The Skipper and the Skipped Part 37

"Will he go?" asked Cap'n Sproul, anxiously.

"He will," declared Hiram, with conviction. "A free trip combined with a chance of perhaps doin' over again such an easy thing as you seem to be won't ever be turned down by Colonel Gideon Ward."

At nine o'clock that evening Cap'n Sproul knocked at Hiram Look's front door and stumped in eagerly. "He'll go!" he reported. "Now let me in on full details of plan."

"Details of plan will be handed to you from time to time as you need 'em in your business," said Hiram, firmly. "I don't dare to load you.

Your trigger acts too quick."

"For a man that is handlin' Bodge, and is payin' all the bills, I don't seem to have much to do with this thing," grunted the Cap'n, sullenly.

"I'll give you something to do. To-morrow you go round town and hire half a dozen men--say, Jackson Denslow, Zeburee Nute, Brad Wade, Seth Swanton, Ferd Parrott, and Ludelphus Murray. Be sure they're all members of the Ancient and Honorable Firemen's a.s.sociation."

"Hire 'em for what?"

"Treasure-huntin' crew. I'll go with you. I'm their foreman, and I can make them keep their mouths shut. I'll show you later why we'll need just those kind of men."

The Cap'n took these orders with dogged resignation.

"Next day you'll start with Bodge and charter a packet in Portland for a pleasure cruise--you needin' a sniff of salt air after bein'

cooped up on sh.o.r.e for so long. Report when ready, and I'll come along with men and esteemed relative."

"It sounds almighty complicated for a plot," said the Cap'n. In his heart he resented Hiram's masterfulness and his secretiveness.

"This ain't no timber-land deal," retorted Hiram, smartly, and with cutting sarcasm. "You may know how to sail a ship and lick Portygee sailors, but there's some things that you can afford to take advice in."

On the second day Cap'n Sproul departed un.o.btrusively from Smyrna, with the radiant Mr. Bodge in a new suit of ready-made clothes as his seat-mate in the train.

Smyrna perked up and goggled its astonishment when Hiram Look shipped his pet elephant, Imogene, by freight in a cattle-car, and followed by next train accompanied by various tight-mouthed members of the Smyrna fire department and Colonel Gideon Ward.

Cap'n Sproul had the topmast schooner _Aurilla P. Dobson_ handily docked at Commercial Wharf, and received his crew and brother-in-law with cordiality that changed to lowering gloom when Hiram followed ten minutes later towing the placid Imogene, and followed by a wondering concourse of men and boys whom his triumphal parade through the streets from the freight-station had attracted. With a nimbleness acquired in years of touring the elephant came on board.

Cap'n Sproul gazed for a time on this unwieldy pa.s.senger, surveying the arrival of various drays laden with tackle, shovels, mysterious boxes, and baled hay, and then took Hiram aside, deep discontent wrinkling his forehead.

"I know pretty well why you wanted Gid Ward along on the trip. I've got sort of a dim idea why you invited the Hecly fire department; and perhaps you know what we're goin' to do with all that dunnage on them trucks. But what in the devil you're goin' to do with that cust-fired old elephant--and she advertisin' this thing to the four corners of G.o.d's creation--well, it's got my top-riggin' snarled."

"Sooner you get your crew to work loadin', sooner you'll get away from sa.s.sy questions," replied Hiram, serenely, wagging his head at the intrusive crowd ma.s.sing along the dock's edge. And the Cap'n, impressed by the logic of the advice, and stung by the manner in which Hiram had emphasized "sa.s.sy questions," pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes, and became for once more in his life the autocrat of the quarter-deck.

An hour later the packet was sluggishly b.u.t.ting waves with her blunt bows in the lower harbor, Cap'n Sproul hanging to the weather-worn wheel, and roaring perfectly awful profanity at the clumsy attempts of his makeshift crew.

"I've gone to sea with most everything in the line of cat-meat on two legs," he snarled to Hiram, who leaned against the rail puffing at a long cigar with deep content, "but I'll be billy-hooed if I ever saw six men before who pulled on the wrong rope every time, and pulled the wrong way on every wrong rope. You take them and--and that elephant," he added, grimly returning to that point of dispute, "and we've got an outfit that I'm ashamed to have the Atlantic Ocean see me in company with."

"Don't let that elephant fuss you up," said Hiram, complacently regarding Imogene couched in the waist.

"But there ain't northin' sensible you can do with her."

Hiram c.o.c.ked his cigar pertly.

"A remark, Cap'n Sproul, that shows you need a general manager with foresight like me. When you get to hoistin' dirt in buckets she'll be worth a hundred dollars an hour, and beat any steam-winch ever operated."

Again the Cap'n felt resentment boil sourly within him. This doling of plans and plot to him seemed to be a reflection on his intelligence.

"Reckon it's buried deep, do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, his eyes straight ahead.

"It's buried deep," said Hiram, with conviction. "It's buried deep, because there's a lot of it, and it was worth while to bury it deep.

A man like Cap Kidd wa'n't scoopin' out a ten-foot hole and buryin'

a million dollars and goin' off and leavin' it to be pulled like a pa'snip by the first comer."

"A million dollars!" echoed the Colonel.

"Northin' less! History says it. There was a lot of money flyin'

around the world in them days, and Cap Kidd knew how to get holt of it. The trouble is with people, Colonel, they forget that there was a lot of gold in the world before the 'Forty-niners' got busy."

"But Bodge," snorted the Colonel. "He--"

"Certain men for certain things," declared Hiram, firmly. "Most every genius is more or less a lunatic. It needed capital to develop Bodge. It's takin' capital to make Bodge and his idea worth anything.

This is straight business run on business principles! Bodge is like one of them dirt buckets, like a piece of tackle, like Imogene there.

He's capitalized."

"Well, he gets his share, don't he?" asked Colonel Ward, his business instinct at the fore.

"Not by a blame sight," declared Hiram, to the Cap'n's astonished alarm. "It would be like givin' a dirt bucket or that elephant a share."

When the Cap'n was about to expostulate, Hiram kicked him un.o.bserved and went on: "I'm bein' confidential with you, Colonel, because you're one of the family, and of course are interested in seein' your brother-in-law make good. Who is takin' all the resks? The Cap'n.

Bodge is only a hired man. The Cap'n takes all profits. That's business. But of course it's between us."

When Colonel Ward strolled away in meditative mood the Cap'n made indignant remonstrance.

"Ain't I got trouble enough on my hands with them six Durham steers forrads to manage without gettin' into a free fight with old Bodge?"

he demanded. "There ain't any treasure, anyway. You don't believe it any more'n I do."

"You're right!" a.s.sented Hiram.

"But Bodge believes it, and when it gets to him that' we're goin'

to do him, you can't handle him any more'n you could a wild hyeny!"

"When you hollered for my help in this thing," said the old showman, boring the Cap'n with inexorable eye, "you admitted that you were no good on complicated plots, and put everything into my hands. It will stay in my hands, and I don't want any advice. Any time you want to operate by yourself put me and Imogene ash.o.r.e and operate."

For the next twenty-four hours the affairs of the _Aurilla P. Dobson_ were administered without unnecessary conversations between the princ.i.p.als.

On the afternoon of the second day Mr. Bodge, whom no solicitation could coax from his vigil on the capstan, broke his trance.

"That's the island," he shouted, flapping both hands to mark his choice. It wasn't an impressive islet. There were a few acres of sand, some scraggy spruces, and a thrusting of ledge.

Mr. Bodge was the first man into the yawl, sat in its bow, his head projected forward like a whiskered figurehead, and was the first on the beach.

"He's certainly the spryest peg-legger I ever saw," commented Hiram, admiringly, as the treasure-hunter started away, his cow's-horn divining-rod in position. The members of Hecla fire department, glad to feel land under their country feet once more, capered about on the beach, surveying the limited attractions with curious eyes.

Zeburee Nute, gathering seaweed to carry home to his wife, stripped the surface of a bowlder, and called excited attention to an anchor and a cross rudely hacked into the stone.