Having an hour or so to wait he went down to Atlantic Avenue, just to see the fish markets and the rows of schooners lying at the piers, to listen to the splash of the rising tide. He found the place so fascinating that he nearly missed his train, but managed to catch it at the last minute, and sped away on the final stage of his journey.
“Rockford?” said the conductor, looking at his ticket, “we don’t run as far as that at this season of the year. We stop at Piscataqua, and there is only one train a day from there until the summer rush begins. I don’t think you can make connections; you will have to stop over.”
To wait a whole day when he was but a few miles from the end of his journey was quite out of the question for Billy. He knew that a jingling, rattling, two-horse stage plied between Piscataqua and Rockford; perhaps he could catch that. He found on inquiry that he could, that it would start in half an hour. In summer one could go by motor, but “it ain’t the season” was the only answer he could get to all his questions, so that he was forced to content himself with Silas Oakley and his slow and talkative mode of travel.
He walked about the streets a little in Piscataqua and stopped at a bulletin board before the newspaper office. It was the Friday morning that war was actually declared. Billy saw the notice go up as he stood watching, but observed very little change in the crowd that gathered to read that the last step had been taken. People looked a little more anxious, perhaps; more than one said, “Well, I’m glad the waiting’s over.” That was all.
At the end of the street he saw two bluejackets standing before the door of a little building above which a big flag was flying.
“That’s the recruiting station,” a passerby told him; “they are enlisting men for the Navy. It’s going pretty briskly, too, I hear; they have almost the authorized number now, so they will close the place in a few days. I’m glad our town has done so well.”
Billy walked on down to the corner where the stage was to start. He did not yet feel that the war was real; why, it couldn’t be real on a bright, gay, spring morning, with the church bells ringing for Good Friday services, and everything looking just the same as it always did. It was time for the stage to go, but the driver was telling a good story to some friends and could not be bothered to hurry himself for the three passengers who were waiting. The boy bounced about impatiently on the narrow seat and thought that the “I says” and “he says” and “then I just told him” would never come to an end.
They started at last, and a long, bumpy, weary ride it proved to be. The woods on each side of them were green and full of flowers, the little brooks below the bridges were brimming full with the spring rains, the birds were all singing their best songs, but Billy saw only the road before them and heard nothing but the squeaking of the wheels and the creaking of the clumsy old stage. It seemed as though the drive and Silas Oakley’s conversation would never have an end; but at last both were cut short by their arrival at Rockford.
It was late in the afternoon, just the time for the Appledore boat. Billy made a breathless dash down to the landing and made it just as the gang-plank was being taken in. He hardly understood, himself, why he was in such haste to be there; he only knew that his longing for the place made it impossible to delay a minute. As the boat puffed out of the harbour he leaned back in the deck chair, content at last, since he knew that now there were no more obstacles between him and his journey’s end.
He was glad to find that it was still light when finally the little steamer lay alongside of Appledore wharf. He was rather surprised to see Johann Happs on the pier, an unfamiliar Johann dressed in best clothes a good deal too small for him, and carrying a battered old suitcase.