Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 26

The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no longer occupied. It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney with a cap to keep the rain out. The window sashes had been carried away and the door hung by a single hinge. However, the one-roomed cabin was otherwise tight and dry.

"Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp for a day or two," explained Tunis. "But Hosea Westcott used to live here altogether. Even in the winter. He caught his own fish and split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold them in town, or swapped them for what he needed. Sometimes the neighbors gave him a day's work."

"An old and lonely man, Tunis?" the girl murmured.

"That is what he was. All his immediate family was gone. So, when he fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm."

They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach toward the port. Before they reached the path by which they intended to mount to the summit of Wreckers' Head, they observed another couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water on the firm strand. The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues that she could be mistaken for n.o.body but a resident of Portygee Town.

"That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you came here, Ida May," said Tunis carelessly.

"But do you see who the man is?" she said, with some surprise. "It is your cousin."

"'Rion? So it is. Well," he added rather scornfully, "no accounting for tastes. She's a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don't mix much with the Portygees. Although most of them are all right folks, at that. But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble, as 'Rion ought to know by this time."

As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again.

The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead.

The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held:

"I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled Above the green elms that a cottage was near; And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world, A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'"

"That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?"

"It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart _is_ humble, Tunis. I feel that G.o.d has been very good to me--and you," she added softly.

"I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a one. I--I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward."

"Tunis!"

He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes.

"You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the _Seamew_ eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk to you like this. But--but I can't wait any longer!"

She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again.

"Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked.

"You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else--not since the first time I saw you."

"What? You felt--felt that you could like me that night when we sat on the bench so long on the Common?"

"My G.o.dfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the world!"

"Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?"

"I certainly do," he said stoutly.

"That--that you thought _that_? At very first sight?"

"I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream.

Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I half believed it must be you that they sent me for--until I came face to face with that other girl."

Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him pa.s.sed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He would have drawn her closer.

"Not here, Tunis," she whispered. "But if you dare take me--knowing what and who I am--I am all yours. Whenever you feel that you can take me I shall be ready. Can I say more, Tunis?"

He looked at her solemnly. "I am the happiest man alive. I am the happiest man alive, Ida May!" he breathed.

CHAPTER XVIII

IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER

The _Seamew_ sailed next day, short-handed. Not only had Tony, the boy, left, but one of the foremast hands did not put in an appearance. A grinning Portygee boy came to the wharf and announced that "Paul, he iss ver' seek."

Tunis knew it would be useless to go after the man, just as it had been useless to go after Tony. He had been unable to ship another boy in Tony's place, and when he let it be known among the dock laborers and loungers about Luiz Wharf that there was a berth open in the _Seamew's_ forecastle, n.o.body applied for it.

"What is the matter with those fellows?" the skipper asked Mason Chapin. "They were tumbling over each other a few weeks ago to join us, and now there isn't an offer."

"Some Portygee foolishness," grumbled the mate.

"I wonder," muttered Tunis.

"You wonder if it's so?" queried the mate. "You know how silly these people are once they get a crazy notion in their heads."

"What's the crazy notion, Mr. Chapin?"

The mate flung up his hands and shrugged his shoulders.

"A haunt--a jinx--_something_. The Lord knows!"

"I wonder if it is a Portygee notion or something else," said Tunis Latham, his eyes fixed on the back of Orion, busy, for once, at the other rail.

"Whatever it is, Captain Latham," said Mason Chapin with gravity, "I suggest you fill your berths at Boston."

"Guess I'll have to. But the offscourings of the city docks! They will be worse than these Portygees."

It was not a prospect he welcomed. He well knew the sort of dock rats he must put up with if he wished to make up his crew with city hands for a short trip. The sea tramps who are within reach of coasting skippers are the same kind of worthless material that shiftless farmers must depend upon in harvest time.

Even the lack of one man forward, to say nothing of the cook's boy, made a considerable difference in the working of the schooner. 'Rion Latham loudly proclaimed that he was being imposed upon when he was forced to work with the captain's watch. He had shipped as supercargo and clerk, he had! This treatment was an imposition.

"You know what you can do about it, 'Rion, if you like," the skipper said to him calmly, but aside. "I wouldn't want to feel that I was holding you to a job that you did not like. You can leave the _Seamew_ any time you want."

"Huh! The rats will be doing that soon enough," growled 'Rion.