“Why, you are just as comfortable and neat as possible,” she replied. “But I notice one thing has not lost its place—your red oar.”
“No—indeed!” he said almost solemnly. “That oar will stay with me while Denny Shane has eyes to see it. It has a story, Freddie, and I often promised to tell it to you. This is as good a time as another.”
He put his pipe down, brought a big chair up to the window, opened a back door to allow the salt air to sweep in; then, while Cora looked with quickening interest at the old red oar, that hung over the fireplace, Denny shook his head reflectively and started with his story.
“That oar,” he said, “seems like a link between me and Leonard Lewis—your grandpa, Freddie. And, too, it is a reminder of the night when I nearly went over the other sea, and would have, but for Leonard Lewis and his strong red oar.”
A light flashed into the old eyes. Plainly the recollections brought up by his story were sacred. He left his chair and went over to the mantel, climbed up on a box and touched the oar that had sagged a little from its position.
“The wind rocks this shanty so,” he explained, “the oar thinks it’s out on the waves again, I guess. I don’t like to spoil it with nails or strings.”
“It looks very artistic,” Cora declared; “but how curious that an oar should be painted red.”
“Yes, there was only one pair of them, that I know of. One went with the wreck, and this one Len Lewis held on to. Now I’ll tell you about it.”
Again he seated himself and this time started off briskly with the tale.
“It was a raw January night—in fact, it seemed as if it had been night all day for all the chance the sun had to get out. A howling wind whistled and fairly shrieked at everything that didn’t fly fast enough to suit it. Len and me had been puttin’ in a lot of time together at his house, just chinnin’—there wasn’t much else to do but to keep warm. Well, along about five o’clock, we heard a rocket! The wind died away for a minute or so, and we dashed out to the beach to get the lay of that distress signal. Talk about big city fires!” he digressed. “A fire on land ain’t what it is on sea. It always seems like as if death has a double power with the fire and the deep and nothing but the sky above to fan the flame.