Vesty of the Basins Part 32

"Afore I'm took to the dagarrier's?"

"Yes, indeed."

"See here, wife!" said Captain Pharo, completely broken down--for we were all suffering, as usual, from the generic emptiness and craving of our natures for food--"major says 't we're goin' up to git baited, afore I'm took to the dagarrier's."

"I wish 't you could have your picture took jest as you look now, Captain Pharo Kobbe!" exclaimed his wife kindly and admiringly.

At the inn the most conspicuous object in the reception-room was a sink of water, with basins for ablutions.

Captain Pharo waited, visibly holding the leash on his impatience, for a "runner"--or travelling salesman--to complete his bath, when he plunged in gleefully, face and hands. Mrs. Kobbe drew him away with dismay. The paste that had endured the whole sea voyage he had now ruthlessly washed from one side of his head, the locks on the other side still standing out ebullient.

"'M sorry, wife," said the captain. But the captain, smelling the smoke from the kitchen, was not the forlorn companion of our treacherous voyage. "I reckon she'll stan' out ag'in, mebbe," said he, "soon 's she 's dry." But he winked at me with daring inconsequence.

In vain Mrs. Kobbe tried to flay out those locks to their former att.i.tude with the hotel brush and comb, which the runner had finally abandoned.

"Poo! poo! woman, never mind," said the captain; "one side 's fa'r to wind'ard, anyhow. I can have a profiler took, jest showin' one side on me, ye know."

"I didn't want a profiler," lamented Mrs. Kobbe; "I wanted a full-facer."

"Wal, wal, woman, I hain't washed my face off, have I?" said the captain cheerfully, resurrecting his pipe. "Put up them thar' public belayin' pins," he added, referring to the hotel brush and comb, "and don't le's worry 'bout nothin' more, 'long as we're goin' to be baited."

The "runner" meanwhile was looking at us with the pale, scientific interest of one who covets curiosities which he yet dare not approach too intimately.

"Do you smoke before eating, sir?" said he to the captain, at the same time standing off a little way from the elephant.

"Poo! poo!" said Captain Pharo, turning the whole flower indifferently to his questioner, and drawing a match with a slight, genteel uplifting of the leg; "I smoke, as the 'postle says, on all 'ccasions t' all men, in season an' outer season, an' 'specially when I'm a darn min' ter."

The runner, withered, vanquished by horse and foot, thereafter regarded us silently.

At the table I made haste first of all to catch the eye of our waiter, who was also the proprietor of the little inn. I pressed a wordless plea into his hand. "We are eccentric," I murmured in explanation, "and you must look well to our wants."

He winked at me as though we had been life-long cronies. "Eccentric all ye wan' ter," said he, "the more on 'er the better."

I pointed to the captain, who, the table-cloth before him, sat rigid with hunger.

"The ladies will consider the bill of fare," I said, "and request that Captain Kobbe may be first served."

"Which'll ye have--boil' salmon, corn' beef, beef-steak, veal stew, liver an' bacon?" quickly bawled the proprietor into the captain's ear.

"Sartin, sartin, fetch 'em along," said the compliant and nervy captain, "and don't stand thar' no'ratin' about 'em--'ceptin' liver,"

he added. "I hain't got so low down yit 's to eat liver."

The runner, sitting with a few guests at another table, served by the proprietor's daughter, gazed at us with fixed vision, not even having taken up his knife and fork, for that pale, scientific interest which absorbed him.

"I know that squar's are fash'nable," said the captain, taking up the napkin by his plate on the point of his knife and giving it an airy toss into the middle of the table; "but I'd ruther have the sea-room.

Is your mess all fillers to-day, or have ye got some wrappers?"

"Wrappers? Oh, certainly--doughnuts, mince pie, apple pie, an' rhubub pie."

"Sartin, sartin; fetch 'em along. I'll try a double decker o'

rhubub--I'm ruther partial to 'er. Fetch 'em all in: all'as survey yer country, ye know, afore ye lays yer turnpike. F'r all these favors, O Lord, make us duly thankful. Touch-and-go is a good pilot," mumbled the captain in a religious monotone, and began.

From this time on our table fairly scintillated with mirth and good cheer, in the midst of which, his first hunger appeased, the captain's resonant tones were frequently heard pealing through the dining-room, singing, as if particularly, it seemed, to the edification of the pale runner, that "His days were as the gra.s.s, or as the morning flower."

I observed how Mrs. Kobbe and Miss Pray now and then warily conveyed a "doughnut" from the table to their pockets, with an air of dark declension from the moral laws. Having filled their own receptacles, they whispered me an entreaty to do the same, as we might be late with the tide and hungry on our way home. I complied in this, as in every case, gallantly; but in my very first essay was detected by the proprietor with a large edible of this description half-way to my trousers' pocket. He winked unconsciously and obligingly turned his back. Captain Pharo, however, oblivious to sense of guilt, approved my action in clear words: "Tuck in the cheese too, major," said he; "it'll do for the mouse-trap."

I was equally unfortunate when, some time after, in settling for our dinner I drew out first, instead of my purse, the very same fried cake which had formerly betrayed me; and, to add to my discomfiture, Miss Pray and Mrs. Kobbe, who had six of these stolen products each in their capacious pockets, retired into a corner, innocently giggling.

But an unexpected formidable dilemma arose when Captain Pharo, braced up to such a degree by his dinner and his pipe, declared that "He didn't know as he should be took to any dagarrier's, after all! Tide and wind both serve f'r a fa'r sail home," said he, "and I'm a-goin'."

"Not till we've been to a tobacconist's," said I, "anyway."

I purchased a quant.i.ty of smoking tobacco. With this parcel peeping enticingly from my pocket, and with persuasive argument that I could never again leave the Basin without his likeness, as aid to Mrs.

Kobbe's tears, we at last seduced him up the stairs of the studio to the long-antic.i.p.ated ordeal.

Now if young Mrs. Kobbe had had the discretion to keep silence! But "I wish, pa," said she, made bodeful by the agonized and even villanous aspect of the captain's usually stoical features, "'t you could look just as you did when major said he was goin' to take us up to dinner!"

"Good Lord! woman, how can I tell how I looked then? I didn't see myself, did I?"

"You looked so--so happy!" moaned Mrs. Kobbe, "and your face was all break--breaking out into a smile, and you didn't have that suf--sufferin' kinder look 't you've got now."

"I think, myself, sir," said the bland photographer--"ah! let me arrange your hair a little, just this side--or this?--which side?--ah!

so--that a little less severe expression--we all have our trials, I know, but----"

"I hain't!" said the captain ferociously. "I hain't got a darn thing t' worry me. 'F my woman wants me ter have to git a boat an' row out for the 'Lizy Rodgers' on high tide, an' not git home till sun-up, I don't care. What ye screwin' my head into--hey?"

"Merely a head-rest, sir; merely an a.s.sistance toward composing the--ah--features."

"I can compose my feetur's without any darn nihilism machine back on me," said the captain; which he straightway did in a manner that froze the operator's veins.

"Has nothing pleasant occurred to you recently, sir. No--ah?"

"O Cap'n Kobbe," exclaimed his wife, with desperate fated mirth, "think o' how you shot the buoy this mornin' 'stead of a coot!"

The photographer, observing Mrs. Kobbe's face rather than his victim's, and seizing this as probably the opportune moment, transferred the captain's features to his camera.

We waited for the result. After some time our artist approached us with mincing steps and a hand thrust in his breast-pocket as if for possible recourse to defence.

In the type before us, even the gloom and wrath of the captain's countenance were lost sight of in the final skittish and disastrous arrangement, through the day's perils, of his hair.

"Ye see now what ye've done, don't ye?" said the captain to his wife.

Mrs. Kobbe came over and stood beside me.

"'T looks 'like somethin' 't the cat brought in, don't it?" said she, still gazing, pale with curiosity.

"I don't know," I said, not knowing what to say; "does she bring in a great variety?"