"Young man, I'm sorry to have had to hurt your feelin's with the truth, an' I hope ye'll forgive me. Take this experience of to-day as a warnin'. Don't be a beach-comber. For when you are, to my mind, you are what folks call a grave-robber—a ghoul. Now go home to your mammy, who used to have some good thoughts. Unless they're all gone through livin' with that no-'count daddy o' your'n, she'll tell you that Captain Ichabod is right fer once. Yes, I say, quit it all! Be a man, an' show folks, that, after all, it is possible to make a silk purse out o' a sow's ear."
After this parting thrust, Ichabod turned on his heel without another word, and walked swiftly away down the shore. The men from the station added a few phrases of very trenchant advice to Sandy and his son. They waited until the beach-combers had entered the sharpie and set sail due north toward the hamlet of Portsmouth.
When the coast guard came up again with Captain Ichabod, they found him seated on the sand hard by the noisy breakers. Three Dominick hens clucked about him. The old fisherman was throwing them kernels of corn, which he took from his pocket. The men gazed somewhat somberly at the fowls. It was plain that these were the only creatures that had escaped alive from the three-master whose bones littered the beach.
Ichabod looked up at his friends with a wry smile, that was touched with grimness.
"Boys," he remarked whimsically, "it seems to me as if Icky had had about enough reminders fer one day without these pesky Dominick pullets a-buttin' in."
CHAPTER XI
The Awakening of Ichabod
The door to the fisherman's shack stood ajar, and in the opening showed the form of a man. As the light from the newly risen moon fell full upon the wrinkled features of the face, a pleased, contented smile was to be seen as he placidly puffed his corncob pipe and blew rings before him in the quiet, heavy, midnight air. It was Captain Ichabod, home again after the momentous happenings of the day when the dead body was found in the wreck of The Isabel.
The Captain had been more or less methodical in his ways all his life, but he had never carried routine so far as to keep a diary. Probably during the past twenty years, living the life he had upon his lonely island, there had not been enough of incident to have suggested even the idea of such a record. But on this particular night, the fisherman, closeted within his shack, had been toiling through three long hours in order to set down a detailed narrative of the strange happenings in which he had been concerned since the coming of the great storm. He had ransacked his belongings until he found pencil and paper. Then, with his characteristically painstaking and deliberate manner, he had indited an itemized account of the various events. Now he had completed his work, and rested well content with his accomplishment. As he lounged in the doorway, he was taking a glimpse over the beautiful expanse of water, the while he smoked a final pipe before turning in. He felt that after the arduous endeavors of the day he was entitled to a sound and refreshing sleep. His usual calm had returned to him.