THE DISTURBER IN THE RAVINE
Occasionally a pair of eagles would soar around over the dune country. These he longed to kill, but he could never get near enough to them. The wary birds were inconsiderate, and “wouldn’t never light, ’cept away off.”
A “hoot’n owl” somewhere in the ravine caused him many sleepless nights. Its prolonged and unearthly cries frequently startled him from dreams of his friend Bill off in the South Pacific, and he spent many hours prowling softly around among the trees in the darkness, trying to locate the offender. Probably the owl, in the wisdom of his kind, had kept the silent stealthy figure under observation, and was careful not to do any hooting within shooting distance,—certainly an example to be emulated. He usually resumed his lamentations when Sipes returned to his shanty.
The old man had this owl listed as one of his bitter enemies, and annihilation awaited the wily bird if he ever found it. “One hoot’n owl’s too dam’ many to have ’round,” he declared. “This critter reminds me o’ one night when I was on a ship off the coast o’ South Ameriky.
“I was aloft on one o’ the yard-arms, an’ there was a little roll on the sea. I seen some long white streaks o’ foam comin’, about two points offen the lee bow, an’ there was sumpen that shined in the moonlight mixed up in it. It seemed all yellow, an’ about two hundred feet long, an’ it flopped up an’ down. When it got close, it opened up a mouth pretty near half as big as the ship, an’ let out an awful yell. It sounded like a hoot’n owl, only ten thousand times louder an’ deeper. Then it dove down an’ went under the ship. The sails all shook, an’ my blood was froze, so I couldn’t call out to the feller at the wheel, an’ I dropped off on to the deck.
“I never found out what the cussed thing was. If I’d bin drinkin’ very much I’d ’a’ thought I had the jimmies. The wheel feller said he hadn’t noticed nothin’, but I did all the same, an’ I’ll never fergit it.
“I had some ter’ble experiences off down there in that part o’ the gorgofy. We sailed fer months an’ months, an’ never seen nothin’ but the big waves an’ the sky. There was a lot o’ latitude an’ longitude, an’ me an’ Bill used to offen wonder, when we was roostin’ out on the bowsprit smokin’ at night, what ’ud happen if we butted into one o’ them lines that’s always runnin’ up an’ down an’ sideways on them salt water maps.
“There was ter’ble perils all the time. Sometimes we’d run among icebergs, an waterspouts, an’ cyclones, an’ we wallered in bilin’ seas, an’ the skies was black as yer hat, an’ we got lost on the ocean a couple o’ times, an’ we got smashed up on that island I told ye about. You bet this lake’s plenty wet enough fer me, an’ I’m goin’ to spatter ’round right ’ere, an’ if Bill was only ’ere instid o’ cavortin’ ’round with them South Pacific floozies, I’d be all right.”
Some of Sipes’s many sea yarns sounded suspiciously like stories I had read in early youth, but I generally gave him the benefit of the doubt, as he did not need to be strictly truthful to be entertaining. In one instance he related a thrilling tale in which his experiences were practically identical with those of the hero in a favorite yellow covered treasure of years ago. I rather tactlessly called his attention to that fact. He at once replied, “Now you see how queer some things git ’round in this world. I was that feller.”