Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 27

But he did not say this where Captain Latham could hear. It was Horry Newbegin who heard him.

"It strikes me, young feller, that if I quarreled with my victuals and drink the way you do, I'd get me another berth and get shet of all this." And the old salt wagged his head. "I don't get you at all, 'Rion."

"You wait," growled the younger man. "I'll leave at the right time.

And if things go as I expect, everybody else will leave him flat, too."

"You're taking a chance talking that way," admonished the old man.

"It's just as much mutiny as though you turned and hit the skipper or the mate."

"It is, is it? I'll show him!"

"Show who?" asked Horry, in some wonder at the other's spitefulness.

"That dratted cousin of mine. Thinks he owns the earth and sea, as well as this hoodooed tub of a schooner. Gets the best of everything. But he won't always. He never ought to have got the money to buy this old tub."

"You said you wouldn't have her for a gift," chuckled the old man.

"But that don't make it any the more right that he should have her.

And she is hoodooed. You know she is, Horry."

The old mariner was silent. 'Rion craftily went on:

"Look what a number of things have happened since he put this derned schooner into commission. We broke an anchor chain in Paulmouth Harbor, didn't we? And the old mud hook lies there to this day. Did you ever see so many halyards snap in your life, and in just a capful of wind? Didn't we have a tops'l carried away--clean--in that squall off Swampscott? And now the hands are leaving her."

"Guess you know something about that," growled Horry.

'Rion grinned.

"Maybe I do. I don't say 'no' and I don't say 'yes.' However, we've all got to work like dogs to make up for being short-handed."

"n.o.body is kicking much but you," said the older man.

"That's all right. I've got pluck enough not to stand being imposed upon. Them Portygees--well, there's no figuring on what they will do."

"I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise trouble," Newbegin said, shaking his head once more.

"What do you expect? You know the _Seamew_ is hoodooed. Huh!

_Seamew_! That ain't no more her rightful name than it is mine."

"I wouldn't say that."

"I would!" snapped 'Rion. "She's the _Marlin B._, out o' Salem. No matter what he says, or anybody else. She's the murder ship. If he sailed her over that place outside o' Salem Harbor where those poor fellows was drowned, they'd rise again and curse the schooner and all aboard her."

The old man shuddered. He turned his face away and spat reflectively over the rail. The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost electric shock. 'Rion watched him slyly. He knew the impression he was making on the old man's superst.i.tious mind. He played upon it as he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen.

So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm frame of mind. Although he had no words with 'Rion, and really no trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing.

And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to avert.

It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even from the offscourings of the docks. It was a time when dock labor was at a premium. And short voyages never did interest good sailormen. In addition, knowing that the _Seamew_ sailed from her home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end.

These men wondered about Captain Latham, too. They judged that infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with the schooner. He was, perhaps, a driver--too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed answers--and answers from those members of the _Seamew's_ crew who were not friendly to the skipper.

In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the _Seamew_ was haunted. If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her--either for'ard or in the afterguard--for all time. In consequence of this the only man who applied for the empty berth aboard the _Seamew_ was more than a little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him come over the rail.

Nor could the young shipmaster give much time to looking up hands.

He had freight ready for his return trip. It must be got aboard, stowed properly, and advantage taken of the tide and a fair wind to get back to the Cape. He had not been in the habit of going up into the city at all of late. If that girl behind the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl's had expected to see Tunis Latham again, she had been disappointed. Her warm invitation to him to call on her--possibly to take her again to lunch--had borne only Dead Sea fruit. He had accepted her decision regarding the b.a.l.l.s and Cape Cod as final and irrevocable. At least, he had had no intention of ever going back and discussing the suggestion again.

The possibility of the real Ida May Bostwick changing her mind and reconsidering her refusal to communicate with the b.a.l.l.s or visit Wreckers' Head never once entered Tunis' mind, if it had Sheila Macklin's. He had seen how scornfully the cheap little shop-girl had refused the kind offer extended to her by her old relatives. He could not have imagined her thinking of the old people and their home and Big Wreck Cove in any different way.

He was quite right in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the slave of a pair of old fogies.

Not for her! She would not think of it. Indeed, this phase of the offer Tunis had brought her really made Ida May Bostwick angry. What did he think she was, anyway? In fact, she was inclined to think that that seafaring person had almost insulted her. Although she had deliberately spoken of him as her "Cousin Tunis" to the girls who were her confidantes in the store and to her landlady, who was likewise curious about him, Ida May Bostwick was much pleased by the thought of him.

Then she began to compare Tunis with the young men she knew in Boston. She knew that the young men she got acquainted with were either very light minded or downright objectionable. If any of them contemplated marriage at all, they knew it could not be undertaken upon the meager salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork, with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light housekeeping.

Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered these all-too-evident facts. She said:

"I bet _that_ fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace counter and take the sa.s.s of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my claws on him again--"

Just what she might do to Tunis under those circ.u.mstances she did not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's.

It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be.

But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives down on the Cape.

Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed "soft" and "easy."

"A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My goodness! Why not?

"There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they are sick. Ma was _awful_. I can remember it. And there was pa, when he was cripped with rheumatism before he died."

This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind--or tried to. Yet that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls had come back and related all their adventures--those that had actually happened and those that they had imagined.

"Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked.

At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape."

"You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss Leary.

"I know you _said_ he took you there."

"Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin--of course, not too close."

And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding."

"I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary.

Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed.

"I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole."