Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper Part 43

"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt Baker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?"

"Yep."

"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup, she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."

"So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I speak of turned pirates, and they held me--the only one of the afterguard left alive--to navigate the ship.

"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the _Galatea_?" went on the narrator unblushingly.

His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it--yes. But you don't mean to say you sailed on _her_, Am'zon?"

"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her--she carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn--a hermaphrodite brig she was; and--she--could--sail!

"But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin'

smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.

"They was a hard crew I allow--them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might say.

"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin'

aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast. _They_ lived well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck.

"I got knocked out first thing--there's the scar of it," and the captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child.

"Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin'

down from N'York.

"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard, they begun to see they needed me to navigate the _Galatea_. They give me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator--the b.l.o.o.d.y crew o' pirates!"

"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.

"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our first prize--an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para all right, I heard afterward.

"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we looted her of everything wuth while. Then----"

The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky, half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:

"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"

"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.

"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin'

spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."

"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for the door.

The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all directions were the neighbors--both men and women. The possibility of a wreck--the great tragedy of long-sh.o.r.e existence--would bring everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.

He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat b.u.t.toned tightly across her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already halfway to the sh.o.r.e. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the motion picture company were running excitedly about.

"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder where that schooner is."

He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers high upon the strand.

But suddenly the man remembered that he was _not_ Cap'n Abe! He stood here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the rough and ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had tamely kept store on the Sh.e.l.l Road for twenty-odd years.

What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from the scene of excitement at such a time? He turned back into the store for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door. Then he shuffled down the road.

At first he closed his eyes--squeezing the lids tight so as not to see the gale-ridden sea. But finally, stumbling, he opened them. Far away where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses, their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale. Black was the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.

Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks. A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ash.o.r.e the open sea and what swam on it.

The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Sh.e.l.l Road. Scattered in groups along the strand were the people of all cla.s.ses and degrees brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril. Here a group of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened down upon their heads. Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the possibility of making a film of the scene. Farther away huddled a party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and children at their skirts. Beyond them the people from the cottages on the bluff were hurrying to the spot--women in silk attire and men in the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear.

The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this. He stood squarely up to the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand. With his other hand he stroked the scar along his jaw. He had a feeling that he had been cheated. That story of the mutiny of the _Galatea_ was destined to be one of his very best narratives.

He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe. He had heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own. He could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it.

And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a narrative. Cap'n Abe did not like it.

His keen vision swept the outlook once more. How darkly the clouds lowered! And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut shrewdly. It would be a wild night. Casually he thought of his cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all.

"Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't at sea in a blow like this."

It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing. Her poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging.

She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that rolled in from the horizon line. Now and then a curling wave-crest hid even her topmasts. Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks shrouded her.

For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks. Unless the wind shifted--and that soon--she must batter her hull to bits upon the reef.

The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation. When the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion, it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four hours' duration.

"She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly.

The might of the sea made him tremble. The thought of what was about to happen to the schooner--a fate that naught could avert--sickened him. Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers, the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred.

CHAPTER x.x.x

WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT

It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches.

Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening--was leaving lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with her. But on that point Louise had been firm.

"No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said. "I shall wait for daddy-prof and the _Curlew_ to arrive at Boston. Then I shall either go there to meet him, or he will come here. I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married."

"Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror. "How can you say such a thing!"