Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 20

"Oh, yes! I see!" murmured Cap'n Amazon. "Then you must be her A'nt 'Phemie. I've heard Louise speak of you. Tubbesure!"

"I am Mrs. Conroth," said Mrs. Euphemia Conroth haughtily.

"Happy to make your acquaintance," said Cap'n Amazon, bobbing his head and putting forth his big hand. Mrs. Conroth scorned the hand, raised her lorgnette and stared at the old mariner as though he were some curious specimen from the sea that she had never observed before.

Cap'n Amazon smiled whimsically and looked down at his stained and toil-worn palm.

"I see you're nigh-sighted, ma'am. Some of us git that way as we grow older. I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself."

"I wish to see my niece at once," Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little at his suggestion of her advancing years.

"Come right in," he said, lifting the flap in the counter.

Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her gla.s.s. "Cannot Louise come here?" She asked helplessly.

"We live back o' the shop--and overhead," explained Cap'n Amazon.

"Come right in, I'll have Betty Gallup call Louise."

Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic woman followed the spry figure of the captain. Her first glance over the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a p.r.o.nounced sniff.

"Catarrh, ma'am?" suggested the perfectly composed Cap'n Amazon. "This strong salt air ought to do it a world of good. I've known a sea v'y'ge to cure the hardest cases. They tell me lots of 'em come down here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured."

Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap'n Amazon. It began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given him credit.

"Sit down, ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon hospitably. "Abe ain't here, but I cal'late he'd want me to do the honors, and a.s.sure you that you are welcome. He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that boards us, as well as a seat at the table.

"Betty," he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then appearing at the living-room door, "tell Louise her A'nt 'Phemie is here, will you?"

"Say Mrs. Conroth, woman," corrected the lady tartly.

Betty scowled and went away, muttering: "Who's a 'woman,' I want to know? I ain't one no more'n _she_ is," and it can be set down in the log that the "able seaman" began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia's.

It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt's arrival. She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her mother's relative, Captain Abram Silt. Again, on reaching the store on the Sh.e.l.l Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing her arrival.

She had known perfectly well that some time she would have to "pay the piper." Aunt Euphemia would never overlook such a thing. Louise was sure of that. But the idea that the Poughkeepsie lady would follow her to Cardhaven never for a moment entered Louise's thought.

She had put off this reckoning until the fall--until the return of daddy-professor. But here Aunt Euphemia had descended upon her as unexpectedly as the Day of Wrath spoken of in Holy Writ.

As she came down the stairs she heard her uncle's voice in the living-room. Something had started him upon a tale of adventure above and beyond the usual run of his narrative.

"Yes, _ma'am_," he was saying, "them that go down to the sea in ships, as the Good Book says, sartain sure meet with hair-raisin' experiences.

You jumped then, ma'am, when old Jerry let out a peep. He was just tryin' his voice I make no doubt. Ain't sung for months they say. I didn't know why till I--I found out t'other day he was blind---stone blind.

"Some thinks birds don't know nothing, or ain't much account in this man-world----But, as I was sayin', I lay another course. I'll never forget one v'y'ge I made on the brigantine _Hermione_. That was 'fore the day of steam-winches and we carried a big crew--thirty-two men for'ard and a big after-guard.

"Well, ma'am! Whilst she was hove down in a blow off the Horn an albatross came aboard. You know what they be--the one bird in all the seven seas that don't us'ally need a dry spot for the sole of his foot.

If Noah had sent out one from the ark he'd never have come back with any sprig of promise for the land-hungry wanderers shut up in that craft.

"'Tis bad luck they do say to kill an albatross. Some sailors claim ev'ry one o' them is inhabited by a lost soul. I ain't superst.i.tious myself. I'm only telling you what happened.

"Dunno why that bird boarded us. Mebbe he was hurt some way. Mebbe 'twas fate. But he swooped right inboard, his wing brushing the men at the wheel. Almost knocked one o' them down. He was a Portugee man named Tony Spadello and he had a re'l quick temper.

"Tony had his knife out in a flash and jumped for the creature. The other steersman yelled (one man couldn't rightly hold the wheel alone, the sea was kicking up such a bobberation) but Tony's one slash was enough. The albatross tumbled right down on the deck, a great cut in its throat. It bled like a dog shark, cluttering up the deck."

"Horrid!" murmured Mrs. Conroth with a shudder of disgust.

"Yes--the poor critter!" agreed Cap'n Amazon. "I never like to see innocent, dumb brutes killed. Cap'n Hicks--he was a young man in them days, and boastful--cursed the mess it made, yanked off the bird's head, so's to have the beautiful pink beak of it made into the head of a walking-stick, and ordered Tony to throw the carca.s.s overboard and clean up the deck. I went to the wheel in his stead, with Jim Ledward.

Jim says to me: 'Am'zon, that bird'll foller us. Can't git rid of it so easy as _that_.'

"I thought he was crazy," went on Cap'n Amazon, shaking his head. "I wasn't projectin' much about superst.i.tions. No, ma'am! We had all we could do--the two of us--handlin' the wheel with them old graybacks huntin' us. Them old he waves hunt in droves mostly, and when one did board us we couldn't scarce get clear of the wash of it before another would rise right up over our rail and fill the waist, or mebbe sweep ev'rything clean from starn to bowsprit.

"It was sundown (only we hadn't seen no sun in a week) when that albatross was killed and hove overboard. At four bells of the mornin'

watch one o' them big waves come inboard. It washed everything that wasn't lashed into the scuppers and took one of our smartest men overboard with it. But there, floatin' in the wash it left behind, was the dead albatross!"

"Oh, how terrible!" murmured Mrs. Conroth, watching Cap'n Amazon much as a charmed bird is said to watch a snake.

"Yes, ma'am; tough to lose a shipmate like that, I agree. But that was only the beginning. Cap'n Hicks pitched the thing overboard himself.

Couldn't ha' got one of the men, mebbe, to touch it. Jim Ledward says: 'Skipper, ye make nothin' by that. It's too late. Bad luck's boarded us.'

"And sure 'nough it had," sighed Cap'n Amazon, as though reflecting.

"You never did see such a time as we had in gettin' round the Cape.

And we got it good in the roarin' forties, too--hail, sleet, snow, rain, and lightnin' all mixed, and the sea a reg'lar h.e.l.l's broth all the time."

"I beg of you, sir," breathed the lady, shuddering again. Cap'n Amazon, enthralled by his own narrative, steamed ahead without noticing her shocked expression.

"One hurricane on top of another--that's what we got. We lost four men overboard, includin' the third officer, one time and another. I was knocked down myself and got a broken arm--had it in a sling nine weeks.

We got fever in a port that hadn't had such an epidemic in six months, and seven of the crew had to be took ash.o.r.e.

"Bad luck dogged us and the ship. Only, it never touched the skipper or Tony Spadello--the only two that had handled the albatross. That is, not as far as I know. Last time I see Cappy Hicks he was carryin'

his cane with the albatross beak for a handle; and Tony Spadello has made a barrel of money keeping shop on the Bedford docks.

"But birds have an influence in the world, I take it, like other folks.

You wouldn't think, ma'am, how much store my brother Abe sets by old Jerry yonder."

Aunt Euphemia jumped up with an exclamation of relief. "Louise!" she uttered as she saw the girl, amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes, standing in the doorway.

CHAPTER XIII

WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY

"I do not see how you can endure it, Louise! He is impossible--quite impossible! I never knew your tastes were low!"

Critical to the tips of her trembling fingers, Aunt Euphemia sat stiffly upright in Louise's bedroom rocking chair and uttered this harsh reflection upon her niece's good taste. Louise never remembered having seen her aunt so angry before. But she was provoked herself, and her determination to go her own way and spend her summer as she chose stiffened under the lash of the lady's criticism.

"What will our friends think of you?" demanded Mrs. Conroth. "I am horrified to have them know you ever remained overnight in such a place.

There are the Perritons. They were on the train with me coming down from Boston. They are opening their house here at what they call The Beaches--one of the most exclusive colonies on the coast, I understand.

They insisted upon my coming there at once, and I have promised to bring you with me."