When the Cock Crows Part 6

proved to me that I ain't as near all in as me and my friends thought.

Didn't I tote a human woman nigh onto a quarter of a mile without a-hurtin' me a mite? No, sir, Doctor, I am the man that wants the job.

Them scoundrels that I saved has stole all that I had in the world to come home to and now I'm ready to quit this island o' mine and go an'

dust out an' cook vituals for some crabbid old customer that is meaner than me. The more he'd quarrel the more it 'ould suit fer it 'ould take my mind off of this woman business that took place here to-day, and then I might larn to forgit the rooster."

"Jones, I believe you're crazy!" The Doctor exclaimed half angrily. Then he added, with a grin: "I guess I'd better give you a sedative to quiet those overwrought nerves of yours. Then you can get inside the shack, lie down on your bunk and doze off for a spell."

The old fisherman took the remark with all seriousness. His face grew livid as he stared at the Doctor with widened eyes. He stretched to his full height and spoke in a tone of tense solemnity.

"I will have you to know, Doctor Hudson, that never again will Ichabod Jones occupy that bunk, for--G.o.d A'mighty, man!--it has been desecrated by a woman. Of course, it was my own fault, I suppose. But then there was death a-starin', an' what could I do? When I built that hut an'

tossed the fust blankets on that bunk I swore by the power that rules the waters what washes over this sand-bank o' mine that no woman should ever be welcome. An', by the Eternal, I meant it! They may say that Icky Jones has quar notions, and like enough he has, but when that woman what I loved saw fit to take on the beach-comber o' Port Smith Town, an' left me to be the laughin' stock o' Cartaret County, I sure as shootin' made up my mind that it couldn't happen but once in my lifetime--an' it hain't--an' it won't! An' say, Doc, when that foreign woman, whilst I was a-bringin' her to, opened up them pretty eyes an' looked at me fer the fust time, I made up my mind or rather diskivered, that old as I be an' quar as I be, I can't trust myself agin whar thar's women. Sure as thar's clams and oysters on them rocks yonder, I'd play fool, an' try an' make it heigh-ho for the parson. You see, Doc, it ain't that I hate women that I located on this lonely island. It's because, by golly, I'm afeared of 'em."

This was the first time, so far as the physician knew, that Ichabod had ever thus frankly confessed the truth concerning his bitter marital experience and its effect on his life. Doctor Hudson was deeply impressed by the fisherman's display of emotion. He spoke seriously in reply:

"Captain, you can't imagine how glad I am to have heard you say this.

Until now, I never could understand how a man of your honest character and kind heart could hate the s.e.x to which we owe our being, the s.e.x that has done so much to make life more beautiful, to make happiness for humanity. Now, at last, I understand. Your seeming hatred has been merely a mask for cowardice. You'd fight a giant, if need be--just as you have fought that giant, the sea, so often and so bravely. But, just the same, you're an arrant coward. You turn tail and run when a woman's in question, because you're afraid of the weaker s.e.x. I suspect it's time for you to reform. I want you to come to town with me now, and stay there until you've fully recovered from to-day's excitement. While you're there, I'll look round and see what I can do toward finding you a place as housekeeper."

Ichabod shook his head with great emphasis.

"No, sir, Doc," he declared st.u.r.dily, "I ain't a-goin' to stir a step fer the town. But I'll let ye tow me as far as the Spar Channel. Then I'll set sail fer the coast-guard station. I'll spin my yarn thar to the boys, an' like's not spend the night with 'em. Then I reckon I'll come back to the Island. But, fust off, I'll stop at your office an' git some fumigatin' powders, so's to fix the house fit fer Ichabod again."

The Captain and the physician made some further examination, which convinced them that the strangers had in fact left the Island by means of the wrecked yacht's little tender. a.s.sured of this, the two men set forth, the Doctor for Beaufort, Ichabod to pay his visit at the life-saving station near old Fort Macon, where he knew that he was sure of a royal welcome.

CHAPTER X

EYES FROM THE DEEP

The staid little city of Beaufort had been stirred to its remotest corners with the exciting news brought back from Ichabod's Island by the physician. Doctor Hudson had told the story to little groups here and there as he called upon his patients. Needless to say that a shipwreck, even though it be only that of a medium-sized pleasure craft, was enough to set everyone all agog with excitement. And here, too, there was the added mystery, concerning the young and beautiful woman together with her strange companion, who had been rescued from death only to vanish so inexplicably.

Next day, Ichabod quite forgot to stop at the town in order to secure the fumigating powders from the physician. As a matter of fact, he was accompanied home by a number of the life-saving crew, who were eager to survey the wreck and make investigation on their own account. As he approached the Island, the old fisherman was astonished to see at least a dozen launches and fishing schooners gathered near the wreck. It was low tide, and all those aboard the craft seemed to be staring down into the pellucid waters. It was evident that something of an unusual sort attracted their gaze. As Ichabod drew near, accompanied by the boat from the life-saving station, one of the men, on a launch that had her nose resting on the tiny beach at the oyster rocks was seen to be busy arranging a block and tackle. In answer to Ichabod's hail, he shouted that there was a dead man in the wreck.

This information astonished both Ichabod and those to whom he had told his story, for he had had no least suspicion that there was a third person on the yacht at the time of the wreck. In answer to eager questions, the man with the tackle declared that the body seemed to be chained fast to the engine of the sunken boat.

At this news, the Captain became greatly excited.

"Men!" he exclaimed in accents of dismay. "Hain't it been enough for this old, weather-beaten, storm-tossed hulk of an Ichabod to have gone through more'n most young fellers could stand without now havin' a murder to be investigated at his very door? Didn't ye hear them words o'

Sumner Jenkins? He says as how the body is chained to the ingine. It's fitten, boys, as we should go right plumb up thar, an' have a look fer ourselves."

A few minutes later, Ichabod and his companions were lying alongside the wreck, and were leaning over gunwales, looking intently down into the transparent depths of the sea. And there, sure enough, lay the form of a man, with distorted features and wide-open dead eyes gazing back up at them. Around the waist of the corpse there was to be seen distinctly the chain that tightly encircled the body and thence ran to the engine frame, around which it was twisted, and held immovable by a huge padlock. Thus fettered, the unfortunate wretch had been carried down to his doom in the sea.

The gruesome discovery had been made that morning by pure chance on the part of a fisherman who, out of curiosity to view the wreck, had brought his boat up into the wind there. A careless glance over the side had shown him the ghastly face of the corpse beneath the waves. At the sight, the fisherman had let his craft slip off before the wind. He sailed straight to Beaufort, and told the town his news. It was the tidings carried by him that brought the morbid crowd of sightseers.

The combined efforts of those present had been insufficient to raise the engine and the body of the dead man to the surface. Now they were arranging a windla.s.s, with block and fall, to bring the victim up to where the Coroner was impatiently waiting to perform his duty.

Presently, then, the energetic workers secured a firm hold with the tackle on the engine frame. It was hauled to the surface, bringing with it the attached body. The padlock was smashed, and the stiffened form released from its iron bonds. Forthwith, the body was removed in one of the small boats to the sandy beach of Captain Ichabod's Island. The Coroner would have preferred that it should be taken into the shack for the holding of the inquest. But when the official made his request to the fisherman, the reply was by no means favorable.

"It seems as how I might be just a leetle accomidatin', but I dunno, Mr.

Coroner, I've already got that place to fumigate out on account o' thar havin' been sickness an' a woman present thar. An' now should ye see fitten to carry that poor murdered feller in thar, Uncle Icky would sure have to quit. It 'ould be just a leetle more'n he could stand. Don't think I'm feared o' hants an' sich fer I hain't. It's just this: The thoughts o' the poor devil, how he just lay thar on the bottom with his eyes wide-open, an' him murdered--them thoughts would keep a-comin'

back. No, Mr. Coroner, you'd better not take him into the hut--not unless you aim to buy Ichabod's Island."

The Coroner yielded to the old man's whim. He ordered the sodden and twisted form laid out decently on the white smoothness of the beach.

Then, with the other men grouped about him, the Coroner selected a jury, and a minute later the investigation was under way according to due form of law. The only witnesses who were examined were the man who had discovered the corpse, and Ichabod. There was small need of more. For while the account of the finding of the body was completed within a few minutes, Captain Ichabod's narrative continued for a full hour, during which he told everything he knew concerning the wreck of _The Isabel_ and the subsequent events, including the kidnapping of Shrimp.

Most of the hearers, if not all, had heard previously broken bits of the narrative. But now as they received the account in detail from beginning to end they hung on the old fisherman's words, held by the weird spell of this mystery of the sea.

At the conclusion of the testimony, the Coroner charged the jury briefly, and sent them into the shack to agree upon a verdict. The decision was not long delayed. Within ten minutes, the jury returned to the beach and the foreman announced that they had agreed upon a verdict.

This was to the effect that the man had come to his death at the hands of parties unknown, while confined against his will aboard the gasoline yacht _Isabel_.

The Coroner complimented the jury upon their verdict and then discharged the panel. He next arranged with one of the boatmen present for the removal of the corpse to Beaufort, where he meant to have it embalmed and held for a reasonable length of time before burial, for identification. When these formalities were concluded the crowd quickly scattered. Some hastened away to attend their nets, which had been neglected for many hours, while the others set sail or cranked engines for the voyage home.

Captain Ichabod and his friends from the life-saving station decided that they would run over to Shackleford's Banks, and thence sail along sh.o.r.e to approximately the point where Ichabod had seen the rockets of a ship that doubtless went to pieces in the surf during the night of the gale. Their particular destination was a place where the strip of sand was so narrow that they could easily cross it on foot in the expectation of locating the wreck of the unfortunate vessel. Very soon after the party had set out, Captain Ichabod's spirits lightened. The congenial company of the coast-guard crew, now that he was away from the gruesome a.s.sociation of the Coroner's Court, induced a reaction in his mood, and he was almost cheerful. His companions were anxious to remove the old man's depression and made kindly effort to divert his thoughts into pleasant channels by droll stories and rough banter. When, finally, the party went ash.o.r.e at Core Banks and walked up the beach along the edge of the breaking surf in search for signs of the wrecked ship, it was Ichabod that walked in the lead with brisk steps and animated face. It seemed scarcely possible in view of his agility and vigor that the old fisherman was indeed living on borrowed time.

It was not long before they began to see huge timbers that had been twisted and rent asunder, which now strewed the beach. They saw, too, others to which were attached sections of the deck and the deck-house, which were lazily riding back and forth to the rhythm of the sea. Now, a wave would drop its bit of flotsam upon the hard sand; then, a moment later, one of greater magnitude would envelop the stranded spar or plank or piece of cargo, and with its backward flow bear away the wreckage, to be again tossed hither and yon, until perhaps finally the tide at its full would leave it on the sh.o.r.e, to become the spoil of beach-combers--those ghouls ever ready to take advantage of the hapless mariner's mischance.

It was a fact that the whole sh.o.r.e line for over a mile was littered with parts torn away from the foundered schooner. Amid the ma.s.s were many barrels of rum and of mola.s.ses out of the cargo. As the little squad of men from the station, together with Captain Ichabod, drew near the strip of beach, they saw two fellows working with feverish haste to roll a barrel of mola.s.ses over the top of a sand dune, and then down on the Sound side. Captain Ichabod scrambled to the pinnacle of a near-by hill of sand. From this vantage point, he beheld a good-sized two-masted sharpie lying near the sh.o.r.e. The sight made him immediately aware that the beach-combers from up the coast were already on the job, and that the boat on the Sound side of the Banks belonged to them. He knew, too, that the pair working so desperately to get the barrel away from the wreckage were thus toiling in haste to get their loot aboard the sharpie.

For certain reasons, Captain Ichabod Jones had taken a strong dislike to the professional beach-combers. He believed that a man who would rush to the wreckage of a ship thrown on a barren sh.o.r.e away from civilization, and would appropriate without investigation the valuable articles thus cast up by the sea, was in very sooth not a good citizen--just a plain thief. More than once, indeed, he had seen fit to report men of this stripe, and had caused them no little trouble in the courts over this matter of their pilfering. It is just possible that, had Captain Ichabod not been robbed of the woman he loved years before by one of this cla.s.s, he might have looked on their depredations with a more lenient eye. Be that as it may, it remains certain that he maintained a very genuine and very bitter spite against all beach-combers.

Captain Ichabod often a.s.serted that it was right for the natives to remove to a place of safety above high tide any articles of value from a wreck on their sh.o.r.es, and then to wait during a reasonable time for the lawful owners to make their claim. But he had no tolerance for the fellow who would hurriedly and secretly remove to his own premises goods of a salvable sort. He declared this to be no better than theft.

The Captain quickly realized now that here was his opportunity. He motioned to his friends from the station to go on toward the two men busy with the barrel. He, himself, hastened down the slope of sand, in order that he might slip close unseen, and station himself between the beach-combers and their boat. By this method of approach both he and the men from the station would make sure of recognizing the offenders. As the old man drew near the sharpie, which lay with her sails flapping idly in the scant breeze, his eyes took in the name roughly painted on the stern rail of the boat, and he stared at it in shocked amazement. He stopped short and spelled the words aloud:

"_R-o-x-a-n-a L-e-e_!"

At the sound of the name in his ears, a strange expression came over the fisherman's features. It was an expression compounded of many warring emotions, which it might well have puzzled an observer to interpret. But his muttered soliloquy made his feeling clear.

"Wall, I'll be plumb d.a.m.ned! Here it is, most twenty year since I has spoke them words an' G.o.d knows I didn't aim to now, but bein' a leetle slow on spellin', an' kinder befl.u.s.tered over identifyin' these-here thievin' cusses they got out before I realized what I was sayin'. That boat's named fer my old gal!"

Captain Ichabod had no time for further musing. His attention was attracted by a crackling of twigs in the small brush on the side of the dune. As he looked in the direction of the sound he saw hurtling toward him the barrel of mola.s.ses. The two beach-combers had succeeded in topping the rise with their burden; then, suddenly excited and confused by the approach of the coast-guard men, they had turned it loose with a violent push. It shot downward at speed, nor did it stop until it had reached the very edge of the water of Core Sound, almost at Ichabod's feet. After the heavy barrel came the two plunderers, running rapidly.

One of them was a mere lad, certainly not more than nineteen years of age, while the other was of advanced years as was proclaimed by his deeply lined face and gray hair.

As the two drew near, Captain Ichabod quickly concealed himself behind a haw bush, there to await developments. He had a particular reason for not wishing to be recognized by these men--at least not until he should have had time to get his bearings and to decide what course it were best to pursue in this unexpected situation. For that matter, he was half tempted to leave the place without showing himself and without denouncing the paltry thieves.

Ichabod's indecision was not of long duration. His course of action was decided more quickly than he had antic.i.p.ated by the arrival of the coast-guard men. They had hurried after the fugitives with some apprehension lest the old fisherman might be roughly handled. Now the men descended the slope with a cheer, and in another moment had pounced on the two cringing wretches, who were eagerly clutching their ill-gotten barrel of "long sweet'nin'," as if loath to give it up.

This was not the first time that old Sandy Mason, for such was the name of the gray-haired man, had been driven away from his nefarious work by the boys from the station. Hitherto, he had been let off with a reprimand. He was sure that such would now be the case. Nevertheless, his heart was sore within him, for he knew that the coming of these servants of Uncle Sam must prevent him from taking away in his sharpie a whole winter's supply, and more, of fine old Porto Rico mola.s.ses--a treasure trove indeed. For the dwellers on the banks have little b.u.t.ter, and mola.s.ses, when it is to be had, serves in a measure as a subst.i.tute, at every meal.

There was only a short struggle, for the beach-combers offered no resistance, except at being separated from the precious barrel. The capture was chiefly an affair for merriment to the men of the coast guard, and, when they finally loosened their hold of Sandy and the lad, his son, they were laughing boisterously at the despair on the countenance of the father and the youngster's look of chagrin.

Then, before a word was spoken and while the men were still roaring with mirth, Captain Ichabod stepped forth from the shelter of the haw tree.

He seemed to stand a little more erect than was his wont. There was a twinkle of delight in those kindly eyes, a little dimmed by age. He bore himself with an air of impressive manliness, despite the burden of his years. He pa.s.sed around the group until he stood directly in front of the beach-comber with the gray hair. For a moment he did not speak, but stood motionless, gazing steadily at the fellow before him. But, presently, he raised his hand in a gesture commanding silence. The laughter of the coast guard ceased on the instant, and the fisherman spoke:

"Men," he said in a steady voice, evidently weighing each word, "as I clim over the top o' yonder dune an' come down the slope to the sh.o.r.e I saw that sharpie with her nose snug-up to the sh.o.r.e. As I came on further I saw an' read aloud her name--_Roxana Lee_. Right then was the fust time that name had pa.s.sed my lips in twenty year. It hurt me to speak it, fer 'twas that o' the only woman I have ever loved--or ever lost until just lately. The words was on my lips afore I knowed it. That woman did not die, pa.s.s away like an honest woman, but she ran off with a low-down beach-comber, whose thieving face I hain't looked upon--like the name on the stern rail o' yonder boat--fer twenty year, until to-day. Neither have I spoke his name. Seein' as how so many things has been a-happenin' here lately that is a-changin' things with me, I will say to you men--that varmint, that low-down robber o' the dead an' o'

the livin' whose clawlike hands you have unhooked from the chymes o' the barrel containin' the stolen 'la.s.ses that he hoped to get home fer Roxana Lee to wallop her dodgers in, is no less or no other than Sandy Mason, the thief who stole my gal twenty year ago, an' if I hain't plumb wrong on family favorin', that striplin' is their son."

To all outward appearance, old Ichabod was perfectly calm. The men from the station regarded the speaker with faces grown suddenly stern as they realized the nature of the wrong done him. Neither Sandy Mason nor his son ventured to utter a syllable, as the fisherman continued: