CHAPTER XIX
MUCH ADO
As on previous occasions, Louise Grayling was deterred from putting a searching question to Cap'n Amazon because of his look and manner. The little she had seen of Cap'n Abe assured her that she would have felt no hesitancy in approaching the mild-mannered storekeeper upon any subject.
But the master mariner seemed to be an entirely different personality. The way he had overawed the idlers in the store that afternoon when the old chest was broken open, and his refusal to make any further explanation of Cap'n Abe's absence, pinched out Louise's courage as one might pinch out a candle wick.
That suspicion was rife in the community, and that the story of the strange contents of Cap'n Abe's chest had spread like a prairie fire, Louise was sure. Yet at supper time Cap'n Amazon was as calm and cheerful as usual and completely ignored the accident of the afternoon.
"Hi-mighty likely mess of tautog you caught, Louise," he said, ladling the thick white gravy dotted with crumbly yellow egg yolk upon her plate with lavish hand. "That Lawford Tapp knows where the critters school, if he doesn't know much else."
"Oh, Uncle Amazon! I think he is a very intelligent young man. Only he wastes his time so!"
"He knows enough book l'arnin', I do allow," agreed Cap'n Amazon. "But fritters away his time as you say. They all do that over to Tapp P'int, I cal'late."
"I wonder how it came to be called Tapp Point?" Louise asked, with a suddenly sharpened curiosity.
"'Cause it's belonged to the Tapps since away back,—or, so Cap'n Joab says. That sand heap never was wuth a punched nickel a ton till these city folks began to build along The Beaches."
Louise, in her own mind, immediately constructed another theory about Lawford Tapp, "the fisherman's son." The sandy point had been sold to the builder of the very ornate villa now crowning it, and the proceeds of that sale had paid for the Merry Andrew sloop and the expensive fishing rod and the clothes of superquality which the young man wore.
She shrank, however, from commenting upon this extravagant and spendthrift trait in his character, even to Uncle Amazon. Nor would she have spoken to anybody else upon the subject.
Something had happened to Louise Grayling on this adventurous afternoon—something of which she scarcely dared think, let alone talk!
The grip of fear at her heart when she thought Lawford was drowning had startled her as much as the accident itself. She had seen men in peril before—in deadly peril—without feeling any personal terror for their fate.
In that moment when Lawford was sinking and she was preparing to leap to his aid, Louise had realized this fact. And in her inmost soul she admitted—with a thrill that shook her physically as well as spiritually—that her interest in this Cape Cod fisherman's son was an interest rooted in her inmost being.
The incident of the wrecked sea chest held her attention in only a secondary degree. All through supper she was listening for Betty Gallup's heavy step. She knew she could not sleep that night without knowing how Lawford was.
For the very reason that she felt so deeply regarding it, she shrank from talking with Cap'n Amazon of the accident that had happened to Lawford. She was glad the substitute storekeeper had "gone for'ard" again to attend to customers when Betty came clumping up the back steps.
"He's all right, Miss Lou," said the kindly woman, patting the girl's hand. "I waited to see Doc Ambrose when he come back from the P'int. He says there ain't a thing the matter with him that vinegar an' brown paper won't cure.
"But land sakes! Miss Lou, ain't this an awful thing 'bout your Uncle Abe's chest? That old pirate knows more'n he'd ought to 'bout what's come o' Cap'n Abe, even if they ain't brought it home to him yit."
"Now, Betty, I wish you wouldn't," begged the girl. "Why should you give currency to such foolish gossip?"
"What foolish gossip?" snapped the woman.
"Why, about my Uncle Amazon."
"How d'ye know he's your uncle at all?" demanded Betty. "You never seen him before he come here. You never knowed nothin' 'bout him, so you said, 'fore you come here to Cardhaven."
"But, Betty——"
"Ain't no 'buts' about it!" fiercely declared the "able seaman."
"Cap'n Abe's gone—disappeared. We don't know what's become of him.
Course, Huldy Baker was a silly to think Cap'n Abe had been murdered
and cut up like shark bait and shipped away in that old chest."
"Oh!"
"Yes. 'Cause Perry seen Cap'n Abe himself that night when he took the chest away. That was ridic'lous. But then, Huldy Baker ain't got right good sense, nor never had.
"But it stands to reason Cap'n Abe had no intent of shipping aboard any craft with sich dunnage in his chest as they say was in it."
"No-o. I suppose that is so," admitted Louise.
"Then, what's become of the poor man?" Betty ejaculated.
"Why, nobody seems to know. Not even Uncle Amazon."
"Have you axed him?" demanded the other bluntly.
"No. I haven't done that."
"Humph!" was the rejoinder. "You're just as much afeared on him as the rest on us. You take it from me, Miss Lou, he's been a hard man on his own quarter-deck. He ain't no more like Cap'n Abe than buttermilk's like tartaric acid.
"Cap'n Abe warn't no seafarin' man," pursued Betty, "though he had the lingo on his tongue and 'peared as salt as a dried pollock. It's in my mind that he wouldn't never re'lly go to sea—'nless he was egged on to it."
Here it was again! That same doubt as expressed by Washy Gallup—the suggestion that Cap'n Abe Silt possessed an inborn fear of the sea that he had never openly confessed.
"Why do you say that, Betty?" Louise hesitatingly asked the old woman.
"'Cause I've knowed Cap'n Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't a seafarin' man."
"But what has Uncle Amazon to do with the mystery of his brother's absence?" demanded Louise.
"Humph! If he is Cap'n Abe's brother. Now, now, you don't know no more about this old pirate than I do, Miss Lou. He influenced Cap'n Abe somehow, or someway, so't he cut his hawser and drifted out o' soundings—that's sure! Here this feller callin' himself Am'zon Silt has got the store an' all it holds, an' Cap'n Abe's money, and ev'rything."
"Oh, Betty, how foolishly you talk," sighed the girl.
"Humph! Mebbe. And then again, mebbe it ain't foolish. Them men to-day thought they could scare that old pirate into admittin' something if they sprung Cap'n Abe's chest on him. Oh, I knowed they was goin' to do it," admitted Betty.
"Course, they had no idee what was in the chest. Bustin' it open was an accident. Perry Baker's as clumsy as a cow. But you see, Miss Lou, just how cool that ol' pirate took it all. Washy was tellin' me. He just browbeat 'em an' left 'em with all their canvas slattin'.
"Oh, you can't tell me! That old pirate's handled a crew without no tongs, you may lay to that! And what he's done to poor old Cap'n Abe——"
She went away shaking a sorrowful head and without finishing her sentence. Louise was unable to shake off the burden of doubt of Cap'n Amazon's character and good intentions. She felt that she could not spend the long evening in his company, and bidding him good-night through the open store door she retired to the upper floor.
She felt that sleep was far from her eyelids on this night; therefore she lit a candle and went into the storeroom to get something to read. She selected a much battered volume, printed in an early year of the nineteenth century, its title being:
LANDSMEN'S TALES:
Seafaring Yarns of a Lubber.
Louise became enthralled by the narratives of perilous adventure and odd happenings on shipboard which the author claimed to have himself observed. She read for an hour or more, while the sounds in the store below gradually ceased and she heard Cap'n Amazon close and lock the front door for the night.
Silence below. Outside the lap, lap, lap of the waves on the strand and the rising moan of the surf over Gulf Rocks.
Louise turned a page. She plunged into another yarn. Breathlessly and, almost fearfully she read it to the end—the very story of the murdered albatross and the sailors' superstitious belief in the bird's bad influence, as she had heard Cap'n Amazon relate it to Aunt Euphemia Conroth.
She laid down the book at last in amazement and confusion. There was no doubt now of Cap'n Amazon's mendacity. This book of nautical tales had been written and printed long before Amazon Silt was born!
And if the falseness of his wild narratives was established, was it a far cry to Betty Gallup's suspicions and accusations? What and who was this man, who called himself Amazon Silt who had taken Cap'n Abe's place in the store on the Shell Road?
Louise lay with wide-open eyes for a long time. Then she crept out of bed and turned the key in the lock of her door—the first time she had thought to do such a thing since her arrival at Cardhaven.