should think her a motion picture actress.

"Your coming here and Cap'n Amazon exchanging jobs with his brother
have caused more excitement than Cardhaven and the vicinity have seen
in a decade.  Or at least since _I_ have lived here."

"Oh!  Then are you not native to the soil?"

"No, not exactly," he replied.  And then after a moment he added: "It's
a great old place, even in winter."

"Not dull at all?"

"Never dull," he reassured her.  "Too much going on, on sea and shore,
to ever be dull.  Not for me, at least.  I love it."

They reached the store.  Louise bade the young man good-morning and
went around to the back door to greet Betty.

Lawford made his purchases in rather serious mood and returned to his
motor boat.  His mind was fixed upon the way Louise Grayling had looked
as he stepped ashore and greeted her.

He had been close enough to her now, and for time enough as well, to be
sure that there was nothing artificial about this girl.  She was as
natural as a flower--and just as sweet!  There was a softness to her
cheek and to the curve of her neck like rich velvet.  Her eyes were
mild yet sparkling when she became at all animated.  And that demure
smile!  And her dimples!

When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in
this way, he is far gone indeed.  Lawford Tapp was very seriously
smitten.

He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called
L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile.  She
had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long
before he docked the launch.  Lawford did not pay much attention to
what went on in the big villa.  His mother and sisters lived a social
life of their own.  He merely slept there, spending most of his days on
the water.

The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford
arrived.  Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man.  He "flew
off the handle" at the slightest provocation.  Many times a day he lost
his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, "blew up."

These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp.  They were
escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his
years of idleness.  Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for
fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the
first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to
the old-fashioned ports of the Cape.  Catering to their wants was a
gold mine but little worked at that time.

He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts.  Then he
began to make candy.  His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous.  He
learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape
in summer played all the year around.  They went to Atlantic City or to
the Florida beaches in the winter.

So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens
all up and down the coast.  "I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King" became
a catch-word.  It was then but a step to incorporating a company and
establishing huge candy factories.  I. Tapp went on by leaps and
bounds.  While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a
multi-millionaire.  Even a rather expensive family could not spend his
income fast enough.

He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred
to live there rather than elsewhere.  His wife and the older girls
insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain
times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe.  Their one
ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt
their money should rightfully place them.  But a house on the Back Bay
does not always assure one's entrance to the circles of the "gilded
codfish."

Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time.  Lawford had the
_Merry Andrew_ all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip.  The
sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing
boat within miles of Cardhaven.  Lawford was proud of her.

"So you're back at last, are you?" snapped the Salt Water Taffy King.

He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow.  His very
strut pronounced him a self-made man.  He glared at his son, whose cool
nonchalance he often declared was impudence.

"I've been waiting some time for you, dad.  Hop aboard," Lawford calmly
said.

"You took your time in getting back here," responded his father, by no
means mollified.  "And you knew I was waiting.  But you had to stand
and talk to a girl over there.  Cicely says it is that picture actress
who is staying at Cap'n Abe's.  Is that so?"

"I presume Cicely is right," his son answered.  "There is no other here
at present to my knowledge."

"Of all things!" ejaculated Mr. Tapp.  "You are always making some kind
of a fool of yourself, Lawford.  Don't, for pity's sake, be _that_ kind
of a fool."

"What do you mean, dad?" and now the young man's eyes flashed.  It was
seldom that Lawford turned upon his father in anger.

"You know very well what I mean.  Keep away from such women.  Don't get
messed up with actor people.  I won't have it, I tell you!  I am
determined that at least _one_ rich man's son shall not be the victim
of the wiles of any of these stage women."

The flush remained in Lawford's cheek.  It hurt him to hear his father
speak so in referring to Louise Grayling.  He, too, possessed some of
the insular prejudice of his kind against those who win their
livelihood in the glare of the theatrical spotlight.  This gentle,
well-bred, delightful girl staying at Cap'n Abe's store was a
revelation to him.  He held his tongue, however, and held his temper in
check as well.

"I don't see," stormed I. Tapp, "why you can't take up with a nice girl
and marry.  Why, at your age I was married and we had Marian!"

"Don't you think that should discourage me, dad?" Lawford put in.
"Marian is nobody to brag of, I should say."

"Hah!" ejaculated his father.  "She's a fool, too.  But there are nice
girls.  I was talking to your mother about your case last night.  Of
course, I don't want you to say anything to her about what I'm going to
tell you now.  She's got the silliest notions," pursued Mr. Tapp who
labored under the belief that all the wisdom of the ages had lodged
under his own hat.  "Expects her daughters to marry dukes and you to
catch a princess or the like."

"There are no such fish in these waters," laughed Lawford.  "At least,
none has so much as nibbled at my hook."

"And no nice girl will nibble at it if you don't come ashore once in a
while and get into something besides fisherman's duds."

"Now, dad, clothes do not make the man."

"Who told you such a fool thing as that?  Some fool philosopher with
only one shirt to his back said it.  Bill Johnson proved how wrong that
was to my satisfaction years and years ago.  Good old Bill!  I wanted
to branch out.  We had just that one little candy factory and I worked
in it myself every day.

"I got the idea," continued I. Tapp, launched on a favorite subject
now, "that my balance sheet and outlook for trade might impress the
bank people.  I wanted to build a bigger factory.  So I took off my
apron one day and walked over to the bank.  I saw the president.  He
looked like a fashion plate himself and he swung a pair of dinky
glasses on a cord as he listened to me and looked me over.  Then he
turned me down--flat!

"I told Bill about it.  Bill was kind of tied up just then himself.
That was before he made his big strike.  But he was a different fellow
from me.  Bill always looked like ready money.

"'Isra,' he says to me, 'I'll tell you how to get that money from the
bank.'

"'It can't be done, Bill,' I told him.  'The president of the bank
showed me that my business was too weak to stand such spread-eagling.

"'Nonsense!' says Bill.  'It isn't your business, it's your nerve that
you've got to hire money on--and your clothes.  You do what I tell you.
Come to my tailor's in the morning.'

"Well, to cut a long story short, I did it.  I rigged up to beat that
bank president himself.  When he saw me in about two hundred dollars'
worth of good clothes he considered the case again and recommended the
loan to his board.  'You put your facts much more lucidly to-day, Mr.
Tapp,' is the way he expressed himself.  But take it from me, Lawford,
it was my clothes that made the impression.

"So!" ruminated Mr. Tapp, "that is one thing Bill Johnson did for me.
And later, as you know, he came into the candy business with me and his
money helped make I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King.  Lawford, Bill is
like a brother to me.  His girl, Dorothy, is one of the nicest girls
who ever stepped in a slipper."

"Dorothy Johnson is a really sweet girl, dad," Lawford agreed.  "I like
her."

"There!" ejaculated I. Tapp.  "You let that liking become something
stronger.  Dorothy's just the girl for you to marry."

"_What_?" gasped the skipper of the _Merry Andrew_, almost losing his
grip on the steering wheel.

"You get my meaning," said his father, scowling.  "I've always meant
you should marry Bill's daughter.  I had your mother write her last
night inviting her down here.  Of course, your mother and the girls
think Bill Johnson's folks are too plain.  But I'm boss once in a while
in my own house."

"And you call mother a matchmaker!"

"I know what I want and I'm going to get it," said I. Tapp doggedly.
"Dorothy is the girl for you.  Don't you get entangled with anybody
else.  Not a penny of my money will you ever handle if you don't do as
I say, young man!"

"You needn't holler till you're hit, dad," Lawford said, trying to
speak carelessly.

"Oh!  _I_ sha'n't holler," snarled the Taffy King.  "I warn you.  One
such play as that and I'm through with you.  I'm willing to support an
idle, ne'er-do-well; but he sha'n't saddle himself with one of those
theatrical creatures and bring scandal upon the family.  Do you know
what I was doing when I was your age?  I had a booth at 'Gansett, two
at Newport, a big one at Atlantic City, and was beginning to branch
out.  I worked like a dog, too."

"That's why I think I don't have to work, dad," said Lawford coolly.




CHAPTER IX

SUSPICION HOVERS

Betty Gallup, clothed as usual in her man's hat and worn pea-coat, but
likewise on this occasion with mystery, seized Louise by the hand the
instant she appeared and drew her into the kitchen, shutting the door
between that and the living-room.

"What is the matter?" the girl asked.  "Have you broken something--or
is the canary dead?"

"Sh!" warned Betty, her little brown eyes blinking rapidly.  "I heard
something last night."

"I didn't.  I slept like a baby.  The night before I heard that old
foghorn----"

"I mean," interrupted Betty, "something was told me."

"Well, go on."  Louise made up her mind that she could not stem the
tide of talk.

"About your uncle, Cap'n Abe.  He--he never was seen to take that train
to Boston.  I got it straight, or pretty average straight.  Mandy Baker
told me, and Peke Card's wife, Mary Lizbeth, told her, who got it right
from Lute Craven who works in the post-office uptown, and Lute got it
from Noah Coffin.  You know, he't drives the ark you come over in from
Paulmouth.  Well!  Noah was at Paulmouth depot as he always is of
course when the clam train stops at five-thutty-five.  He says he
didn't see Cap'n Abe nor nobody that looked like him board that train
yest'day mornin'."

"Why, Betty!"  Louise could only gasp.  This house-that-Jack-built
narrative quite took her breath away.

"Besides," went on Betty; "there's more to it.  Cap'n Abe's chest was
took back to the depot by Perry Baker when he brought your trunks over,
sure 'nough.  And Perry Baker says he shipped that chest to Boston for
your uncle, marked to be called for.  It went by express."

"But--but what of it?" asked the puzzled girl.

"Humph!  Stands to reason," declared Mrs. Gallup, "that Cap'n Abe
wouldn't have done no such foolish thing as that.  It costs money to
ship a heavy sea chest by express.  He could have took it on his ticket
as baggage, free gratis, for nothin'!"

"I really don't see," Louise now said rather severely, "that these
facts you state--if they are facts--are any of our business, Betty.
Uncle Abram might have taken the train at some other station.  He was
not sure, perhaps, whether he would join the ship Cap'n Amazon
recommended, so why should he not send his chest by express?"

"Cap'n Am'zon!  Humph!" sniffed Betty.  "Nobody knows whether that's
his name or not.  _He_ comes here without a smitch of clo'es, as near
as I can find out."

Louise was amused; yet she was somewhat vexed as well.  The curiosity,
as well as the animosity, displayed by Betty and others of the
neighbors began to appall her.  If Cape Cod folk were, as her
daddy-professor had declared, "the salt of the earth," some of the salt
seemed to have lost its savor.

"We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely.  "Just as he
had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he
probably had his reasons for taking nobody into his confidence.  This
Perry Baker, the expressman, must know that Cap'n Abe sent the trunk
from the house, here."

"Humph!  Yes!  Nobody's denyin' that."

"Then Cap'n Abe must have known exactly what he wished to do.  Cap'n
Amazon surely had nothing to do with the chest, with how his brother
took the train, or with _where_ he took it.  Really, Betty, what do you
suspect Cap'n Amazon has done?"

"I don't know what he's done," snapped Betty.  "But I wouldn't put
nothin' past him, from his looks.  The old pirate!"

"You will make me feel very bad if you continue to talk this way about
my Uncle Amazon," said the girl, far from feeling amused now.  "It is
not right.  I hope you will not continue to repeat such things.  If you
do you will some time be sorry for it, Betty."

"Humph!" sniffed the woman.  "Mebbe I will.  But I'm warnin' you, Miss
Grayling."

"Warning me of what?"

"Of that man.  That old sinner!  I never see a wickeder looking feller
in my life--and I've sailed with my father and my husband to 'most
ev'ry quarter of the globe.  He may be twin brother to the Angel
Gabriel; but if he is, his looks belie it!"

There was nothing in all this of enough consequence to disturb the
girl, only in so far as she was vexed to find the neighbors so gossipy
and unkind.  She gazed thoughtfully upon Cap'n Amazon as he sat across
from her at the breakfast table, and wondered how anybody could see in
his bronzed face anything sinister.

That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true.  Those gold
earrings!  But then, she had seen several of the older men about the
store wearing rings in their ears.  If he did not always have that
bright-colored kerchief on his head!  But then, he might wear that
because he was susceptible to neuralgia and did not wish to wear a hat
all the time as seemed to have been Cap'n Abe's custom.

When he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners, he was as
kindly of expression, she thought, as Cap'n Abe himself.  And he was a
much better looking man than the brother who had gone away.

"Cap'n Amazon," she said to him, "I believe you must be just full of
stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land.  Uncle
Abram said you had been everywhere."

Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and
said:

"I've been pretty nigh everywhere.  Seen some funny corners of the
world, too, Louise."

"You must tell me about your adventures," she said.  "Your brother told
me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and
sailed on a long whaling voyage."

"Yep.  _South Sea Belle_.  Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon
briskly.  "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin'
with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big
as a nail keg--or pretty nigh."

Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of
ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so.  He told
it so vividly that Louise was enthralled.  The picture of the whaling
bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the
surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had
brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days.  The mate of the _South
Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly
caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted
upon boarding the carcass.  Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea
fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the
whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth
so great a sum to the perfumer.

"'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought
into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon.  "Helped make
the owners rich, and the Old Man, too.  Course, I got my sheer; but a
boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot.
So I went to sea again."

"You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon."

"Pretty nigh.  I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a
berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'.  I let Abe do
that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone.

"Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body!  See the
nice business he has built up here.  And he told me he owned shares in
several vessels and other property."

"That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly.  "And a tidy sum in the
Paulmouth National Bank.  I got a letter to the bank folks he left to
introduce me, if I needed cash.  Yes, Abe's done well enough that way.
But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore."

"And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing.

"I'm going to try it, Louise.  I've done my sheer of roaming about.
Mebbe I'll settle down here for good."

"With Cap'n Abe?  Won't that be fine?"

"Yep.  With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the
meal.

On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual.
Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers;
but he would not listen to that for a moment.

"I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to
look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly.  "You stay
aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew.  Besides,
there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue.  Abe said he sometimes
helped around.  He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores
is stowed."

The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and
attacked Cap'n Amazon.  It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers
their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the
captain slept locked against her.  It was Cap'n Abe's room and it
seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his
own bed and keep his room tidy during the week.  But Betty had always
given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Saturdays.

"What's that room locked for?  I want to know what you mean?" the woman
demanded of Cap'n Amazon.  "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where
doors is locked against me?  I'm as honest as any Silt that ever
hobbled on two laigs.  Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the
coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile."

She had much more to say--and said it.  It seemed to make her feel
better to do so.  Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer
to take the key out of his trousers' pocket.

"What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless.

"I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive
voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was.  "I
don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds.  That
door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece.  You do
the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin."

Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at
first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she would resign
from her situation on the spot.

But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her.
And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed.  She spluttered a
little more, then returned to her work.  Though she was sullen all day,
she did not offer to reopen the discussion.

"What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise
thought.  "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp
suggested.  My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all."

But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father.  He stood
on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with
Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word.

That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender
heart, the girl was sure.  For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel
a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him
stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with
him.  And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye.

"Blind's a bat!  Poor little critter!" he would murmur.  "All the
sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more.  Out-o'-doors
ain't nothin' to him now."

Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor
little Jerry.  He had promised Abe, he said.  He kept that promise
faithfully.

Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem.  At first, whenever he
saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled.  Then, gradually, an
unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell.  He would
peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes
through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the
substitute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest
in the man.  But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him.

"I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon.
"They'll desert ship as soon as wink.  Treacherous critters, the hull
tribe.  Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's
hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten.  Brought
it up on a bottle himself.

"He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock
under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as
lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall
in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed
demon would lay in it, too, and purr like an ordinary cat.

"But a day come when the man fell asleep and had a nightmare or
something, and kicked out, cracking that cat on the snout with his
heel.  Next breath the cat had a chunk out o' his calf and if I hadn't
been there with a gun he'd pretty near have eat the feller!"

The personal touch always entered into Cap'n Amazon's stories.  He had
always been on me spot when the thing in point happened--and usually he
was the heroic and central figure.  No foolish modesty stayed his
tongue when it came to recounting adventures.

He had all his wits, as well as all his wit, about him, had Cap'n
Amazon.  This was shown by an occurrence that very Saturday afternoon.

Milt Baker, like the other neighbors, was becoming familiar, if not
friendly, with the substitute storekeeper and, leaning on the showcase.
Milt said:

"Leave me have a piece of Brown Mule, Cap'n Am'zon.  I'm all out o'
chewin'.  Put it on the book and Mandy'll pay for it."

"Avast there!" Cap'n Amazon returned.  "Seems to me I got something in
the bill o' ladin' 'bout that," and he drew forth the long memorandum
Cap'n Abe had made to guide his substitute's treatment of certain
customers.  "No," the substitute storekeeper said, shaking his head
negatively.  "Can't do it."

"Why not, I want to know?" blustered Milt.  "I guess my credit's good."
He already had the Brown Mule in his hand.

"Your wife's credit seems to be good," Cap'n Amazon returned firmly.
"But here's what I find here: 'Don't trust Milt Baker for Brown Mule
'cause Mandy makes him pay cash for his tobacker and rum.  We don't
sell no rum.'  That's enough, young man."

Milt might have tried to argue the case with Cap'n Abe; but not with
Cap'n Amazon.  There was something in the steady look of the latter
that caused the shiftless clam digger to dig down into his pocket for
the nickel, pay it over, and walk grumblingly out of the store.

"Does beat all what a fool a woman will be," commented Cap'n Amazon,
rather enigmatically; only Louise, who heard him, realized fully what
his thought was.  Jealous and hard-working Mandy Baker had chosen for
herself a handicap in the marriage game.




CHAPTER X

WHAT LOUISE THINKS

Sunday morning such a hush pervaded the store on the Shell Road, and
brooded over its surroundings, as Lou Grayling had seldom experienced
save in the depths of the wilderness.

She beheld a breeze-swept sea from her window with no fishing boats
going out.  There was nobody on the clam flats, although the tide was
just right at dawn.  The surfman from the patrol station beyond The
Beaches paced to the end of his beat dressed in his best, like a man
merely taking a Sunday morning stroll.

The people she saw seemed to be changed out of their everyday selves.
Not only were they in Sabbath garb, but they had on their Sabbath
manner.  Even to Milt Baker, the men were cleanly shaven and wore fresh
cotton shirts of their wives' laundering.

Cap'n Amazon appeared from his "cabin" when the first church bells
began to ring, arrayed in a much wrinkled but very good suit of "go
ashore" clothes of blue, which were possibly those he had worn when he
arrived at the store on the Shell Road.  He wore a hard, glazed hat of
an old-fashioned naval shape and, instead of the usual red bandana, he
wore a black silk handkerchief tied about his head.

Just why he always kept his crown thus swathed, Louise was very
desirous of knowing.  Yet she did not feel like asking him such a very
personal question.  Had it been Cap'n Abe she would not for a moment
have hesitated.  Louise had heard of men being scalped by savages and
she was almost tempted to believe that this had happened to Cap'n
Amazon in one of his wild encounters.

"We'll go to the First Church, Niece Louise," he said firmly.  "Abe
always did.  These small-fry craft, like the Mariner's Chapel, are all
right, I don't dispute; but they are lacking in ballast.  It's in my
mind to attend the church that's the most like a well-founded, deep-sea
craft."

Louise was more impressed than amused by this philosophy.  The captain
seemed to have put on his "Sunday face" like everybody else.  As they
came out of the yard old Washington Gallup hobbled by, but instead of
stopping to chatter inconsequently, for he was an inveterate gossip, he
saluted the captain respectfully and hobbled on.

Indeed, the captain was a figure on this day to command profound
respect.  It is no trick at all for a big man to look dignified and
impressive; but Cap'n Amazon was not a big man.  However, in his blue
pilot-cloth suit, cut severely plain, and with his hard black hat on
his head he made a veritable picture of what a master-mariner should be.

On his quarter-deck, in fair or foul weather, Louise was sure that he
had never lacked the respect of his crew or their confidence.  He was
distinctly a man to command--a leader and director by nature.  He was,
indeed, different from the seemingly easy-going, gentle-spoken Cap'n
Abe, the storekeeper.

They had scarcely started up the Shell Road when the whir of a
fast-running automobile sounded behind them and the mellow hoot of a
horn.  Louise turned to see a great touring car take the curve from the
direction of The Beaches and glide swiftly toward them.  Lawford Tapp
was guiding the car.

"Then he's a chauffeur as well as fisherman and boatman," she thought.

She could not see how he was dressed under the coat he wore; but he
touched his cap to her and Cap'n Amazon as he drove by.

Beside Lawford on the driving seat was a plump little man who seemed to
be violently quarreling with the chauffeur.  In the tonneau was a
matronly woman and three girls including "L'Enfant Terrible," all,
Louise thought, rather overdressed.

"Those folks, so I'm told," said Cap'n Amazon placidly, "come from that
big house on the p'int--as far as you can see from our windows.  More
money than good sense, I guess.  Though the man, he comes of good old
Cape stock.  But I guess that blood can de-te-ri-orate, as the feller
said.  Ain't much of it left in the young folks, pretty likely.  They
just laze around and play all the time.  If 'All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy,' you can take it from me, Niece Louise, that all play
and no work makes Jill a pretty average useless girl.  Yes, sir!"

To the First Church it was quite a walk, up Main Street beyond the Inn
and the post-office.  There was some little bustle on Main Street at
church-going time for some of the vacation visitors--those of more
modest pretensions than the occupants of the cottages at The
Beaches--had already arrived.

At the head of the church aisle Cap'n Amazon spoke apologetically to
the usher:

"Young man, my brother, Mr. Abram Silt, hires a pew here; but I don't
rightly know its bearings.  Would you mind showin' me and my niece the
course?"

They were accommodated.  After service several shook hands with them;
but Louise noticed that many cast curious glances at the black silk
handkerchief on Cap'n Amazon's head and did not come near.  Despite his
dignity and the reverence of his bearing, he did look peculiar with
that 'kerchief swathing his crown.

Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the Cardhaven Inn, claimed
acquaintanceship after church with Louise.

"There's goin' to be more of your crowd come to-morrow, Miss Grayling,"
she said.  "Some of 'em's goin' to stop with us at the Inn.  How you
makin' out down there to Cap'n Abe's?  Land sakes! _that_ ain't Cap'n
Abe!"

"It is his brother, Cap'n Amazon Silt," explained Louise.

"I want to know!  He looks amazin' funny, don't he?  Not much like
Cap'n Abe.  You see, my folks live down the Shell Road.  My ma married
again.  D'rius Vleet.  Nice man, but a Dutchman.  I don't take up much
with these furiners.

"Now! what was I sayin'?  Oh!  The boss tells me there's a Mr. Judson
Bane of your crowd goin' to stop with us.  Sent a telegraph dispatch
for a room to be saved for him.  With bath!  Land sakes! ain't the
whole ocean big enough for him to take a bath in?  We ain't got nothing
like that.  And two ladies--I forget their names.  You know Mr. Bane?".

"I have met him--once," confessed Louise.

"Some swell he is, I bet," Gusty declared.  "I'm goin' to speak to him.
Mebbe he can get me into the company.  I ain't so _aw_-ful fat.  I seen
a picture over to Paulmouth last night where there was a girl bigger'n
I am, and she took a re'l sad part.

"She cried re'l tears.  _I_ can do that.  All I got to do is to think
of something re'l mis'rable--like the time our old brahma hen, Beauty,
got bit by Esek Coe's dog, and ma had to saw her up.  Then the tears'll
squeeze right out, _just as ea'sy_!"

Louise thought laughter would overcome her "just as easy" despite the
day and place.  She knew a hearty burst of laughter in the church
edifice would amaze and shock the lingering congregation.

Seeing that Cap'n Amazon was busy with some men he had met, the girl
walked out to the little vestibule of the church.  Here a number of
women and men were discussing various matters--the sermon, the weather,
clamming, boating, and the colony at The Beaches.  Two women stood
apart from the others and presently Louise was attracted to them by the
sound of Lawford Tapp's name.

"I dunno who he is exactly, bein' somethin' o' a stranger here," one of
the women said.  "But I was told he was some poor relation who allers
lived among the fisher folk.  But he does seem to know how to run thet
autermobile, don't he?"

"I should say!" returned the other woman.  "An' he's well spoken,
too--from what I heard him say down to the store."

"Yes, I know that too.  Well, I hope he buys the outfit--Jimmy wants to
sell it bad enough--an' needs the money, believe me!"  And thereupon
the two women took their departure.

The conversation hung in Louisa's mind and she looked exceedingly
thoughtful when Cap'n Amazon broke away from those with whom he had
been talking and joined her.

"Nice man, that Reverend Jimson, I guess," the captain said, as they
wended their way homeward; "but he's got as many ways of holdin' a
feller as an octopus.  And lemme tell you, that's a plenty!  Arms seem
to grow on devilfish 'while you wait' as the feller said.

"I sha'n't ever forget the time I was a boy in the old _Mary Bedloe_
brig, out o' Boston, loaded with sundries for Jamaica, to bring back
molasses--and something a leetle mite stronger.  That's 'bout as near
as I ever got to having traffic with liquor--and 'twas an unlucky
v'y'ge all the way through.

"Before we ever got the rum aboard," pursued Cap'n Amazon, "on our way
down there, our water went bad.  Yes, sir!  Water does get stringy
sometimes on long v'y'ges.  It useter on whalin' cruises--get all
stringy and bad; but after she'd worked clear she'd be fit to drink
again.

"But this time in the _Mary Bedloe_ it was something mysterious
happened to the drinking water.  Made the hull crew sick.  Cap'n Jim
Braman was master.  He was a good navigator, but an awful profane man.
Swore without no reason to it.

"Well----Where was I?  Oh, yes!  We had light airs in the Caribbean for
once, and didn't make no more headway in a day than a brick barge goin'
upstream.  We come to an island--something more than a key--and Cap'n
Braman ordered a boat's crew ashore for water.  I was in the second's
boat so I went.  We found good water easy and the second officer, who
was a nice young chap, let us scour around on our own hook for fruit
and such, after we'd filled the barrels.

"I was all for shellfish them days, and I see some big mussels attached
to the rocks, it bein' low water.  Some o' them mussels, when ye gut
'em same as ye would deep-sea clams, make the nicest fry you ever
tasted.

"Wal," said Cap'n Amazon, walking sedately home from church with his
amused niece on his arm, "I wanted a few of them mussels.  There was a
mud bottom and so the water was black.  Just as I reached for the first
mussel I felt something creeping around my left leg.  I thought it was
eel-grass; then I thought it was an eel.

"Next thing I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places.
I jumped; but I didn't jump far.  There was two o' the things had me,
and that left leg o' mine was fast as a duck's foot in the mud!"

"Oh, Uncle Amazon!" gasped Louise.

"Yep.  A third arm whipped out o' the water had helt me round the waist
tighter'n any girl of my acquaintance ever lashed her best feller.
Land sakes, that devilfish certainly give me a hi-mighty hug!

"But I had what they call down in the Spanish speakin' islands a
machette--a big knife for cuttin' your way through the jungle.  I
hauled that out o' the waistband of my pants and I began slicing at
them snake-like arms of the critter and yelling like all get-out.

"More scare't than hurt, I reckon.  I was a young feller, as I tell
you, and hadn't seen so much of the world as I have since," continued
Cap'n Amazon.  "But the arms seemed fairly to grow on that devilfish.
I wasn't hacked loose when the second officer come runnin' with his
gun.  I dragged the critter nearer inshore and he got a look at it.
Both barrels went into that devilfish, and that was more than it could
stomach; so it let go," finished the captain.

"Mercy! what an experience," commented Louise, wondering rather vaguely
why the minister of the First Church had reminded her uncle of this
octopus.

"Yes.  'Twas _some_," agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "But let's step along a
little livelier, Niece Louise.  I'm goin' to give you a re'l
fisherman's chowder for dinner, an' I want to git the pork and onions
over.  I like my onions well browned before I slice in the potaters."

Cap'n Amazon insisted on doing most of the cooking, just as Cap'n Abe
had.  Louise had baked some very delicate pop-overs for breakfast that
morning and the captain ate his share with appreciation.

"Pretty average nice, I call 'em, for soft-fodder," he observed.  "But,
land sakes! give me something hearty and kind of solid for reg'lar
eating.  Ordinary man would starve pretty handy, I guess, on breadstuff
like this."

The chowder was both as hearty and as appetizing as one could desire.
Nor would the captain allow Louise to wash the dishes afterward.

"No, girl.  I'll clean up this mess.  You go out and see how fur you
can walk on that hard beach now it's slack tide.  You ain't been up
there to Tapp P'int yit and seen that big house that belongs to the
candy king.  Neither have I, of course," he added; "but they been
tellin' me about it in the store."

Louise accepted the suggestion and started to walk up the beach; but
she did not get far.  There was a private dock running out beyond
low-water mark just below the very first bungalow.  She saw several men
coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the
bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands.  This must be
Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the moving picture
people.

If Judson Bane was to be leading man of the company the picture was
very likely to be an important production; for Bane would not leave the
legitimate stage for any small salary.  Seeing no women in the party
and that the men were heading up the beach, Louise went no farther in
that direction, and instead walked out upon the private dock to its end.

It was not until then that she saw, shooting inshore, the swift launch
in which Lawford Tapp had come over in the morning previous.  The wind
being off the land she had not heard its exhaust.  In three minutes the
launch glided in beside the dock where she stood.

"Come for a sail, Miss Grayling?" he asked her, with his very widest
smile.  "I'll take you out around Gull Rocks."

"Oh!  I am not sure----"

"Surely you're not down here to work on Sunday?" and he glanced at the
actors.

She laughed.  "Oh, no, Mr. Tapp.  I do not work on Sundays.  Uncle
Amazon would not even let me wash the dishes."

"I should think not," murmured Lawford with an appreciative glance at
her ungloved hands.  "He's a pretty decent old fellow, I guess.  Will
you come aboard?  She's perfectly safe, Miss Grayling."

If he had invited her to enter the big touring car he had driven that
morning, to go for a "joy ride," Louise Grayling would certainly have
refused.  To go on a pleasure trip at the invitation of a chauffeur in
his employer's car was quite out of consideration.

But this was somehow different, or so it seemed.  She hesitated not
because of who or what he was (or what she believed him to be), but
because she had seen something in his manner and expression of
countenance that warned her he was a young man not to be lightly
encouraged.

In that moment of reflection Louise Grayling, asked herself if she felt
that he possessed a more interesting personality than almost any man
she had ever met socially before.  She did so consider him, she told
herself, and so--she stepped aboard the launch.

She did not need his hand to help her to the seat beside him.  She was
boatwise.  He pushed off, starting his engine; and they were soon
chug-chugging out upon the limitless sea.




CHAPTER XI

THE LEADING MAN

"I saw you with Cap'n Amazon going to church this morning," Lawford
said.  "To the First Church, I presume?"

"And you?"

"Oh, I drove the folks over to Paulmouth.  There is an Episcopal Church
there and the girls think it's more fashionable.  You don't see many
soft-collared shirts among the Paulmouth Episcopalians."

There spoke the "native," Louise thought; and she smiled.

"It scarcely matters, I fancy, which denomination one attends.  It is
the spirit in which we worship that counts."

He gazed upon her seriously.  "You're a thoughtful girl, I guess.  I
should not have looked for that--in your business."

"In my business?  Oh!"

"We outsiders have an idea that people in the theatrical line are a
peculiar class unto themselves," Lawford went on.

"But I----"  On the point of telling him of his mistake she hesitated.
He was unobservant of her amusement and went on with seriousness:

"I guess I'm pretty green after all.  I don't know much about the
world--your world, at least.  I love the sea, and sailing, and all the
seashore has to offer.  Sometimes I'm out here alone all day long."

"But what is it doing for you?" she asked him rather sharply.  "Surely
there can be very little in it, when all's said and done.  A man with
your intelligence--you have evidently had a good education."

"I suppose I don't properly appreciate that," he admitted.

"And to really waste your time like this--loafing longshore, and
sailing boats, and--and driving an automobile.  Why! you are a regular
beach comber, Mr. Tapp.  It's not much of an outlook for a man I should
think."

She suddenly stopped, realizing that she was showing more interest than
the occasion called for.  Lawford was watching her with smoldering eyes.

"Don't you think it is a nice way to live?" he asked.  "The sea is
really wonderful.  I have learned more about sea and shore already than
you can find in all the books.  Do you know where the gulls nest, and
how they hatch their young?  Did you ever watch a starfish feeding?  Do
you know what part of the shellfish is the scallop of commerce?  Do you
know that every seventh wave is almost sure to be larger than its
fellows?  Do you----"

"Oh, it may be very delightful," Louise interrupted this flow of badly
catalogued information to say.  He expressed exactly her own desires.
Nothing could be pleasanter than spending the time, day after day,
learning things "at first hand" about nature.  For her father--and of
course for her--to do this was quite proper, Louise thought.  But not
for this young fisherman, who should be making his way in the world.
"Where is it getting you?" she demanded.

"Getting me?"

"Yes," she declared with vigor, yet coloring a little.  "A man should
work."

"But I'm not idle."

"He should work to get ahead--to save--to make something of himself--to
establish himself in life--to have a home."

He smiled then and likewise colored.  "I--I------A man can't do that
alone.  Especially the home-making part."

"You don't suppose any of these girls about here--the nice girls, I
mean--want a man who is not a home provider?"

He laughed outright then.  "Some of them get that kind, I fear, Miss
Grayling.  Mandy Card, for instance."

"Are you planning to be another Milt Baker?" she responded with scorn.

"Oh, now, you're hard on a fellow," he complained.  "I'm always busy.
And, fixed as I am, I don't see why I should grub and moil at
unpleasant things."

Louise shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture of finality.  "You are
impossible, I fear," she said and put aside--not without a secret
pang--her interest in Lawford Tapp, an interest which had been
developing since she first met the young man.

He allowed the subject to lapse and began telling her about the ledges
on which the rock cod and tautog schooled; where bluefish might be
caught on the line, and snappers in the channels going into the Haven.

"Good sport.  I must take you out in the _Merry Andrew_," he said.
"She's a peach of a sailer--and my very own."

"Oh! do you own the sloop, Mr. Tapp?"

"I guess I do!  And no money could buy her," he cried with boyish
enthusiasm.  "She's the best lap-streak boat anywhere along the Cape.
And _sail_!"

"I love sailing," she confessed, with brightening visage.

"Say!  You just set the day--so it won't conflict with your work--and
I'll take you out," he declared eagerly,

"But won't it conflict with your duties?"

"Humph!" he returned.  "I thought your idea was that I didn't have any
duties.  However," and he smiled again, "you need not worry about that.
When you want to go I will arrange everything so that I'll have a free
day."

"But not alone, Mr. Tapp?"

"No," he agreed gravely.   "I suppose that wouldn't do.  But we can
rake up a chaperon somewhere."

"Oh, yes!" and Louise dimpled again.  "We'll take Betty Gallup along.
She's an able seaman, too."

"I _bet_ she is!" ejaculated Lawford with emphasis.

He handled the boat with excellent judgment, and his confidence caused
Louise to see no peril when they ran almost on the edge of the
maelstrom over Gull Rocks.  "I know this coast by heart," he said.  "I
believe there's not one of them sailing out of the Haven who is a
better pilot than I am.  At least, I've learned _that_ outside of
textbooks," and he smiled at her.

Louise wondered how good an education this scion of a Cape Cod family
really had secured.  The longer she was in his company the more she was
amazed by his language and manners.  She noted, too, that he was much
better dressed to-day.  His flannels were not new; indeed they were
rather shabby.  But the garments' original cost must have been
prohibitive for a young man in his supposed position.  Very likely,
however, they had been given him, second-hand, by some member of the
family for which he worked.

The more she saw of him, and the more she thought about it, the greater
was Louise's disappointment in Lawford Tapp.  She was not exactly sorry
she had come out with him in the motor boat; but her feeling toward him
was distinctly different when she landed, from that which had been
roused in her first acquaintance.

It was true he was not an idle young man--not exactly.  But he betrayed
an ability and a training that should already have raised him above his
present situation in the social scale, as Louise understood it.  She
was disappointed, and although she bade Lawford Tapp good-bye
pleasantly she was secretly unhappy.

The next morning she chanced to need several little things that were
not to be found in Cap'n Abe's store and she went uptown in quest of
them.  At midday she was still thus engaged, so she went to the Inn for
lunch.

Gusty Durgin spied her as she entered and found a small table for
Louise where she would be alone.  A fat woman whom Gusty mentioned as
"the boss's sister, Sara Ann Whipple," helped wait upon the guests.
Several of the business men of the town, as well as the guests of the
Inn, took their dinners there.

To one man, sitting alone at a table not far distant, Louise saw that
Gusty was particularly attentive.  He was typically a city man; one
could not for a moment mistake him for a product of the Cape.

He was either a young-old or an old-young looking man, his hair graying
at the temples, but very luxuriant and worn rather long.  A bright
complexion and beautifully kept teeth and hands marked him as one more
than usually careful of his personal appearance.  Indeed, his character
seemed to border on that of the exquisite.

His countenance was without doubt attractive, for it was intelligent
and expressed a quiet humor that seemed to have much kindliness mixed
with it.  His treatment of the unsophisticated Gusty, who hovered about
him with open admiration, held just that quality of good-natured
tolerance which did not offend the waitress but that showed discerning
persons that he considered her only in the light of an artless child.

"D'you know who that is?" Gusty whispered to Louise when she found time
to do so.  The plump girl was vastly excited; her hands shook as she
set down the dishes.  "That's Mr. Judson Bane."

"Yes.  I chanced to meet Mr. Bane once, as I told you," smiled Louise,
keeping up the illusion of her own connection with the fringe of the
theatrical world.

"And Miss Louder and Miss Noyes have come.  My, you ought to see
_them_!" said the emphatic waitress.  "They've got one o' them
flivvers.  Some gen'leman friend of Miss Noyes' lent it to 'em.
They're out now hunting what they call a garridge for it.  That's a
fancy name for a barn, I guess.  And dressed!" gasped Gusty finally.
"They're dressed to kill!"

"We shall have lively times around Cardhaven now, sha'n't we?" Louise
commented demurely.

"We almost always do in summer," Gusty agreed with a sigh.  "Last
summer an Italian lost his trick bear in the pine woods 'twixt here and
Paulmouth and the young 'uns didn't darest to go out of the houses for
a week.  Poor critter!  When they got him he was fair foundered eating
green cranberries in the bogs."

"Something doing," no matter what, was Gusty's idea of life as it
should be.  Louise finished her meal and went out of the dining-room.
In the hall her mesh bag caught in the latch of the screen door and
dropped to the floor.  Somebody was right at hand to pick it up for her.

"Allow me." said a deep and cultivated voice.  "Extremely annoying."

It was Mr. Bane, hat in hand.  He restored the bag, and as Louise
quietly thanked him they walked out of the Inn together.  Louise was
returning to Cap'n Abe's store, and she turned in that direction before
she saw that Mr. Bane was bound down the hill, too.

"I fancy we are fellow-outcasts," he said.  "You, too, are a visitor to
this delightfully quaint place?"

"Yes, Mr. Bane," she returned frankly.  "Though I can claim
relationship to some of these Cardhaven folk.  My mother came from the
Cape."

"Indeed?  It is not such a far cry to Broadway from any point of the
compass, after all, is it?" and he smiled engagingly down at her.

"You evidently do not remember me, Mr. Bane?" she said, returning his
smile.  "Aboard the Anders Liner, coming up from Jamaica, two years ago
this last winter?  Professor Ernest Grayling is my father."

"Indeed!" he exclaimed.  "You are Miss Grayling?  I remember you and
your father clearly.  Fancy meeting you here!" and Mr. Bane insisted on
taking her hand.  "And how is the professor?  No need to ask after your
health, Miss Grayling."

As they walked on together Louise took more careful note of the actor.
He had the full habit of a well-fed man, but was not gross.  He was
athletic, indeed, and his head was poised splendidly on broad
shoulders.  Louise saw that his face was massaged until it was as pink
and soft as a baby's, without a line of close shaving to be detected.
The network of fine wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes was
scarcely distinguishable.  That there was a faint dust of powder upon
his face she noted, too.

Judson Bane was far, however, from giving the impression of effeminacy.
Quite the contrary.  He looked able to do heroic things in real life as
well as in the drama.  And as their walk and conversation developed,
Louise Grayling found the actor to be an interesting person.

He spoke well and without bombast upon any subject she ventured on.
His vocabulary was good and his speaking voice one of the most pleasing
she had ever heard.

So interested was Louise in what Mr. Bane said that she scarcely
noticed Lawford Tapp who passed and bowed to her, only inclining her
head in return.  Therefore she did not catch the expression on
Lawford's face.

"A fine-looking young fisherman," observed Mr. Bane patronizingly.

"Yes.  Some of them are good-looking and more intelligent than you
would believe," Louise rejoined carelessly.  She had put Lawford Tapp
aside as inconsequential.




CHAPTER XII

THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA

It was mid forenoon the following day, and quite a week after Louise
Grayling's arrival at Cap'n Abe's store on the Shell Road, that the
stage was set for a most surprising climax.

The spirit of gloom still hovered over Betty Gallup in the rear
premises where she was sweeping and dusting and scrubbing.  Her idea of
cleanliness indoors was about the same as that of a smart skipper of an
old-time clipper ship.

"If that woman ain't holystonin' the deck ev'ry day she thinks we're
wadin' in dirt, boot-laig high," growled Cap'n Amazon.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness!" quoted Louise, who was in the store
at the moment.

"Land sakes!" ejaculated the captain.  "It's next door to a lot of
other things, seems like, too.  I shouldn't say that Bet Gallup was
spillin' over with piety."

Louise, laughing softly, went to the door.  There was a cloud of dust
up the road and ahead of it came a small automobile.  Cap'n Amazon was
singing, in a rather cracked voice:

  "'_The Boundin' Biller, Captain Hanks,
  She was hove flat down on the Western Banks_;------"

With a saucy blast of its horn the automobile flashed past the store.
There were two young women in it, one driving.  Louise felt sure they
were Miss Louder and Miss Noyes, mentioned by Gusty Durgin the day
before, and their frocks and hats were all that their names suggested.

"Them contraptions," Cap'n Amazon broke off in his ditty to say, "go
past so swift that you can't tell rightly whether they got anybody to
the helm or not.  Land sakes, here comes another!  They're getting as
common as sandfleas on Horseneck Bar, and Washy Gallup says that's
a-plenty."

He did not need to come to the door to make this discovery of the
approach of the second machine.  There sounded another blast from an
auto horn and a considerable racket of clashing gears.

"Land sakes!" Cap'n Amazon added.  "Is it going to heave to here?"

Louise had already entered the living-room, bound for her chamber to
see if, by chance, Betty had finished dusting there.  She did not hear
the second automobile stop nor the cheerful voice of its gawky driver
as he said to his fare:

"This is the place, ma'am.  This is Cap'n Abe's."

His was the only car in public service at the Paulmouth railroad
station and Willy Peebles seldom had a fare to Cardhaven.  Noah
Coffin's ark was good enough for most Cardhaven folk if they did not
own equipages of their own.

When Willy reached around and snapped open the door of the covered car
a lady stepped out and, like a Newfoundland after a plunge into the
sea, shook herself.  The car was a cramped vehicle and the ride had
been dusty.  Her clothing was plentifully powdered; but her face was
not.  That was heated, perspiring, and expressed a mixture of
indignation and disapproval.

"Are you sure this is the place, young man?" she demanded.

"This is Cap'n Abe Silt's," repeated Willy.

"Why--it doesn't look------"

"Want your suitcase, ma'am?" asked Willy.

"Wait.  I am not sure.  I--I must see if I----.  I may not stay.
Wait," she repeated, still staring about the neighborhood.

As a usual thing, she was not a person given to uncertainty, in either
manner or speech.  Her somewhat haughty glance, her high-arched nose,
her thin lips, all showed decision and a scorn of other people's
opinions and wishes.  But at this moment she was plainly nonplused.

"There--there doesn't seem to be anybody about," she faltered.

"Oh, go right into the store, ma'am.  Cap'n Abe's somewheres around.
He always is."

Thus encouraged by the driver the woman stalked up the store steps.
She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried
considerable flesh.  She could carry this well, however, and did.  Her
traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode,
but in no extreme.  This well-bred, haughty, but perspiring woman
approached the entrance to Cap'n Abe's store in a spirit of frank
disapproval.

On the threshold she halted with an audible gasp, indicating amazement.
Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange
conglomeration of goods for sale--on the shelves the rows of glowingly
labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green
cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows
of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of
hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of
cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there.  It was not so much
a store as it was a warehouse displaying many articles the names and
uses for which the lady did not even know.

The wondrous array of goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much
startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter,
where he was stooping at some task.

She might be excused her sudden cry, for Cap'n Amazon was an apparition
to shock any nervous person.  The bandana he wore seemed, if possible,
redder than usual this morning; his earrings glistened; his long
mustache seemed blacker and glossier than ever.  As he leaned
characteristically upon the counter, his sleeves rolled to his elbows,
the throat-latch of his shirt open, he did not give one impression of a
peaceful storekeeper, to say the least.

"Mornin', ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon, not at all embarrassed.  "What can
I do for you, ma'am?"

"You--you are not Captain Silt?" the visitor almost whispered in her
agitation.

"Yes, ma'am; I am."

"Captain Abram Silt?"

"No, ma'am; I ain't.  I'm Cap'n Am'zon, his brother.  What can I do for
you?" he repeated.  The explanation of his identity may have been
becoming tedious; at least, Cap'n Amazon gave it grimly.

"Is--is my niece, Louise Grayling, here?" queried the lady, her voice
actually trembling, her gaze glued to the figure behind the counter.

"'Hem!" said the captain, clearing his throat.  "Who did you say you
was, ma'am?"

"I did not say," the visitor answered stiffly enough now.  "I asked you
a question."

"Likely--likely," agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "But you intimated that you was
the a'nt of a party by the name of Grayling.  I happen to be her uncle
myself.  Her mother was my ha'f-sister.  I don't remember--jest _who'd_
you say you was, ma'am?"

"I am her father's own sister," cried the lady in desperation.

"Oh, yes!  I see!" murmured Cap'n Amazon.  "Then you must be her A'nt
'Phemie.  I've heard Louise speak of you.  Tubbesure!"

"I am Mrs. Conroth," said Mrs. Euphemia Conroth haughtily.

"Happy to make your acquaintance," said Cap'n Amazon, bobbing his head
and putting forth his big hand.  Mrs. Conroth scorned the hand, raised
her lorgnette and stared at the old mariner as though he were some
curious specimen from the sea that she had never observed before.
Cap'n Amazon smiled whimsically and looked down at his stained and
toil-worn palm.

"I see you're nigh-sighted, ma'am.  Some of us git that way as we grow
older.  I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself."

"I wish to see my niece at once," Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little
at his suggestion of her advancing years.

"Come right in," he said, lifting the flap in the counter.

Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her glass.  "Cannot Louise
come here?" She asked helplessly.

"We live back o' the shop--and overhead," explained Cap'n Amazon.
"Come right in, I'll have Betty Gallup call Louise."

Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic
woman followed the spry figure of the captain.  Her first glance over
the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff.

"Catarrh, ma'am?" suggested the perfectly composed Cap'n Amazon.  "This
strong salt air ought to do it a world of good.  I've known a sea
v'y'ge to cure the hardest cases.  They tell me lots of 'em come down
here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured."

Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap'n Amazon.  It
began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking
seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given
him credit.

"Sit down, ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon hospitably.  "Abe ain't here, but
I cal'late he'd want me to do the honors, and assure you that you are
welcome.  He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that
boards us, as well as a seat at the table.

"Betty," he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then
appearing at the living-room door, "tell Louise her A'nt 'Phemie is
here, will you?"

"Say Mrs. Conroth, woman," corrected the lady tartly.

Betty scowled and went away, muttering: "Who's a 'woman,' I want to
know?  I ain't one no more'n _she_ is," and it can be set down in the
log that the "able seaman" began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia's.

It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt's
arrival.  She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York
that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her
mother's relative, Captain Abram Silt.  Again, on reaching the store on
the Shell Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing
her arrival.

She had known perfectly well that some time she would have to "pay the
piper."  Aunt Euphemia would never overlook such a thing.  Louise was
sure of that.  But the idea that the Poughkeepsie lady would follow her
to Cardhaven never for a moment entered Louise's thought.

She had put off this reckoning until the fall--until the return of
daddy-professor.  But here Aunt Euphemia had descended upon her as
unexpectedly as the Day of Wrath spoken of in Holy Writ.

As she came down the stairs she heard her uncle's voice in the
living-room.  Something had started him upon a tale of adventure above
and beyond the usual run of his narrative.

"Yes, _ma'am_," he was saying, "them that go down to the sea in ships,
as the Good Book says, sartain sure meet with hair-raisin' experiences.
You jumped then, ma'am, when old Jerry let out a peep.  He was just
tryin' his voice I make no doubt.  Ain't sung for months they say.  I
didn't know why till I--I found out t'other day he was blind---stone
blind.

"Some thinks birds don't know nothing, or ain't much account in this
man-world----But, as I was sayin', I lay another course.  I'll never
forget one v'y'ge I made on the brigantine _Hermione_.  That was 'fore
the day of steam-winches and we carried a big crew--thirty-two men
for'ard and a big after-guard.

"Well, ma'am!  Whilst she was hove down in a blow off the Horn an
albatross came aboard.  You know what they be--the one bird in all the
seven seas that don't us'ally need a dry spot for the sole of his foot.
If Noah had sent out one from the ark he'd never have come back with
any sprig of promise for the land-hungry wanderers shut up in that
craft.

"'Tis bad luck they do say to kill an albatross.  Some sailors claim
ev'ry one o' them is inhabited by a lost soul.  I ain't superstitious
myself.  I'm only telling you what happened.

"Dunno why that bird boarded us.  Mebbe he was hurt some way.  Mebbe
'twas fate.  But he swooped right inboard, his wing brushing the men at
the wheel.  Almost knocked one o' them down.  He was a Portugee man
named Tony Spadello and he had a re'l quick temper.

"Tony had his knife out in a flash and jumped for the creature.  The
other steersman yelled (one man couldn't rightly hold the wheel alone,
the sea was kicking up such a bobberation) but Tony's one slash was
enough.  The albatross tumbled right down on the deck, a great cut in
its throat.  It bled like a dog shark, cluttering up the deck."

"Horrid!" murmured Mrs. Conroth with a shudder of disgust.

"Yes--the poor critter!" agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "I never like to see
innocent, dumb brutes killed.  Cap'n Hicks--he was a young man in them
days, and boastful--cursed the mess it made, yanked off the bird's
head, so's to have the beautiful pink beak of it made into the head of
a walking-stick, and ordered Tony to throw the carcass overboard and
clean up the deck.  I went to the wheel in his stead, with Jim Ledward.
Jim says to me: 'Am'zon, that bird'll foller us.  Can't git rid of it
so easy as _that_.'

"I thought he was crazy," went on Cap'n Amazon, shaking his head.  "I
wasn't projectin' much about superstitions.  No, ma'am!  We had all we
could do--the two of us--handlin' the wheel with them old graybacks
huntin' us.  Them old he waves hunt in droves mostly, and when one did
board us we couldn't scarce get clear of the wash of it before another
would rise right up over our rail and fill the waist, or mebbe sweep
ev'rything clean from starn to bowsprit.

"It was sundown (only we hadn't seen no sun in a week) when that
albatross was killed and hove overboard.  At four bells of the mornin'
watch one o' them big waves come inboard.  It washed everything that
wasn't lashed into the scuppers and took one of our smartest men
overboard with it.  But there, floatin' in the wash it left behind, was
the dead albatross!"

"Oh, how terrible!" murmured Mrs. Conroth, watching Cap'n Amazon much
as a charmed bird is said to watch a snake.

"Yes, ma'am; tough to lose a shipmate like that, I agree.  But that was
only the beginning.  Cap'n Hicks pitched the thing overboard himself.
Couldn't ha' got one of the men, mebbe, to touch it.  Jim Ledward says:
'Skipper, ye make nothin' by that.  It's too late.  Bad luck's boarded
us.'

"And sure 'nough it had," sighed Cap'n Amazon, as though reflecting.
"You never did see such a time as we had in gettin' round the Cape.
And we got it good in the roarin' forties, too--hail, sleet, snow,
rain, and lightnin' all mixed, and the sea a reg'lar hell's broth all
the time."

"I beg of you, sir," breathed the lady, shuddering again.  Cap'n
Amazon, enthralled by his own narrative, steamed ahead without noticing
her shocked expression.

"One hurricane on top of another--that's what we got.  We lost four men
overboard, includin' the third officer, one time and another.  I was
knocked down myself and got a broken arm--had it in a sling nine weeks.
We got fever in a port that hadn't had such an epidemic in six months,
and seven of the crew had to be took ashore.

"Bad luck dogged us and the ship.  Only, it never touched the skipper
or Tony Spadello--the only two that had handled the albatross.  That
is, not as far as I know.  Last time I see Cappy Hicks he was carryin'
his cane with the albatross beak for a handle; and Tony Spadello has
made a barrel of money keeping shop on the Bedford docks.

"But birds have an influence in the world, I take it, like other folks.
You wouldn't think, ma'am, how much store my brother Abe sets by old
Jerry yonder."

Aunt Euphemia jumped up with an exclamation of relief.  "Louise!" she
uttered as she saw the girl, amusement in her eyes, standing in the
doorway.




CHAPTER XIII

WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY

"I do not see how you can endure it, Louise!  He is impossible--quite
impossible!  I never knew your tastes were low!"

Critical to the tips of her trembling fingers, Aunt Euphemia sat stiffly
upright in Louise's bedroom rocking chair and uttered this harsh
reflection upon her niece's good taste.  Louise never remembered having
seen her aunt so angry before.  But she was provoked herself, and her
determination to go her own way and spend her summer as she chose
stiffened under the lash of the lady's criticism.

"What will our friends think of you?" demanded Mrs. Conroth.  "I am
horrified to have them know you ever remained overnight in such a place.
There are the Perritons.  They were on the train with me coming down from
Boston.  They are opening their house here at what they call The
Beaches--one of the most exclusive colonies on the coast, I understand.
They insisted upon my coming there at once, and I have promised to bring
you with me."

"You have promised more than you can perform.  Aunt Euphemia," Louise
replied shortly.  "I will remain here."

"Louise!"

"I will remain here with Cap'n Amazon.  And with Uncle Abram when he
returns.  They are both dear old men----"

"That awful looking pirate!" gasped Mrs. Conroth.

"You do not know him," returned the girl.  "You do not know how worthy
and now kind he is."

"You have only known him a week yourself," remarked Aunt Euphemia.  "What
can a young girl like you know about these awful creatures--fishermen,
sailors, and the like?  How can you judge?"

Louise laughed.  "Why, Auntie, you know I have seen much of the world and
many more people than you have.  And if I have not learned to judge those
I meet by this time I shall never learn, though I grow to be as old
as"--she came near saying "as you are," but substituted instead--"as Mrs.
Methuselah.  I shall remain here.  I would not insult Cap'n Amazon or
Cap'n Abe, by leaving abruptly and going with you to the Perritons'
bungalow."

"But what shall I say to them?" wailed Aunt Euphemia.

"What have you already said?"

"I said I expected you were waiting for me at Cardhaven.  I would not
come over from Paulmouth in their car, but hurried on ahead.  I wished to
save you the disgrace--yes, _disgrace_!--of being found here in
this--this country store.  Ugh!" She shuddered again.

"I am determined that they shall not know your poor, dear father
unfortunately married beneath him."

"Aunt Euphemia!" exclaimed Louise, her gray eyes flashing now.  "Don't
say that.  It offends me.  Daddy-prof never considered my mother or her
people beneath his own station."

"Your father, Louise, is a fool!" was the lady's tart reply.

"As he is your brother as well as my father," Louise told her coldly, "I
presume you feel you have a right to call him what you please.  But I
assure you, Aunt Euphemia, it does not please me to hear you do so."

"You are a very obstinate girl!"

"That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's
side of the family," the girl returned bluntly.

"I shall be shamed to death!  I must accept the Perritons' invitation.  I
already have accepted it.  They will think you a very queer girl, to say
the least."

"I am," her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was
soon over her wrath.  "Even daddy-prof says that."

"Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did.  I only
wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise.

"No.  I have begun to like my comfort too well," and now Louise laughed
outright.  "A mark of oncoming age, perhaps."

"You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise."

Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a
single word; but she was too respectful to do so.

"I am determined to remain here," she repeated, "so you may as well take
it cheerfully, auntie.  If you intend staying with the Perritons any
length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them.  I
haven't come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you.  But
I am settled here with Cap'n Amazon, and I am comfortable.  So, why
should I make any change?"

"But in this common house!  With that awful looking old sailor!  And the
way he talks!  The rough adventures he has experienced--and the way he
relates them!"

"Why, I think he is charming.  And his stories are jolly fun.  He tells
the most thrilling and interesting things!  I have before heard people
tell about queer corners of the world--and been in some of them myself.
Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays.  But
when Cap'n Amazon was young!" she sighed.

"You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the
South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it,
the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe.  The
poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide
to kill and eat them, or merely marry them."

"Louise!"  Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece.  "You show
distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has
already contaminated your mind.  You are positively vulgar!"

She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through
the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "with ev'ry stitch of
canvas drawin' and a bone in her teeth."  Louise agreed about the
"bone"--she had given her Aunt Euphemia a hard one to gnaw on.

The girl followed Mrs. Conroth to the automobile and helped her in.
Cap'n Amazon came to the store door as politely as though he were seeing
an honored guest over the ship's side.

"Ask your A'nt 'Phemie to come again.  Too bad she ain't satisfied to
jine us here.  Plenty o' cabin room.  But if she's aimin' to anchor near
by she'll be runnin' in frequent I cal'late.  Good-day to ye, ma'am!"

Aunt Euphemia did not seem even to see him.  She was also afflicted with
sudden deafness.

"Louise!  I shall never forget this--never!" she declared haughtily, as
Willy Peebles started the car and it rumbled on down the Shell Road.

Unable to face Cap'n Amazon just then for several reasons, Louise did not
re-enter the store but strolled down to the sands.  There was a skiff
drawn up above high-water mark and the hoop-backed figure of Washy Gallup
sat in it.  He was mending a net.  He nodded with friendliness to Louise,
his jaw working from side to side like a cow chewing her cud--and for the
same reason.  Washy had no upper teeth left.

"How be you this fine day, miss?" the old fellow asked sociably.  "It's
enough to put new marrer in old bones, this weather.  Cold weather lays
me up same's any old hulk.  An' I been used to work, I have, all my life.
Warn't none of 'em any better'n me in my day."

"You have done your share, I am sure, Mr. Gallup," the girl said, smiling
cheerfully down upon him.  "Yours is the time for rest."

"Rest? How you talk!" exclaimed Washy.  "A man ought to be able to aim
his own pollock and potaters, or else he might's well give up the ship.
I tell 'em if I was only back in my young days where I could do a full
day's work, I'd be satisfied."

Louise had turned up a fiddler with the toe of her boot.  As the creature
scurried for sanctuary, Washy observed:

"Them's curious critters.  All crabs is."

"I think they are curious," Louise agreed.  "Like a cross-eyed man.  Look
one way and run another."

"Surely--surely.   Talk about a curiosity--the curiousest-osity I ever
see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around's a clam-bucket
and dangling gre't long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."'

Louise was thankful for this opportunity for laughter, for that
"curiousest-osity" was too much for her sense of the ludicrous.

Like almost every other man of any age that Louise had met about
Cardhaven--save Cap'n Abe himself--Washy had spent a good share of his
life in deep-bottomed craft.  But he had never risen higher than petty
officer.

"Some men's born to serve afore the mast--or how'd we git sailors?"
observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man.
"Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!"  His
trembling fingers knotted the twine dexterously.  "Now, there's your
uncle."

"Uncle Amazon?" asked Louise.

"No, miss.  Cap'n Abe, I mean.  This here Am'zon Silt, 'tis plain to be
seen, has got more salt water than blood in _his_ veins.  Cap'n Abe's a
nice feller--not much again him here where he's lived and kep' store for
twenty-odd year.  'Ceptin' his yarnin' 'bout his brother all the time.
But from the look of Cap'n Am'zon I wouldn't put past him anything that
Cap'n Abe says he's done--and more.

"But Abe himself, now, I'd never believed would trust himself on open
water."

"Yet," cried Louise, "he's shipped on a sailing vessel, Uncle Amazon
says.  He's gone for a voyage."

"Ye-as.  But _has_ he?" Washy retorted, his head on one side and his
rheumy old eyes looking up at her as sly as a ferret's.

"What do you mean?"

"We none of us--none of the neighbors, I mean--seen him go.  As fur's we
know he didn't go away at all.  We're only taking his brother's word for
it."

"Why, Mr. Gallup!  You're quite as bad as Betty.  One would think to hear
you and her talk that Cap'n Amazon was a fratricide."

"Huh?"

"That he had murdered his brother," explained the girl.

"That's fratter side, is it?  Well, I don't take no stock in such
foolishness.  Them's Bet Gallup's notions, Cap'n Am'zon's all right, to
_my_ way o' thinkin'.  I was talkin' about Cap'n Abe."

"I do not understand you at all, then," said the puzzled girl.

"I see you don't just foller me," he replied patiently.  "I ain't casting
no alligators at your Uncle Am'zon.  It's Cap'n Abe.  I doubt his goin'
to sea at all.  I bet he never shipped aboard that craft his brother
tells about."

"Goodness!  Why not?"

"'Cause he ain't a sea-goin' man.  There's a few o' such amongst Cape
Codders.  Us'ally they go away from the sea before they git found out,
though."

"'Found out?'" the girl repeated with exasperation.  "Found out in
_what_?"

"That they're _scare't_ o' blue water," Washy said decidedly.  "Nobody
'round here ever seen Cap'n Abe outside the Haven.  He wouldn't no more
come down here, push this skiff afloat, and row out to deep water than
he'd go put his hand in a wild tiger's mouth--no, ma'am!"

"Why, isn't that very ridiculous?" Louise said, not at all pleased.  "Of
course Cap'n Abe shipped on that boat just as Cap'n Amazon said he was
going to.  Otherwise he would have been back--or we would have heard from
him."

"He did, hey?" responded Washy sharply, springing the surprise he had
been leading up to.  "Then why didn't he take his chist with him?  It's
come back to the Paulmouth depot, so Perry Baker says, it not being
claimed down to Boston."




CHAPTER XIV

A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS

Washy Gallup's gossip should not have made much impression upon Louise
Grayling's mind, but it fretted her.  Perhaps her recent interview with
Aunt Euphemia had rasped the girl's nerves.  She left the old fisherman
with a tart speech and returned to the store.

There were customers being waited upon, so she had no opportunity to
mention the matter of Cap'n Abe's chest to the substitute storekeeper
at once.  Then, when she had taken time to consider it, she decided not
to do so.

It really was no business of hers whether Cap'n Abe had taken his chest
with him when he sailed from Boston or not.  She had never asked Cap'n
Amazon the name of the vessel his brother was supposed to have shipped
on.  Had she known it was the _Curlew_, the very schooner on which
Professor Grayling had sailed, she would, of course, have shown a much
deeper interest.  And had Cap'n Amazon learned from Louise the name of
the craft her father was aboard, he surely would have mentioned the
coincidence.

It stuck in the girl's mind--the puzzle about Cap'n Abe's chest--but it
did not come to her lips.  Looking across the table that evening, after
the store was closed, as they sat together under the hanging lamp, she
wondered that Cap'n Amazon did not speak of it if he knew his brother's
chest had been returned to the Paulmouth express agent.

Without being in the least grim-looking in her eyes, there was an
expression on Cap'n Amazon's face, kept scrupulously shaven, that made
one hesitate to pry into or show curiosity regarding any of his private
affairs.

He might be perfectly willing to tell her anything she wished to know.
He was frank enough in relating his personal experiences up and down
the seas, that was sure!

Cap'n Amazon puffed at his pipe and tried to engage the attention of
Diddimus.  The big tortoise-shell ran from him no longer; but he
utterly refused to be petted.  He now lay on the couch and blinked with
a bored manner at the captain.

If Louise came near him he purred loudly, putting out a hooked claw to
catch her skirt and stop her, and so get his head rubbed.  But if Cap'n
Amazon undertook any familiarities, Diddimus arose in dignified silence
and changed his place or left the room.

"Does beat all," the Captain said reflectively, reaching for his
knitting, "what notions dumb critters get.  We had a black man and a
black dog with us aboard the fo'master _Sally S. Stern_ when I was
master, out o' Baltimore for Chilean ports.  Bill was the blackest
negro, I b'lieve, I ever see.  You couldn't see him in the dark with
his mouth and eyes both shut.  And that Newfoundland of his was just as
black and his coat just as kinky as Bill's wool.  The crew called 'em
the two Snowballs."

"What notion did the dog take, Uncle Amazon?" Louise asked as he
halted.  Sometimes he required a little urging to "get going."  But not
much.

"Why, no matter what Bill did around the deck, or below, or overside,
or what not, the dog never seemed to pay much attention to him.  But
the minute Bill started aloft that dog began to cry--whine and
bark--and try to climb the shrouds after that nigger.  Land sakes, you
never in your life saw such actions!  Got so we had to chain the dog
Snowball whenever it came on to blow, for there's a consarned lot o'
reefin' down and hoistin' sail on one o' them big fo'masters.  The
skipper't keeps his job on a ship like the _Sally S. Stern_ must get
steamboat speed out o' her.

"So, 'twas 'all hands to stations!' sometimes three and four times in a
watch.  Owners ain't overlib'ral in matter of crew nowadays.  Think
because there's a donkey-engine on deck and a riggin' to hoist your big
sails, ye don't re'lly need men for'ard at all.

"That v'y'ge out in pertic'lar I remember that there was two weeks on a
stretch that not a soul aboard had more'n an hour's undisturbed sleep.
And that dog!  Poor brute, I guess he thought Bill was goin' to heaven
and leavin' him behind ev'ry time the nigger started for the masthead.

"I most always," continued Cap'n Amazon, "seen to it myself that the
dog was chained when Bill was likely to go aloft.  I liked that dog.
He was a gentleman, if he was black.  And Bill was a good seaman, and
with a short tongue.  The dog was about the only critter aboard he
seemed to cotton to.  Nothin' was too good for the dog, and the only
way I got Bill to sign on was by agreeing to take the Newfoundland
along.

"Well, we got around the Horn much as us'al.  Windjammers all have
their troubles there.  And then, not far from the western end o' the
Straits we got into a belt of light airs--short, gusty winds that blew
every which way.  It kept the men in the tops most of the time.  Some
of 'em vowed they was goin' to swing their hammocks up there.

"Come one o' those days, with the old _Sally_ just loafin' along,"
pursued Cap'n Amazon, sucking hard on his pipe, "when I spied a flicker
o' wind comin', and the mate he sent the men gallopin' up the shrouds.
I'd forgot the dog.  So had Nigger Bill, I reckon.

"Bill was one o' the best topmen aboard.  He was up there at work
before the dog woke up and started ki-yi-ing.  He bayed Bill like a
beagle hound at the foot of a coon tree.  Then, jumping, he caught the
lower shrouds with his forepaws.

"The new slant of the wind struck us at the same moment.  The old
_Sally S._ heeled to larboard and that Newfoundland was jerked over the
rail."

"The poor thing!" Louise cried.

"You'd ha' thought so.  I wouldn't have felt no worse if one of the men
had gone over.  Owner's business, or not, I sung out to the second to
get his boat out and I kicked off my shoes, grabbed a life-ring, and
jumped myself."

"You!  Uncle Amazon?" gasped his niece.

"Yep.  The mate had the deck and I was the only man free.  There wasn't
much of a sea runnin', anyway.  No pertic'lar danger.  That is, not
commonly.

"But the minute I come up to the surface and rose breast-high, dashin'
the water out o' my eyes so's to look around for the dog, I seen I'd
been a leetle mite too previous, as the feller said.  I hadn't taken
into consideration one pertic'lar chance--like the feller't married one
o' twins an' then couldn't tell which from t'other.

"I see Snowball the dog, all right; but headin' for him like a streak
o' greased lightin' was the triandicular fin of a shark.  I'd forgot
all about those fellers; and we hadn't see one for weeks, anyway.  In
warmer waters than them the _Sally S. Stern_ was then in, the sharks
will come right up and stand with their noses out o' the sea begging
like a dog for scraps.  They'd bark, if they knew how, by gravy!

"Well," went on Cap'n Amazon while Louise listened spellbound, "that
dog Snowball was in a bad fix.  A dog's a dog--almost human as you
might say.  But I wasn't aimin' puttin' myself in a shark's mouth for a
whole kennel full o' dogs.

"Mind you, not minutes but only seconds had passed since the dog shot
outboard.  The ship was not movin' fast.  She heeled over again' and
her spars and flappin' canvas was almost over my head as I glanced up.

"And then I seen a sight--I did, for a fact.  I cal'late you never give
a thought to how high the teetering top of a mast on such a vessel as
the _Sally S. Stern_ is, from the ocean level.  Never did, eh?

"Well," as the enthralled Louise shook her head, "they're taller than a
lot of these tall buildings you see in the city.  'Skyscrapers' they
call 'em.  That's what the old Sally's topmasts looked like gazin' up
at 'em out of the sea.  They looked like they brushed the wind-driven
clouds chasin' overhead.

"And out o' that web of riggin' and small spars, and slattin' canvas,
and other gear, I seen a man's body hurled into the air.  It was
Snowball, the man.  Bill his right name was.

"Flung himself, he did, clean out o' the ship and as she heeled back to
starboard he shot down, feet first, straight as a die, and made a hole
in the sea not ha'f a cable's length from me and nearer the dog than I
was.  And as he came down I seen his open knife flashing in his hand.

"Yes, my dear, that was a mem'rable leap.  Talk about these fellers
jumpin' off that there Brooklyn Bridge!  'Tain't much higher.

"The mate brought the _Sally S. Stern_ up into the wind, the second's
crew got the boat over, and they picked me up in a jiffy.  Then

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