Indeed, a conscience is a most distressing comrade. And, albeit a conscience is not for a fisherman,—he cannot afford it,—a clammer may be pricked and stabbed and plagued by that he would willingly get rid of. For I suppose it was my conscience that impelled me to buy—in secret, for I would not have Eve know of it lest it give her anxiety—a little card with two revolving discs and pictures of a signalman in every position that is possible to a signalman.
By diligent use of that card and much practice in the proper manner of waving my arms I hoped to make myself duly proficient in the art of signalling by the wigwag method.
I found the card at a nautical instrument store in the city on the day after our dinner; and as I looked at it somewhat doubtfully, the clerk pulled out a little book that gave the matter more at length. I bought them both, and I have been practising the motions for a week in secret. And that has its difficulties too, that I do it in secret, for if I practised in the house it was not secret, nor was it secret in my garden or in the hayfield or on my bluff. At last I hit upon that little clump of trees. No one could see me there.
To-day being the Fourth of July, I thought it fit that I practise more diligently than usual. So, having gathered my first peas, a generous mess of them, I repaired to the clump of trees; and having propped the book upon a branch and hung the card upon a twig, I began. But no sooner had I got to work at it than somebody came running out of the house, softly calling, "Adam! Adam!" It was the voice of Eve, and she was waving a paper, for I could hear it rustling. And I swept the book off its branch and the card from its twig, tearing the card in my haste, and I stepped from my hiding-place on to the bluff, so that I should seem to be but gazing out over the water, as is my wont.
I was just putting the book and the card in my pocket when Eve came upon me, but she was so intent that she did not notice. The paper that she had is published in the nearest city, and it is a good paper, a better paper than any published in Boston. It suits me even better than the London "Times," to which I subscribe, for although the "Times" has the war news in greater detail than we have it, it is usually three weeks old; and news which one has read three weeks before is old enough to have been forgotten.
She held the paper up before my eyes.
"See, Adam," she said. "Here is good news for the Fourth. Our transports have beaten the submarines, great flocks of them, and have sunk some of them, and they have arrived safely, every ship and every man."
I smiled at her enthusiasm. "That should be good news. To be sure, the submarines that were sunk carried their crews down with them to be drowned like rats in a trap, and we used to think that Germans were pretty good—"
"Good!" she cried. "When they have committed so many murders on the sea!"
"Well, these Germans will commit no more murders. Let me see your paper."