Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 15

"We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely. "Just as he had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he probably had his reasons for taking n.o.body into his confidence. This Perry Baker, the expressman, must know that Cap'n Abe sent the trunk from the house, here."

"Humph! Yes! n.o.body's denyin' that."

"Then Cap'n Abe must have known exactly what he wished to do. Cap'n Amazon surely had nothing to do with the chest, with how his brother took the train, or with _where_ he took it. Really, Betty, what do you suspect Cap'n Amazon has done?"

"I don't know what he's done," snapped Betty. "But I wouldn't put nothin' past him, from his looks. The old pirate!"

"You will make me feel very bad if you continue to talk this way about my Uncle Amazon," said the girl, far from feeling amused now. "It is not right. I hope you will not continue to repeat such things. If you do you will some time be sorry for it, Betty."

"Humph!" sniffed the woman. "Mebbe I will. But I'm warnin' you, Miss Grayling."

"Warning me of what?"

"Of that man. That old sinner! I never see a wickeder looking feller in my life--and I've sailed with my father and my husband to 'most ev'ry quarter of the globe. He may be twin brother to the Angel Gabriel; but if he is, his looks belie it!"

There was nothing in all this of enough consequence to disturb the girl, only in so far as she was vexed to find the neighbors so gossipy and unkind. She gazed thoughtfully upon Cap'n Amazon as he sat across from her at the breakfast table, and wondered how anybody could see in his bronzed face anything sinister.

That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true. Those gold earrings! But then, she had seen several of the older men about the store wearing rings in their ears. If he did not always have that bright-colored kerchief on his head! But then, he might wear that because he was susceptible to neuralgia and did not wish to wear a hat all the time as seemed to have been Cap'n Abe's custom.

When he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners, he was as kindly of expression, she thought, as Cap'n Abe himself. And he was a much better looking man than the brother who had gone away.

"Cap'n Amazon," she said to him, "I believe you must be just full of stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land. Uncle Abram said you had been everywhere."

Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and said:

"I've been pretty nigh everywhere. Seen some funny corners of the world, too, Louise."

"You must tell me about your adventures," she said. "Your brother told me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and sailed on a long whaling voyage."

"Yep. _South Sea Belle_. Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon briskly. "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin'

with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big as a nail keg--or pretty nigh."

Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so. He told it so vividly that Louise was enthralled. The picture of the whaling bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days. The mate of the _South Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted upon boarding the carca.s.s. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling ma.s.s which was worth so great a sum to the perfumer.

"'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon. "Helped make the owners rich, and the Old Man, too. Course, I got my sheer; but a boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot.

So I went to sea again."

"You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon."

"Pretty nigh. I ain't never lazed around on sh.o.r.e when there was a berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'. I let Abe do that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone.

"Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body! See the nice business he has built up here. And he told me he owned shares in several vessels and other property."

"That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly. "And a tidy sum in the Paulmouth National Bank. I got a letter to the bank folks he left to introduce me, if I needed cash. Yes, Abe's done well enough that way.

But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ash.o.r.e."

"And now you are going to remain ash.o.r.e yourself," she said, laughing.

"I'm going to try it, Louise. I've done my sheer of roaming about.

Mebbe I'll settle down here for good."

"With Cap'n Abe? Won't that be fine?"

"Yep. With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the meal.

On Sat.u.r.day the store trade was expected to be larger than usual.

Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers; but he would not listen to that for a moment.

"I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides, there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores is stowed."

The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and attacked Cap'n Amazon. It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the captain slept locked against her. It was Cap'n Abe's room and it seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his own bed and keep his room tidy during the week. But Betty had always given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Sat.u.r.days.

"What's that room locked for? I want to know what you mean?" the woman demanded of Cap'n Amazon. "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where doors is locked against me? I'm as honest as any Silt that ever hobbled on two laigs. Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile."

She had much more to say--and said it. It seemed to make her feel better to do so. Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer to take the key out of his trousers' pocket.

"What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless.

"I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly pa.s.sive voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was. "I don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds. That door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece. You do the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin."

Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she would resign from her situation on the spot.

But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her.

And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed. She spluttered a little more, then returned to her work. Though she was sullen all day, she did not offer to reopen the discussion.

"What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise thought. "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp suggested. My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all."

But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father. He stood on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word.

That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender heart, the girl was sure. For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with him. And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye.

"Blind's a bat! Poor little critter!" he would murmur. "All the sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more. Out-o'-doors ain't nothin' to him now."

Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor little Jerry. He had promised Abe, he said. He kept that promise faithfully.

Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem. At first, whenever he saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled. Then, gradually, an unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-sh.e.l.l. He would peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the subst.i.tute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest in the man. But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him.

"I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon.

"They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten. Brought it up on a bottle himself.

"He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed demon would lay in it, too, and purr like an ordinary cat.

"But a day come when the man fell asleep and had a nightmare or something, and kicked out, cracking that cat on the snout with his heel. Next breath the cat had a chunk out o' his calf and if I hadn't been there with a gun he'd pretty near have eat the feller!"

The personal touch always entered into Cap'n Amazon's stories. He had always been on me spot when the thing in point happened--and usually he was the heroic and central figure. No foolish modesty stayed his tongue when it came to recounting adventures.

He had all his wits, as well as all his wit, about him, had Cap'n Amazon. This was shown by an occurrence that very Sat.u.r.day afternoon.