“No. I never did.”
“Well, you’d ought to. It’s a wonder of it’s kind. I learned more things about life-savin’ and ’longshore life from that drayma than you’d believe was possible. You’d have got some p’ints for your Cap’n Jim yarn from that play; you sartin would! Yes, indeed! Way I happened to go to it was on account of seein’ a poster on a fence over nigh where that Moriarty tribe lived. The poster pictured a bark ashore, on her beam ends, in a sea like those off the Horn. On the beach was a whole parcel of life-savers firin’ off rockets and blue lights. Keepin’ the Fourth of July, I judged they was, for I couldn’t see any other reason. The bark wa’n’t more’n a hundred foot from ’em, and if all hands on board didn’t know they was in trouble by that time, then they deserved to drown. Anyhow, they wa’n’t likely to appreciate the celebration. Ho! ho! Well, when I run afoul of that poster I felt I hadn’t ought to let anything like that get away; so I hunted up the theater—it wa’n’t but a little ways off—and got a front seat for that very afternoon.”
“Was it up to the advertising?” asked Pearson.
“Was it? Hi hum! I wish you’d been there. More ’special I wished some of the folks from home had been there, for the whole business was supposed to happen on the Cape, and they’d have realized how ignorant we are about the place we live in. The hero was a strappin’ six-footer, sort of a combination fisherman and parson, seemed so. He wore ileskins in fair weather and went around preachin’ or defyin’ folks that provoked him and makin’ love to the daughter of a long-haired old relic that called himself an inventor.... Oh, consarn it!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Dropped my collar button, as usual. Collar buttons are one of the Old Harry’s pet traps. I’ll bet their responsible for ’most as many lapses from grace as tangled fishlines. Where.... Ow!... All right; I found it with my bare foot, and edge up, of course.”
A series of grunts and short-breathed exclamations followed, indicating that the sufferer was struggling with a tight collar.
“Go on,” commanded Pearson. “Tell me some more about the play.”
“Hey? Oh, the play. Where was I?”
“You were saying that the heroine’s father was an inventor.”