"How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked, impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper.
The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically. "It's easy 'nough to pick up skipper's title longshore. 'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft—or 'doughter be. But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough."
"How?" urged Lawford.
"When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking comp'nies left on the Cape. Why, 'tain't been ten years since the Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the Mary Benson that went onto Sanders Reef all standin'. They made a good speck out o' the job, too.
"Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies—was the heaviest stockholder, in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n. He never headed no crew—not as I ever heard on. But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it."
"But about his brother—this Captain Amazon?" The line of Cap'n Joab Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed, and he wagged his head slowly. "I don't know what to make of all this talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply.
Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper. He certainly looked to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop. He was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon. His eyes were too mild for that—save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.
Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a mariner could be. No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences. Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper had told over and over again until they were threadbare.
Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue jersey. He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth. Under the bulk of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the observer could not easily judge. And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.
Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a lonely life. Twenty years' residence meant little to Cardhaven folk. Cap'n Abe was still an outsider to people who were so closely married and intermarried that every human being within five miles of the Haven (not counting the aristocrats of The Beaches) could honestly call each of the others cousin in some degree.