Billy knew well that one should not look around, but he nevertheless turned full about to smile a greeting at Sally Shute when she came into the pew behind him. Her stiff skirts stood out almost straight around her and her yellow braids were brushed until they shone. He observed that she had grown a little taller since last year, but that her pink cheeks were as round as ever and her face as earnest. Her father and mother were with her, and young Jacky, very restless and making continual trouble.
The service began with a prayer that Billy sometimes, during idle moments in a long sermon, had examined curiously in the prayer book and wondered if it were ever used. “In Time of War and Tumults,” it was headed, and reminded him of what for a little time he had forgotten, that there was a war. He looked out of the window and tried to think of it as true, but failed. No, there certainly could not be a war, not on such a day as this. Then he saw that one of the fishermen’s wives was crying quietly behind her pew, yes, and there was another over in the corner doing the same thing. They had boys who were bluejackets in the Navy, he supposed, and were foolish enough to think that something might happen to them. On the way up the hill, Aunt Mattie had been giving him a little talk on history and had pointed out that nearly all of our wars began in April. Why in April, he wondered, when everything seemed less like war then than at any other time of the year. He began to think idly of how many Easter Sundays there must have been just like this one, back, back as far as the Revolution, when women bravely put on their best and toiled up to the church, only to cry in secret behind the pews because there was going to be a war. Why—
His mind was wandering farther and farther from the service. Suddenly it was brought back by a quick touch upon his arm.
“Captain Saulsby is in the doorway,” whispered Sally Shute behind him. “I think he wants you for something.”
There indeed stood the old sailor in the door, looking distressed and uncomfortable and peering about as though in search of some one. He seemed much relieved when he caught Billy’s eye and saw the boy rise to tiptoe out. He put a paper into Billy’s hand as they went down the path together.
“I want that telephoned to the telegraph office at Rockport,” he said. “I have tried to do it myself, but I can’t hear quite well enough to make sure they have got it right, and I don’t want the hotel clerk to give it for me, or he would be telling it all over the Island. I hope your Aunt won’t mind it that I called you out of the church.”
Billy read over the message, then, in bewilderment, read it again.
“Why, Captain Saulsby,” he said, “it doesn’t make sense!”
“I know it,” agreed the Captain, “and I don’t quite know what it stands for myself. But that naval officer from Piscataqua who was out here yesterday told me to send such and such a message if this thing or that thing happened; he wrote out several to cover different cases. I suppose he thought I couldn’t get a regular cipher code straight. Maybe I couldn’t.”
The day before, Captain Saulsby had had a visitor whose coming had seemed both to please him and to make him feel important. An officer from one of the warships lying in the harbour of Piscataqua had come all the way to Appledore to see him. At first the old man had announced that he would speak to no officer unless he came to apologize for the Navy’s refusal of its best recruit; but he had finally changed his mind and had held a long and earnest talk with his guest in the garden.