THE STORM
Captain Tunis Latham, pacing the deck of the Seamew, had come to a conclusion which was by no means complimentary to his own self-respect. During his manifold duties and the business bothers connected with the sailing of the undermanned schooner, his mind had seized upon and grappled with a train of ideas which brought him logically to the decision that he was playing a weak and piffling part.
Strong in most things, Tunis Latham had allowed his better sense to be throttled and his purpose balked in the thing which meant more to him than the schooner, his business success, or anything else in life. The broader the rift grew between Sheila and himself, the clearer he saw that without her he was a ship without a rudder and that nothing could come of his life save wreck and disaster.
She had renounced him for his own good, as she believed, and he had tacitly consented to her ruling. He might be slow of thought regarding such things, but once having made up his mind—and it was made up now—he was of the kind that obstacles do not frighten.
Not only did he realize that by bowing to the girl's will he had been weak, but he was determined to take matters in the future into his own hands. He should not have allowed Sheila, in the first place, to shoulder the responsibility of handling the emergency of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at Big Wreck Cove.
Sheila, in an attempt to save his reputation, to save his self-respect in the eyes of the home folks and of the world in general, had uttered a direct falsehood and cut herself off from him and from those who loved her. This was too much for any decent man to stand. Was he a coward? Would he shelter himself—as he had told her—behind her skirts?
Tunis believed that Cap'n Ira and Prudence, when once the shock of the girl's revelation was past, loved her so dearly that they would forgive Sheila if they knew all the truth—if they knew the girl as he knew her. He was not so sure of Aunt Lucretia. He had feared to tell her the night before that Sheila had gone to live in the old fisherman's cabin, in spite of the sympathy Lucretia had previously shown him. But he believed his silent aunt fully appreciated the better qualities of the girl she had seen on but one occasion, and that she would, in time, admit that Sheila was more than worthy of her nephew's love.
In any event he had his own life to make or mar. Without Sheila he knew it would be utterly fruitless and without an object. Rather than lose Sheila he would sell the schooner, cut himself off from friends and home, and, with her, face the world anew. He was determined, if Sheila left Big Wreck Cove, that he would go with her. Nobody—not even the girl herself—could shake this determination now born in the mind of the captain of the Seamew.
Sheila had borne his reputation upon her heart from the beginning, but he should have at first thought of her good name and the opinion the world must needs hold of Sheila Macklin. She had been unfairly accused. She had been abused, ill-treated, punished for a sin which was not hers. It was not enough that he had tried to help her hide away from those who knew of her persecution. The only right thing to do—the only sane course, and the one which should have been pursued from the start—was to attempt to disprove the accusation under which the girl had suffered and set her right not only before Big Wreck Cove folk, but before the whole world.
The poignant feeling of sin committed, with which Sheila herself was now burdened, did not influence Tunis Latham. It was the logic of the idea which convinced him that they had been totally wrong in what they had done. He should have married Sheila on the night they had met in Boston and set about first of all tracing back her trouble and disproving the flimsy evidence which must have convicted her of stealing from Hoskin & Marl's.
He told himself it was not piety, but hard common sense which suggested this as the only and practical way to handle the matter. It was, in truth, the awakened hope in a loving heart.
Tunis had been able to keep scarcely enough of his crew to handle the Seamew in fair weather; and the barometer was falling, with every indication in sea and sky of the approach of bad weather. He feared the few hands he had would desert when they reached Boston. Zebedee Pauling was a young host in himself—far and away a better seaman than Orion Latham, as well as a better fellow. But the schooner could not be sailed with good will.
Tunis' mind, however, remained fixed upon Sheila's troubles rather than upon his own; and as soon as the schooner docked, he went up into the town and wended his way directly to the great department store in which he had once interviewed the troublesome Ida May Bostwick.
The cargo was out, and the Seamew had already been warped into another wharf where freight was awaiting her when the skipper returned to the water front that afternoon. The three men remaining of the forecastle crew were still at work, assisted by Zebedee and Horry Newbegin. They had not had a regular cook for two trips now.
But a new complication had arisen. Mason Chapin stood at the rail waiting his return, and a taxicab had been summoned. The mate carried a bag.
"A telegram from Doctor Norris. My wife's worse, Mr. Latham. I've got to go back just as fast as steam will get me there," was his greeting to the skipper of the Seamew.
This was according to the agreement Mason Chapin had made in the beginning. His wife was sorely ill, and surely Tunis would not stand between a man and his sick wife!
But it left a very serious situation upon the schooner when the mate drove away in the taxicab. Six men, forward and aft, to handle a suit of sails which equaled those of any seagoing racing yacht. If it had not been for the freight—some of which was perishable—the master of the Seamew would have laid up until he could have got together a more numerous crew at least.
But instead of going to the seamen's employment offices, Tunis had to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered down the hatchway of the schooner. It was near evening when the hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled blessing in midstream.
All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that was sure.
But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship's officers.
"I'll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!"
There was wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast, and the Seamew went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht.
But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next morning. By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage.
Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement.
"What's to do now?" demanded the skipper.
"They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put foot on the Seamew's deck again. That—that confounded 'Rion—"
"What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?"
"Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won't try to work her no further."
Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before—leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.
"What in thunder!"
He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superstition had him by the throat.
"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?" Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful Seamew was once the Marlin B.? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak? I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."
"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively. "That's a fact."
"Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man? Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some silly letters burned into it?"
The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a true and just man.
"I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely to desert his son."
"How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the Seamew.
"I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee."
"I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us out. I tried while I was uptown."
Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.
"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life," he said.
"She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd," muttered Horry.
"Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the Seamew. "But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?"
They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was, his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming.
This was no place for a schooner of the Seamew's size to ride out the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance.