Cap’n Crumbie viewed them approvingly as, with Jack at his side, he paced to and fro on Garnett and Sayer’s wharf, his short, slightly bowed legs working with the regularity of a pendulum, six paces nor’east, then six paces so’west. He had traveled a good many miles in that fashion in the last twenty years, for he was watchman at Garnett and Sayer’s, and this stretch of clear space on the busy wharf was the Cap’n’s quarter-deck. He was, let it be confessed, no ancient deep-sea mariner, although he had all the marks of the ocean-going skipper—leathery, crinkled face, with crow’s-feet at the corners of his twinkling eyes, skin tanned deeply from long exposure to the salt sea air, a fringe of yellowish-white whiskers, and a deep growl of a voice. True it is that he had been a captain, but captain only of a center-board sail-boat in which, before he had given up the precarious life, he had taken out pleasure parties for a day’s fishing—including chowder—or for a run around the Head. But everybody didn’t know that, more especially the “summer folks,” and among the latter he held the reputation for being not only the most dependable weather-prophet along the coast but a perfect example of the old-time ship’s captain, with experience gathered from Iceland to Fiji, from Seattle to Siam. And many a good yarn Cap’n Crumbie could spin, too, of his adventures in far-off climes. Indeed, he had related some of them so frequently that he had long since grown to believe them!
Jack had spent all of his sixteen years in Greenport and so knew the Cap’n for what he was, a kind-hearted, eccentric, and amusing old character.
“But,” he said, suppressing a smile, “if Bob does come back he’s pretty sure to have a tremendous catch. The mackerel are in and the water’s boiling with them, they say.”
“Maybe, maybe,” blustered the Cap’n; “but what good’s a load o’ mackerel to a drowned man? Terrible bad weather it was yesterday. Don’t know when I’ve seen such a snorter. Guess the last one was three years ago, the time your father was robbed.”
“I remember,” replied Jack. “There was a fierce gale that night, wasn’t there? Poor Dad was wet through when they brought him home. He’s never talked much about the robbery, Cap’n, and I never really understood just what happened that night. But I do know that poor Dad’s never been quite the same since.”
“And no wonder,” answered the Cap’n. “He was hard hit, Jack. More’n a thousand dollars went, as near as I recall.”
“Twelve hundred and forty. I asked him once and he told me, but he said I wasn’t to talk about it again.”
“Well, by gravy, ’twas a shame, anyway!” said the Cap’n, emphatically, with a belligerent glance at Barker’s wharf across the slip.
“Wasn’t it queer that they never caught any one!” Jack observed.
“That’s what Simon Barker always said,” replied the Cap’n, dryly, “but when he says that, he’s trying to suggest that Samuel Holden knows more about the affair than he cares to tell.”