I made Crab hustle the goods aboard and stowed all away in the cuddy before I let the boatman put me ashore. Paul and his friends were hanging about the landing.
“Keep your eye on my Wavecrest, will you, Lampton?” I said to the man who owned the landing, and kept boats for hire. “Remember, nobody’s to go aboard of the sloop without my special permission,” and I glanced pointedly at my cousin.
“I’ll see to that, sir,” said Lampton, who was my friend, I knew. “And in this weather, and with the wind the way she is, anybody would be crazy to want to take a boat out through the breach.”
I went back to the house in ample time for dinner, and Ham, who had been on the watch, reported that my uncle had not again tried to enter the house. But I was worried about Paul and his henchmen. I couldn’t rest in the house after dark. If they couldn’t get a boat on the Neck side of the harbor in which to go out to the Wavecrest, they might come across from the town side and do her some damage.
Mother had come down to dinner and we had one of our old-fashioned, homey meals, followed by a pleasant hour in the drawing-room, where she played and sang for me. It was her pleasure that I should dress for dinner just as though company was to be present, and she trained me in the niceties of life, and in bits of etiquette, for which I have often, in later times, been very thankful. For although I found my amusement in rough adventure and my companionship for the most part among seamen and fishermen, it hurts no boy or man to be as well grounded in the tenets of polite society as in writing, reading, and arithmetic!
The subject that was uppermost in my mind—that hazy mystery surrounding my father’s death—did not come up between us on this evening. Nor did the unpleasant topic of the Downeses come to the fore. I am very, very glad to remember that my mother looked her prettiest, that she gave me the tenderest of kisses when she bade me goodnight early, and that we parted very lovingly.
I went up to my room, but only to put on a warmer suit—a fishing suit in fact. I shrugged myself into oilskin pants and jacket, too, in the back shed, and exchanged my cap for a sou’wester. Then I sallied forth through a pelting rain, with the gale whistling a sharp tune behind me, and descended the hill toward the point off which the Wavecrest was moored.
I had said nothing to anybody about my intention. I do not think that any of the servants saw me go. I left my home without any particular thought of the future, or any serious cogitation as to what would be the result of my act.
Merely, I had put two and two together in my mind—and I would sleep aboard the Wavecrest.