Little Bobtail Part 6

If the yacht went so fast with only her main-sail, what would she not do with her jib also? The young skipper was determined to test the question, and, lashing the helm, he hoisted her headsail. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the sail by the sheets which led aft, the yacht increased her speed, and tossed the water over her boughs at a fearful rate; but Little Bobtail had closed the fore scuttle, and he let it toss. It was wild excitement to him, and he enjoyed it to the utmost. In two hours he was approaching the Spindles off the Point, where he deemed it prudent to take in the jib; but the wind was not so fresh in sh.o.r.e, and he went up the harbor quite leisurely. He had time to think again; and a disagreeable consideration was forced upon him, as he heard the clock of the Baptist Church strike one.

He was in Camden harbor; he must come to anchor; and the next morning everybody would wonder what boat the stranger was. The boatmen and b.u.mmers about town would board her, and want to know what those boxes contained. Little Bobtail was worried; but it was high tide, and he anch.o.r.ed close up to the rocks in front of the cottage. He was not willing to "face the music" the next day, and he was determined to get rid of the boxes, even if he threw them overboard. Landing in the old boat, he went up to the cottage. Ezekiel was in a drunken sleep in his chamber. Nothing could wake him, as he knew from former experience, when he was in this condition. He went up stairs to his own chamber. The cottage was a one-story building, with two rooms finished in the middle of the roof. On each side of these chambers there was a s.p.a.ce for old rubbish, which no one ever explored. The young skipper decided, after a careful examination of the premises, to store the boxes in these s.p.a.ces.

To will was to do with him, and he went to work at once.

In a couple of hours he had conveyed the twenty boxes from the boat, and packed them away in these lumber-holes, and covered them with old traps, so that even his mother would not suspect their presence in the house.

Having done all this, he sailed the yacht out into the deep water near the Portland Pier, where he anch.o.r.ed her. Tired out after the long day and the long night, he stretched himself on one of the transoms, and went to sleep.

CHAPTER V.

MONKEY.

Little Bobtail slept as soundly on the transom of the yacht as Ezekiel Taylor did in the cottage; and, as he did not retire till after three in the morning, he did not turn out till nine. He had worked all day and nearly all night, and he was very tired. While he was slumbering soundly in the cabin, many an eye was directed from the sh.o.r.e, and from the boats and vessels in the harbor, at the trim and janty yacht which had come in during the night. She was not there the evening before, and she was there now. Scores of boatmen asked what she was and where she came from; but no one could answer. No one had seen her before, and all were confident that she did not belong anywhere in the bay. The gossips concluded that she was a yacht from Boston or Portland, with a party on board; and, as she had come in during the night, they supposed her crew were making up for lost time in the matter of sleep. Those who were out in boats, though they sailed around the stranger and examined her carefully, were considerate enough not to go on board of her, and thus waken the tired sleepers.

So Little Bobtail was permitted to finish his nap in peace. The clock on the Baptist Church was striking nine when he woke. He leaped upon the cabin floor with a start when he saw the sunlight streaming in through the round port-holes in the trunk. He had no toilet to make, for he had turned in without removing even his shoes; and, putting on his cap, he was ready for business at once, though he did wash his face and hands, and comb his hair, when a wash-basin at the forward part of the cabin suggested these operations to him. He had an opportunity to see the yacht now by daylight, and his previous impressions of her were more than confirmed. She was even trimmer and more janty than he had supposed.

The experience of the preceding night seemed to him very like a dream.

He went on deck, and examined with a critical eye the standing and running rigging, than which nothing could be neater or better. The old tub in which he had been blown off the day before was anch.o.r.ed near her, with a slack line from her stern to the yacht, as he had left her. The dingy old craft looked so mean and insignificant compared with the yacht, that the contrast put him almost out of conceit with the brilliant plan he had considered to purchase the former. He was rather doubtful whether he should be willing to invest the ten dollars--if he should obtain it--in such an enterprise.

Just then it occurred to him that he did not even know the name of the yacht. He walked out on the foot-rope at the end of the main boom, in order to see if it was painted on the stern. There it was--SKYLARK; only this, and nothing more. The port from which she hailed was not there.

Skylark was a very good name, though it was not particularly appropriate for a thing that was to sail on the water, and not in the air. But "skylarking" was a term applied to frolicking, to rude play; and in this sense "Skylark" was entirely proper. On the whole, he did not object to the name, and would not if the owner had appeared at that moment and made him a present of her. He was entirely satisfied both with the yacht and her name; and, having completed his survey by daylight, he again pondered the subject of smuggling in a general way, and then in its relations to the incidents of the previous night. No higher views, no better resolutions, came to him. The contraband cargo was safe under the eaves of the cottage, where no one would be likely to find it; though he could not help thinking what a disaster it would be if Ezekiel should happen to discover those boxes, which doubtless contained liquor enough to keep him drunk for a whole year.

Turning away from the great moral question which confronted him, Little Bobtail began to feel--distinctly to feel, rather than to think--that it was about breakfast time. He went forward and removed the scuttle from over the cook-room. Jumping down into the little apartment, he made a fire in the stove, and put on the tea-kettle. While it was warming up, he went on deck again, for he heard the dip of a pair of oars near the yacht.

"Hullo, Monkey!" he shouted, as he recognized the occupant of a dilapidated old dory, who was taking a leisurely survey of the trim yacht.

"Hullo, Bob! Is that you?" replied the person in the boat, who was a boy of about the age of Little Bobtail, though not half so handsome.

Robert had called him "Monkey," and it was not difficult to determine where he had obtained his sobriquet, for, looking at the youth, Darwinism seemed to be made easy, without distorting either facts or logic. In his case, no long ages appeared to have elapsed between the monkey and the man, and the transition seemed to have been easy and natural. In a word, he looked like a monkey in the face, while no one could possibly have suspected that he was one. Above his mouth his face abruptly receded, so that the end of his nose was not far from plumb with his lips. In the middle of his forehead the hair seemed to grow down to the bridge of his nose. A stranger, who was not of a melancholy turn of mind, could hardly have refrained from laughing when looking at him for the first time. But Bobtail did not laugh, for Monkey was a friend, and a brother, in the generic sense.

"Come on board, Monkey," added Little Bobtail.

"What boat's this?" asked the representative of Darwinism, as he leaped upon the deck with the painter of the dory in his hand.

"The Skylark," replied Bobtail.

As the new arrival stepped upon the deck of the yacht, he was not unlike the traditional monkey of the circus, for his dress was almost as fantastic as his face. His father, who was a fisherman, had been lost at sea, and his mother was a poor woman, with neither energy nor gumption, who occupied a miserable shanty about a mile from the village, in which hardly a mean dwelling could be found. The woman was believed to be a little "daft," for she always hid herself when any of the town's people appeared near her shanty. She had a garden, in which she raised potatoes and corn, and kept a pig and a cow; and these furnished her subsistence, with the trifle which her son earned by odd jobs. The woman's name was Nancy Monk, and her boy's was Peter Monk, though certainly the surname was not needed to suggest the nickname by which he was universally called.

Of course Peter Monk's unfortunate affinity to the ape subjected him to no little annoyance from the sneers and insults of other boys, whose sense of decency was below their sense of the ludicrous.

Though Peter was, in the main, a good-natured fellow, there was a point of endurance beyond which he was not proof against the coa.r.s.e jeers of his companions; and more than once Little Bobtail had been his protector when borne under by the force of numbers; for our hero had a hard fist as well as a kind heart. So Monkey was his friend for life, not so much because Bobtail had fought his battles, as because he treated him well, and made more of him than any one else did.

"Never heard of the Skylark before," said the visitor. "Where does she come from?"

"I don't know."

"Who owns her?"

"I don't know."

"Where does she belong?"

"I don't know."

"O, you don't?" grinned Monkey, exhibiting another affinity to the origin of the race.

"No, I don't."

"Where are the folks that belong to her?"

"I don't know."

"What you doing on board of her, Bob?"

"I'm looking out for her till somebody comes who has a better right to do so."

"How come she here?"

"I brought her here."

"Where from?"

"Blank Island."

"n.o.body lives there."

"I know it."

And Little Bobtail smiled at the perplexity of the visitor.

"Well, then, how come she over there, where n.o.body don't live?"

"I picked her up adrift."

"O, you did--did you?"

"I did. But come below; I want to get my breakfast," added Bobtail, as he led the way down into the cabin.

Monkey stared, and exclaimed as he viewed the comfortable, and even luxurious, furnishings of the yacht. He asked a thousand questions which Bobtail could not answer, and a thousand more which he did answer.

"Have you been to breakfast, Monkey?" asked Bobtail, as he seated himself before the stove in the cook-room, while the guest remained at the door in the cabin.

"Yes, I had something," replied Monkey, glancing at the leg of bacon.

The host knew very well that Monkey did not live much better at home than the pigs in the sty of the first-cla.s.s farmer; that he was always a hungry waif, who could make a meal at any time. He resolved to give his visitor a treat on the present occasion; and he antic.i.p.ated his own breakfast with double pleasure when he thought of the satisfaction which the meal would give his companion.