The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems Part 16

It had become a matter of life and death now to keep afloat, with only one oar to fight the sea with; and, though hoping little from the expedient, in such a gale--blowing the wrong way, besides--Chillis shouted for a.s.sistance in every lull of the tempest. To his own intense astonishment, as well as relief, his hail was answered.

"Where away?" came on the wind, the sound seeming to flap and flutter like a shred of torn sail.

"Off the creek, about a mile?" shouted Chillis, with those powerful lungs of his, that had gotten much of their bellows-like proportions during a dozen years of breathing the thin air of the mountains.

"All right!" was returned on the snapping, fluttering gale. After this answer, Chillis contented himself with keeping his boat right side up, and giving an occasional prolonged "Oh-whoo!" to guide his rescuers through the thickening gloom. How long it seemed, with the growing darkness, and the effort to avoid another upset! But the promised help came at last, in the shape of the mail-carrier's plunger, her trim little mast catching his eyes, shining white and bare out of the dusk.

Directly he heard the voices of the mail-carrier and another.

"Where be ye? _Who_ be ye?"

"Right here, under yer bow. Joe Chillis, you bet your life!"

"Waal, come aboard here, mighty quick. Make fast. Mind your boat; don't let her strike us. Pole off--pole off, with yer oar!"

"Mind _your_ oars," returned Chillis; "I'll mind mine"--every word spoken with a yell.

"What was the row, out there?" asks the mail-carrier, making a trumpet of his hand.

"Boat flopped over; lost an oar," answered Chillis, keeping his little craft from flying on board by main force.

"Guess I won't go over to-night," says the carrier. "'Taint safe for the mail"--The wind s.n.a.t.c.hing the word "mail" out of his mouth, and scattering it over the water as if it had been a broken bundle of letters. "I'll go back to Skippanon"--the letters flying every way again.

"Couldn't get over noways, now," shouts back Chillis, glad in his heart that he could not, and that the chance, or mischance, favored his previous designs. Then he said no more, but watched his boat, warding it off carefully until they reached the mouth of the creek and got inside, with nothing worse to contend against than the insolent wind and rain.

"This is a purty stiff tide, for this time o' day. It won't take long to pull up to Skippanon, with all this water pushin' us along. Goin' home to-night, Joe?"

"Yes, I'm goin' home, ef I can borrer an oar," said Chillis. "My house ain't altogether safe without me, in sech weather as this."

"Safer 'n most houses, ef she don't break away from her moorin's,"

returned the mail-carrier, laughing. "Ef I can git somebody to take my place for a week, I'm comin' up to spend it with you, an' do some shootin'. Nothin' like such an establishment as yours to go huntin'

in--house an' boat all in one--go where you please, an' stay as long as you please."

"Find me an oar to git home with, an' you can come an' stay as long as the grub holds out."

"Waal, I can do that, I guess, when we git to the landin'. I keep an extra pair or two for emergencies. But it's gittin' awful black, Chillis, an' I don't envy you the trip up the creek. It's crooked as a string o' S's, an' full o' shoals, to boot."

"It won't be shoal to-night," remarked Chillis, and relapsed into silence.

In a few minutes the boat's bow touched the bank. "Mind the tiller!"

called out both oarsmen, savagely. But as no one minded it, and it was too dark to see what was the matter, the mail-carrier dropped his oar, and stepped back to the stern to _feel_ what it was.

"He's fast asleep, or drunk, or dead, I don't know which," he called to the other oarsman, as he got hold of the steering gear, and headed the boat up-stream again. His companion made no reply, and the party proceeded in silence to the landing. Here, by dint of much shouting and hallooing, the inmates of a house close by became informed of something unusual outside, and, after a suitable delay, a man appeared, carrying a lantern.

"It's you, is it?" he said to the mail-carrier. "I reckoned you wouldn't cross to-night. Who ye got in there?"

"It's Joe Chillis. We picked him up outside, about a mile off the land.

His boat had been upset, an' he'd lost an oar; an' ef we hadn't gone to his a.s.sistance it would have been the last of old Joe, I guess."

"Hullo, Joe! Why don't you git up?" asked the man, seeing that Chillis did not rise, or change his position.

"By George! I don't know what's the matter with him. Give me the lantern;" and the mail-carrier took the light and flashed it over Chillis's face.

"I don't know whether he's asleep, or has fainted, or what. He's awful white, an' there's an ugly cut in his shoulder, an' his coat all torn away. Must have hurt himself tryin' to right his boat, I guess. George!

the iron on the rowlock must have struck right into the flesh."

"He didn't say he was hurt," rejoined the other oarsman.

"It's like enough he didn't know it," said the man with the lantern.

"When a man's in danger he doesn't feel a hurt. Poor old Joe! he wasn't drunk, or he couldn't have handled his boat at all in this weather. We must take him in, I s'pose."

Then the three men lifted him upon his feet, and, by shaking and talking, aroused him sufficiently to walk with their support to the house. There they laid him on a bench, and brought him a gla.s.s of hot whisky and water; and the women of the house gathered about shyly, gazing compa.s.sionately upon the ugly wound in the old man's delicate white flesh, white and delicate as the fairest woman's.

Presently, Chillis sat up and looked about him. "Have you got me the oars?" he said to the mail-carrier.

"You won't row any more to-night, Joe, _I_ guess," the carrier answered, smiling grimly. "Look at your shoulder, man."

"Shoulder be d----d!" retorted Chillis. "Beg pardon, ladies; I didn't see you. Been asleep, haven't I? Perhaps, sence you seem to think I'm not fit for rowin', one of these ladies will do me the favor to help me put myself in order. Have you a piece of court-plaster, or a healing salve, ma'am?"--to the elder woman. "Ladies mostly keep sech trifles about them, I believe."

Then he straightened himself up to his magnificent height, and threw out his broad, round chest, as if the gash in his shoulder were an epaulet or a band of stars instead.

"Of course, I can do something for you," said the woman he had addressed, very cheerfully and quickly. "I have the best healing salve in all the country;" and, running away, she quickly returned with a roll of linen, and the invaluable salve.

"I must look at the wound, and see if it wants washing out. Ugh! O, dear! it is a dreadful cut, and ragged. You will have to go to the doctor with that, I'm afraid. But I'll just put this on to-night, to prevent your taking cold in it; though you will take cold, anyway, if you do not get a change of clothes;" and the good woman looked round at her husband, asking him with her eyes to offer this very necessary kindness.

"You'll stop with us to-night, Joe," said the man, in answer to this appeal, "an' the sooner you git off them wet clothes the better. I'll lend you some o' mine."

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Chillis, you must get out of these wet things, and put on some of Ben's. Then you will let me get you a bit of hot supper, and go right to bed. You don't look as if you could sit up. There!" she added, as the salve was pressed gently down over the torn flesh, and heaving a deep sigh, "if you feel half as sick as I do, just looking at it, you will do well to get ready to lie down."

"Thankee, ma'am. It's worth a man's while to git hurt a leetle, ef he has a lady to take care o' him," answered Chillis, gallantly. "But I can't accept your kindness any furder to-night. Ef I can git the loan of a lantern an' a pair o' oars, it is all I ask, for home I must go, as soon as possible."

"Ben will lend you a lantern," said the mail-carrier, "an' I will lend you the oars, as I promised; but what on earth you want to go any further in this storm for, beats me."

"This storm has only jist begun, and its goin' to last three days,"

returned Chillis. "No use waitin' for it to quit; so, good-night to you all. I've made a pretty mess o' your floor," he added, turning to glance at the little black puddles that had drained out of his great spongy blanket coat, and run down through his leaky boots on to the white-scoured boards of the kitchen; then, glancing from them to the mistress of the house--"I hope you'll excuse me." And with that he opened the door quickly, and shut himself out into the tempest once more, making his way by the lantern's aid to the boat-house at the landing, where he helped himself to what he needed, and was soon pulling up the creek. Luckily there was no current against him, for it was sickening work making the oar-stroke with that hurt in his shoulder.

He could see by the light of the lantern, which he occasionally held aloft, that the long gra.s.s of the tide-marsh was already completely submerged, the immense flats looking like a sea, with the wind driving the water before it in long rolls, or catching it up and flirting it through the air in spray and foam. His only guide to his course was the scattering line of low willows whose tops still bent and shook above the flood, indicating the slightly raised banks of the creek, everything more distant being hidden in the profound darkness which brooded over and seemed a part of the storm. But even with these landmarks he wandered a good deal in his reckoning, and an hour or more had elapsed before his watchful eyes caught the gleam of what might have been a star reflected in the ocean.

"Thank G.o.d!" he whispered, and pulled a little faster toward that spark of light.

In ten minutes more, he moored his boat to the hitching-post in front of a tiny cottage, from whose uncurtained window the light of a brisk wood-fire was shining. As the chain clanked in the ring, the door opened, and a woman and child looked out.

"Is that you, Eben?" asked the woman, in an eager voice, made husky by previous weeping. "I certainly feared you were drowned." Then seeing, as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, that the figure still lingering about the boat was not her husband's she shrank back, fearing the worst.

"I'm sorry I'm not the one you looked for, Mrs. Smiley," answered Chillis, standing on the bit of portico, with its dripping honeysuckle vines swinging in the wind; "but I'm better than n.o.body, I reckon, an'

Smiley will hardly be home to-night. The bay's awful rough, an' ef I hadn't started over early, I shouldn't have ventured, neither. No, you needn't look for your husband to-night, ma'am."

"Will you not come in by the fire, Mr. Chillis?" asked the woman, hesitatingly, seeing that he seemed waiting to be invited.