The listeners gathered closer. Tunis Latham's face displayed such rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the oar. But instead he shook it before their eyes—and Orion's.
"See it?" he demanded of the bystanders. "That's the scurvy trick the dog played me. Found this broken oar in somebody's woodpile, burned the name of the Marlin B. into the handle, and foisted it on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that name. I ought to pound him to death!"
Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and reached the angry skipper and his victim. Eunez, her black eyes ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly. One glance at the prostrate Orion assured her that, although there was blood upon his face, he was not much hurt. She tossed her head and snapped her fingers under the nose of the captain of the Seamew.
"So now, Tunis Latham! It is that you have waked up! Of a gr-r-reat smartness are you, eh?" she cried. "You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat us as you would dogs. Heh! All you shipmasters are alike.
"But you—we put the laugh on you, eh? That oar in your hand—ha, ha! Do not lay the blame altogether upon your cousin. I burned those letters into that wood with my curling irons. Fooled by a girl, eh, Tunis Latham? Ah! Learn your lesson, Captain Latham! We Portygee women are not to be scorned by any schooner captain. No!"
She snapped her fingers again in his face and turned away, swaying her hips and tossing her head as she disappeared into her father's cottage. When Tunis looked around for his cousin, he found that that facile young man, taking advantage of the girl's intervention, had slipped away.
A winter hurricane had pounced upon the Cape and torn at it with teeth and claws, as though seeking to dismember it—to wrench the forty-mile curved claw of the Cape from the remainder of Barnstable County.
The driven snow masked everything—earth, houses, trees, and the shivering bushes; it clung to these objects, iced upon them like frosting. No craft ventured out of Big Wreck Cove, least of all the Seamew, although she had a cargo in her hold and a complete and satisfied crew in her forecastle.
Tunis Latham was speaking of the latter fact to Aunt Lucretia in the warm and homelike kitchen of Latham's Folly.