Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 12

"Le's see; what did you say your name was?" and Cap'n Amazon drew from the cash drawer a long and evidently fully annotated list of customers'

names, prepared by Cap'n Abe.

"I'm Mandy Baker--she 'twas Mandy Card."

"Yes. I find you here all right. Your bill o' ladin' seems good.

Good-mornin', ma'am. Call again."

Mandy Baker looked as though she desired to continue the conversation.

But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech that impressed Mrs. Baker--as it had Lawford Tapp--that here was a very different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe. Mandy sniffed, jerked her sunbonnet forward, and departed with her purchases.

Cap'n Amazon's quick eye caught sight of Louise's amused face in the doorway.

"Kind of a sharp craft that," he observed, watching' Mandy cross the road. "Reminds me some o' one o' them Block Island double-enders they built purpose for sword-fishing. When you strike on to a sword-fish you are likely to want to back water 'bout as often as shove ahead. I cal'late this here Mandy Baker is some spry in her maneuvers. And I bet she's got one o' the laziest husbands in this whole town. 'Most always happens that way," concluded the captain, who seemed quite as homely philosophical and observant as his brother.

As a stone thrown into a quiet pool drives circling ripples farther and farther away from the point of contact, so the news of Cap'n Abe's secret departure and the appearance of the strange brother in his place, spread through the neighborhood.

The coming of Louise to the store on the Sh.e.l.l Road had also set the tongues to clacking. Mandy Baker, who took her husband's rating in women's eyes at his own valuation, was up in arms. A pretty girl, and an actress at that!--for until recent years that was a word to be only whispered in polite society on the Cape--was considered by such as Mandy to be under suspicion right from the start.

The mystery of Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about Louise. Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt. Women left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for something considered suddenly essential to their work. Some of the clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon.

Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that strange, red-kerchief-topped figure behind Cap'n Abe's counter.

Cap'n Joab Beecher was one of the earliest arrivals. Cap'n Joab had been as close to Cap'n Abe as anybody in Cardhaven. There had been some little friction between him and the storekeeper on the previous evening. Cap'n Joab felt almost as though Cap'n Abe's sudden departure was a thrust at him.

But when he introduced himself to Cap'n Amazon the latter seized the caller's hand in a seaman's grip, and said heartily: "I want to know Cap'n Joab Beecher, of the old _Sally n.o.ble_. I knowed the bark well, though I never happened to clap eyes on _you_, sir. Abe give me a letter for you. Here 'tis. Said you was a good feller and might help wise me to things in the store here till I'd l'arned her riggin' and how to sail her proper."

Cap'n Joab was frankly pleased by this. He spelled out the note Cap'n Abe had addressed to him slowly, being without his reading gla.s.ses, and then said:

"I'm yours to command, Cap'n Silt. Land sakes! I s'pose your brother had a puffict right to go away. He'd talked about goin' enough.

Where's he gone?"

"On a v'y'ge," said Cap'n Amazon.

"No! Gone to sea?"

"Yes. Sailing to-day--out o' Boston."

"I want to know! Abe Silt gone to sea! Wouldn't never believed it.

Always 'peared to be afraid of gettin' his paws wet--same's a cat,"

ruminated Cap'n Joab. "What craft's he sailin' in?"

The Boston morning paper lay before Cap'n Amazon, opened at the page containing the shipping news. His glance dropped to the sailing notices and with scarcely a moment's hesitancy he said:

"_Curlew_, Ripley, master, out o' Boston. I knowed of her--knowed Cap'n Ripley," and he pointed to the very first line of the sailing list. "If Abe got there in time he like enough j'ined her crew."

"Shipped before the mast?" exploded Cap'n Joab.

"Well," Cap'n Amazon returned sensibly, "if you were skipper about where would you expect a lubber like Abe Silt to fit into your crew?"

"I swanny, that's so!" agreed Cap'n Joab. "But it's goin' to be hard lines for a man of his years--and no experience."

Cap'n Amazon sniffed. "I guess he'll get along," he said, seemingly less disturbed by his brother's plight than other people. "Three months of summer sailin' won't do him no harm."

That he was under fire he evidently felt, and resented it. His brother's old neighbors and friends desired to know altogether too much about his business and that of Cap'n Abe. He told Louise before night:

"I tell you what, Abe's got the best of it! If I'd knowed I was goin'

to be picked to pieces by a lot of busybodies the way I be, I'd never agreed to stay by the ship till Abe got back. No, sir! These folks around here are the beatenest I ever see."

Yet Louise noticed that he seemed able to hold his own with the curious ones. His tongue was quite as nimble as Cap'n Abe's had been. On the day of her arrival, Lou Grayling had believed she would be amused at Cardhaven. Ere the second twenty-four hours of her stay were rounded out, she knew she would be.

CHAPTER VIII

SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY

During the day Cap'n Amazon and Amiel Perdue carried Louise's trunks upstairs and into the storeroom, handy to her own chamber. It seems Cap'n Amazon had not brought his own sea chest; only a "dunnage bag,"

as he called it.

"But there's plenty of Abe's duds about," he said; "and we're about of a size."

When Louise went to unpack her trunks she found a number of things in the storeroom more interesting even than her own pretty summer frocks.

There were sh.e.l.ls, corals, sea-ivory--curios, such as are collected by seamen the world over. Cap'n Abe was an indefatigable gatherer of such wares. There was a green sea chest standing with its lid wide open, tarred rope handles on its ends, that may have been around the world a score of times. It was half filled with old books.

All the dusty, musty volumes in the chest seemed to deal with the sea and sea-going. Many of them, long since out of print and forgotten, recounted strange and almost unbelievable romances of nautical life--stories of wrecks, fires, battles with savages and pirates, discoveries of lone islands and marvelous explorations in lands which, since the date of publication, have become semi-civilized or altogether so.

Here were narratives of men who had sailed around the world in tiny craft like Captain Sloc.u.m; stories of seamen who had become chiefs of cannibal tribes, like the famous Larry O'Brien; several supposedly veracious narratives of the survivors of the Bounty; stories of Arctic and Antarctic discovery and privation. There were also several sc.r.a.pbooks filled with newspaper clippings of nautical wonders--many of these clipped from New Bedford and Newport papers which at one time were particularly rich in whalers' yarns.

Interested in skimming these wonderful stories, Lou Grayling spent most of the afternoon. Here was a fund of entertainment for rainy days--or wakeful nights, if she chanced to suffer such. She carried one of the sc.r.a.pbooks into her bedroom that it might be under her hand if she desired such amus.e.m.e.nt.

In arranging her possessions in closet and bureau, she found no time on this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open back door while her uncle was sweeping the store.

The sun was but then opening a red eye above the horizon. The ocean, away out to this line demarcating sea and sky, was perfectly flat.

Unlike the previous dawn, this was as clear as a bell's note.

Louise had been wise enough to wear high shoes, so the sands above high-water mark did not bother her. The waves lapped in softly, spreading over the dimpling gray beach, their voice reduced to a whispering murmur.

Along the crescent of the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the homes of the summer residents--those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the hotel, termed "the big bugs." On the farthest point visible in this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of small craft. Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried a swift craft coming from this anchorage.

She saw, by sweeping it with her glance, that not a soul but herself was on the sh.o.r.e--neither in the direction of the summer colony nor on the other hand where the beach curved sharply out to the lighthouse at the end of the Neck. The motor boat was fast approaching the spot where Louise stood.

It being the single moving object on the scene, save the gulls, she began to watch it. There was but one person in the motor boat. He was hatless and was dressed in soiled flannels. It was the young man, Lawford Tapp, of whom Cap'n Abe did not altogether approve.

"He must work for those people over there," Louise Grayling thought.

"He is nice looking."

It could not be possible that Lawford Tapp had descried and recognized the figure of the girl from the Tapp anchorage!

He no longer wore his hip boots. After shutting off his engine, he guided the sharp prow of the launch right up into the sand and leaped into shallow water, bringing ash.o.r.e the bight of the painter to throw over a stub sunk above high-water mark.