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