Taberman contrasted curiously with his host. He was short and thickset, with blue eyes and fair hair which showed a tendency to curl. As he stood with shoulders turned to the wind, the square collar of his canvas jumper was blown against his round pate, and made a background for his tanned face. He held a briar drop-pipe between his teeth, and his hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets. Working his pipe into the corner of his mouth, he spoke again.
"Hope this breeze won't trouble the old gentleman," he remarked, casting a glance at the billowing double-headers that were driving by aloft.
The wind shrilled by the watchers on the jetty, clear, strong, and salt.
"Guess not," replied Castleport; "anything short of a hurricane's a sailing-wind for him. He's a mettlesome old chap."
"That's right enough. Can't have him spoiling our game by being late, you know. Let's go up; it's getting beastly chilly."
They turned and walked along the pier. At the point where it met the shore stood a small boathouse. Thence the ground, covered with a stunted growth of spruce and fir, and the inevitable New England boulders, rose abruptly. Directly in the line of the jetty the shingled roof of a small house showed above the trees. To the westward, in the dimming afterglow of the sunset, the Camden Hills stood out luminous, purple, yet rimmed with a thread of golden fire. Away to the east, clad in soberer colors, rose Mt. Desert, a mass of shadowy greens and blues. The steepness of the path they were ascending soon cut off from the view of the young men these beauties and grandeurs, which, however, they were probably not in a mood to dwell upon; and a minute's walking brought them to the door of the house, a small affair with high-pitched roof and broad veranda. Its shingles were almost the color of the dark evergreens that encircled the clearing in which it stood; its windows reflected with a vacant and glassy stare the fast-fading light. Castleport opened the door for his guest, and followed him into the living-room.
The darkness seemed the greater from its contrast with what light yet remained outside, and not until Taberman had put a match to the pile of old shingles and light driftwood in the wide fireplace could they see fairly. The crimson glow showed a room some twenty feet square, with windows on two sides,—the south and east. The joists and sheathing were of planed spruce, left unpainted. The big Mexican fireplace of brick occupied the northwestern corner; in the middle of the room stood conspicuously a round deal table, covered with a litter of pipes, tobacco, magazines, and nautical hardware; between the two eastern windows, below a box-like cabinet which was attached to the wall, was a smaller table with a square top, piled with books and charts. Beneath the southern windows was placed a heavy desk with a faded baize top, the cloth ink-stained and full of holes due to moths and carelessly handled cigars. Of the happy-go-lucky assortment of chairs which completed the furniture of the room, no large portion was in an entirely unbroken condition, but all evidently were meant for service and ease. The walls of the room were decorated with devices in scallop-shells and a few unframed water-colors of the impressionist type. A large chart of Penobscot Bay was tacked to the inside of the door, and a venerable flintlock musket hung below a battered quadrant over the chimneypiece. Everything was simple almost to rudeness, yet the place gave at once and most strongly the impression of comfort and good-fellowship.
Castleport laid his binoculars on the desk, and, stepping to a door on his right, opened it and called out:—
"Oh, Gonzague?"