THE KELP-GATHERERS.
[A Story of the Maine Coast.]
By J. T. Trowbridge.
Chapter I.
THE ELDER TWINS.
Before Beman's Beach had become the popular summer resort which all tourists know to-day, there lived, a little back from the rocky coast which stretches away from it toward the southwest, a farmer named Elder. He had a large family, which consisted mostly of girls; but there were two boys, who were twins.
The boys were called Moke and Poke. These were not their baptismal names, of course. Moke Elder had been christened Moses, and Poke Elder had received at the same time the respectable appellation of Porter—both after their uncle, Mr. Moses Porter, who lived in the family. But they were so seldom called by those names that most people seemed to have forgotten them. Moke was Moke, and Poke was Poke, the world over.
That is to say, their world, which would not have required a tape measure quite twenty-five thousand miles long to go around it. "Frog-End" was the nickname of the part of the town where they lived,—probably on account of a great marsh which was very noisy in spring,—and they were little known beyond its borders.
But everybody about Frog-End and along the coast knew Moke and Poke. That is to say, they were known as twins, if not as individual, separate boys. They looked so much alike, both being thin-faced and tow-headed, and dressed so much alike, often wearing each other's clothes, that he who, meeting one alone, could always say "Moke," or "Poke," as the case might be,—and feel sure he wasn't calling Moke "Poke" or Poke "Moke,"—must have known them very well indeed.
Of course, only a born Frog-Ender could do that. I am not a Frog-Ender myself, and the only way I could ever tell them apart was by looking closely at their moles.
They had two moles between them, exactly alike, except that Moke wore his on the right cheek, quite close to the right nostril, while Poke hung out his sign on the left cheek, at about an equal distance from the left nostril; as if Nature had had just a pair of moles to throw in with their other personal attractions, and had divided her gift in this impartial way.
Even after people had learned these distinguishing marks, however, they could not always remember, at a moment, which had the right mole and which the left; but they would often say "Poke" to the right mole and "Moke" to the left mole, in a manner that appeared very ridiculous to the boys' seven sisters, who couldn't see that they resembled each other at all.
The twins were nearly always together, whether at work or at play; when one was sent on an errand, as a rule both would go, if it was only to get a pound of board-nails or a spool of thread at the village store. They were about the age of their neighbors and playmates, Oliver Burdeen (commonly called Olly), who, when he was at home, lived two farms away from them, and Percival Bucklin (familiarly known as Perce), who lived still nearer, on the other side.
These four boys are the three heroes of our story,—counting the twins as one,—and they come into it on a certain afternoon late in August, just after a great storm had swept over the New England coast.
Uncle Moses Porter—uncle of the twins on the mother's side, an odd and very shabby old bachelor—comes into it at the same time, but doesn't get in very far. It would be hard to make a hero of him. At about four o'clock that day he stood in Mr. Elder's backyard, barefooted and without his hat, watching the clouds and the wooden fish on the barn, and making up his mind about the weather. That was a subject to which he had given the study of a lifetime. He could tell you as many "signs" as there are letters in the alphabet, and spell out to-morrow's weather very exactly with them; that is to say, what it should be, not always what it actually was—Nature sometimes neglecting in the strangest way her own plain rules. A great deal was said about Uncle Moses's occasional lucky hits, and very little about his frequent misses; and he enjoyed a world-wide reputation (the Frog-End world, again) as a weather-prophet, until "Old Probabilities" at Washington took the wind out of his predictions, and drove him, so to speak, out of the business.
But at the time of which I write he was at the pinnacle of his fame, and nobody ventured to doubt his prognostications. If the weather didn't turn out as he predicted, why, so much the worse for the weather!
"Wind has whipped 'round the right way this time, boys!" he remarked, after long and careful observation. "It's got square into the west, and I predict it's a-go'n' to stay there, and give us fair weather, nex' four-'n'-twenty hours. The's no rain in yon clouds; it's all been squeezed out, or else I never saw a flyin' scud afore!"
He paused as if to relax his mind after the severe strain of this prophecy, and smiled as he came toward the woodshed,—where the twins were standing.
"An' I tell ye what, boys! A heap o' that kelp the storm's hove up, are a-go'n' to land, this tide an' tomorrer mornin's, an' you'd better be on hand to git our share on 't."
Of all the farm-work the twins ever tried, they found going for sea-weed the most delightful. There was a relish of adventure in it; and it took them to the beach, which was always a pleasant change for boys brought up on Frog-End rocks. The kelp was usually hauled up from the shore and left to rot in heaps; after which, it became excellent dressing for the land.
There was no good beach very near Mr. Elder's farm, but he had a right on Beman's Beach, two or three miles down the coast.
Chapter II.
A PARTNERSHIP.
Mr. Bucklin, another Frog-End farmer, had a similar right, and he and his son Percival were that same afternoon talking about the expected harvest of kelp. Mr. Bucklin was saying that there was nothing to be gained by starting for the beach till the next morning, and that even then he couldn't go, as being one of the town's selectmen he would have some public business to attend to,—and Percival, a bright, strong, enterprising boy of sixteen, was insisting that their team ought to be on the shore by daylight, and that he would be there with it if he could get anybody to go with him, when the Elder twins came crossing fields and leaping fences, and finally tumbled over the bars into the yard where father and son were talking.
"Uncle Mose says—" began Moke.
"Wind's just right for the kelp," struck in Poke.
"There'll be stacks of it," Moke exclaimed.
"And we're going!" Poke continued.
That was the way they usually did an errand or told a story,—one giving one fragment of a sentence, and his brother the next, if, indeed, they didn't both speak together.
They ended with a proposition. Their father had gone to Portland with the team; and if Mr. Bucklin would let Perce take his tip-cart and yoke of steers, they would go with him, and all the sea-weed gathered by the three should be shared equally by the two farmers.
"And what we want is——" said Moke.
"To start after an early supper this evening," said Poke.
"Camp to-night at the beach," Moke added.
"And be on hand to begin work——" Poke added, contributing his link to the conversational chain.
"As soon as the tide turns in the morning," rattled both together.
Mr. Bucklin smiled indulgently.
"I think your uncle is right," he said. "And I'm willing Perce should go. Though I don't know about your starting to-night to camp out."
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Percival, as eager for the adventure as if he had been a third twin and shared the enthusiasm of his two other selves. "That will be all the fun!"
"We'll take some green corn——" said Moke.
"And new potatoes——" said Poke.
"And a sickle to cut grass——" Moke ran on.
"And make a fire of driftwood——" Poke outstripped him.
"For the steers," said Moke, finishing his own sentence, and not Poke's.
"To roast 'em," concluded Poke, referring to the potatoes and green corn, and not to the steers.
"It'll be just grand!" Percival exclaimed. "May we, father? The tide will turn about daylight; we'll have our breakfast on the beach, and be ready to go to work; and we'll haul two big heaps on the shore, one for us and one for them, and leave 'em till they're ready to draw away and spread on the land. May we, father?"
"You're not so sure the kelp'll land," said the cautious farmer. "It's notional about it sometimes."
"But if the wind keeps off shore it will!" said Moke and Poke, two voices for a single thought.
"The wind may chip around again, and the kelp all disappear as clean as if the beach had been swept. But I don't care," added the farmer indulgently. "If you boys want to take the chance, I'll let Perce have the steers. You might gather some driftwood, anyhow. The storm must have driven a good lot of that high up, out of the reach of the common tides."
His easy consent made the boys as happy as if they had been going to a circus; and they immediately began to make preparations for the trip.
Moke and Poke ran home for their suppers, and came running back in an incredibly short time, bringing a basket of provisions, with ears of unhusked corn and bottles of spruce-beer sticking out, a blanket for their bed on the beach, and each a three-tined pitchfork for handling the kelp. These were put into the cart, along with articles furnished by Percival, and a quantity of hay which Mr. Bucklin said they would find comfortable to sleep on that night, even if it didn't come handy to feed the oxen.
The yoked steers were then made fast to the cart, and they set off.
Chapter III.
GOING FOR SEA-WEED.
Never king in his coach enjoyed a more exhilarating ride than our three youngsters in the old tip-cart, drawn by the slow cattle along the rough country road. The source of happiness is in our own hearts; and it is wonderful how little it takes to make it run over, in a healthy boy.
A board placed across the cart-box served as a seat; and when one of them tired of riding on that, he would tumble in the hay. Perce wielded the ox-gad at first; but soon the twins wished to drive. Both reached for the whip at once.
"Wait a minute! you can't both have it!" cried Perce. "The oldest first!"
"I'm the oldest," declared Moke.
"So I've heard you say," Perce replied. "But I don't see how anybody ever remembered."
"They looked out for that when they named us," said Moke.
"It was uncle Moses's idea," said Poke. "He told 'em, 'Call the oldest by my first name and the youngest by my last name——'"
"'And that will fix it in folks's minds,'" Moke completed the quotation.
"That was before they discovered the moles," said both together.
"I never thought of that," said Perce. "But whenever anybody asks me which is the oldest, I think of your initials, and run over in my mind—L, M, N, O, P;—M comes before P; then I say, 'Moke's the oldest.' But how could they tell you apart before they saw the moles?"
"They tied a red string around Moke's ankle," said Poke.
"But once the string came off, and Ma thinks it might have been changed," said Moke.
"And to this day she can't say positively but I am Moke, and Moke is me," said Poke.
Perce laughed. "Why didn't you have something besides a couple of teenty-taunty moles to distinguish you?" he asked. "Why didn't one of you be light-complexioned and the other dark? There'd have been some sense in that."
"We couldn't!" said Poke.
"You didn't try," replied Perce.
"We couldn't if we had tried," said Moke. "Twins are always——"
"The same complexion," struck in Poke. "Just like one person."
"No, they're not; there's no rule about that," said Perce. "And when you talk of one person—have you heard of the man over in Kennebunk?"
"What about him?" asked the twins.
"Why, haven't you heard? One half his face," said Perce, "as if you should draw a line straight down his forehead and nose to the bottom of his chin," he drew his finger down his own face, by way of illustration; "one half—it's the right half, I believe—is as black as a negro's. Yes; I'm sure it's the right half."
"Pshaw!" said Moke.
"Oh, Jiminy!" said Poke.
"I don't believe it!" said both together.
"It's true, I tell you!" Perce insisted. "My father has seen him; and my father wouldn't lie."
"He must have had some disease," said Moke.
"He's what they call a leopard," said Poke.
"You mean a leper?" laughed Perce. "No; he isn't a leper, nor an albino. Why, boys! didn't you ever hear of such a case? It's quite common, and it's easily explained."
"I give it up! How do you explain it?" said the twins.
"Simply enough!" exclaimed Perce. "The other side of his face is black too." And he keeled over backward on the hay.
It was an old joke which he had indeed heard his father tell; but it was new to the twins, who were completely taken in by it.
"Throw him out of the cart!" shrieked Poke, half smothered with laughter, at the same time seizing hold of Perce as if to execute his own order.
"I'll jolt him out!" cried Moke, who was driving; and he began to urge the oxen into a heavy, clumsy trot, which shook up the cart and its contents in a way that was more lively than pleasant.
"Oh, don't do that!" cried Perce, with the jolts in his voice. "You'll break the e-g-g-s in my ba-ask-et!"
"I've had one supper, but I shall want another by the time we get to the beach," said Poke.
"So shall I!" cried Perce. "We'll make a big fire on the shore, and have a jolly time. And, I say, boys, let's call for Olly Burdeen, and make him come down on the beach with us to-night."
"That will be fun, if he isn't too proud to go with country people now," replied Moke.
"Since he's been waiting on city folks, he's as stuck up as if he'd tumbled into a cask of molasses," said Poke.
"Olly is all right," said Perce. "He doesn't put on any airs with me. We'll have him with us, anyhow!"
CHAPTER IV.
OLLY BURDEEN'S NEW CLOTHES.
There was but one boarding-house at Beman's Beach in those days. Originally a farm-house, it stood in not the very best situation, a little distance back from the sea, in a hollow of the hills. It was kept by a farmer's widow, Mrs. Murcher, who, as her business expanded, had built on additions until her house looked as if it had the mumps in one enormously swollen cheek.
While his Frog-End mates were driving thither-ward in the tip-cart, and talking about him, Master Oily Burdeen, the third hero in our story (counting the twins as one), was standing before a bureau in Mrs. Murcher's best corner room, and smiling graciously at his image in the oval-shaped looking-glass.
He held a hair-brush in his right hand and a comb in his left, and after giving his sleek locks an artistic touch or two, he would tip the mirror a trifle and recede a step, to get a still more pleasing view of his personal perfections.
It was not his own room, there in the new part—the swollen cheek, as it were—of the summer boarding-house. Nor can I have the satisfaction of declaring that it was his own brush and comb with which he was making so free, nor his own cologne that had imparted to his naturally rough, rusty hair its extraordinary fragrance and smoothness. But the broadly smiling mouth, snub nose, and freckles were possessions nobody would have thought of disputing with Master Olly; and the tolerably well-fitting, genteel, grayish-brown suit he had on had belonged to him about eight hours.
Olly Burdeen was not, in fact, one of Mrs. Murcher's boarders. He was only a boy-of-all-work employed by her for the season. The room belonged to Mr. Hatville, who had gone yachting that afternoon; and Olly had taken temporary possession to admire himself in his new clothes before the convenient glass.
For new they were to him, although they had been rather well worn that summer by the friendly young boarder, who, on departing in the morning, had made Oily a present of them in return for the errands Oily had done for him.
This was the first opportunity to try them on that the proud recipient had found. He had never in his life worn anything so stylish, and we can smile tolerantly at the innocent vanity with which he surveyed himself in Mr. Hatville's mirror. His liberal use of Mr. Hatville's hair-brush and cologne-bottle was not, perhaps, so excusable. And when with fearful joy he took from its embroidered case by the mirror the tempting gold watch which Mr. Hatville had, either by accident or design, left hanging there, on changing his clothes that afternoon to go yachting,—when, I say, Master Burdeen lifted out that valuable time-piece by its dangling chain, and placed it in the watch-pocket of his new waistcoat, it must be owned that he was carrying his ideas of hospitality too far.
"It only needed a watch to set it off," he said; "and here it is!"
In his button-hole he hooked the gold guard, letting the heavy seal hang, and the chain fall in a graceful curve on his vest. Then he drew out the watch and opened it with a pressure of the spring (it was a hunter's case), and looked at the time; shutting it again with a delightful snap, and replacing it in his pocket, as he strutted the while with amiable satisfaction before the tilted glass.
"I'll have just such a watch of my own some day," he said to himself, proudly, "and just such a gold chain, with a seal as big as that! See if I don't!"
With a sigh he started to put it back in the embroidered case where he had found it. But that required too great an effort of self-denial.
"I'd like to wear it a few minutes; where'll be the harm?" he thought. "Of course, I wont let any accident happen to it."
He looked at the time again; it was half-past six. The two or three men boarders who remained with Mrs. Murcher (for it was now late in the season) had gone yachting, and the ladies were at tea. It was an hour of leisure with Olly, and having put on his new rig, he thought it would be pleasant to take a stroll on the beach, a sort of rehearsal of his rôle of "walking gentleman," before going that evening to show himself to the admiring natives at Frog-End. He couldn't resist the temptation to carry the watch, on this preliminary excursion; buttoning the guard and seal under the top buttons of his coat, so that they shouldn't be observed as he left the house.
"I only wish she could see me!" he whispered blushingly to himself, as he went down the stairs.
"She" was Miss Amy Canfield, the youngest of the lady boarders, and in his eyes the prettiest. She had been kind to Olly, as, indeed, the most of the boarders had been; and it put him into a warm glow, from his cheeks to his shins, as he thought of meeting her surprised gaze.
But Amy was at tea with the rest, and as oblivious of him at that moment as if he had never existed. So he passed out of the house unnoticed, and went to enjoy his little strut alone; unbuttoning his coat again, and glancing down at the superb chain and seal, as he took the sandy path to the beach.
"If I see the Susette," he said,—for that was the name of the yacht,—"I'll hurry back, and have the watch in its place again long before Mr. Hatville lands."
This he fully intended to do. But neither from the intervening sand-hills, nor from the shore itself, which he reached after a short walk from the boarding-house, was the yacht anywhere to be seen.
The sea had gone down rapidly since the recent gale. It rolled on the beach, in breakers made dark and turbid by the sea-weed which, uptorn by the storm and mixed with sand, still tumbled and washed to and fro in the waves.
"Wind's got around square in the west," observed Olly. "The yacht'll have a mean time beating up!"
The sky was partly covered by heavy masses of broken clouds, in an opening of which the sun was just setting over dark growths of pine and spruce that rose behind the dunes, a little back from the beach. As it went down, the shadows of the woods stretched out, like wings, over the dunes and the smooth, glistening slope of beach sand, just washed by the receding tide. Then the sunset light on the white crests of the breakers was quenched, and the whole sea was in gloom. For a moment only, for now the flying clouds caught a flush which spread swiftly over the sky, until the entire heavens, almost down to the sea rim, appeared one burning flame. The sea itself had a strange, wild beauty, the dark and sullen waters but half consenting to reflect the glow of the clouds on their heaving waves.
Chapter V.
LAUNCHING THE DORY.
"Just the time to take a little row," thought Olly Burdeen, as he strolled about, looking sometimes admiringly at his new clothes and the gay watch-guard, and sometimes casting wistful glances at the sea.
He knew the thrilling pleasure of crossing and recrossing the breakers in a good boat, and rocking on the swells outside.
"I believe I'll try it once," he said. "Maybe I can see the yacht around the point."
The point was a rocky arm of the shore which shut off the ocean view on the north-east, the direction from which the Susette was expected. But the little harbor it would have to enter was a deep cove in the broken coast at the other end of the beach, a quarter of a mile away.
"It can't possibly come in without my seeing it in season," thought Olly, with a glance at the watch, which he took from his pocket and opened and shut again with a sort of guilty joy, for the twentieth time.
There were a couple of dories drawn up above high-water mark; and he knew where a pair of old battered oars were hidden under a row of bathing-houses close by. He drew them out and threw them on the sand. Then he looked at the seaweed in his way,—little windrows of it littering the beach, and dark masses rolling in the surf. The tide had been going out about three hours.
"I can get through that easily enough," he said.
He dragged the lightest of the dories down to the water's edge, and put in the oars. He knew just how it should be launched, and understood the necessity of sending it straight across the breakers, and of never, by any chance, letting them strike it sidewise.
Placing himself at the upper end, he waited for a good wave, and pushed the boat into it,—running with it until his feet were almost in the water, then holding it firmly until another wave lifted it. Just as that was subsiding, he gave the dory another push, leaped in at the same time, caught up the oars, and had them in the rowlocks and in the water just as the third wave came.
So far, so good. He had done the same thing many times before, and had never met with an accident. Two or three sturdy strokes, and he would have been safe outside the rollers. But at a critical moment he paused to look at a few spatters of water on his new clothes; and on the instant one of his oars caught in a whirling tangle of kelp.
The boat was going out swiftly in one direction; the billow that bore the kelp was rushing in with tremendous force in the other. No one knows the power of a wave, who has not felt it at some such crisis. What happened was over so quickly that Olly himself could not have explained it. A brief struggle, a terrible wrench, a buffet in the breast and face from the end of an oar,—and he was lying on his back in the dory with his heels above the thwarts.
For a few seconds he lay there, half stunned by the blow and the fall. His breath seemed to have been quite knocked out of his body. It did not take him long to recover it, however, and to reverse the positions of his head and his heels. When he did so, he found the boat swinging around broadside to the breakers, with one threatening at that very moment to overwhelm it.
Instinctively he seized an oar and pulled with all his might to head the dory to the wave. He succeeded, and sent it careening safely over it and the next great swell, and so out to sea.
But it was at the expense of the oar. It was an old one, much worn by the friction of the rowlocks, and his last stroke broke it short off at the weak point. The paddle-end fell overboard, and only the handle remained in his hand.
He then turned to look for the other oar, and found that he had lost it at the time of his tumble. He could see it going over on a breaker, several rods behind him. For now the wind took the dory, and was wafting it away almost as rapidly as if it carried a sail.
He tried paddling with the stub that remained in his hand, but made so little headway with it that he began to be seriously alarmed. He had been sufficiently startled by his accident and the danger of an overturn in the rollers; but he now saw himself in face of an unforeseen peril.
He at first thought he would jump overboard and swim to the beach; but even then he remembered his clothes, which a wetting might ruin—to say nothing of Mr. Hatville's watch.
There was, besides, another danger. The kelp! He was a good swimmer; but could he ever make his way through breakers in which such fields of sea-weed tossed and rolled?
The night was shutting down with gathering clouds. The wind struck the skiff with a force he had not felt under the lee of the woods. Not a human being was in sight, nor a boat—only two or three distant sails on the horizon.
"Oh, the yacht! Where is the yacht?" he cried aloud, gazing eagerly around the point of rocks, the view beyond which was rapidly opening as he drifted out to sea.
A little while before, he would have been sorry enough to have had the Susette come in before he had time to land and run back to the boarding-house with the borrowed watch; but now he wished for nothing so devoutly as that it might come along and pick him up—so much worse things might happen than the discovery of the time-piece in his possession.
But no yacht hove in sight. The glory had faded out of the sky. The sea darkened; the wind increased. He shouted for help, though with little hope of making himself heard.
There were only women at the boarding-house, and even if his voice reached them, it must have sounded so faint and far away as to attract no especial attention. But the upper windows were visible over the sand-hills. Perhaps somebody, perhaps Amy Canfield herself, was gazing from them.
In that hope he swung his hat with frantic gestures of distress, still screaming for help, as he drifted away on the darkening waters.
(To be continued.)