Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 2

"Ye-as. That's what Sutro Brothers says," and the old man wagged his head doubtfully. "But there's just as much difference in ships, as there is in men. Ain't never been two men just per_zact_-ly alike.

No two craft ever sailed or steered same as same, Captain Tunis. I steered the _Martin B._ out o' Salem on her second trip, without knowing what she'd been through, you can believe, on her first."

"Well, well!" Tunis broke in sharply. "Just keep your mind on what you are doing now, Horry. You're supposed to be steering the _Seamew_ into Big Wreck Cove. Don't undertake to shave a piece off the Lighthouse Point reef."

The steersman did not answer. From long experience with these Lathams, Horace Newbegin knew just how much interference or advice they would stand.

"And, by gum, that ain't much!" he growled to himself.

He took the beautifully sailing schooner in through the channel in a masterly manner. He knew that more ancient skippers than Cap'n Ira Ball, up there on Wreckers' Head, would be watching the _Seamew_ make the cove, and old Horry Newbegin wanted them to say it was well done.

Half an hour later the anchor was dropped fifty yards off Portygee Town. Captain Tunis ordered the gig lowered to take him ash.o.r.e and, after giving the mate some instructions regarding stowage and the men's sh.o.r.e leave, he was rowed over to Luiz Wharf. 'Rion Latham, a red-headed, pimply faced young man, sidled up to Horace Newbegin.

"Well, what do you think of the hoodoo ship, Horrors?" he hoa.r.s.ely whispered.

Newbegin stared at him unwaveringly, and the red-haired one repeated the question. The old salt finally batted one eye, slowly and impressively.

"D'you know what answer the little boy got that asked the quahog the time o' day?" he drawled. "Not a word. Not a derned word, 'Rion."

Landing at the fish wharf, Tunis Latham walked up the straggling street of the district inhabited for the most part by smiling brown men and women. Fayal and Cape Cod are strangely a.n.a.logous, especially upon a summer's day. The houses he pa.s.sed had one room; they were little more than shacks. But there were gay colors everywhere in the dress of both men and women. It was believed that these Portygee fishermen would have their seines dyed red and yellow if the fish would swim into them.

A young woman sitting upon a doorstep, nursing a little, bald, brown-headed baby, dropped a gay handkerchief over her bared bosom but nodded and smiled at the captain of the _Seamew_ with right good fellowship. He knew all these people, and most of them, the young women at least, admired Tunis; but he was too self-centered and busied with his own thoughts and affairs to comprehend this.

At the corner of one of the houses a girl stood--a tall, lean-flanked, but deep-bosomed creature, as graceful as a well-grown sapling. Her calico frock clung to the lines of her matured figure as though she had just stepped up out of the sea itself. Around her head she had banded a crimson bandanna, but it allowed the escape of glossy black hair that waved prettily. Her lips were as red as poppies, full, voluptuous; her eyes were sloe-black and as soft as a cow's. Fortunately for the languishing girl's peace of mind--she had placed herself there at the corner of the house to wait for Tunis since the moment the _Seamew_ had dropped anchor--she did not know that the young captain had noticed her only as "that cow" as he swung by on his way to the road that wound up the slope of Wreckers'

Head.

Neither Eunez Pareta--nor any other girl of the port, Portygee or Yankee--had ever made Tunis Latham's heart flutter. He was not impervious to the blandishments of all feminine beauty. As Cap'n Ira Ball would have said, Tunis was "a general admirer of the sect." And as the young man pa.s.sed the languishing Eunez with a cheerful nod and smile there flashed into his memory an entirely different picture, but one of a girl nevertheless. Somehow the memory of that girl in Scollay Square kept coming back to his mind.

He had gone up by train for the _Seamew_ and her crew, and naturally he had spent one night in Boston. Coming up out of the North End after a late supper, he had stopped upon one side of the square to watch the pa.s.sing throng, some hurrying home from work, some hurrying to theaters and other places of amus.e.m.e.nt, but all hurrying. Nowhere did he see the slow, but carrying, stride of a man used to open s.p.a.ces. And the narrow-skirted girls could scarcely hobble.

A narrow skirt, however, had not led Tunis Latham to give particular note to one certain girl in the throng. She had stepped through the door of a cheap but garish restaurant. Somebody had thrown a peeling on the sidewalk, and she had slipped on it. Tunis had leaped and caught her before she measured her length. She looked up into his face with startled, violet eyes that seemed, in that one moment, to hold in them a fascination and power that the Cape man had never dreamed a woman's eyes could possess.

"You're all right, ma'am," he said, confused, setting her firmly on her feet.

"My skirt!" She almost whispered it. There seemed to be not a shyness, but a terrified timidity in her voice and manner. Tunis saw that the shabby skirt was torn widely at the hem.

"Let's go somewhere and get that fixed," he suggested awkwardly.

"Thank you, sir. I will go back into the restaurant. I work there. I can get a pin or two."

He had to let her go, of course. Nor could he follow her. He lacked the boldness that might have led another man to enter the restaurant and order something to eat for the sake of seeing what became of the girl with the violet eyes and colorless velvet cheeks. There had been an appeal in her countenance that called Tunis more and more as he dreamed about her.

And standing there on Scollay Square dreaming about her had done the young captain of the _Seamew_ positively no good! She did not come out again, although he stood there for fully an hour. At the end of that time he strolled up an alley and discovered that there was a side door to the restaurant for the use of employees, and he judged that the girl, seeing him lingering in front, had gone out by this way. It made him flush to his ears when he thought of it. Of course, he had been rude.

Marching up the winding road by the Ball homestead, Tunis Latham revisioned this adventure--and the violet-eyed girl. Well, he probably would never see her again. And in any case she was not the sort of girl that he would ever take home to Aunt Lucretia. He was headed toward home now, to the old brown house in the saucer-like valley some distance beyond Cap'n Ira's.

As he came within hail of the old homestead in which the b.a.l.l.s had been born and had died--if they were not lost at sea--for many generations, the captain of the _Seamew_ became suddenly aware that something was particularly wrong there. He heard somebody shouting.

Was it for help? He hastened his stride.

Quite unexpectedly the hobbling figure of Cap'n Ira appeared in the open barn door. He saw Tunis. He waved his cane in one hand and beckoned wildly with the other. Then he disappeared.

The young captain vaulted the fence and ran across the ill-tended garden adjoining the b.a.l.l.s' side yard. Again he heard Cap'n Ira's hail.

"Come on in here, Tunis!"

"What's the matter, Cap'n Ira?"

"That dratted Queen of Sheby! I knowed she'd be the death of one of us some day. I swan! Tunis Latham, come here! I can't get her out, and you know derned well Prudence can't stand on her head that a way without strangling. Lend us a hand, boy. This is something awful!

Something awful!"

Tunis Latham, much disturbed by the old man's words and excited manner, pushed into the dimly lit interior of the barn.

CHAPTER III

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

The barn was a roomy place, as well built as the Ball house itself, and quite as old. The wagon floor had a wide door, front and rear.

The stables were on either side of this floor and the mows were above. In one mow was a small quant.i.ty of hay and some corn fodder, but the upper reaches were filled only with a brown dusk.

The pale face of a gray mare was visible at the opening over one of the mangers. She was the sole recognized occupant of the stable. In a dark corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover raised and its maw gaping wide. There was something moving there in the murk, something fluttering.

"Come here, boy!" gasped Cap'n Ira, hurrying across the barn door.

"I'm so crippled I can't git her up, and she's dove clean to the lower hold, tryin' to sc.r.a.pe out a capful o' oats for that dratted Queen of Sheby."

"Aunt Prue!" shouted Tunis, reverting to the t.i.tle he had addressed her by in his boyhood. "It's never her?"

A m.u.f.fled voice stammered:

"Get me out! Get me out!"

"Heave hard, Tunis! All together now!" gasped Cap'n Ira, as the younger man reached over the old woman's struggling heels and seized her around the waist.

"Up she comes!" continued the excited old man, as though he were bossing a capstan crew starting one of the _Susan Gatskill's_ anchors.

Tunis Latham set Prudence Ball on her feet, but the old woman was forced to lean against the stalwart young man for a minute. She addressed her husband in some heat.

"Goodness gracious gallop! Why don't you sing a chantey over me, I want to know? You'd think I was a bale of jute being snaked out of a ship's hold. Good land!"

"There, there, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "You're safe, after all! It--it was something awful!"

"I cal'late it was," rejoined the old woman rather bitterly. "And I didn't get them oats, after all."

"I'll 'tend to all that, Aunt Prue," said Tunis.

"If it hadn't been for that dratted Queen of Sheby"--Cap'n Ira glared malevolently at the rather surprised-looking countenance of the gray mare in her box--"you wouldn't have got into that jam."