E-text prepared by Al Haines



CAP'N ABE, STOREKEEPER

A Story of Cape Cod

by

JAMES A. COOPER

1917







CONTENTS

CHAPTER

      I.  A CHOICE
     II.  CAP'N ABE
    III.  IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM
     IV.  THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS
      V.  WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT
     VI.  BOARDED BY PIRATES
    VII.  UNDER FIKE
   VIII.  SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY
     IX.  SUSPICION HOVERS
      X.  WHAT LOUISE THINKS
     XI.  THE LEADING MAN
    XII.  THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA
   XIII.  WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY
    XIV.  A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS
     XV.  THE UNEXPECTED
    XVI.  A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS
   XVII.  THE ODDS AGAINST HIM
  XVIII.  SOMETHING BREAKS
    XIX.  MUCH ADO
     XX.  THE SUN WORSHIPERS
    XXI.  DISCOVERIES
   XXII.  SHOCKING NEWS
  XXIII.  BETWEEN THE FIRES
   XXIV.  GRAY DAYS
    XXV.  AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT
   XXVI.  AT LAST
  XXVII.  SARGASSO
 XXVIII.  STORM CLOUDS THREATEN
   XXIX.  THE SCAR
    XXX.  WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT
   XXXI.  AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL
  XXXII.  ON THE ROLL OF HONOR




CHAPTER I

A CHOICE

"Of course, my dear, there is nobody but your Aunt Euphemia for you to go
to!"

"Oh, daddy-professor!  Nobody?  Can we rake or scrape up no other
relative on either side of the family who will take in poor little me for
the summer?  You will be home in the fall, of course."

"That is the supposition," Professor Grayling replied, his lips pursed
reflectively.  "No.  Dear me! there seems nobody."

"But Aunt Euphemia!"

"I know, Lou, I know.  She expects you, however.  She writes----"

"Yes.  She has it all planned," sighed Louise Grayling dejectedly.
"Every move at home or abroad Aunt Euphemia has mapped out for me.  When
I am with her I am a mere automaton--only unlike a real marionette I can
feel when she pulls the strings!"

The professor shook his head.  "There's--there's only your poor mother's
half-brother down on the Cape."

"What half-brother?" demanded Louise with a quick smile that matched the
professor's quizzical one.

"Why----Well, your mother, Lou, had an older half-brother, a Mr. Silt.
He keeps a store at Cardhaven.  You know, I met your mother down that way
when I was hunting seaweed for the Smithsonian Institution.  Your
grandmother was a Bellows and her folks lived on the Cape, too.  Her
family has died out and your grandfather was dead before I married your
mother.  The half-brother, this Mr. Silt--Captain Abram Silt--is the only
individual of that branch of the family left alive, I believe."

"Goodness!" gasped the girl.  "What a family tree!"

Again the professor smiled whimsically.  "Only a few of the branches.
But they all reach back to the first navigators of the world."

"The first navigators?"

"I do not mean to the Phoenicians," her father said.  "I mean that the
world never saw braver nor more worthy sailors than those who called the
wind-swept hamlets of Cape Cod their home ports.  The Silts were all
master-mariners.  This Captain Abe is a bachelor, I believe.  You could
not very well go there."

Louise sighed.  "No; I couldn't go there--I suppose.  I couldn't go
there----"  Her voice wandered off into silence.  Then suddenly, almost
explosively, it came back with the question: "Why couldn't I?"

"My dear Lou!  What would your aunt say?" gasped the professor.

He was a tall, rather soldierly looking man--the result of military
training in his youth--with a shock of perfectly white hair and a
sweeping mustache that contrasted clearly with his pink, always cleanly
shaven cheeks and chin.  Without impressing the observer with his
muscular power.  Professor Grayling was a better man on a long hike and
possessed more reserve strength than many more beefy athletes.

His daughter had inherited his springy carriage and even the clean
pinkness of his complexion--always looking as though she were fresh from
her shower.  But there was nothing mannish about Lou Grayling--nothing at
all, though she had other attributes of body and mind for which to thank
her father.

They were the best of chums.  No father and daughter could have trod the
odd corners of the world these two had visited without becoming so
closely attached to each other that their processes of thought, as well
as their opinions in most matters, were almost in perfect harmony.
Although Mrs. Euphemia Conroth was the professor's own sister he could
appreciate Lou's attitude in this emergency.  While the girl was growing
up there had been times when it was considered best--usually because of
her studies--for Lou to live with Aunt Euphemia.  Indeed, that good lady
believed it almost a sin that a young girl should attend the professor on
any of his trips into "the wilds," as she expressed it.  Aunt Euphemia
ignored the fact that nowadays the railroad and telegraph are in Thibet
and that turbines ply the headwaters of the Amazon.

Mrs. Conroth dwelt in Poughkeepsie--that half-way stop between New York
and Albany; and she was as exclusive and opinionated a lady as might be
found in that city of aristocracy and learning.

The college in the shadow of which Aunt Euphemia's dwelling basked, was
that which had led the professor's daughter under the lady's sway.
Although the girls with whom Lou associated within the college walls were
up-to-the-minute--if not a little ahead of it--she found her aunt, like
many of those barnacles clinging to the outer reefs of learning in
college towns, was really a fossil.  If one desires to meet the
ultraconservative in thought and social life let me commend him to this
stratum of humanity within stone's throw of a college.  These barnacles
like Aunt Euphemia are wedded to a manner of thought, gained from their
own school experiences, that went out of fashion inside the colleges
thirty years ago.

Originally, in Lou Grayling's case, when she first lived with Aunt
Euphemia and was a day pupil at an exclusive preparatory school, it had
been drilled into her by the lady that "children should be seen but not
heard!"  Later, although she acknowledged the fact that young girls were
now taught many things that in Aunt Euphemia's maidenhood were scarcely
whispered within hearing of "the young person," the lady was quite
shocked to hear such subjects discussed in the drawing-room, with her
niece as one of the discussers.

The structure of man and the lower animals, down to the number of their
ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party.  It made
Aunt Euphemia gasp.  Anatomy was Lou's hobby.  She was an excellent and
practical taxidermist, thanks to her father.  And she had learned to name
the bones of the human frame along with her multiplication table.

However, there was little about Louise Grayling to commend her among, for
instance, the erudite of Boston.  She was sweet and wholesome, as has
been indicated.  She had all the common sense that a pretty girl should
have--and no more.

For she was pretty and, as well, owned that charm of intelligence without
which a woman is a mere doll.  Her father often reflected that the man
who married Lou would be playing in great luck.  He would get a _mate_.

So far as Professor Grayling knew, however (and he was as keenly
observant of his daughter and her development as he was of scientific
matters), there was as yet no such man in sight.  Lou had escaped the
usual boy-and-girl entanglements which fret the lives of many young folk,
because of her association with her father in his journeys about the
world.  Being a perfectly normal, well-balanced girl, black boys, brown
boys, yellow boys, or all the hues and shades of boys to be met with in
those odd corners of the earth where the white man is at a premium, did
not interest Lou Grayling in the least.

Without being ultraconservative like Aunt Euphemia, she was the sort of
girl whom one might reckon on doing the sensible--perhaps the
obvious--thing in almost any emergency.  Therefore, after that single
almost awed exclamation from the professor--his sole homage to Mrs.
Grundy--he added:

"My dear, do as you like.  You are old enough and wise enough to choose
for yourself--your aunt's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.  Only,
if you don't mind----"

"What is it, daddy-prof?" she asked him with a smile, yet still
reflective.

"Why, if you don't mind," repeated the professor, "I'd rather you didn't
inform me where you decide to spend your summer until I am off.  I--I
don't mind knowing after I am at sea--and your aunt cannot get at me."

She laughed at him gaily.  "You take it for granted that I am going to
Cape Cod," she cried accusingly.

"No--o.  But I know how sorely I should be tempted myself, realizing your
aunt's trying disposition."

"Perhaps this--this half-uncle may be quite as trying."

"Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply.

"What?" she cried.  "Traitor to the family fame?"

"You do not know Cape Cod folk.  I do," he told her rather seriously.
"Some of them are quaint and peculiar.  I suppose there are just as many
down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New
England.  But your mother's people, as I knew them, were the very salt of
the earth.  Our wanderings were all that kept you from knowing the old
folk before they passed away."

"You tempt me," was all Louise said.  Then the conversation lapsed.

It was the day following that the professor was to go to Boston
preparatory to sailing.  At the moment of departure his daughter,
smiling, tucked a sealed note into his pocket.

"Don't open it, daddy-prof, till you are out of sight of Cohasset Rocks,"
she said.  "Then you will not know where I am going to spend the time of
your absence until it is too late--either to oppose or to advise."

"You can't worry me," he told her, with admiration in his glance.  "I've
every confidence in you, my dear.  Have a good time if you can."

She watched him down the long platform between the trains.  When she saw
him assisted into the Pullman by the porter she turned with a little
sigh, and walked up the rise toward Forty-second Street.  She could
almost wish she were going with him, although seaweed and mollusk
gathering was a messy business, and the vessel he sailed in was an
ancient converted coaster with few comforts for womenkind.  Louise
Grayling had been hobbled by city life for nearly a year now and she
began to crave new scenes.

There were some last things to do at the furnished apartment they were
giving up.  Some trunks were to go to the storehouse.  Her own baggage
was to be tagged and sent to the Fall River boat.

For, spurred by curiosity as well as urged by a desire to escape Aunt
Euphemia for a season, Louise was bent upon a visit to Cape Cod.  At
least, she would learn what manner of person her only other living
relative was--her mother's half-brother, Captain Abram Silt.

In the train the next day, which wandered like an erratic caterpillar
along the backbone of the Cape, she began to wonder if, after all, she
was displaying that judgment which daddy-professor praised so highly.  It
was too early in the season for the "millionaire's special" to be
scheduled, in which those wealthy summer folk who have "discovered" the
Cape travel to and from Boston.  Lou was on a local from Fall River that
stopped at every pair of bars and even hesitated at the pigpens along the
right of way.

Getting aboard and getting off again at the innumerable little stations,
were people whose like she had never before seen.  And their speech,
plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her,
and sometimes puzzled her.  Some of the men who rode short distances in
the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys.  They called the conductor
"skipper," and hailed each other in familiar idioms.

The women were not uncomely, nor did they dress in outlandish manner.
Great is the sway of the modern Catalogue House!  But their speech was
blunt and the three topics of conversation most popular were the fish
harvest, clamming, and summer boarders.

"Land sakes! is that you, Em'line Scudder?  What sent you cruisin' in
these waters?  I thought you never got away from the Haven."

"Good-day, Mrs. Eldredge.  You're fairin' well?  I just _had_ to come
over to Littlebridge for some fixin's.  My boarders will be 'long and I
got to freshen the house up a little."

"You goin' to have the same folks you had last year, Em'line?"

"Oh, yes.  They're real nice---for city people.  I tell Barzillai----"

"How is Barzillai?"

"Middlin'.  His leg ain't never been just right since he was helpin' ice
the _Tryout_, come two summers ago.  You know, one o' them big cakes from
the ice fact'ry fell on him. . . .  I tell Barzillai the city folks are a
godsend to us Cape Codders in summer time, now that sea-goin' don't seem
so pop'lar with the men as it useter be."

"I dunno.  Some of these city folks don't seem to be sent by the Lord,
but by the other feller!" was the grim rejoinder.  "I had tryin' times
with my crowd last summer; and the children with 'em was a
visitation--like the plagues of Egypt!"

Louise was an amused yet observant listener.  She began thus early to
gain what these good people themselves would call a "slant" upon their
characters and their outlook on life.

Aside from her interest in her fellow-travelers, there were other things
to engage the girl's attention.  New places always appealed to her more
than unfamiliar human beings; perhaps because she had seen so many of the
latter in all quarters of the globe and found so little variety in their
characters.  There were good people and bad people everywhere, Louise had
found.  Greedy, generous, morose, and laughing; faithful and treacherous,
the quick and the stupid; those likable at first meeting as well as those
utterly impossible.  Of whatever nation and color they might be, she had
learned that under their skins they were all just human beings.

But Nature--ah! she was ever changing.  This girl who had seen so much of
the world had never seen anything quite like the bits of scene she
observed from the narrow window of the car.  Not beautiful, perhaps, but
suggestive and provocative of genre pictures which would remain in her
memory long afterward.  There were woods and fields, cranberry bogs and
sand dunes, between the hamlets; and always through the open window the
salt tang of the air delighted her.  She was almost prepared to say she
was glad she had ventured when she left the train at Paulmouth and saw
her trunks put off upon the platform.

A teetering stage, with a rack behind for light baggage, drawn by a pair
of lean horses, waited beside the station.  The stage had been freshened
for the season with a thin coat of yellow paint.  The word "_Cardhaven_"
was painted in bright blue letters on the doors of this ancient coach.

"No, ma'am!  I can't possibly take your trunks," the driver said,
politely explanatory.  "Ye see, miss, I carry the mail this trip an' the
parcel-post traffic is right heavy, as ye might say. . . .  Belay that,
Jerry!" he observed to the nigh horse that was stamping because of the
pest of flies.  "We'll cast off in a minute and get under way. . . .  No,
miss, I can't take 'em; but Perry Baker'll likely go over to the Haven
to-night and he'll fetch 'em for ye.  I got all the cargo I can load."

Soon the horses shacked out of town.  The sandy road wandered through the
pine woods where the hot June sunshine extracted the scent of balsam
until its strength was almost overpowering.  Louise, alone in the
interior of the old coach, found herself pitching and tossing about as
though in a heavy sea.

"It is fortunate I am a good sailor," she told herself, somewhat ruefully.

The driver was a large man in a yellow linen duster.  He was not
especially communicative--save to his horses.  He told them frankly what
he thought of them on several occasions!  But "city folks" were evidently
no novelty for him.  As he put Louise and her baggage into the vehicle he
had asked:

"Who you cal'latin' to stop with, miss?"

"I am going to Mr. Abram Silt's," Louise had told him.

"Oh!  Cap'n Abe.  Down on the Shell Road.  I can't take ye that
fur--ain't allowed to drive beyond the tavern.  But 'tain't noways a fur
walk from there."

He expressed no curiosity about her, or her business with the Shell Road
storekeeper.  That surprised Louise a little.  She had presumed all these
people would display Yankee curiosity.

It was not a long journey by stage, for which she was thankful.  The
noonday sun was hot and the interior of the turnout soon began to take on
the semblance of a bake-oven.  They came out at last on a wind-swept
terrace and she gained her first unobstructed view of the ocean.

She had always loved the sea--its wideness, its mystery, its ever
changing face.  She watched the sweep of a gull following the crested
windrow of the breakers on a near-by reef, busy with his fishing.  All
manner of craft etched their spars and canvas on the horizon, only bluer
than the sea itself.  Inshore was a fleet of small fry--catboats, sloops,
dories under sail, and a smart smack or two going around to Provincetown
with cargoes from the fish pounds.

"I shall like it," she murmured after a deeper breath.

They came to the outlying dwellings of Cardhaven; then to the head of
Main Street that descended gently to the wharves and beaches of the inner
harbor.  Halfway down the hill, just beyond the First Church and the
post-office, was the rambling, galleried old structure across the face of
which, and high under its eaves, was painted the name "_Cardhaven Inn_."
A pungent, fishy smell swept up the street with the hot breeze.  The tide
was out and the flats were bare.

The coach stopped before the post-office, and Louise got out briskly with
her bag.  The driver, backing down from his seat, said to her:

"If ye wait till I git out the mail I'll drive ye inter the tavern yard
in style.  I bait the horses there."

"Oh, I'll walk," she told him brightly.  "I can get dinner there, I
suppose?"

"Warn't they expectin' you at Cap'n Abe's?" the stage driver asked.  "I
want to know!  Oh, yes.  You can buy your dinner at the tavern.  But
'tain't a long walk to Cap'n Abe's.  Not fur beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

Louise thanked him.  A young man was coming down the steps of the
post-office.  He was a more than ordinarily good-looking young fellow,
deeply tanned, with a rather humorous twist to his shaven lips, and with
steady blue eyes.  He was dressed in quite common clothing: the jersey,
high boots, and sou'wester of a fisherman.

He looked at Louise, but not offensively.  He did not remove his hat as
he spoke.

"I heard Noah say you wished to go to Cap'n Abe's store," he observed
with neither an assumption of familiarity nor any bucolic embarrassment.
"I am bound that way myself."

"Thank you!" she said with just enough dignity to warn him to keep his
distance if he chanced to be contemplating anything familiar.  "But I
shall dine at the hotel first."

A brighter color flooded into his cheeks and Louise felt that she might
have been too sharp with him.  She mended this by adding:

"You may tell me how to get to the Shell Road and Mr. Silt's, if you will
be so kind."

He smiled at that.  Really, he was an awfully nice-looking youth!  She
had no idea that these longshore fishermen would be so gentlemanly and so
good looking.

"Oh, you can't miss it.  Take the first left-hand street, and keep on it.
Cap'n Abe's store is the only one beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

"Thank you," she said again and mounted the broad steps of the Inn.  The
young fellow hesitated as though he were inclined to enter too.  But when
Louise reached the piazza and glanced quickly down at him, he was moving
on.

The cool interior of a broad hall with a stairway mounting out of it and
a screened dining-room at one side, welcomed the girl.  A bustling young
woman in checked gingham, which fitted her as though it were a mold for
her rather plump figure, met the visitor.

"How-do!" she said briskly.  "Goin' to stop?"

"Only for dinner," Louise said, smiling--and when she smiled her gray
eyes made friends.

"Almost over.  But I'll run an' tell the cook to dish you up something
hot.  Come right this way an' wash.  I'll fix you a table where it's
cool.  This is 'bout the first hot day we've had."

She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away.
Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders
having departed.

"My name's Gusty Durgin," she volunteered.  "I reckon you're one o' them
movin' picture actresses they say are goin' to work down to The Beaches
this summer."

"What makes you think so?" asked Louise, somewhat amused.

"Why--you kinder look it.  I should say you had 'screen charm.'  Oh!  I
been readin' up about you folks for a long time back.  I subscribed to
_The Fillum Universe_ that tells all about you.  I'd like to try actin'
before the cam'ra myself.  But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen
charm,'" the waitress added seriously.  "I'm too fat.  And I wouldn't do
none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of
it.  But you must take lovely photographs."

"I'm not sure that I do," laughed Louise.

"Land sakes!  Course you do.  Them big eyes o' yourn must just look
fetchin' in a picture.  I don't believe I've ever seen you in a movie,
have I, Miss------?"

"Grayling."

"'Grayling'!  Ain't that pretty?" Gusty Durgin gave an envious sigh.  "Is
it your honest to goodness, or just your fillum name?"

"My 'honest to goodness,'" the visitor confessed, bubbling with laughter.

"Land sakes!  I should have to change mine all right.  The kids at school
useter call me 'Dusty Gudgeon.'  Course, my right name's Augusta; but
nobody ever remembers down here on the Cape to call anybody by such a
long name.  Useter be a boy in our school who was named 'Christopher
Columbus George Washington Marquis de Lafayette Gallup.'  His mother
named him that.  But everybody called him 'Lafe'--after Lafayette, ye see.

"Land sakes!  I should just have to change my name if I acted in the
pictures.  Your complexion's real, too, ain't it?" pursued this waitress
with histrionic ambitions.  "Real pretty, too, if 'tis high colored.  I
expect you have to make up for the pictures, just the same."

"I suppose I should.  I believe it is always necessary to accentuate the
lights and shadows for the camera."

"'Accentuate'--yep.  That's a good word.  I'll remember that," said
Gusty.  "You goin' to stay down to The Beaches long---and will you like
it?"

"The Beaches?"

"That's where you'll work.  At the Bozewell house.  Swell bungalow.  All
the big bugs live along The Beaches."

"I am not sure just how long I shall stay," confessed Louise Grayling;
"but I know I am going to like it."




CHAPTER II

CAP'N ABE

"I see by the _Globe_ paper," Cap'n Abe observed, pushing up from his
bewhiskered visage the silver-bowed spectacles he really did not need,
"that them fellers saved from the wreck of the _Gilbert Gaunt_ cal'late
they went through something of an adventure."

"And they did," rejoined Cap'n Joab Beecher, "if they seen ha'f what they
tell about."

"I dunno," the storekeeper went on reflectively, staring at a huge
fishfly booming against one of the dusty window panes.  "I dunno.  Cap'n
Am'zon was tellin' me once't about what he and two others went through
with after the _Posy Lass,_ out o' Bangor, was smashed up in a big blow
off Hat'ras.  What them fellers in the _Globe_ paper tell about ain't a
patch on what Cap'n Am'zon suffered."

There was an uncertain, troubled movement among Cap'n Abe's hearers.
Even the fishfly stopped droning.  Cap'n Beecher looked longingly through
the doorway from which the sea could be observed as well as a strip of
that natural breakwater called "The Neck," a barrier between the tumbling
Atlantic and the quiet bay around which the main village of Cardhaven was
set.

All the idlers in the store on this June afternoon were not natives.
There were several young fellows from The Beaches--on the Shell Road to
which Cap'n Abe's store was a fixture.  In sight of The Beaches the
wealthy summer residents had built their homes--dwellings ranging in
architectural design from the mushroom-roofed bungalow to a villa in the
style of the Italian Renaissance.

The villa in question had been built by I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy
King, and Lawford Tapp, only son of the house, was one of the audience in
Cap'n Abe's store.

"Cap'n Amazon said," boomed the storekeeper a good deal like the
fishfly--"Cap'n Amazon said the _Posy Lass_ was loaded with lumber and
her cargo's 'bout all that kep' her afloat as fur as Hat'ras.  Then the
smashin' big seas that come aboard settled her right down like a wounded
duck.

"The deck load went o' course; and about ev'rything else was cleaned off
the decks that warn't bolted to 'em.  The seas rose up and picked off the
men, one after t'other, like a person'd clean off a beach plum bush."

"I shouldn't wonder," spoke up Cap'n Beecher, "if we seen some weather
'fore morning."

He was squinting through the doorway at an azure and almost speckless
sky.  There was an uneasy shuffling of boots.  One of the boys from The
Beaches giggled.  Cap'n Abe--and the fishfly--boomed on together, the
storekeeper evidently visualizing the scene he narrated and not the
half-lighted and goods-crowded shop.  At its best it was never well
illumined.  Had the window panes been washed there was little chance of
the sunshine penetrating far save by the wide open door.  On either hand
as one entered were the rows of hanging oilskins, storm boots,
miscellaneous clothing and ship chandlery that made up only a part of
Cap'n Abe's stock.

There were blue flannel shirts dangling on wooden hangers to show all
their breadth of shoulder and the array of smoked-pearl buttons.  Brown
and blue dungaree overalls were likewise displayed--grimly, like men
hanging in chains.  At the end of one row of these quite ordinary
habiliments was one dress shirt with pleated bosom and cuffs as stiff as
a board.  Lawford Tapp sometimes speculated on that shirt--how it chanced
to be in Cap'n Abe's stock and why it had hung there until the flies had
taken title to it!

Centrally located was the stove, its four heavily rusted legs set in a
shallow box which was sometimes filled with fresh sawdust.  The
stovepipe, guyed by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the chimney behind
Cap'n Abe.

He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy
fists on the brown, hacked plank--the notches of the yard-stick and
fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge--his pale eyes sparkling as
he talked.

"There she wallered," went on the narrator of maritime disaster, "her
cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs.  She was
wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman's hands.  She no longer
mounted the waves; she bored through 'em.  'Twas a serious time--to hear
Cap'n Am'zon tell it."

"I guess it must ha' been, Abe," Milt Baker put in hastily.  "Gimme a
piece o' that Brown Mule chewin' tobacker."

"I'll _sell_ it to ye, Milt," the storekeeper said gently, with his hand
on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase.

"That's what I mean," rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the
required nickel.

"For fourteen days while the _Posy Lass_ was drivin' off shore before an
easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the
fo'mast, _ex_-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves
picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes.  And five raw potaters was all they had
to eat in all that endurin' time!"

"Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried.  "For three men?  And for fourteen
days?  Good-_night_!"

Cap'n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of
indignation.  "Young man," he said tartly, "you should hear Cap'n Am'zon
himself tell it.  You wouldn't cast no doubts upon his statement."

Cap'n Joab snorted and turned his back again.  Young Tapp felt somewhat
abashed.

"Yes, sir!" proceeded Cap'n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his
stories, "they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them
potaters--scraping 'em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin' 'em
like they was jewels.  One of 'em went mad."

"One o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue.

"_Who_ went crazy--your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully.  He
had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the
storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides
the Brown Mule.

Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the
other feller lashed the poor chap--han's _an_' feet--and so kep' him from
goin' overboard.  But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all.  When they
was rescued from the _Posy Lass_, her decks awash and her slowly breakin'
up, there warn't nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his
mind.  He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port.

"Now, them fellers saved from the _Gilbert Gaunt_ didn't go through
nothin' like that, it stands to reason.  Cap'n Am'zon----"

Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply
tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust.

"I declare!  I'd love to see this wonderful brother of his.  He must have
Baron Munchausen lashed to the post," the young man whispered.

"Never heard tell of that Munchausen feller," Cap'n Joab reflected.
"Reckon he didn't sail from any of the Cape ports.  But you let Abe tell
it, Cap'n Am'zon Silt is the greatest navigator an' has the
rip-snortin'est adventoors of airy deep-bottom sailor that ever chawed
salt hoss."

"Did you ever see him?" Lawford asked.

"See who?"

"Cap'n Amazon?"

"No.  I didn't never see him.  But I've heard Cap'n Abe talk about
him--standin' off an' on as ye might say--for twenty year and more."

"Odd you never met him, isn't it?"

"No.  I never happened on Cap'n Am'zon when I was sea-farin'.  And he
ain't never been to Cardhaven to my knowledge."

"Never been here?" murmured Lawford Tapp more than a little surprised.
"Wasn't he born and brought up here?"

"No.  Neither was Cap'n Abe.  The Silts flourish, as ye might say--or,
useter 'fore the fam'ly sort o' petered out--down New Bedford way.  Cap'n
Abe come here twenty-odd year back and opened this store.  He's as salt
as though he'd been a haddocker since he was weaned.  But he's always
stuck mighty close inshore.  Nobody ever seen him in a boat--'ceptin' out
in a dory fishin' for tomcod in the bay, and on a mighty ca'm day at
that."

"How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked,
impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper.

The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically.  "It's easy 'nough
to pick up skipper's title longshore.  'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of
a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft--or 'doughter be.
But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough."

"How?" urged Lawford.

"When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking
comp'nies left on the Cape.  Why, 'tain't been ten years since the
Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the _Mary Benson_ that went onto Sanders Reef
all standin'.  They made a good speck out o' the job, too.

"Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies--was the heaviest stockholder,
in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n.  He never headed no crew--not as I ever
heard on.  But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it."

"But about his brother--this Captain Amazon?"  The line of Cap'n Joab
Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed,
and he wagged his head slowly.  "I don't know what to make of all this
talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply.

Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper.  He certainly looked
to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years
had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop.  He
was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon.  His eyes were too mild
for that--save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his
interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.

Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a
mariner could be.  No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too
remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences.
Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper
had told over and over again until they were threadbare.

Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue
jersey.  He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had
made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth.  Under the bulk
of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the
observer could not easily judge.  And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's
sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.

Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell
Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a
lonely life.  Twenty years' residence meant little to Cardhaven folk.
Cap'n Abe was still an outsider to people who were so closely married and
intermarried that every human being within five miles of the Haven (not
counting the aristocrats of The Beaches) could honestly call each of the
others cousin in some degree.

The house and store was set on a lonely stretch of road.  It was
unlighted at night, for the last street lamp had been fixed by the town
fathers at the Mariner's Chapel, as though they said to all mundane
illumination as did King Canute to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou come and
no farther."

Betty Gallup came cross lots each day to "rid up" Mr. Silt's living-room,
which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead.  She was gone
home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last
lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself.  He
declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder,
anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of
"blood-ends," she was all at sea.  He intimated that there were digestive
reasons for her husband's death at the early age of sixty-eight.

Milt Baker had successfully introduced another topic of conversation, far
removed it would seem from any adventurous happening connected with Cap'n
Amazon Silt's career.

"I hear tell," said Milt, chewing Brown Mule with gusto, "that them folks
cavortin' down on The Beaches for a week past is movin' picture actors.
That so, Lawford?"

"There's a camera man and a director, and several handy men arrived," the
son of the Salt Water Taffy King replied.  "They are going to use
Bozewell's house for some pictures.  The Bozewells are in Europe."

"But ain't none of the actorines come?" demanded Milt, who was a sad
dog--let him tell it!  He had been motorman on a street car in Providence
for a couple of winters before he married Mandy Card, and now tried to
keep green his reputation for sophistication.

"I believe not," Lawford answered, with reflection.  "I presume the
company will come later.  The director is taking what he calls 'stills'
of the several localities they propose using when the films are really
made."

"One of 'em told me," chuckled Amiel Perdue, "that they was hopin' for a
storm, so's to get a real wreck in the picture."

"Hoh!" snorted Cap'n Joab.  "Fine time o' year to be lookin' for a
no'theaster on the Cape."

"And do they reckon a craft'll drift right in here if there is a storm
an' wrack herself to please 'em?" piped up Washy Gallup--no relation to
Betty save through interminable cross-currents of Card and Baker blood.

"Sometimes them fillum fellers buy a boat an' wreck it a-purpose.  Look
what they did to the old _Morning Star_," Milt said.  "I read once of a
comp'ny putting two locomotives on one track an' running 'em full-tilt
together so's to get a picture of the smashup."

"Crazy critters!" muttered Cap'n Joab.

"But wait till ye see the fillum actresses," Milt chuckled.  "Tell ye
what, boys, some of 'em 'll make ye open your eyes!"

"Ye better go easy.  Milt, 'bout battin' your eyes," advised Amiel
Perdue.  "Mandy ain't lost her eyesight none either."

Washy's thin whine broke through the guffaw: "I seen a picture at
Paulmouth once't about a feller and a girl lost in the woods o' Borneo.
It was a stirrin' picture.  They was chased by headhunters, and one o'
these here big man-apes tackled 'em--what d'ye call that critter now?
Suthin' like ringin' a bell."

"Orang-outang," suggested Lawford.

"That's it.  Sounds jest like the Baptist Meetin' House bell.  It's
cracked."

"Them orang-outangs don't sound like no bell--not when they holler," put
in Cap'n Abe, leaning on his counter and staring at the tireless fishfly
again.  "Cap'n Am'zon Silt, when he was ashore once't in Borneo, met one
o' them critters."

"Gosh all fishhooks!" ejaculated Milt.  "Ain't there no place on this
green airth that brother o' yourn ain't been, Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't never been in jail, Milt," said the storekeeper mildly, and the
assembly broke into an appreciative chuckle.  It was well known that on
the last Fourth of July Milt Baker had been shut into the calaboose at
Paulmouth to sober up.

"As I was sayin'," pursued Cap'n Abe reflectively, "Cap'n Amazon went up
country with a Dutchman--a trader, I b'lieve he said the man was--and
they got into a part where the orang-outangs was plentiful."

"Jest as thick as sandpipers along The Beaches, I shouldn't wonder," put
in Cap'n Joab, at last tempted beyond his strength.

"No; nor like mackerel when ye get a full seine-haul," responded the
storekeeper, unruffled, "but thicker'n you'd want sand fleas to be if the
fleas measured up to the size of orang-outangs."

Lawford Tapp burst into open laughter.  "They can't catch you, can they,
Cap'n Abe?" he said.  "If that brother of yours has gone through one-half
the perils by land and sea I've heard you tell about, he's beat out most
sailors from old Noah down to Admiral Dewey."

Cap'n Abe's brows came together in pronounced disapproval.  "Young man,"
he said, "if Cap'n Am'zon was here now ye wouldn't darst cast any
aspersions on his word.  He ain't the man to stand for't."

"Well, I'd like to see Cap'n Amazon," Lawford said lightly, "if only for
the sake of asking him a question or two."

"You'll likely get your wish," returned the storekeeper tartly.

"What d'ye mean?" drawled Milt Baker, who always bobbed up serenely.  "Ye
don't say Cap'n Am'zon's likely to show up here at Cardhaven after all
these years?"

There was barely a second's hesitation on Mr. Silt's part.  Then he said:
"That's exactly what I mean.  I got a--ahem!--a letter from Cap'n Am'zon
only lately."

"And he's comin' to see ye?" gasped Cap'n Joab, turning from the door to
stare like the others at the storekeeper.

"Yes," the latter confessed.  "And he's likely to stay quite a spell when
he does come.  Says suthin' 'bout settlin' down.  He's gettin' along in
years like the rest of us.  Mebbe I'll let him keep store for me this
summer whilst I take a vacation," added Cap'n Abe more briskly, "like I
been wantin' to do for a long spell back."

"You took a vacation of a week or more about--was it ten year ago?"
demanded Cap'n Joab.  "I looked after the place for ye then."

"Ahem!  I mean a real vacation," Cap'n Abe declared, still staring at the
fishfly now feebly butting its head against the pane.  "That week was
when I went to the--'hem--buryin' of my a'nt, Joab.  I'll go this time
mebbe for two-three months.  Take a v'y'ge somewhere, I've always wanted
to."

"Land sakes!" exploded Cap'n Joab.  "I know ye been talkin' 'bout
cruisin' around--to see your folks, or the like--for the longest spell.
But I didn't s'pose ye re'lly meant it.  And your brother comin', too!
Well!"

"If he can tell of his adventures as well as you relate them," laughed
Lawford, "Cap'n Amazon should be an addition to the Cardhaven social
whirl."

"You take my advice, young man," Cap'n Abe said, with sternness, "and
belay that sort o' talk afore Cap'n Am'zon when he does come.  He's lived
a rough sort o' life.  He's nobody's tame cat.  Doubt his word and he's
jest as like as not to take ye by the scruff of the neck and duck ye in
the water butt."

There was a general laugh.  Almost always the storekeeper managed to turn
the tables in some way upon any doubting Thomas that drifted into his
shop.  Because of his ability in this particular he had managed to hold
his audience all these years.

Lawford could think of no reply with which to turn the laugh.  His wit
was not of a nimble order.  He turned to the door again and suddenly a
low ejaculation parted his lips.

"There's that girl again!"

Milt Baker screwed his neck around for a look.  "See who's come!" he
cackled.  "I bet it's one o' them moving picture actresses."

Lawford cast on the ribald Milt a somewhat angry glance.  Yet he did not
speak again for a moment.

"Tidy craft," grunted Cap'n Joab, eying the young woman who was
approaching the store along the white road.

"I saw her get out of Noah's ark when he landed at the post-office this
noon," Lawford explained to Cap'n Joab.  "She looks like a nice girl."

"Trim as a yacht," declared the old man admiringly.

She was plainly city bred--and city gowned--and she carried her light
traveling bag by a strap over her shoulder.  Her trim shoes were dusty
from her walk and her face was pink under her wide hat brim.

Lawford stepped out upon the porch.  His gaze was glued again to this
vision of young womanhood; but as he stood at one side she did not appear
to see him as she mounted the steps.

The heir of the Salt Water Taffy King was twenty-four, his rather
desultory college course behind him; and he thought his experience with
girls had been wide.  But he had never seen one just like Louise
Grayling.  He was secretly telling himself this as she made her entrance
into Cap'n Abe's store.




CHAPTER III

IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM

Louise came into the store smiling and the dusty, musty old place seemed
actually to brighten in the sunshine of her presence.  Her big gray eyes
(they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective mood) now
sparkled as her glance swept Cap'n Abe's stock-in-trade--the shelves of
fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with soap, and starch, and
half a hundred other kitchen goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham,
"turkey red," and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps and boxes of
sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns, coils of rope, boathooks,
tholepins hanging in wreaths; bailers, clam hoes, buckets, and the
thousand and one articles which made the store on the Shell Road a museum
that later was sure to engage the interest of the girl.

Now, however, the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting notice from
Louise.  Her gaze almost immediately fastened upon the figure of the
bewhiskered old man, with spectacles and sou'wester both pushed back on
his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her--his smile somehow impressing
Louise Grayling as almost childish, it was so kindly.

Cap'n Joab had dodged through the door after Lawford Tapp.  The other
boys from The Beaches followed their leader.  Old Washy Gallup and Amiel
Perdue suddenly remembered that it was almost chore time as this radiant
young woman said:

"I wish to see Mr. Abram Silt--Captain Silt.  Is he here?"

"I'm him, miss," Cap'n Abe returned politely.

Milt Baker surely would have remained of all the crowd of idlers, gaping
oilily at the visitor across the top of the rusty stove, had not a shrill
feminine voice been heard outside the store,

"Is Milt Baker there?  Ain't none o' you men seen him?  Land sakes! he's
as hard to hold as the greased pig on Fourth o' July--an' jest 'bout as
useful."

"Milt," said Cap'n Abe suggestively, "I b'lieve I hear Mandy callin' you."

"I'm a-comin'!--I'm a-comin', Mandy!" gurgled Milt, cognizant of the
girl's gay countenance turned upon him.

"What did you want, miss?" asked Cap'n Abe, as the recreant husband of
the militant Mandy stumbled over his own feet getting out of the store.

Louise bubbled over with laughter; she could not help it.  Cap'n Abe's
bearded countenance broke slowly into an appreciative grin.

"Yes," he said, "she does have him on a leadin' string.  I do admit
Mandy's a card."

The girl, quick-witted as she was bright looking, got his point almost at
once.  "You mean she was a Card before she married him?"

"And she's a Card yet," Cap'n Abe said, nodding.  "Guess you know a thing
or two, yourself.  What can I do for you?"

"You can say: 'Good-evening, Niece Louise,'" laughed the girl, coming
closer to the counter upon which the storekeeper still leaned.

"Land sakes!"

"My mother was a Card.  That is how I came to see your joke, Uncle Abram."

"Land sakes!"

"Don't you believe me?"

"I--I ain't got but one niece in the world," mumbled Cap'n Abe.
"An'--an' I never expected to see _her_."

"Louise Grayling, daughter of Professor Ernest Grayling and Miriam
Card--your half-sister's child.  See here--and here."  She snapped open
her bag, resting it on the counter, and produced an old-fashioned
photograph of her mother, a letter, yellowed by time, that Cap'n Abe had
written Professor Grayling long before, and her own accident policy
identification card which she always carried.

Cap'n Abe stretched forth a hairy hand, and it closed on Lou's as a
sunfish absorbs its prey.  The girl's hand to her wrist was completely
lost in the grip; but despite its firmness Cap'n Abe's handclasp was by
no means painful.  He released her and, leaning back, smiled benignly.

"Land sakes!" he said again.  "I'm glad to see little Mirry's girl.  An'
you do favor her a mite.  But I guess you take mostly after the
Graylings."

"People say I am like my father."

"An' a mighty nice lookin' man--an' a pleasant--as I remember him," Cap'n
Abe declared.

"Come right in here, into my sittin'-room, Niece Louise, an' lemme take a
look at you.  Land sakes!"

He lifted the flap in the counter to let her through.  The doorway beyond
gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the
living-room.  The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back.  The table in the
big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth
and set with heavy chinaware for a meal.  A huge caster graced the center
of the table, containing glass receptacles for salt, red and black
pepper, catsup, vinegar, and oil.  Knives, forks, and spoons for two--all
of utilitarian style--were arranged with mathematical precision beside
each plate.

In one window hung a pot with "creeping Jew" and inchplant, the tendrils
at least a yard long.  In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in
a cage.  A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion
in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork
coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on
the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at least two feet
tall.

"Sit down," said Cap'n Abe heartily.  "Drop your dunnage right down
there," as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder.  "Take
that big rocker.  Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your
place."

"Oh, don't bother him, Uncle Abram.  What a beauty he is," Louise said,
as the tortoise-shell--without otherwise moving--opened one great, yellow
eye.

"He's a lazy good-for-nothing," Cap'n Abe said mildly.  "Friends with all
the mice on the place, I swan!  But sometimes he's the only human critter
I have to talk to.  'Cept Jerry."

"Jerry?"

"The bird," explained Cap'n Abe, easing himself comfortably into a chair,
his guest being seated, and resting his palms on his knees as he gazed at
her out of his pale blue eyes.  "He's a lot of comfort--Jerry.  An' he
useter be a great singer.  Kinder gittin' old, now, like the rest of us.

"Does seem too bad," went on Cap'n Abe reflectively, "how a bird like him
has got to live in a cage all his endurin' days.  Jerry's a
prisoner--like I been.  _I_ ain't never had the freedom I wanted,
Miss------?

"Louise, please.  Uncle Abram.  Lou Grayling," the girl begged, but
smiling.

"Then just you call me Cap'n Abe.  I'm sort o' useter that," the
storekeeper said.

"Of course I will.  But why haven't you been free?" she asked, reverting
to his previous topic.  "Seems to me--down here on the Cape where the sea
breezes blow, and everything is open----"

"Yes, 'twould seem so," Cap'n Abe said, but he said it with hesitation.
"I been some hampered all my life, as ye might say.  'Tis something that
was bred in me.  But as for Jerry------

"Jerry was give to me by a lady when he was a young bird.  After a while
I got thinkin' a heap about him bein' caged, and one sunshiny day--it was
a marker for days down here on the Cape, an' we have lots on 'em!  One
sunshiny day I opened his door and opened the window, and I says: 'Scoot!
The hull world's yourn!'"

"And didn't he go?" asked the girl, watching the rapt face of the old man.

"Did he go?  Right out through that window with a song that'd break your
heart to hear, 'twas so sweet.  He pitched on the old apple tree
yonder--the August sweet'nin'--and I thought he'd bust his throat
a-tellin' of how glad he was to be free out there in God's sunshine an'
open air."

"He came back, I see," said Louise thoughtfully.

"That's just it!" cried Cap'n Abe, shaking his head till the tarpaulin
fell off and he forgot to pick it up.  "That's just it.  He come back of
his own self.  I didn't try to ketch him.  When it grew on toward sundown
an' the air got kinder chill, I didn't hear Jerry singin' no more.  I'd
seen him, off'n on, flittin' 'bout the yard all day.  When I come in here
to light the hangin'-lamp cal'latin' to make supper, I looked over there
at the window.  I'd shut it.  There was Jerry on the window sill, humped
all up like an old woman with the tisic."

"The poor thing!" was Lou's sympathetic cry.

"Yes," said Cap'n Abe, nodding.  "He warn't no more fit to be let loose
than nothin' 'tall.  And I wonder if _I_ be," added the storekeeper.
"I've been caged quite a spell how.

"But now tell me, Niece Louise," he added with latent curiosity, "how did
you find your way here?"

"Father says--'Daddy-professor,' you know is what I call him.  He says if
we had not always been traveling when I was not at school, I should have
known you long ago.  He thinks very highly of my mother's people."

"I wanter know!"

"He says you are the 'salt of the earth'--that is his very expression."

"Yes.  We're pretty average salt, I guess," admitted Cap'n Abe.  "I never
seen your father but once or twice.  You see, Louise, your mother was a
lot younger'n me an' Am'zon."

"Who?"

"Cap'n Am'zon.  Oh! _I_ ain't the only uncle you got," he said, watching
her narrowly.  "Cap'n Am'zon Silt----"

"Have I another relative?  How jolly!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her
hands.

"Ye-as.   Ain't it?  Jest," Cap'n Abe said.  "Ahem! your father never
spoke of Cap'n Am'zon?".

"I don't believe daddy-prof even knew there was such a person."

"Mebbe not.  Mebbe not," Cap'n Abe agreed hastily.  "And not to be
wondered at.  You see, Am'zon went to sea when he was only jest a boy."

"Did he?"

"Yep.  Ran away from home--like most boys done in them days, for their
mothers warn't partial to the sea--and shipped aboard the whaler _South
Sea Belle_.  He tied his socks an' shirt an' a book o' navigation he
owned, up in a handkerchief, and slipped out over the shed roof one
night, and away he went."  Cap'n Abe told the girl this with that
far-away look on his face that usually heralded one of his tales about
Cap'n Amazon.

"I can remember it clear 'nough.  He walked all the way to New Bedford.
We lived at Rocky Head over against Bayport.  Twas quite a step to
Bedford.  The _South Sea Belle_ was havin' hard time makin' up her crew.
She warn't a new ship.  Am'zon was twelve year old an' looked fifteen.
An' he was fifteen 'fore he got back from that v'y'ge.  Mebbe I'll tell
ye 'bout it some time--or Cap'n Am'zon will.  He's been a deep-bottom
sailor from that day to this."

"And where is he now?" asked Louise.

"Why--mebbe!--he's on his way here.  I shouldn't wonder.  He might step
in at that door any minute," and Cap'n Abe's finger indicated the store
door.

There was the sound of a footstep entering the store as he spoke.  The
storekeeper arose.  "I'll jest see who 'tis," he said.

While he was absent Louise laid aside her hat and made a closer
inspection of the room and its furniture.  Everything was homely but
comfortable.  There was a display of marine art upon the walls.  All the
ships were drawn exactly, with the stays, spars, and all rigging in
place, line for line.  They all sailed, too, through very blue seas, the
crest of each wave being white with foam.

Flanking the model of the brigantine on the mantle were two fancy shell
pieces--works of art appreciated nowhere but on the coast.  The designs
were ornate; but what they could possibly represent Louise was unable to
guess.

She tried to interest the canary by whistling to him and sticking her
pink finger between the wires of his cage.  He was ruffled and dull-eyed
like all old birds of his kind, and paid her slight attention.  When she
turned to Diddimus she had better success.  He rolled on his side, stuck
all his claws out and drew them in again luxuriously, purring meanwhile
like a miniature sawmill.

When Cap'n Abe came back the girl asked:

"Wasn't your customer a young man I saw on the porch as I came in?"

"Yep.  Lawford Tapp.  Said he forgot some matches and a length o'
ropeyarn.  I reckon you went to that young man's head.  And his top
hamper ain't none too secure, Niece Louise."

"Oh, did I?" laughed the girl, understanding perfectly.  "How nice."

"Nice?  That's how ye take it.  Lawford Tapp ain't a fav'rite o' mine."

"But he seemed very accommodating to-day when I asked him how to reach
your store."

"So you met him up town?"

"Yes, Uncle Abe."

"He's perlite enough," scolded the storekeeper.  "But I don't jest fancy
the cut of his jib.  Wanted to know if you was goin' to stop here."

"Oh!" exclaimed Louise.  "That is what I want to know myself.  Am I?"




CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS

Cap'n Abe reached for his spectacles and pulled them down upon his nose
to look at his guest through the lenses.  Not that they aided his sight
in the least; but the act helped to cover the fact that he was startled.

"Stop here?" he repeated.  "Where's your father?  Ain't he with you up
to the Inn?"

"No, Cap'n Abe.  He is in Boston to-day.  But he will sail to-morrow
for a summer cruise with a party for scientific research.  I am all
alone.  So I came down here to Cape Cod."

Louise said it directly and as simply as the storekeeper himself might
have spoken.  Yet it seemed really difficult for Cap'n Abe to get her
meaning into his head.

"You mean you was intendin' to cast anchor here--with _me_?"

"If it is agreeable.  Of course I'll pay my board if you'll let me.
You have a room to spare, haven't you?"

"Land sakes, yes!"

"And I am not afraid to use my hands.  I might even be of some slight
use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled
and amazed though he evidently was by her determination.  "I've roughed
it a good deal with daddy-prof.  I can cook--some things.  And I can do
housework----"

"Bet Gallup does that," interposed Cap'n Abe, finally getting his
bearings.  "Hi-mighty, ye did take me aback all standin', Niece Louise!
Ye did, for a fac'.   But why not?  Land sakes, there's room enough,
an' to spare!  Ye don't hafter put them pretty han's to housework.
Betty Gallup'll do all that.  An' you don't have to pay no board money.
As for cookin'----That remin's me.  I'd better git to work on our
supper.  We'll be sharp for it 'fore long."

"And--and I may stay?" asked Louise, with some little embarrassment
now.  "You are sure it won't inconvenience you?"

"Bless you, no!  I cal'late it's more likely to inconvenience _you_,"
and Cap'n Abe chuckled mellowly.  "I don't know what sort o' 'roughin'
it' you've done with your pa; but if there's anything much rougher than
an ol' man's housekeepin' down here on the Cape, it must be pretty
average rough!"

She laughed gayly.  "You can't scare me!"

"Ain't a-tryin' to," he responded, eying her admiringly.  "You're an
able seaman, I don't dispute.  An' we'll git along fine.  Hi-mighty!
there's Am'zon!"

Louise actually turned around this time to look at the door, expecting
to see the mariner in question enter.   Then she said, half doubtfully:

"Do you suppose your brother will object if he does come, Cap'n Abe?"

"Land sakes, no!" the storekeeper quickly assured her.  "'Tain't that.
But I cal'lated 'bout soon's Am'zon anchored here I'd cast off moorin's
myself."

"Go away?" Louise demanded.

"Yes.  Like poor old Jerry, mebbe," said Cap'n Abe, looking at the
caged bird.  "Mebbe I'll be glad to come back again--and in a hurry.
But while Cap'n Am'zon is here I can take a vacation that I've long
hankered for, Niece Louise.  I--I got my plans all made."

"Don't for one moment think of changing them on my account," Louise
said briskly.  "I shall like Uncle Amazon immensely if he's anything
like you, Cap'n Abe."

"He--he ain't so _much_ like me," confessed the storekeeper.  "Not in
looks he ain't.  But hi-mighty!  I know he'll be as pleased as Punch to
see ye."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Wait till you see how he takes to ye," declared her reassuring uncle.
"Now, lemme git my apern on and set to work on supper."

"Can't I help, Cap'n Abe?"

"In them things?" the storekeeper objected.

"Well--I'll have plenty of house dresses when my trunks come.  I left
my checks at the station for a man named Perry Baker.  They said he'd
bring them over to-night."

"He will," Cap'n Abe assured her.  But he stopped a moment, stock-still
in the middle of the room, and stared at her unseeingly.  Evidently his
mind was fixed upon an idea suddenly suggested by her speech.  "He
will," he repeated.  Then:

"I'll get the fat kettle over an' the fry-cage ready.  Amiel brought me
a likely cod.  'Tain't been out o' the water two hours."

"I love fish," confessed Louise, following him to the kitchen door.

"Lucky you do, if you're going to stay a spell on Cape Cod.  For that's
what you'll eat mornin', noon, and night.  Fish and clams, an' mebbe a
pot o' baked beans on a Saturday, or a chicken for Sunday's dinner.  I
don't git much time to cook fancy."

"But can't this woman who comes to do the work cook for you?"

"She can't cook for me," snorted Cap'n Abe.  "I respect my stomach too
much to eat after Bet Gallup.  She's as good a man afore the mast as
airy feller in Cardhaven.  An' that's where she'd oughter be.  But
never let her in the galley."

"Oh, well," Louise said cheerfully.  "I'm a dab at camp cooking myself,
as I told you.  Uncle Amazon and I will make out--if he comes."

"Oh!  Ah!  'Hem!" said Cap'n Abe, clearing his throat.  He stooped to
pick up a dropped potlid and came up very red in the face.  "You
needn't borrow any trouble on that score, Cap'n Am'zon's as good a cook
as I be."

Only twice did Cap'n Abe make forced trips into the shop.  The supper
hour of Cardhaven was well established and the thoughtful housewives
did not seek to make purchases while the fat was hot in Cap'n Abe's
skillet.  One of these untimely customers was a wandering child with a
penny.  "I might have waited on him, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared.

"Land sakes!  so you might," the storekeeper agreed.  "Though if he'd
seen you behind my counter I reckon that young 'un of 'Liathel
Grummet's would have been struck dumber than nature made him in the
fust place."

The other customer was a gangling, half-grown youth after a ball of
seine twine and the girl heard him say in a shocked whisper to Cap'n
Abe:

"Say! is it true there's one o' them movin' picture actresses goin' to
stop here with you, Cap'n Abe?  Ma heard so."

"You tell your ma," Cap'n Abe said sternly, "that if she keeps on
stretchin' her ears that a-way, she'll hear the kambuoy over Bartell
Shoals in a dead calm!"

Cap'n Abe's bald poll began to shine with minute beads of perspiration.
He looked over the bib of his voluminous apron like a bewhiskered gnome
very busy at some mysterious task.  Louise noticed that his movements
about the kitchen were remarkably deft.

"All hands called!" he called out at length.  "I'm about to dish up."

"Shall I put on another plate, Cap'n Abe?  You expected somebody else
to supper?"

"Nope.  All set.  I'm always ready for a messmate; but 'tain't often
one boards me 'cept Cap'n Joab now and then.  His woman likes to git
him out from under foot.  You see, when a woman's been useter seein'
her husband only 'twixt v'y'ges for forty year, I 'spect 'tis something
of a cross to have him litterin' up the house ev'ry day," he confessed.
"But as I can't leave the shop myself to go visitin' much in return,
Joab acks offish.  We Silts was always bred to be hospitable.  Poor or
rich, we could share what we had with another.  So I keep an extry
plate on the table.

"I've had occasion," pursued the philosophical storekeeper, drawing up
his own chair across the table from the girl, "to be at some folks'
houses at meal time and had 'em ask me to set up and have a bite.  But
it never looked to me as if they meant it 'nless there was already an
extry plate there.

"Just like having a spare bedroom.  If you can say: 'Stay all night, we
got a room for ye,' then that's what I call hospitality.  I wouldn't
live in a house that warn't big enough to have at least one spare room."

"I believe I must be very welcome here, Cap'n Abe," Louise said,
smiling at the kindly old man.

"Land sakes, I sh'd hope ye felt so!" ejaculated Cap'n Abe.  "Now, if
you don't mind, Niece Louise."  He dropped his head suddenly and closed
his eyes in reverence.  "For what we are about to partake of, Lord,
make us duly thankful.  Amen!"  His countenance became animated again.
"Try them biscuit.  I made 'em this morning 'twixt Marcy Coe selectin'
that piece of gingham for a new dress and John Peckham buying cordage
for his smack.  But they warmed up right nice in the oven."

Meanwhile he heaped her plate with codfish and fried potatoes cooked to
a delicate brown.  There was good butter, fat doughnuts, and beach-plum
preserve.  It was a homely meal but Louise ate it graciously.  Already
the air of Cardhaven had sharpened her appetite.

"Lend me your apron," insisted the girl when they had finished, "and I
will wash these dishes."

"I us'ally let them go till Betty Gallup comes in the morning," the
storekeeper said rather ruefully.  "It don't look right to me that you
should mess with these greasy dishes jest as we get under way, as ye
might say."

"You must not make company of me, Cap'n Abe," Louise declared.  "There,
I hear a customer in the store," and she gave him a little pat on the
shoulder as he delivered the huge apron into her hand.

"I dunno," he said, smiling upon her quizzically, "as I shall really
want to cast off if Cap'n Am'zon _does_ come.  Seems to me 'twould be
hi-mighty nice to have a girl like you around the place, Louise."

"Then don't go," she said, briskly beginning to clear off.  "_I_
sha'n't mind having two of you for me to boss.  Two captains!  Think of
it."

"Yes.  I know.  But I got all my plans laid," he murmured, and then
went slowly into the store.

There seemed to be some briskness in the after-supper trade, and Louise
suspected that it was founded upon the news of her arrival at Cap'n
Abe's store.  Several of his rather tart rejoinders reached her ears as
she went from kitchen to livingroom and back again.  Finally removing
the apron, her task done, she seated herself with Diddimus in her lap
within the radiance of the lamp and within hearing of all that was said
in the store.

"No.  I dunno's I ever did tell ye quite all my business, Joab.  Some
things I missed, includin' the list of my relations."

"Yes, I hear tell most of these movin' picture actresses are pretty,
Miz' Peckham.  They pick 'em for that puppose, I shouldn't wonder.  I
didn't ask her what part she was goin' to play--_if_ any."

"Land sakes, Mandy, she's just got here!  I ain't no idee how long
she'll stay.  If you think there's any danger of Milt not tendin' to
his clammin' proper whilst she's here you'd better send him on a cruise
with Cap'n Durgin.  The _Tryout_ sails for the Banks to-morrow, I
understand."

"No, Washy.  That was my A'nt Matildy I went away to help bury ten
years ago.  She's still dead--an' this ain't her daughter.  This is my
ha'f sister's child, she that was Miriam Card.  She got married to a
scientific chap that works for the government, I guess when you write
to Washington for your garden seeds next spring, you better ask about
him, if ye want to know more'n _I_ can tell ye."

"You got it right for once't, Joab.  I do expect Cap'n Am'zon.  Mebbe
to-night.  He may come over from the depot with Perry Baker--I can't
tell.  What'll I do with the girl?  Land sakes! ain't Cap'n Am'zon just
as much her uncle as _I_ be?  Some o' you fellers better stow your
jaw-tackle if Cap'n Am'zon does heave to here.  For he ain't no tame
cat, like I told you."

"You back again, Lawford Tapp?  Hi-mighty! what you forgot this time?
Fishhooks?  Goin' fishin', be you?  Wal, in my 'pinion you're throwin'
your hook into unproductive waters around here, as ye might say.  Even
chummin' won't sarve ye.  _Good_-night!"

After getting rid of this importunate customer, Cap'n Abe closed his
door and put out his store lights--an hour earlier than usual--and came
back to sit down with Louise.  His visage was red and determination sat
on his brow.

"I snum!" he emphatically observed.  "Cardhaven folks seem bit with
some kind o' bug.  Talk 'bout curiosity!  'Hem!  I dunno what Cap'n
Am'zon'll think of 'em."

"_I_ think they are funny," Louise retorted, her laughter bubbling up
again.

"Likely it looks so to you," said Cap'n Abe.  "They're pretty average
funny I do guess to a stranger, as ye might say.  But after you've
summered 'em and wintered 'em for twenty-odd years like I have, land
sakes! the humor's worn hi-mighty thin!"




CHAPTER V

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT

Cap'n Abe produced a pipe.  He looked at his niece tentatively.
"Do--do you mind tobacker smoke?"

"Daddy-prof is an inveterate," she laughed.

"Huh?  An--an invet'rate _what_?"

"Smoker.  I don't begrudge a man smoking tobacco as long as we women
have our tea.  A nerve tonic in both cases."

"I dunno for sure that I've got any nerves," Cap'n Abe said, the
corners of his eyes wrinkling.  "Mebbe I was behind the door when they
was given out.  But a pipeful o' tobacker this time o' the evening
_does_ seem sort o' satisfyin'.  That, and knittin'."

Having filled his pipe and lit it, he puffed a few times to get it well
alight and then reached for a covered basket that Louise had noticed on
a small stand under Jerry's cage.  He drew from this a half-fashioned
gray stocking that was evidently intended for his own foot and the
needles began to click in his strong, capable hands.

"Supprise you some, does it, Louise?" Cap'n Abe said.  "Cap'n Am'zon
taught me.  Most old whalers knit.  That, an' doin' scrimshaw work, was
'bout all that kep' 'em from losing their minds on them long v'y'ges
into the Pacific.  An' I've seen the time myself when I was hi-mighty
glad I'd l'arned to count stitches.

"Land sakes!  Some o' them whalin' v'y'ges lasted three-four years.
Cap'n Am'zon was in the old bark _Neptune's Daughter_ when she was
caught in the ice and drifted pretty average close't to the south pole.

"You know," said Cap'n Abe reflectively, "the Antarctic regions ain't
like the Arctic.  'Cause why?  There ain't no folks there.  Cap'n
Am'zon says there ain't 'nough land at the south pole to make Marm
Scudder's garden--and they say she didn't need more'n what her
patchwork quilt would cover.  Where there's land there's folks.  And if
there was land in the Antarctic there'd be Eskimos like there is up
North.

"'Hem!  Well, that wasn't what I begun on, was it?  This knitting.
Cap'n Am'zon says that many's the time he's thanked his stars he knowed
how to knit."

"I shall be glad to meet him," said Louise.

"If he comes," Cap'n Abe rejoined, "an' I go away as I planned to,
'twon't make a mite o' difference to you, Niece Louise.  You feel right
at home here--and so'll Cap'n Am'zon, though he ain't never been to
Cardhaven yet.  He'll be a lot better company for you than I'd be."

"Oh, Cap'n Abe, I can scarcely believe that!" cried the girl.

"You don't know Cap'n Am'zon," the storekeeper said.  "I tell ye fair:
he's ev'rything that I ain't!   As a boy--'hem!--Am'zon was always
leadin' an' me follerin'.  I kinder took after my mother, I guess.
She was your grandmother.  Your grandfather was a Card--and a nice man
he was.

"Our father--me an' Am'zon's--was Cap'n Joshua Silt of the schooner
_Bravo_.  Hi-mighty trim and taut craft she was, from all accounts.
I--I warn't born when he died," added Cap'n Abe, hesitatingly.

"You were a posthumous child!" said Louise.

"Er--I guess so.  Kinder 'pindlin', too.  Yes!  yes!  Cap'n Am'zon's
ahead o' me--in ev'ry way.  When father died 'twas pretty average hard
on mother," Cap'n Abe pursued.  "We was llvin' at Rocky Head, I guess I
told you b'fore?"

"Yes," Louise said, interested.

"The _Bravo_ was makin' reg'lar trips from Newport to Bangor, Maine.
Short-coastin' v'y'ges paid well in them days.  There come a big storm
in the spring--onexpected.  Mother'd got a letter from Cap'n
Josh--father he'd put out o' Newport with a sartain tide.  He warn't
jest a fair-weather skipper.  Cap'n Am'zon gits his pluck an' darin'
from Cap'n Josh.

"Well, mother knowed he must be out o' sight of Fort Adams and the
Dumplin's when the storm burst, and that he'd take the inside passage,
the wind bein' what it was.  She watched from Rocky Head and she seen
what she knowed to be the _Bravo_ heave in sight.

"There warn't no foolin' her," pursued Cap'n Abe, whose pipe had gone
out but whose knitting needles twinkled the faster.  "No.  She knowed
the schooner far's she could glim her.  She watched the Bravo caught in
the cross-current when the gale dropped sudden, and tryin' to claw off
shore.

"But no use!  She was doomed!  There warn't no help for the schooner.
She went right on to Toll o' Death Reef and busted up in an hour.  Not
a body ever was beached, for the current, tide, _an_' gale was all off
shore.  And it happened in plain sight of our windows.

"Two months later," Cap'n Abe said reflectively, "I come into the
world.  Objectin', of course, like all babies.  Funny thing that.  We
all come into it makin' all kinds of a hullabaloo against anchorin'
here; and we most of us kick just as hard against slippin' our moorin's
to get out of it.

"Land sakes!" he exclaimed in conclusion.  "There ye be.  I guess my
mother hated the sea 'bout as much as any longshore woman ever did.
And there's a slew of 'em detest it worse'n cats.  Why, ye couldn't
hire some o' these Cape Cod females to get into a boat.  Their men for
generations was drowned and more'n forty per cent.  of the stones in
the churchyards along the coast, sacred to the mem'ry of the men of the
fam'lies, have on 'em: '_Lost at sea_.'

"Can't blame the women.  Old Ella Coffin that lives on Narrer P'int
over yonder ain't been to the main but once't in fifteen years.  That
was when an off-shore gale blew all the water out o' the breach 'twixt
the p'int and the mainland.

"Ye see," said Cap'n Abe, smiling again, "Narrer P'int is re'lly an
island, even at low water.  But _then_ a hoss an' buggy can splatter
across't  the breach.  But it makes Marm Coffin seasick even to ride
through water in a buggy.  Marked, she is, as you might say.

"Well, now, Louise, child," the storekeeper added, "I'm a-gassin' 'bout
things that don't much int'rest you, I cal'late.  I'll light a lamp an'
show you up to your room.  When Perry Baker comes by and by, I'll help
him in with your trunks.  You needn't worry about 'em."

It had been foggy on the Sound the night before and Louise had not
slept until the boat had rounded Point Judith.  So she was not averse
to retiring at this comparatively early hour.

Cap'n Abe led her upstairs to a cool, clean, and comfortable chamber.
The old four-posted, corded bedstead stood in the middle of the room,
covered with a blue-and-white coverlet, with sheets and pillow cases as
white as foam.  It could not be doubted that Cap'n Abe had carried out
his idea of hospitality.  The spare room was always ready for the
possible guest.

"Good-night, uncle," she said, smiling at him as he handed her the
lamp.  "I believe I am going to have a delightful time here."

"Of course you be!  Of course!" he exclaimed.  "An' if I ain't here,
Cap'n Am'zon will show you a better time than I could.  Good-night.
Sleep well, Louise."

He kissed her on the forehead.  But she, impulsively, pressed her fresh
lips to the storekeeper's weather-beaten cheek.  Before she closed the
door of the bedroom she heard him clumping downstairs in his heavy
boots.

After that he must have removed his footgear for, although she heard
doors open and close, she could not distinguish his steps.

"I'm glad I came!" she told herself with enthusiasm as she prepared to
retire.  "What a delightful old place it is!  And Uncle Abram--why,
he's a _dear_!  Daddy-prof was not half enthusiastic enough about the
Cape Cod folk.  It has been a distinct loss to me that I was never here
before."

She laid out her toilet requisites upon the painted pine bureau and
hung her negligee over the back of a chair.  As she retied the ribbon
in one of the sleeves of her nightgown she thought:

"And that Tapp boy came back a second time!  Some fisherman's son, I
suppose.  But exceedingly nice looking!"

A little later the feather bed had taken her into its arms and she
almost instantly fell asleep.  Occasionally through the night she was
roused by unfamiliar sounds.  There was a fog coming in from the sea
and the siren at the lighthouse on the Neck began to bellow like a
bereft cow.

There were movements downstairs.  Once she heard a wagon stop, and
voices.  Then the bumping of heavy boxes on the side porch.  Her
trunks.  Voices below in the living-room--gruff, yet subdued.  Creaking
footsteps on the stair; then Louise realized that they were carrying
something heavy down and out to the waiting wagon.  She was just
dropping to sleep when the wagon was driven away.

There came a heavy summons on her door while it was still dark.  But a
glance at her watch assured Lou Grayling that it was the fog that made
the light so dim.

"Yes, Cap'n Abe?" she called cheerfully, for even early rising could
not quench her good spirits.

"'Tain't time to get up yet, Niece Louise," he told her behind the thin
panel of the door.  "Don't disturb yourself.  Cap'n Amazon's come an'
I'm off."

"You're what?" gasped the girl sitting up in her nest of feathers.

"I'm a-goin' to Boston.  Jest got time to ketch the clam-train at the
depot.   Don't you bother; Cap'n Am'zon's here and he'll take care of
you till I get back.  Betty Gallup'll be here by six or a little after
to do the work.  You can have her stop at night, if you want to."

"But, Uncle----"

"Must hurry, Louise," hastily said Cap'n Abe as he heard the bedcords
creak and the patter of the girl's feet on the matting.  "Cap'n Am'zon
knows of a craft that'll sail to-day from Boston and I must jine her
crew.  Good-bye!"

He was gone.  Louise, throwing on the negligee, hurried to the screened
window.  The fog had breathed upon the wires and clouded them.  She
heard the door open below, a step on the porch, and then a muffled:

"Bye, Am'zon.  Don't take no wooden money.  I'm off."

A shrouded figure passed up the road and was quickly hidden by the fog.




CHAPTER VI

BOARDED BY PIRATES

Louise could not go back to sleep.  She drew the ruffles of the
negligee about her throat and removed the sliding screen the better to
see into the outer world.

There was a movement in the fog, for the rising breeze ruffled, it.
Full daybreak would bring its entire dissipation.  Already the mist
held a luster heralding the sun.  The "hush-hush" of the surf along The
Beaches was more insistent now than at any time since Louise had come
to Cap'n Abe's store, while the moan of the breakers on the outer reefs
was like the deep notes of a distant organ.

A cock crew, and at his signal outdoor life seemed to awaken.  Other
chanticleers sounded their alarms; a colt whistled in a paddock and his
mother neighed softly from her stall; a cow lowed; then, sweet and
clear as a mountain stream, broke forth the whistle of a wild bird in
the marsh.  This matin of the feathered songster rose higher and higher
till he reached the very top note of his scale and then fell again, by
cadences, until it mingled with the less compelling calls of other
birds.

There was a warm pinkness spreading through the fog in one direction,
and Louise knew it must be the reflection of the light upon the eastern
horizon.  The sun would soon begin a new day's journey.

The fog was fast thinning, for across the road she could see a spiral
of blue smoke, mounting through it from the chimney of a neighbor.  The
kitchen fire there had just been lighted.

Below, and from the living-rooms behind the store, the girl heard some
faint noises as though the early morning tasks of getting in wood and
filling the coal scuttle were under way.  Uncle Amazon must be "takin'
holt" just as Cap'n Abe said he would.

Louise was curious to see the returned mariner; but it was too early to
go down yet.  She might really have another nap before she dressed, she
thought, yawning behind a pink palm.

There was a step in the store.  Her room overlooked by two windows the
roof of the front porch and she could hear what went on below plainly.
The step was lighter than Cap'n Abe's.  The bolts of the two-leaved
door rattled and it was set wide; she heard the iron wedges kicked
under each to hold it open.  Then a smell of pipe smoke was wafted to
her nostrils.

A footstep on the Shell Road announced the approach of somebody from
The Beaches.  Louise yawned again and was on the point of creeping into
bed once more when she descried the figure coming through the fog.  She
saw only the boots and legs of the person at first; but the fog was
fast separating into wreaths which the rising breeze hurried away, and
the girl at the window soon saw the full figure of the approaching
man--and recognized him.

At almost the same moment Lawford Tapp raised his eyes and saw her; and
his heart immediately beat the call to arms.  Louise Grayling's morning
face, framed by the sash and sill of her bedroom window, was quite the
sweetest picture he had ever seen.

It was only for a moment he saw her, her bare and rounded forearm on
the sill, the frilly negligee so loosened that he could see the column
of her throat.  Her gray eyes looked straight into his--then she was
gone.

"Actress, or not," muttered the son of the Salt Water Taffy King,
"there's nothing artificial about her.  And she's Cap'n Abe's niece.
Well!"

He saw the figure on the porch, smoking, and hailed it:

"Hey, Cap'n Abe!  Those fishhooks you sold me last evening aren't what
I wanted--and there's the _Merry Andrew_ waiting out there for me now.
I want----"

The figure in the armchair turned its head.  It was not Cap'n Abe at
all!

"Mornin', young feller," said the stranger cordially.  "You'll have to
explain a leetle about them hooks.  I ain't had a chance to overhaul
much of Abe's cargo yet.  I don't even know where he stows his small
tackle.  Do you?"

Fully a minute did Lawford Tapp keep him waiting for an answer while he
stared at the stranger.  He was not a big man, but he somehow gave the
impression of muscular power.  He was dressed in shabby
clothing--shirt, dungaree trousers, and canvas shoes such as sailors
work and go aloft in.  The pipe he smoked was Cap'n Abe's--Lawford
recognized it.

There was not, however, another thing about this man to remind one of
the old storekeeper.  This stranger was burned to a rich mahogany hue.
Not alone his shaven face, but his bared forearms and his chest where
the shirt was left unbuttoned seemed stained by the tropical sun.
Under jet-black brows the eyes that gazed upon Lawford Tapp seemed dark.

His sweeping mustache was black; and such hair as was visible showed
none of the iron gray of advancing age in it.  He wore gold rings in
his ears and to cap his piratical-looking figure was a red bandana worn
turbanwise upon his head.

"What's the matter with you, young feller?  Cat got your tongue?"
demanded the stranger.

"Well, of all things!" finally gasped Lawford.  "I thought you were
Cap'n Abe.  But you're not.  You must be Cap'n Amazon Silt."

"That's who I be," agreed the other.

"His brother!"

"Ain't much like Abe, eh?" and Cap'n Amazon smiled widely.

"Only your voice.  That is a little like Cap'n Abe's.  Well, I
declare!" repeated Lawford, coming deliberately up the steps.

Cap'n Amazon rose briskly and led the way into the store.  The fog was
clearing with swiftness and a ray of sunlight slanted through a dusty
window with sufficient strength to illumine the shelves behind the
counter.

"Those boxes yonder are where Cap'n Abe keeps his fishhooks.  But isn't
he here?"

"He's off," Cap'n Amazon replied.  "Up anchor'd and sailed 'bout soon's
I come.  Been ready to go quite a spell, I shouldn't wonder.  Had his
chest all packed and sent it to the depot by a wagon.  Walked over
himself airly to ketch the train.  These the hooks, son?"

"But where's he _gone_?"

"On a v'y'ge," replied Cap'n Amazon.  "Why shouldn't he?  Seems he's
been lashed here, tight and fast, for c'nsider'ble of a spell.  He and
this store of hisn was nigh 'bout spliced.  I don't see how he _has_
weathered it so long."

"Gone away!" murmured Lawford.

Cap'n Amazon eyed him with a tilt to his head and possibly a twinkle of
amusement in his eye.  "Young man, what's your name?" he asked bluntly.
Lawford told him.  "Wal, it strikes me," Cap'n Amazon said, "that your
tops'ls air slattin' a good deal.  You ain't on the wind."

"I am upset, I declare!"

"Sure you got the right hooks this time?"

"Yes.  I believe so."

"Then if your _Merry Andrew_--what is she, cat-rigged or----"

"Sloop."

"Then if your _Merry Andrew_ sloop's a-waiting for you, _that's_ the
way out," said Cap'n Amazon coolly, pointing with his pipestem to the
door.  "Come again--when you want to buy anything in Abe's stock.  Good
day!"

Lawford halted a moment at the door to look back at the bizarre figure
behind the counter, leaning on the scarred brown plank just as Cap'n
Abe so often did.  The amazing difference between the storekeeper's
well remembered appearance and that of his substitute grew more
startling.

As Cap'n Amazon stood there half stooping, leaning on his hairy fists,
the picture rose in Lawford Tapp's mind of a pirate, cutlass in teeth
and his sash full of pistols, swarming over the rail of a doomed ship.
The young man had it in his mind to ask a question about that
wonderfully pretty girl above.  But, somehow, Cap'n Amazon did not
appear to be the sort of person to whom one could put even a mildly
impudent question.

The young man walked slowly down the road toward the shore where his
boat was beached.  He had no idea that a pair of gray eyes watched him
from that window where he had glimpsed the vision of girlish beauty
only a few minutes before.

The neighborhood was stirring now and Louise had not gone back to bed.
Instead, she dressed as simply as she could until it would be possible
to get at her trunks.

While thus engaged she observed the neighborhood as well as she could
see it from the windows of her chamber.  Down the Shell Road, in the
direction of the sea, there were but two or three houses--small
dwellings in wind-swept yards where beach grass was about all the
verdure that would grow.

Across the road from the store, however, and as far as she could see
toward Cardhaven, were better homes, some standing in the midst of
tilled fields and orchards.  Sandy lanes led to these homesteads from
the highway.  She could see the blunt spire of the Mariner's Chapel.
Yet Cap'n Abe's house and store stood quite alone, for none of the
other dwellings were close to the road.

She set her chamber door ajar and suddenly heard the clash of voices.
The one that seemed nearest to the stair was gruff, but feminine.

"That must be Betty Gallup," thought Louise.  "It is nearly six.  I'll
go down and interview the lady who Cap'n Abe said ought to sail before
the mast."

The foot of the stairway was in the back entry which itself opened upon
the rear porch.  As she came lightly down the stairs Louise saw a
squat, square figure standing in the open doorway.  It was topped by a
man's felt hat and was dressed in a loose, shapeless coat and a scant
skirt down to the tops of a pair of men's shoes.

Over the shoulder of this queer looking person--of whose sex it was
hard to be sure--Louise could see an open letter that was evidently
being perused not for the first time.

The hands that held the letter were red and hard and blunt-fingered,
but not large.  They did not look feminine, however; not in the least.

The light tap of the girl's heels as she stepped on the bare floor at
the foot of the stairway aroused this person, who turned, revealing a
rather grim, weather-beaten face, lit by little sharp brown eyes that
proceeded to stare at Louise Grayling with frank curiosity.

"Humph!" ejaculated the woman.

Oh, it was a woman, Louise could now see, although Betty Gallup boasted
a pronounced mustache and a voice both deep and hoarse, while she
looked every inch the able seaman she was.

"Humph!" she exclaimed again.  "You don't look much like a pirate,
that's one comfort!"

Louise burst into gay laughter--she could not help it.

"I see by this letter Cap'n Abe left for me that you're his niece--his
ha'f sister's child--name, Louise Grayling; and that you've come to
stay a spell."

"Yes," the girl rejoined, still dimpling.  "And I know you must be Mrs.
Gallup!"

"Bet Gallup.  Yep.  Ain't much chance of mistaking me," the woman said,
still staring at Louise.  "Humph! you're pretty 'nough not to need
m'lasses to ketch flies.  Why didn't Cap'n Abe stay to home when you
come visiting him?"

"Why, he had his plans all laid to go away, if Uncle Amazon came."

"Ya-as.  That's so.  You are _his_ niece, too, I s'pose."

"Whose niece?  Uncle Amazon's?  I suppose I am," Louise gayly replied,
"though when I came I had no idea there was a second uncle down here on
the Cape."

"What's that?" demanded Betty Gallup, her speech crackling like a rifle
shot.

"I had not heard before of Cap'n Amazon," the girl explained.  "You
see, for several reasons, I have known very little about my mother's
kinfolk.  She died when I was a baby.  We have traveled a good deal,
father and I."

"I see.  I been told you worked for them movin' pictures.  Mandy Card
was over to my house last night.  Well!  what do you think of your
Uncle Am'zon?"

"I can express no opinion until I have met him," Louise returned, again
dimpling.

"Haven't ye seen him?" gasped Betty in astonishment.

"Not yet."

"Ye didn't see him when he came last night?"

"I was in bed."

"Then how--how d'ye know Cap'n Abe's gone?  Or that this man is Am'zon
Silt?  Nobody ever seen this critter 'round Cardhaven before," Betty
Gallup declared with strong conviction.

"Oh, no; Uncle Amazon has never been here to visit Cap'n Abe before.
Cap'n Abe told me all about it," the girl explained, fearing that
scandal was to take root here and now if she did not discourage it.
"Of course Uncle Abe went away.  He came to my door and bade me
good-bye."

Louise was puzzled.  She saw an expression in Betty Gallup's face that
she could not interpret.

"Ye heard Cap'n Abe _say_ he was goin'," muttered Betty.  "_His_ voice
sounds mighty like Cap'n Abe's.  But mebbe Abe Silt didn't go after
all--not rightly."

"What _do_ you mean, Mrs. Gallup?" demanded Louise in bewilderment.

"Well, if you ask me, I should say we'd been boarded by pirates.  Go
take a look at that Uncle Am'zon of yourn.  He's in the store."




CHAPTER VII

UNDER FIRE

"Uncle Amazon?" burst out Louise.  "A pirate?"

"That's what he looks like," repeated Betty Gallup, nodding her head on
which the man's hat still perched.  "I never saw the beat!  Why, that
man give me the shock of my life when I came in here just now!"

"What _do_ you mean?" the amazed girl asked,

"Why, as I come in--I was a lettle early, knowin' you was here--I heard
as I s'posed Cap'n Abe in the sittin'-room.  I saw this letter, sealed
and directed to me, on the dresser there.  'Humph!' says I, 'Who's
writin' billy-doos to _me_, I'd admire to know?'  And I up and opened
it and see it's in Cap'n Abe's hand.  Just then I heard him behind
me----"

"Heard _who_?  Not Cap'n Abe?"

"No, no!  This other feller--this Cap'n Am'zon Silt, as he calls
himself.  But I _thought_ 'twas Cap'n Abe's step I heard.  He says:
'Oh! you've found the letter?'  I declare I thought 'twas your uncle's
voice!"

"But it was my uncle's voice, of course," Louise reminded her, much
amused, "Cap'n Amazon Silt is my uncle, too."

"Humph!  I s'pose so.  Looks to be.  If 'tis him.  Anyhow," pursued the
jerkily speaking Betty Gallup, "I turned 'round when he spoke spectin'
to see Cap'n Abe--for I hadn't read this letter then--_and there he
warn't_!  Instead--of all the lookin' critters!  There! you go take a
peek at him and see what you think yourself.  I'll put the breakfast on
the table.  He's made coffee and the mush is in the double-biler and
the biscuits in the oven are just browning.  I reckon he's as handy
'round the kitchen as Cap'n Abe is.  Lots of these old sailors be."

"Fancy! an uncle who is a pirate!" giggled Louise and she ran through
the living-room and the dividing hall to the door of the store.  First
she saw Cap'n Amazon from the rear.  The red bandana swathing his bead,
below which was a lank fringe of black hair, was the only bizarre thing
she noticed about her new-found relative.  He seemed to have very quick
hearing for almost instantly he swung smartly around to face her.

"Oh!" was expelled from the girl's lips, for she was as startled as
Lawford Tapp and Betty Gallup had been.

Compared with the mild-appearing, heavily whiskered Cap'n Abe, this
brother of the storekeeper was in looks what Betty had pronounced him.
His dark complexion, the long mustache, as black and glossy as a crow's
wing, the gold rings in his ears, with the red handkerchief to top it
all, made Cap'n Amazon Silt as romantic a figure as ever peered out of
a Blackbeard or a Henry Morgan legend.

There were intricate traceries on his forearms in red and blue ink;
beneath the open collar of his shirt the girl gained a glimpse of other
tattooing.  There was a faint scar traced along his right jaw, almost
from ear to chin, which added a certain grimness to his expression.

Yet his was not at all a sinister face.  His eyes twinkled at her
kindly--almost like Cap'n Abe's eyes--and the huge mustache lifted in a
smile.

"Ahoy!" he cried jovially.  "So this is my niece, Louise, is it?  Well,
to be sure!  Abe didn't overpraise you.  You _be_ a pretty tidy craft."

The girl dimpled, coming forward to give him her hand.  As on the day
before, her hand was lost in a warm, firm clasp, while her uncle
continued to look her over with approval.

"Yes, sir!" he ejaculated.  "You look to me like one o' the tidiest
craft I ever clapped eyes on.  I don't scarcely see how Abe could go
away and leave you.  Dunno's he's got an eye for a pretty woman like
me.  Bless you!  I been a slave to the women all my life."

"Yet never married, Uncle Amazon?" she cried roguishly.

"Tell you how 'twas," he whispered hoarsely, his hand beside his mouth.
"I never could decide betwixt and between 'em.  No, sir!  They are all
so desir'ble that I couldn't make up my mind.  So I stayed single."

"Perhaps you showed wisdom, Uncle Amazon," laughed the girl.
"Still--when you grow old----"

"Oh! there's plenty of sailors' snug harbors," he hastened to say.
"And time enough to worry about that when I _be_ old."

"I thought----Why! you look younger than Cap'n Abe," she said.

"Ain't it a fact?  He's let himself run to seed and get old lookin'.
That's from stayin' ashore all his life.  It's the feel of a heavin'
deck under his feet that keeps the spring in a man's wishbone.  Yes,
sir!  Abe's all right--good man and all that--but he's no sailor,"
Cap'n Amazon added, shaking his head.

"Now, here!" he went on briskly, "we ought to have breakfast, hadn't
we?  I left that woman Abe has pokin' around here, to dish up; and it's
'most six bells.  Feel kind of peckish myself, Louise."

"I'll run to see if the biscuits are done," said the girl; and she
hurried to the kitchen ahead of him.  Betty Gallup was waiting for her.

"What d'ye think of him?" she whispered anxiously.

"Why, he's splendid!" the girl replied scarcely stifling her laughter.
"He's a _character_!"

"Humph!  Mebbe.  But even if he is your uncle, I got to say right now
he ain't a man I'd trust.  Nothin' a-tall like Cap'n Abe!"

"I think he seems a great deal like Uncle Abram."

"Humph!  How long you knowed Abram Silt?  Come here yesterday for the
fust time.  Lemme tell you, Miss Grayling, we've knowed Cap'n Abe
around here for twenty year and more.  Course, he ain't Cardhaven born;
but we know him.  He's as diff'rent from this pirate that calls himself
Cap'n Am'zon Silt as chalk is from cheese."

The mush was on the table, Louise called Cap'n Amazon from the store.
They sat down to the table just as she had sat opposite to Cap'n Abe
the evening before.  She thought, for a moment, that Cap'n Amazon was
going to ask a blessing as her other uncle had.  But no, he began
spooning the mush into a rather capacious mouth.

Into the room from the rear strolled Diddimus, the tortoise-shell cat.
Louise tried to attract his attention; but she was comparatively a
stranger to turn.  The cat went around to the chair where Cap'n Abe
always sat.  He leaped into Cap'n Amazon's lap.

"Well, I never!" said Cap'n Amazon.  "Seems quite to home, doesn't he?"

Diddimus, preparing to "make his bed," looked up with topaz eyes into
the face of the captain.  Louise could see the cat actually stiffen
with surprise.  Then, with a "p-sst-maow!" he leaped down and ran out
of the room at high speed.

"What--what do you think of that?" gasped Cap'n Amazon.  "The cat's
gone crazy!"

The girl was in a gale of laughter.  "Of course he hasn't," she said.
"He thought you were Cap'n Abe--till he looked into your face.  You
can't blame the cat, Uncle Amazon."

Cap'n Amazon smote his knee a resounding smack of appreciation.  "You
got your bearin's correct, Louise, I do believe.  I must have surprised
the critter.  And Abe set store by him, I've no doubt."

"Diddimus will get over it," said the amused Louise.

"There's that bird," Cap'n Amazon said suddenly, looking around at the
cage hanging in the sunlit window.  "What's Abe call him?"

"Jerry."

"And he told me to be hi-mighty tender with that canary.  Wouldn't
trust nobody else, he said, to feed and water him."  He rose from the
table, leaving his breakfast.  "I wonder what Jerry thinks of me?"

He whistled to the bird and thrust a big forefinger between the wires
of the cage.  Immediately, with an answering chirp, the canary hopped
along his perch with a queer sidewise motion and, reaching the finger,
sprang upon it with a little flutter of its wings.

"There!" cried Cap'n Amazon, with boyish relief.  "_He_ takes to me all
right."

"That don't show nothin'," said Betty Gallup from the doorway.  She had
removed her hat and coat and was revealed now as a woman approaching
seventy, her iron-gray hair twisted into a "bob" so that it could be
completely hidden when she had the hat on her head.  "That don't show
nothin'," she repeated grimly.

Cap'n Amazon jerked his head around to look at her, demanding: "Why
don't it, I want to know?"

"'Cause the bird's pretty near stone-blind."

"Blind!" gasped Louise, pity in her tone.

"It can't be," murmured the captain, hastily facing the window again.

"I found that out a year an' more ago," Betty announced.  "Didn't want
to tell Cap'n Abe--he was that foolish about the old bird.  Jerry's
used to Cap'n Abe chirping to him and putting his finger 'twixt the
slats of the cage for him to perch on.  He just thinks you're Cap'n
Abe."

She clumped out into the kitchen again in her heavy shoes.  Cap'n
Amazon came slowly back to his chair.  "Blind!" he repeated.  "I want
to know!  Both his deadlights out.  Too bad!  Too bad!"

He did not seem to care for any more breakfast.

Footsteps in the store soon brought the substitute shopkeeper to his
feet again.

"I s'pose that's somebody come aboard for a yard o' tape, or the
seizings of a pair of shoes," he growled.  "I'd ought to hauled in the
gang-plank when we set down."

He disappeared into the store and almost at once a shrill feminine
voice greeted him as "Cap'n Abe."  Vastly abused, Louise arose and
softly followed to the store.

"Give me coupla dozen clothespins and a big darnin' needle, Cap'n Abe.
I got my wash ready to hang out and found them pesky young 'uns of Myra
Stout's had got holt o' my pin bag and fouled the pins all up usin' 'em
for markers in their garden.  I want--land sakes!  Who--what----
_Where's_ Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't here just now," Cap'n Amazon replied.  "I'm his brother.
You'll have to pick out the needle you want.  I can find and count the
clothespins, I guess.  Two dozen, you say?"

"Land sakes!  Cap'n Abe gone away?  Don't seem possible."

"There's a hull lot of seemin' impossible things in this world that
come to pass just the same," the substitute storekeeper made answer,
with some tartness.  "Here's the needle drawer.  Find what you want,
ma'am."

Louise was frankly spying.  She saw that the customer was a lanky young
woman in a sunbonnet.  When she dropped the bonnet back upon her narrow
shoulders with an impatient jerk, the better to see the needles, it was
revealed that her thin, light hair was drawn so tightly back from her
face that it actually seemed to make her pop-eyed.

She had a rather pretty pink and white complexion, and aside from the
defect of hairdressing might have been attractive.  She possessed a
thin and aquiline nose, however, the nostrils fairly quivering with
eagerness and curiosity.

"Land sakes!" she was saying.  "I know Cap'n Abe's been talkin' of
goin' away--the longest spell!  But so suddent--'twixt night and
mornin' as ye might say------"

"Exactly," said Cap'n Amazon dryly, and went on counting the pins from
the box into a paper sack.

"What 'bout the girl that's come here?  That movie actress?" asked the
young woman with added sharpness in her tone.  "What you going to do
with _her_?"

Cap'n Amazon came back to the counter and even his momentary silence
was impressive.  He favored the customer with a long stare.

"Course, 'tain't none o' my business.  I was just askin'----"

"You made an int'restin' discovery, then, ma'am," he said.  "It _ain't_
any of your business.  Me and my niece'll get along pretty average
well, I shouldn't wonder.  Anything else, ma'am?  I see the needle's
two cents and the pins two cents a dozen.  Six cents in all."

"Well, I run a book with Cap'n Abe.  I ain't got no money with me,"
said the young woman defiantly.

"Le's see; what did you say your name was?" and Cap'n Amazon drew from
the cash drawer a long and evidently fully annotated list of customers'
names, prepared by Cap'n Abe.

"I'm Mandy Baker--she 'twas Mandy Card."

"Yes.  I find you here all right.  Your bill o' ladin' seems good.
Good-mornin', ma'am.  Call again."

Mandy Baker looked as though she desired to continue the conversation.
But there was that in Cap'n Amazon's businesslike manner and speech
that impressed Mrs. Baker--as it had Lawford Tapp--that here was a very
different person from the easy-going, benign Cap'n Abe.  Mandy sniffed,
jerked her sunbonnet forward, and departed with her purchases.

Cap'n Amazon's quick eye caught sight of Louise's amused face in the
doorway.

"Kind of a sharp craft that," he observed, watching' Mandy cross the
road.  "Reminds me some o' one o' them Block Island double-enders they
built purpose for sword-fishing.  When you strike on to a sword-fish
you are likely to want to back water 'bout as often as shove ahead.  I
cal'late this here Mandy Baker is some spry in her maneuvers.  And I
bet she's got one o' the laziest husbands in this whole town.  'Most
always happens that way," concluded the captain, who seemed quite as
homely philosophical and observant as his brother.

As a stone thrown into a quiet pool drives circling ripples farther and
farther away from the point of contact, so the news of Cap'n Abe's
secret departure and the appearance of the strange brother in his
place, spread through the neighborhood.

The coming of Louise to the store on the Shell Road had also set the
tongues to clacking.  Mandy Baker, who took her husband's rating in
women's eyes at his own valuation, was up in arms.  A pretty girl, and
an actress at that!--for until recent years that was a word to be only
whispered in polite society on the Cape--was considered by such as
Mandy to be under suspicion right from the start.

The mystery of Cap'n Amazon, however, quite overtopped the gossip about
Louise.  Idlers who seldom dropped into the store before afternoon came
on this day much earlier to have a look at Cap'n Amazon Silt.  Women
left their housework at "slack ends" to run over to the store for
something considered suddenly essential to their work.  Some of the
clam-diggers lost a tide to obtain an early glimpse of Cap'n Amazon.
Even the children came and peered in at the store door to see that
strange, red-kerchief-topped figure behind Cap'n Abe's counter.

Cap'n Joab Beecher was one of the earliest arrivals.  Cap'n Joab had
been as close to Cap'n Abe as anybody in Cardhaven.  There had been
some little friction between him and the storekeeper on the previous
evening.  Cap'n Joab felt almost as though Cap'n Abe's sudden departure
was a thrust at him.

But when he introduced himself to Cap'n Amazon the latter seized the
caller's hand in a seaman's grip, and said heartily: "I want to know
Cap'n Joab Beecher, of the old _Sally Noble_.  I knowed the bark well,
though I never happened to clap eyes on _you_, sir.  Abe give me a
letter for you.  Here 'tis.  Said you was a good feller and might help
wise me to things in the store here till I'd l'arned her riggin' and
how to sail her proper."

Cap'n Joab was frankly pleased by this.  He spelled out the note Cap'n
Abe had addressed to him slowly, being without his reading glasses, and
then said:

"I'm yours to command, Cap'n Silt.  Land sakes!  I s'pose your brother
had a puffict right to go away.  He'd talked about goin' enough.
Where's he gone?"

"On a v'y'ge," said Cap'n Amazon.

"No!  Gone to sea?"

"Yes.  Sailing to-day--out o' Boston."

"I want to know!  Abe Silt gone to sea!  Wouldn't never believed it.
Always 'peared to be afraid of gettin' his paws wet--same's a cat,"
ruminated Cap'n Joab.  "What craft's he sailin' in?"

The Boston morning paper lay before Cap'n Amazon, opened at the page
containing the shipping news.  His glance dropped to the sailing
notices and with scarcely a moment's hesitancy he said:

"_Curlew_, Ripley, master, out o' Boston.  I knowed of her--knowed
Cap'n Ripley," and he pointed to the very first line of the sailing
list.  "If Abe got there in time he like enough j'ined her crew."

"Shipped before the mast?" exploded Cap'n Joab.

"Well," Cap'n Amazon returned sensibly, "if you were skipper about
where would you expect a lubber like Abe Silt to fit into your crew?"

"I swanny, that's so!" agreed Cap'n Joab.  "But it's goin' to be hard
lines for a man of his years--and no experience."

Cap'n Amazon sniffed.  "I guess he'll get along," he said, seemingly
less disturbed by his brother's plight than other people.  "Three
months of summer sailin' won't do him no harm."

That he was under fire he evidently felt, and resented it.  His
brother's old neighbors and friends desired to know altogether too much
about his business and that of Cap'n Abe.  He told Louise before night:

"I tell you what, Abe's got the best of it!  If I'd knowed I was goin'
to be picked to pieces by a lot of busybodies the way I be, I'd never
agreed to stay by the ship till Abe got back.  No, sir!  These folks
around here are the beatenest I ever see."

Yet Louise noticed that he seemed able to hold his own with the curious
ones.  His tongue was quite as nimble as Cap'n Abe's had been.  On the
day of her arrival, Lou Grayling had believed she would be amused at
Cardhaven.  Ere the second twenty-four hours of her stay were rounded
out, she knew she would be.




CHAPTER VIII

SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY

During the day Cap'n Amazon and Amiel Perdue carried Louise's trunks
upstairs and into the storeroom, handy to her own chamber.  It seems
Cap'n Amazon had not brought his own sea chest; only a "dunnage bag,"
as he called it.

"But there's plenty of Abe's duds about," he said; "and we're about of
a size."

When Louise went to unpack her trunks she found a number of things in
the storeroom more interesting even than her own pretty summer frocks.
There were shells, corals, sea-ivory--curios, such as are collected by
seamen the world over.  Cap'n Abe was an indefatigable gatherer of such
wares.  There was a green sea chest standing with its lid wide open,
tarred rope handles on its ends, that may have been around the world a
score of times.  It was half filled with old books.

All the dusty, musty volumes in the chest seemed to deal with the sea
and sea-going.  Many of them, long since out of print and forgotten,
recounted strange and almost unbelievable romances of nautical
life--stories of wrecks, fires, battles with savages and pirates,
discoveries of lone islands and marvelous explorations in lands which,
since the date of publication, have become semi-civilized or altogether
so.

Here were narratives of men who had sailed around the world in tiny
craft like Captain Slocum; stories of seamen who had become chiefs of
cannibal tribes, like the famous Larry O'Brien; several supposedly
veracious narratives of the survivors of the Bounty; stories of Arctic
and Antarctic discovery and privation.  There were also several
scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings of nautical wonders--many of
these clipped from New Bedford and Newport papers which at one time
were particularly rich in whalers' yarns.

Interested in skimming these wonderful stories, Lou Grayling spent most
of the afternoon.  Here was a fund of entertainment for rainy days--or
wakeful nights, if she chanced to suffer such.  She carried one of the
scrapbooks into her bedroom that it might be under her hand if she
desired such amusement.

In arranging her possessions in closet and bureau, she found no time on
this first day at Cap'n Abe's store to stroll even as far as The
Beaches; but the next morning she got up betimes, as soon as Cap'n
Amazon himself was astir, dressed, and ran down and out of the open
back door while her uncle was sweeping the store.

The sun was but then opening a red eye above the horizon.  The ocean,
away out to this line demarcating sea and sky, was perfectly flat.
Unlike the previous dawn, this was as clear as a bell's note.

Louise had been wise enough to wear high shoes, so the sands above
high-water mark did not bother her.  The waves lapped in softly,
spreading over the dimpling gray beach, their voice reduced to a
whispering murmur.

Along the crescent of the sands, above on the bluffs, were set the
homes of the summer residents--those whom Gusty Durgin, the waitress at
the hotel, termed "the big bugs."  On the farthest point visible in
this direction was a sprawling, ornate villa with private dock and
boathouses, and a small breakwater behind which floated a fleet of
small craft.  Louise heard the "put-put-a-put" of a motor and descried
a swift craft coming from this anchorage.

She saw, by sweeping it with her glance, that not a soul but herself
was on the shore--neither in the direction of the summer colony nor on
the other hand where the beach curved sharply out to the lighthouse at
the end of the Neck.  The motor boat was fast approaching the spot
where Louise stood.

It being the single moving object on the scene, save the gulls, she
began to watch it.  There was but one person in the motor boat.  He was
hatless and was dressed in soiled flannels.  It was the young man,
Lawford Tapp, of whom Cap'n Abe did not altogether approve.

"He must work for those people over there," Louise Grayling thought.
"He is nice looking."

It could not be possible that Lawford Tapp had descried and recognized
the figure of the girl from the Tapp anchorage!

He no longer wore his hip boots.  After shutting off his engine, he
guided the sharp prow of the launch right up into the sand and leaped
into shallow water, bringing ashore the bight of the painter to throw
over a stub sunk above high-water mark.

"Good-morning!  What do you think of it?" he asked Louise, with a
cordial smile that belonged to him.

"It is lovely!" she said.  "Really wonderful!  I suppose you have lived
here so long it does not appeal to you as strongly as to the
new-beholder?"

"I don't know about that.  It's the finest place in the world; I think.
There's no prettier shore along the Atlantic coast than The Beaches."

"Perhaps you are right.  I do not know much about the New England
coast," she confessed.  "And that--where the spray dashes up so high,
even on this calm morning?"

"Gull Rocks.  The danger spot of all danger spots along the outer line
of the Cape.  In rough weather all one can see out there is a cauldron
of foam."

Before she could express herself again the purr of a swiftly moving
motor car attracted her attention, and she turned to see a low gray
roadster coming toward them from the north.  The Shell Road, before
reaching the shore, swerved northward and ran along the bluffs on which
the bungalows and summer cottages were built.  These dwellings faced
the smooth white road, the sea being behind them.

As Louise looked the car slowed down and stopped, the engine still
throbbing.  A girl was at the wheel.  She was perhaps fifteen, without
a hat and with two plaits of yellow hair lying over her slim shoulders.

"Hey, Ford!" she shouted to the young man, "haven't you been up to
Cap'n Abe's yet?  Daddy's down at the dock now and he's in a tearing
hurry."

She gazed upon Lou Grayling frankly but made no sign of greeting.  She
did not wait, indeed, for a reply from the young man but threw in the
clutch and the car shot away.

"I've got to go up to the store," he said.  "L'Enfant Terrible is
evidently going to Paulmouth to meet the early train.  Must be somebody
coming."

Louise looked at him quickly, her expression one of perplexity.  She
supposed this child in the car was the daughter of Lawford's employer.
But whoever before heard a fisherman speak just as he did?  Had Cap'n
Abe been at home she certainly would have tapped that fount of local
knowledge for information regarding Lawford.  He did not look so much
the fisherman type without his jersey and high boots.

"How do you like the old fellow up at the store?" Lawford asked, as
they strolled along together.  "Isn't he a curious old bird?"

"You mean my Uncle Amazon?"

"Goodness!  He _is_ your uncle, too, isn't he?" and a flush of
embarrassment came into his bronzed cheek.  "I had forgotten he was
Cap'n Abe's brother.  He is so different!"

"Isn't he?" responded Louise demurely.  "He doesn't look anything like
Uncle Abram, at least."

"I should say not!" ejaculated Lawford.  "Do you know, he's an
awfully--er--romantic looking old fellow.  Looks just as though he had
stepped out of an old print"

"The frontispiece of a book about buccaneers, for instance?" she
suggested gleefully.

"Well," and he smiled down upon her from his superior height, "I wasn't
sure you would see it that way."

"Do you know," she told him, still laughing, "that Betty Gallup calls
him nothing but 'that old pirate.'  She has taken a decided dislike to
him and I have to keep smoothing her ruffled feathers.  And, really,
Cap'n Amazon is the nicest man."

"I bet he's seen some rough times," Lawford rejoined with vigor.  "We
used to think Cap'n Abe told some stretchers about his brother; but
Cap'n Amazon looks as though he had been through all that Cap'n Abe
ever told about--and more."

"Oh, he's not so very terrible, I assure you," Louise said, much amused.

"Did you notice the scar along his jaw?  Looks like a cutlass stroke to
me.  I'd like to know how he came by it.  It must have been some fight!"

"You will make him out a much more terrible character than he can
possibly be."

"Never mind.  If he's anything at all like Cap'n Abe, we'll get it all
out of him.  I bet he can tell us some hair-raisers."

"I tell you he's a nice old man, and I won't have you talk so about
him," Louise declared.  "We must change the subject."

"We'll talk about _you_," said Lawford quickly.  "I'm awfully curious.
When does your--er--work begin down here?"

"My work?"  Then she understood him and dimpled.  "Oh, just now is my
playtime."

"Making pictures must be interesting."

"I presume it looks so to the outsider," she admitted.  It amused her
immensely that he should think her a motion picture actress.

"Your coming here and Cap'n Amazon exchanging jobs with his brother
have caused more excitement than Cardhaven and the vicinity have seen
in a decade.  Or at least since _I_ have lived here."

"Oh!  Then are you not native to the soil?"

"No, not exactly," he replied.  And then after a moment he added: "It's
a great old place, even in winter."

"Not dull at all?"

"Never dull," he reassured her.  "Too much going on, on sea and shore,
to ever be dull.  Not for me, at least.  I love it."

They reached the store.  Louise bade the young man good-morning and
went around to the back door to greet Betty.

Lawford made his purchases in rather serious mood and returned to his
motor boat.  His mind was fixed upon the way Louise Grayling had looked
as he stepped ashore and greeted her.

He had been close enough to her now, and for time enough as well, to be
sure that there was nothing artificial about this girl.  She was as
natural as a flower--and just as sweet!  There was a softness to her
cheek and to the curve of her neck like rich velvet.  Her eyes were
mild yet sparkling when she became at all animated.  And that demure
smile!  And her dimples!

When a young man gets to making an accounting of a girl's charms in
this way, he is far gone indeed.  Lawford Tapp was very seriously
smitten.

He saw his youngest sister, Cicely, whom the family always called
L'Enfant Terrible, speeding back to the villa in the automobile.  She
had not gone as far as Paulmouth, after all, and she reached home long
before he docked the launch.  Lawford did not pay much attention to
what went on in the big villa.  His mother and sisters lived a social
life of their own.  He merely slept there, spending most of his days on
the water.

The Salt Water Taffy King was not at the private dock when Lawford
arrived.  Mr. Israel Tapp was an irritable and impatient man.  He "flew
off the handle" at the slightest provocation.  Many times a day he lost
his temper and, as Lawford phlegmatically expressed it, "blew up."

These exhibitions meant nothing particularly to Mr. Tapp.  They were
escape-valves for a nervous irritability that had grown during his
years of idleness.  Born of a poor Cape family, but with a dislike for
fish-seines and lobster-pots, he had turned his attention from the
first to the summer visitors, even in his youth beginning to flock to
the old-fashioned ports of the Cape.  Catering to their wants was a
gold mine but little worked at that time.

He began to sell candy at one of the more popular resorts.  Then he
began to make candy.  His Salt Water Taffy became locally famous.  He
learned that a good many of the wealthier people who visited the Cape
in summer played all the year around.  They went to Atlantic City or to
the Florida beaches in the winter.

So Israel Tapp branched out and established salt water taffy kitchens
all up and down the coast.  "I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King" became
a catch-word.  It was then but a step to incorporating a company and
establishing huge candy factories.  I. Tapp went on by leaps and
bounds.  While yet a comparatively young man he found himself a
multi-millionaire.  Even a rather expensive family could not spend his
income fast enough.

He built the ornate villa at The Beaches and, like Lawford, preferred
to live there rather than elsewhere.  His wife and the older girls
insisted upon having a town house in Boston and in traveling at certain
times to more or less exclusive resorts and to Europe.  Their one
ambition was to get into that exclusive social set in which they felt
their money should rightfully place them.  But a house on the Back Bay
does not always assure one's entrance to the circles of the "gilded
codfish."

Mr. Tapp went down to the dock again after a time.  Lawford had the
_Merry Andrew_ all ready to set out on the proposed fishing trip.  The
sloop was a pretty craft, clinker built, and about the fastest sailing
boat within miles of Cardhaven.  Lawford was proud of her.

"So you're back at last, are you?" snapped the Salt Water Taffy King.

He was a portly little man with a red face and a bald brow.  His very
strut pronounced him a self-made man.  He glared at his son, whose cool
nonchalance he often declared was impudence.

"I've been waiting some time for you, dad.  Hop aboard," Lawford calmly
said.

"You took your time in getting back here," responded his father, by no
means mollified.  "And you knew I was waiting.  But you had to stand
and talk to a girl over there.  Cicely says it is that picture actress
who is staying at Cap'n Abe's.  Is that so?"

"I presume Cicely is right," his son answered.  "There is no other here
at present to my knowledge."

"Of all things!" ejaculated Mr. Tapp.  "You are always making some kind
of a fool of yourself, Lawford.  Don't, for pity's sake, be _that_ kind
of a fool."

"What do you mean, dad?" and now the young man's eyes flashed.  It was
seldom that Lawford turned upon his father in anger.

"You know very well what I mean.  Keep away from such women.  Don't get
messed up with actor people.  I won't have it, I tell you!  I am
determined that at least _one_ rich man's son shall not be the victim
of the wiles of any of these stage women."

The flush remained in Lawford's cheek.  It hurt him to hear his father
speak so in referring to Louise Grayling.  He, too, possessed some of
the insular prejudice of his kind against those who win their
livelihood in the glare of the theatrical spotlight.  This gentle,
well-bred, delightful girl staying at Cap'n Abe's store was a
revelation to him.  He held his tongue, however, and held his temper in
check as well.

"I don't see," stormed I. Tapp, "why you can't take up with a nice girl
and marry.  Why, at your age I was married and we had Marian!"

"Don't you think that should discourage me, dad?" Lawford put in.
"Marian is nobody to brag of, I should say."

"Hah!" ejaculated his father.  "She's a fool, too.  But there are nice
girls.  I was talking to your mother about your case last night.  Of
course, I don't want you to say anything to her about what I'm going to
tell you now.  She's got the silliest notions," pursued Mr. Tapp who
labored under the belief that all the wisdom of the ages had lodged
under his own hat.  "Expects her daughters to marry dukes and you to
catch a princess or the like."

"There are no such fish in these waters," laughed Lawford.  "At least,
none has so much as nibbled at my hook."

"And no nice girl will nibble at it if you don't come ashore once in a
while and get into something besides fisherman's duds."

"Now, dad, clothes do not make the man."

"Who told you such a fool thing as that?  Some fool philosopher with
only one shirt to his back said it.  Bill Johnson proved how wrong that
was to my satisfaction years and years ago.  Good old Bill!  I wanted
to branch out.  We had just that one little candy factory and I worked
in it myself every day.

"I got the idea," continued I. Tapp, launched on a favorite subject
now, "that my balance sheet and outlook for trade might impress the
bank people.  I wanted to build a bigger factory.  So I took off my
apron one day and walked over to the bank.  I saw the president.  He
looked like a fashion plate himself and he swung a pair of dinky
glasses on a cord as he listened to me and looked me over.  Then he
turned me down--flat!

"I told Bill about it.  Bill was kind of tied up just then himself.
That was before he made his big strike.  But he was a different fellow
from me.  Bill always looked like ready money.

"'Isra,' he says to me, 'I'll tell you how to get that money from the
bank.'

"'It can't be done, Bill,' I told him.  'The president of the bank
showed me that my business was too weak to stand such spread-eagling.

"'Nonsense!' says Bill.  'It isn't your business, it's your nerve that
you've got to hire money on--and your clothes.  You do what I tell you.
Come to my tailor's in the morning.'

"Well, to cut a long story short, I did it.  I rigged up to beat that
bank president himself.  When he saw me in about two hundred dollars'
worth of good clothes he considered the case again and recommended the
loan to his board.  'You put your facts much more lucidly to-day, Mr.
Tapp,' is the way he expressed himself.  But take it from me, Lawford,
it was my clothes that made the impression.

"So!" ruminated Mr. Tapp, "that is one thing Bill Johnson did for me.
And later, as you know, he came into the candy business with me and his
money helped make I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King.  Lawford, Bill is
like a brother to me.  His girl, Dorothy, is one of the nicest girls
who ever stepped in a slipper."

"Dorothy Johnson is a really sweet girl, dad," Lawford agreed.  "I like
her."

"There!" ejaculated I. Tapp.  "You let that liking become something
stronger.  Dorothy's just the girl for you to marry."

"_What_?" gasped the skipper of the _Merry Andrew_, almost losing his
grip on the steering wheel.

"You get my meaning," said his father, scowling.  "I've always meant
you should marry Bill's daughter.  I had your mother write her last
night inviting her down here.  Of course, your mother and the girls
think Bill Johnson's folks are too plain.  But I'm boss once in a while
in my own house."

"And you call mother a matchmaker!"

"I know what I want and I'm going to get it," said I. Tapp doggedly.
"Dorothy is the girl for you.  Don't you get entangled with anybody
else.  Not a penny of my money will you ever handle if you don't do as
I say, young man!"

"You needn't holler till you're hit, dad," Lawford said, trying to
speak carelessly.

"Oh!  _I_ sha'n't holler," snarled the Taffy King.  "I warn you.  One
such play as that and I'm through with you.  I'm willing to support an
idle, ne'er-do-well; but he sha'n't saddle himself with one of those
theatrical creatures and bring scandal upon the family.  Do you know
what I was doing when I was your age?  I had a booth at 'Gansett, two
at Newport, a big one at Atlantic City, and was beginning to branch
out.  I worked like a dog, too."

"That's why I think I don't have to work, dad," said Lawford coolly.




CHAPTER IX

SUSPICION HOVERS

Betty Gallup, clothed as usual in her man's hat and worn pea-coat, but
likewise on this occasion with mystery, seized Louise by the hand the
instant she appeared and drew her into the kitchen, shutting the door
between that and the living-room.

"What is the matter?" the girl asked.  "Have you broken something--or
is the canary dead?"

"Sh!" warned Betty, her little brown eyes blinking rapidly.  "I heard
something last night."

"I didn't.  I slept like a baby.  The night before I heard that old
foghorn----"

"I mean," interrupted Betty, "something was told me."

"Well, go on."  Louise made up her mind that she could not stem the
tide of talk.

"About your uncle, Cap'n Abe.  He--he never was seen to take that train
to Boston.  I got it straight, or pretty average straight.  Mandy Baker
told me, and Peke Card's wife, Mary Lizbeth, told her, who got it right
from Lute Craven who works in the post-office uptown, and Lute got it
from Noah Coffin.  You know, he't drives the ark you come over in from
Paulmouth.  Well!  Noah was at Paulmouth depot as he always is of
course when the clam train stops at five-thutty-five.  He says he
didn't see Cap'n Abe nor nobody that looked like him board that train
yest'day mornin'."

"Why, Betty!"  Louise could only gasp.  This house-that-Jack-built
narrative quite took her breath away.

"Besides," went on Betty; "there's more to it.  Cap'n Abe's chest was
took back to the depot by Perry Baker when he brought your trunks over,
sure 'nough.  And Perry Baker says he shipped that chest to Boston for
your uncle, marked to be called for.  It went by express."

"But--but what of it?" asked the puzzled girl.

"Humph!  Stands to reason," declared Mrs. Gallup, "that Cap'n Abe
wouldn't have done no such foolish thing as that.  It costs money to
ship a heavy sea chest by express.  He could have took it on his ticket
as baggage, free gratis, for nothin'!"

"I really don't see," Louise now said rather severely, "that these
facts you state--if they are facts--are any of our business, Betty.
Uncle Abram might have taken the train at some other station.  He was
not sure, perhaps, whether he would join the ship Cap'n Amazon
recommended, so why should he not send his chest by express?"

"Cap'n Am'zon!  Humph!" sniffed Betty.  "Nobody knows whether that's
his name or not.  _He_ comes here without a smitch of clo'es, as near
as I can find out."

Louise was amused; yet she was somewhat vexed as well.  The curiosity,
as well as the animosity, displayed by Betty and others of the
neighbors began to appall her.  If Cape Cod folk were, as her
daddy-professor had declared, "the salt of the earth," some of the salt
seemed to have lost its savor.

"We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely.  "Just as he
had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he
probably had his reasons for taking nobody into his confidence.  This
Perry Baker, the expressman, must know that Cap'n Abe sent the trunk
from the house, here."

"Humph!  Yes!  Nobody's denyin' that."

"Then Cap'n Abe must have known exactly what he wished to do.  Cap'n
Amazon surely had nothing to do with the chest, with how his brother
took the train, or with _where_ he took it.  Really, Betty, what do you
suspect Cap'n Amazon has done?"

"I don't know what he's done," snapped Betty.  "But I wouldn't put
nothin' past him, from his looks.  The old pirate!"

"You will make me feel very bad if you continue to talk this way about
my Uncle Amazon," said the girl, far from feeling amused now.  "It is
not right.  I hope you will not continue to repeat such things.  If you
do you will some time be sorry for it, Betty."

"Humph!" sniffed the woman.  "Mebbe I will.  But I'm warnin' you, Miss
Grayling."

"Warning me of what?"

"Of that man.  That old sinner!  I never see a wickeder looking feller
in my life--and I've sailed with my father and my husband to 'most
ev'ry quarter of the globe.  He may be twin brother to the Angel
Gabriel; but if he is, his looks belie it!"

There was nothing in all this of enough consequence to disturb the
girl, only in so far as she was vexed to find the neighbors so gossipy
and unkind.  She gazed thoughtfully upon Cap'n Amazon as he sat across
from her at the breakfast table, and wondered how anybody could see in
his bronzed face anything sinister.

That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true.  Those gold
earrings!  But then, she had seen several of the older men about the
store wearing rings in their ears.  If he did not always have that
bright-colored kerchief on his head!  But then, he might wear that
because he was susceptible to neuralgia and did not wish to wear a hat
all the time as seemed to have been Cap'n Abe's custom.

When he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners, he was as
kindly of expression, she thought, as Cap'n Abe himself.  And he was a
much better looking man than the brother who had gone away.

"Cap'n Amazon," she said to him, "I believe you must be just full of
stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land.  Uncle
Abram said you had been everywhere."

Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and
said:

"I've been pretty nigh everywhere.  Seen some funny corners of the
world, too, Louise."

"You must tell me about your adventures," she said.  "Your brother told
me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and
sailed on a long whaling voyage."

"Yep.  _South Sea Belle_.  Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon
briskly.  "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin'
with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big
as a nail keg--or pretty nigh."

Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of
ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so.  He told
it so vividly that Louise was enthralled.  The picture of the whaling
bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the
surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had
brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days.  The mate of the _South
Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly
caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted
upon boarding the carcass.  Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea
fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the
whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth
so great a sum to the perfumer.

"'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought
into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon.  "Helped make
the owners rich, and the Old Man, too.  Course, I got my sheer; but a
boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot.
So I went to sea again."

"You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon."

"Pretty nigh.  I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a
berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'.  I let Abe do
that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone.

"Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body!  See the
nice business he has built up here.  And he told me he owned shares in
several vessels and other property."

"That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly.  "And a tidy sum in the
Paulmouth National Bank.  I got a letter to the bank folks he left to
introduce me, if I needed cash.  Yes, Abe's done well enough that way.
But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore."

"And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing.

"I'm going to try it, Louise.  I've done my sheer of roaming about.
Mebbe I'll settle down here for good."

"With Cap'n Abe?  Won't that be fine?"

"Yep.  With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the
meal.

On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual.
Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers;
but he would not listen to that for a moment.

"I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to
look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly.  "You stay
aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew.  Besides,
there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue.  Abe said he sometimes
helped around.  He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores
is stowed."

The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and
attacked Cap'n Amazon.  It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers
their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the
captain slept locked against her.  It was Cap'n Abe's room and it
seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his
own bed and keep his room tidy during the week.  But Betty had always
given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Saturdays.

"What's that room locked for?  I want to know what you mean?" the woman
demanded of Cap'n Amazon.  "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where
doors is locked against me?  I'm as honest as any Silt that ever
hobbled on two laigs.  Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the
coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile."

She had much more to say--and said it.  It seemed to make her feel
better to do so.  Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer
to take the key out of his trousers' pocket.

"What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless.

"I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive
voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was.  "I
don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds.  That
door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece.  You do
the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin."

Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at
first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she would resign
from her situation on the spot.

But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her.
And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed.  She spluttered a
little more, then returned to her work.  Though she was sullen all day,
she did not offer to reopen the discussion.

"What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise
thought.  "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp
suggested.  My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all."

But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father.  He stood
on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with
Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word.

That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender
heart, the girl was sure.  For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel
a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him
stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with
him.  And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye.

"Blind's a bat!  Poor little critter!" he would murmur.  "All the
sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more.  Out-o'-doors
ain't nothin' to him now."

Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor
little Jerry.  He had promised Abe, he said.  He kept that promise
faithfully.

Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem.  At first, whenever he
saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled.  Then, gradually, an
unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell.  He would
peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes
through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the
substitute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest
in the man.  But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him.

"I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon.
"They'll desert ship as soon as wink.  Treacherous critters, the hull
tribe.  Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's
hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten.  Brought
it up on a bottle himself.

"He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock
under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as
lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall
in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed
demon would lay in it, too, and purr like an ordinary cat.

"But a day come when the man fell asleep and had a nightmare or
something, and kicked out, cracking that cat on the snout with his
heel.  Next breath the cat had a chunk out o' his calf and if I hadn't
been there with a gun he'd pretty near have eat the feller!"

The personal touch always entered into Cap'n Amazon's stories.  He had
always been on me spot when the thing in point happened--and usually he
was the heroic and central figure.  No foolish modesty stayed his
tongue when it came to recounting adventures.

He had all his wits, as well as all his wit, about him, had Cap'n
Amazon.  This was shown by an occurrence that very Saturday afternoon.

Milt Baker, like the other neighbors, was becoming familiar, if not
friendly, with the substitute storekeeper and, leaning on the showcase.
Milt said:

"Leave me have a piece of Brown Mule, Cap'n Am'zon.  I'm all out o'
chewin'.  Put it on the book and Mandy'll pay for it."

"Avast there!" Cap'n Amazon returned.  "Seems to me I got something in
the bill o' ladin' 'bout that," and he drew forth the long memorandum
Cap'n Abe had made to guide his substitute's treatment of certain
customers.  "No," the substitute storekeeper said, shaking his head
negatively.  "Can't do it."

"Why not, I want to know?" blustered Milt.  "I guess my credit's good."
He already had the Brown Mule in his hand.

"Your wife's credit seems to be good," Cap'n Amazon returned firmly.
"But here's what I find here: 'Don't trust Milt Baker for Brown Mule
'cause Mandy makes him pay cash for his tobacker and rum.  We don't
sell no rum.'  That's enough, young man."

Milt might have tried to argue the case with Cap'n Abe; but not with
Cap'n Amazon.  There was something in the steady look of the latter
that caused the shiftless clam digger to dig down into his pocket for
the nickel, pay it over, and walk grumblingly out of the store.

"Does beat all what a fool a woman will be," commented Cap'n Amazon,
rather enigmatically; only Louise, who heard him, realized fully what
his thought was.  Jealous and hard-working Mandy Baker had chosen for
herself a handicap in the marriage game.




CHAPTER X

WHAT LOUISE THINKS

Sunday morning such a hush pervaded the store on the Shell Road, and
brooded over its surroundings, as Lou Grayling had seldom experienced
save in the depths of the wilderness.

She beheld a breeze-swept sea from her window with no fishing boats
going out.  There was nobody on the clam flats, although the tide was
just right at dawn.  The surfman from the patrol station beyond The
Beaches paced to the end of his beat dressed in his best, like a man
merely taking a Sunday morning stroll.

The people she saw seemed to be changed out of their everyday selves.
Not only were they in Sabbath garb, but they had on their Sabbath
manner.  Even to Milt Baker, the men were cleanly shaven and wore fresh
cotton shirts of their wives' laundering.

Cap'n Amazon appeared from his "cabin" when the first church bells
began to ring, arrayed in a much wrinkled but very good suit of "go
ashore" clothes of blue, which were possibly those he had worn when he
arrived at the store on the Shell Road.  He wore a hard, glazed hat of
an old-fashioned naval shape and, instead of the usual red bandana, he
wore a black silk handkerchief tied about his head.

Just why he always kept his crown thus swathed, Louise was very
desirous of knowing.  Yet she did not feel like asking him such a very
personal question.  Had it been Cap'n Abe she would not for a moment
have hesitated.  Louise had heard of men being scalped by savages and
she was almost tempted to believe that this had happened to Cap'n
Amazon in one of his wild encounters.

"We'll go to the First Church, Niece Louise," he said firmly.  "Abe
always did.  These small-fry craft, like the Mariner's Chapel, are all
right, I don't dispute; but they are lacking in ballast.  It's in my
mind to attend the church that's the most like a well-founded, deep-sea
craft."

Louise was more impressed than amused by this philosophy.  The captain
seemed to have put on his "Sunday face" like everybody else.  As they
came out of the yard old Washington Gallup hobbled by, but instead of
stopping to chatter inconsequently, for he was an inveterate gossip, he
saluted the captain respectfully and hobbled on.

Indeed, the captain was a figure on this day to command profound
respect.  It is no trick at all for a big man to look dignified and
impressive; but Cap'n Amazon was not a big man.  However, in his blue
pilot-cloth suit, cut severely plain, and with his hard black hat on
his head he made a veritable picture of what a master-mariner should be.

On his quarter-deck, in fair or foul weather, Louise was sure that he
had never lacked the respect of his crew or their confidence.  He was
distinctly a man to command--a leader and director by nature.  He was,
indeed, different from the seemingly easy-going, gentle-spoken Cap'n
Abe, the storekeeper.

They had scarcely started up the Shell Road when the whir of a
fast-running automobile sounded behind them and the mellow hoot of a
horn.  Louise turned to see a great touring car take the curve from the
direction of The Beaches and glide swiftly toward them.  Lawford Tapp
was guiding the car.

"Then he's a chauffeur as well as fisherman and boatman," she thought.

She could not see how he was dressed under the coat he wore; but he
touched his cap to her and Cap'n Amazon as he drove by.

Beside Lawford on the driving seat was a plump little man who seemed to
be violently quarreling with the chauffeur.  In the tonneau was a
matronly woman and three girls including "L'Enfant Terrible," all,
Louise thought, rather overdressed.

"Those folks, so I'm told," said Cap'n Amazon placidly, "come from that
big house on the p'int--as far as you can see from our windows.  More
money than good sense, I guess.  Though the man, he comes of good old
Cape stock.  But I guess that blood can de-te-ri-orate, as the feller
said.  Ain't much of it left in the young folks, pretty likely.  They
just laze around and play all the time.  If 'All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy,' you can take it from me, Niece Louise, that all play
and no work makes Jill a pretty average useless girl.  Yes, sir!"

To the First Church it was quite a walk, up Main Street beyond the Inn
and the post-office.  There was some little bustle on Main Street at
church-going time for some of the vacation visitors--those of more
modest pretensions than the occupants of the cottages at The
Beaches--had already arrived.

At the head of the church aisle Cap'n Amazon spoke apologetically to
the usher:

"Young man, my brother, Mr. Abram Silt, hires a pew here; but I don't
rightly know its bearings.  Would you mind showin' me and my niece the
course?"

They were accommodated.  After service several shook hands with them;
but Louise noticed that many cast curious glances at the black silk
handkerchief on Cap'n Amazon's head and did not come near.  Despite his
dignity and the reverence of his bearing, he did look peculiar with
that 'kerchief swathing his crown.

Gusty Durgin, the waitress at the Cardhaven Inn, claimed
acquaintanceship after church with Louise.

"There's goin' to be more of your crowd come to-morrow, Miss Grayling,"
she said.  "Some of 'em's goin' to stop with us at the Inn.  How you
makin' out down there to Cap'n Abe's?  Land sakes! _that_ ain't Cap'n
Abe!"

"It is his brother, Cap'n Amazon Silt," explained Louise.

"I want to know!  He looks amazin' funny, don't he?  Not much like
Cap'n Abe.  You see, my folks live down the Shell Road.  My ma married
again.  D'rius Vleet.  Nice man, but a Dutchman.  I don't take up much
with these furiners.

"Now! what was I sayin'?  Oh!  The boss tells me there's a Mr. Judson
Bane of your crowd goin' to stop with us.  Sent a telegraph dispatch
for a room to be saved for him.  With bath!  Land sakes! ain't the
whole ocean big enough for him to take a bath in?  We ain't got nothing
like that.  And two ladies--I forget their names.  You know Mr. Bane?".

"I have met him--once," confessed Louise.

"Some swell he is, I bet," Gusty declared.  "I'm goin' to speak to him.
Mebbe he can get me into the company.  I ain't so _aw_-ful fat.  I seen
a picture over to Paulmouth last night where there was a girl bigger'n
I am, and she took a re'l sad part.

"She cried re'l tears.  _I_ can do that.  All I got to do is to think
of something re'l mis'rable--like the time our old brahma hen, Beauty,
got bit by Esek Coe's dog, and ma had to saw her up.  Then the tears'll
squeeze right out, _just as ea'sy_!"

Louise thought laughter would overcome her "just as easy" despite the
day and place.  She knew a hearty burst of laughter in the church
edifice would amaze and shock the lingering congregation.

Seeing that Cap'n Amazon was busy with some men he had met, the girl
walked out to the little vestibule of the church.  Here a number of
women and men were discussing various matters--the sermon, the weather,
clamming, boating, and the colony at The Beaches.  Two women stood
apart from the others and presently Louise was attracted to them by the
sound of Lawford Tapp's name.

"I dunno who he is exactly, bein' somethin' o' a stranger here," one of
the women said.  "But I was told he was some poor relation who allers
lived among the fisher folk.  But he does seem to know how to run thet
autermobile, don't he?"

"I should say!" returned the other woman.  "An' he's well spoken,
too--from what I heard him say down to the store."

"Yes, I know that too.  Well, I hope he buys the outfit--Jimmy wants to
sell it bad enough--an' needs the money, believe me!"  And thereupon
the two women took their departure.

The conversation hung in Louisa's mind and she looked exceedingly
thoughtful when Cap'n Amazon broke away from those with whom he had
been talking and joined her.

"Nice man, that Reverend Jimson, I guess," the captain said, as they
wended their way homeward; "but he's got as many ways of holdin' a
feller as an octopus.  And lemme tell you, that's a plenty!  Arms seem
to grow on devilfish 'while you wait' as the feller said.

"I sha'n't ever forget the time I was a boy in the old _Mary Bedloe_
brig, out o' Boston, loaded with sundries for Jamaica, to bring back
molasses--and something a leetle mite stronger.  That's 'bout as near
as I ever got to having traffic with liquor--and 'twas an unlucky
v'y'ge all the way through.

"Before we ever got the rum aboard," pursued Cap'n Amazon, "on our way
down there, our water went bad.  Yes, sir!  Water does get stringy
sometimes on long v'y'ges.  It useter on whalin' cruises--get all
stringy and bad; but after she'd worked clear she'd be fit to drink
again.

"But this time in the _Mary Bedloe_ it was something mysterious
happened to the drinking water.  Made the hull crew sick.  Cap'n Jim
Braman was master.  He was a good navigator, but an awful profane man.
Swore without no reason to it.

"Well----Where was I?  Oh, yes!  We had light airs in the Caribbean for
once, and didn't make no more headway in a day than a brick barge goin'
upstream.  We come to an island--something more than a key--and Cap'n
Braman ordered a boat's crew ashore for water.  I was in the second's
boat so I went.  We found good water easy and the second officer, who
was a nice young chap, let us scour around on our own hook for fruit
and such, after we'd filled the barrels.

"I was all for shellfish them days, and I see some big mussels attached
to the rocks, it bein' low water.  Some o' them mussels, when ye gut
'em same as ye would deep-sea clams, make the nicest fry you ever
tasted.

"Wal," said Cap'n Amazon, walking sedately home from church with his
amused niece on his arm, "I wanted a few of them mussels.  There was a
mud bottom and so the water was black.  Just as I reached for the first
mussel I felt something creeping around my left leg.  I thought it was
eel-grass; then I thought it was an eel.

"Next thing I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places.
I jumped; but I didn't jump far.  There was two o' the things had me,
and that left leg o' mine was fast as a duck's foot in the mud!"

"Oh, Uncle Amazon!" gasped Louise.

"Yep.  A third arm whipped out o' the water had helt me round the waist
tighter'n any girl of my acquaintance ever lashed her best feller.
Land sakes, that devilfish certainly give me a hi-mighty hug!

"But I had what they call down in the Spanish speakin' islands a
machette--a big knife for cuttin' your way through the jungle.  I
hauled that out o' the waistband of my pants and I began slicing at
them snake-like arms of the critter and yelling like all get-out.

"More scare't than hurt, I reckon.  I was a young feller, as I tell
you, and hadn't seen so much of the world as I have since," continued
Cap'n Amazon.  "But the arms seemed fairly to grow on that devilfish.
I wasn't hacked loose when the second officer come runnin' with his
gun.  I dragged the critter nearer inshore and he got a look at it.
Both barrels went into that devilfish, and that was more than it could
stomach; so it let go," finished the captain.

"Mercy! what an experience," commented Louise, wondering rather vaguely
why the minister of the First Church had reminded her uncle of this
octopus.

"Yes.  'Twas _some_," agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "But let's step along a
little livelier, Niece Louise.  I'm goin' to give you a re'l
fisherman's chowder for dinner, an' I want to git the pork and onions
over.  I like my onions well browned before I slice in the potaters."

Cap'n Amazon insisted on doing most of the cooking, just as Cap'n Abe
had.  Louise had baked some very delicate pop-overs for breakfast that
morning and the captain ate his share with appreciation.

"Pretty average nice, I call 'em, for soft-fodder," he observed.  "But,
land sakes! give me something hearty and kind of solid for reg'lar
eating.  Ordinary man would starve pretty handy, I guess, on breadstuff
like this."

The chowder was both as hearty and as appetizing as one could desire.
Nor would the captain allow Louise to wash the dishes afterward.

"No, girl.  I'll clean up this mess.  You go out and see how fur you
can walk on that hard beach now it's slack tide.  You ain't been up
there to Tapp P'int yit and seen that big house that belongs to the
candy king.  Neither have I, of course," he added; "but they been
tellin' me about it in the store."

Louise accepted the suggestion and started to walk up the beach; but
she did not get far.  There was a private dock running out beyond
low-water mark just below the very first bungalow.  She saw several men
coming down the steps from the top of the bluff to the shore and the
bathhouses; a big camera was set up on the sands.  This must be
Bozewell's bungalow, she decided; the one engaged by the moving picture
people.

If Judson Bane was to be leading man of the company the picture was
very likely to be an important production; for Bane would not leave the
legitimate stage for any small salary.  Seeing no women in the party
and that the men were heading up the beach, Louise went no farther in
that direction, and instead walked out upon the private dock to its end.

It was not until then that she saw, shooting inshore, the swift launch
in which Lawford Tapp had come over in the morning previous.  The wind
being off the land she had not heard its exhaust.  In three minutes the
launch glided in beside the dock where she stood.

"Come for a sail, Miss Grayling?" he asked her, with his very widest
smile.  "I'll take you out around Gull Rocks."

"Oh!  I am not sure----"

"Surely you're not down here to work on Sunday?" and he glanced at the
actors.

She laughed.  "Oh, no, Mr. Tapp.  I do not work on Sundays.  Uncle
Amazon would not even let me wash the dishes."

"I should think not," murmured Lawford with an appreciative glance at
her ungloved hands.  "He's a pretty decent old fellow, I guess.  Will
you come aboard?  She's perfectly safe, Miss Grayling."

If he had invited her to enter the big touring car he had driven that
morning, to go for a "joy ride," Louise Grayling would certainly have
refused.  To go on a pleasure trip at the invitation of a chauffeur in
his employer's car was quite out of consideration.

But this was somehow different, or so it seemed.  She hesitated not
because of who or what he was (or what she believed him to be), but
because she had seen something in his manner and expression of
countenance that warned her he was a young man not to be lightly
encouraged.

In that moment of reflection Louise Grayling, asked herself if she felt
that he possessed a more interesting personality than almost any man
she had ever met socially before.  She did so consider him, she told
herself, and so--she stepped aboard the launch.

She did not need his hand to help her to the seat beside him.  She was
boatwise.  He pushed off, starting his engine; and they were soon
chug-chugging out upon the limitless sea.




CHAPTER XI

THE LEADING MAN

"I saw you with Cap'n Amazon going to church this morning," Lawford
said.  "To the First Church, I presume?"

"And you?"

"Oh, I drove the folks over to Paulmouth.  There is an Episcopal Church
there and the girls think it's more fashionable.  You don't see many
soft-collared shirts among the Paulmouth Episcopalians."

There spoke the "native," Louise thought; and she smiled.

"It scarcely matters, I fancy, which denomination one attends.  It is
the spirit in which we worship that counts."

He gazed upon her seriously.  "You're a thoughtful girl, I guess.  I
should not have looked for that--in your business."

"In my business?  Oh!"

"We outsiders have an idea that people in the theatrical line are a
peculiar class unto themselves," Lawford went on.

"But I----"  On the point of telling him of his mistake she hesitated.
He was unobservant of her amusement and went on with seriousness:

"I guess I'm pretty green after all.  I don't know much about the
world--your world, at least.  I love the sea, and sailing, and all the
seashore has to offer.  Sometimes I'm out here alone all day long."

"But what is it doing for you?" she asked him rather sharply.  "Surely
there can be very little in it, when all's said and done.  A man with
your intelligence--you have evidently had a good education."

"I suppose I don't properly appreciate that," he admitted.

"And to really waste your time like this--loafing longshore, and
sailing boats, and--and driving an automobile.  Why! you are a regular
beach comber, Mr. Tapp.  It's not much of an outlook for a man I should
think."

She suddenly stopped, realizing that she was showing more interest than
the occasion called for.  Lawford was watching her with smoldering eyes.

"Don't you think it is a nice way to live?" he asked.  "The sea is
really wonderful.  I have learned more about sea and shore already than
you can find in all the books.  Do you know where the gulls nest, and
how they hatch their young?  Did you ever watch a starfish feeding?  Do
you know what part of the shellfish is the scallop of commerce?  Do you
know that every seventh wave is almost sure to be larger than its
fellows?  Do you----"

"Oh, it may be very delightful," Louise interrupted this flow of badly
catalogued information to say.  He expressed exactly her own desires.
Nothing could be pleasanter than spending the time, day after day,
learning things "at first hand" about nature.  For her father--and of
course for her--to do this was quite proper, Louise thought.  But not
for this young fisherman, who should be making his way in the world.
"Where is it getting you?" she demanded.

"Getting me?"

"Yes," she declared with vigor, yet coloring a little.  "A man should
work."

"But I'm not idle."

"He should work to get ahead--to save--to make something of himself--to
establish himself in life--to have a home."

He smiled then and likewise colored.  "I--I------A man can't do that
alone.  Especially the home-making part."

"You don't suppose any of these girls about here--the nice girls, I
mean--want a man who is not a home provider?"

He laughed outright then.  "Some of them get that kind, I fear, Miss
Grayling.  Mandy Card, for instance."

"Are you planning to be another Milt Baker?" she responded with scorn.

"Oh, now, you're hard on a fellow," he complained.  "I'm always busy.
And, fixed as I am, I don't see why I should grub and moil at
unpleasant things."

Louise shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture of finality.  "You are
impossible, I fear," she said and put aside--not without a secret
pang--her interest in Lawford Tapp, an interest which had been
developing since she first met the young man.

He allowed the subject to lapse and began telling her about the ledges
on which the rock cod and tautog schooled; where bluefish might be
caught on the line, and snappers in the channels going into the Haven.

"Good sport.  I must take you out in the _Merry Andrew_," he said.
"She's a peach of a sailer--and my very own."

"Oh! do you own the sloop, Mr. Tapp?"

"I guess I do!  And no money could buy her," he cried with boyish
enthusiasm.  "She's the best lap-streak boat anywhere along the Cape.
And _sail_!"

"I love sailing," she confessed, with brightening visage.

"Say!  You just set the day--so it won't conflict with your work--and
I'll take you out," he declared eagerly,

"But won't it conflict with your duties?"

"Humph!" he returned.  "I thought your idea was that I didn't have any
duties.  However," and he smiled again, "you need not worry about that.
When you want to go I will arrange everything so that I'll have a free
day."

"But not alone, Mr. Tapp?"

"No," he agreed gravely.   "I suppose that wouldn't do.  But we can
rake up a chaperon somewhere."

"Oh, yes!" and Louise dimpled again.  "We'll take Betty Gallup along.
She's an able seaman, too."

"I _bet_ she is!" ejaculated Lawford with emphasis.

He handled the boat with excellent judgment, and his confidence caused
Louise to see no peril when they ran almost on the edge of the
maelstrom over Gull Rocks.  "I know this coast by heart," he said.  "I
believe there's not one of them sailing out of the Haven who is a
better pilot than I am.  At least, I've learned _that_ outside of
textbooks," and he smiled at her.

Louise wondered how good an education this scion of a Cape Cod family
really had secured.  The longer she was in his company the more she was
amazed by his language and manners.  She noted, too, that he was much
better dressed to-day.  His flannels were not new; indeed they were
rather shabby.  But the garments' original cost must have been
prohibitive for a young man in his supposed position.  Very likely,
however, they had been given him, second-hand, by some member of the
family for which he worked.

The more she saw of him, and the more she thought about it, the greater
was Louise's disappointment in Lawford Tapp.  She was not exactly sorry
she had come out with him in the motor boat; but her feeling toward him
was distinctly different when she landed, from that which had been
roused in her first acquaintance.

It was true he was not an idle young man--not exactly.  But he betrayed
an ability and a training that should already have raised him above his
present situation in the social scale, as Louise understood it.  She
was disappointed, and although she bade Lawford Tapp good-bye
pleasantly she was secretly unhappy.

The next morning she chanced to need several little things that were
not to be found in Cap'n Abe's store and she went uptown in quest of
them.  At midday she was still thus engaged, so she went to the Inn for
lunch.

Gusty Durgin spied her as she entered and found a small table for
Louise where she would be alone.  A fat woman whom Gusty mentioned as
"the boss's sister, Sara Ann Whipple," helped wait upon the guests.
Several of the business men of the town, as well as the guests of the
Inn, took their dinners there.

To one man, sitting alone at a table not far distant, Louise saw that
Gusty was particularly attentive.  He was typically a city man; one
could not for a moment mistake him for a product of the Cape.

He was either a young-old or an old-young looking man, his hair graying
at the temples, but very luxuriant and worn rather long.  A bright
complexion and beautifully kept teeth and hands marked him as one more
than usually careful of his personal appearance.  Indeed, his character
seemed to border on that of the exquisite.

His countenance was without doubt attractive, for it was intelligent
and expressed a quiet humor that seemed to have much kindliness mixed
with it.  His treatment of the unsophisticated Gusty, who hovered about
him with open admiration, held just that quality of good-natured
tolerance which did not offend the waitress but that showed discerning
persons that he considered her only in the light of an artless child.

"D'you know who that is?" Gusty whispered to Louise when she found time
to do so.  The plump girl was vastly excited; her hands shook as she
set down the dishes.  "That's Mr. Judson Bane."

"Yes.  I chanced to meet Mr. Bane once, as I told you," smiled Louise,
keeping up the illusion of her own connection with the fringe of the
theatrical world.

"And Miss Louder and Miss Noyes have come.  My, you ought to see
_them_!" said the emphatic waitress.  "They've got one o' them
flivvers.  Some gen'leman friend of Miss Noyes' lent it to 'em.
They're out now hunting what they call a garridge for it.  That's a
fancy name for a barn, I guess.  And dressed!" gasped Gusty finally.
"They're dressed to kill!"

"We shall have lively times around Cardhaven now, sha'n't we?" Louise
commented demurely.

"We almost always do in summer," Gusty agreed with a sigh.  "Last
summer an Italian lost his trick bear in the pine woods 'twixt here and
Paulmouth and the young 'uns didn't darest to go out of the houses for
a week.  Poor critter!  When they got him he was fair foundered eating
green cranberries in the bogs."

"Something doing," no matter what, was Gusty's idea of life as it
should be.  Louise finished her meal and went out of the dining-room.
In the hall her mesh bag caught in the latch of the screen door and
dropped to the floor.  Somebody was right at hand to pick it up for her.

"Allow me." said a deep and cultivated voice.  "Extremely annoying."

It was Mr. Bane, hat in hand.  He restored the bag, and as Louise
quietly thanked him they walked out of the Inn together.  Louise was
returning to Cap'n Abe's store, and she turned in that direction before
she saw that Mr. Bane was bound down the hill, too.

"I fancy we are fellow-outcasts," he said.  "You, too, are a visitor to
this delightfully quaint place?"

"Yes, Mr. Bane," she returned frankly.  "Though I can claim
relationship to some of these Cardhaven folk.  My mother came from the
Cape."

"Indeed?  It is not such a far cry to Broadway from any point of the
compass, after all, is it?" and he smiled engagingly down at her.

"You evidently do not remember me, Mr. Bane?" she said, returning his
smile.  "Aboard the Anders Liner, coming up from Jamaica, two years ago
this last winter?  Professor Ernest Grayling is my father."

"Indeed!" he exclaimed.  "You are Miss Grayling?  I remember you and
your father clearly.  Fancy meeting you here!" and Mr. Bane insisted on
taking her hand.  "And how is the professor?  No need to ask after your
health, Miss Grayling."

As they walked on together Louise took more careful note of the actor.
He had the full habit of a well-fed man, but was not gross.  He was
athletic, indeed, and his head was poised splendidly on broad
shoulders.  Louise saw that his face was massaged until it was as pink
and soft as a baby's, without a line of close shaving to be detected.
The network of fine wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes was
scarcely distinguishable.  That there was a faint dust of powder upon
his face she noted, too.

Judson Bane was far, however, from giving the impression of effeminacy.
Quite the contrary.  He looked able to do heroic things in real life as
well as in the drama.  And as their walk and conversation developed,
Louise Grayling found the actor to be an interesting person.

He spoke well and without bombast upon any subject she ventured on.
His vocabulary was good and his speaking voice one of the most pleasing
she had ever heard.

So interested was Louise in what Mr. Bane said that she scarcely
noticed Lawford Tapp who passed and bowed to her, only inclining her
head in return.  Therefore she did not catch the expression on
Lawford's face.

"A fine-looking young fisherman," observed Mr. Bane patronizingly.

"Yes.  Some of them are good-looking and more intelligent than you
would believe," Louise rejoined carelessly.  She had put Lawford Tapp
aside as inconsequential.




CHAPTER XII

THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA

It was mid forenoon the following day, and quite a week after Louise
Grayling's arrival at Cap'n Abe's store on the Shell Road, that the
stage was set for a most surprising climax.

The spirit of gloom still hovered over Betty Gallup in the rear
premises where she was sweeping and dusting and scrubbing.  Her idea of
cleanliness indoors was about the same as that of a smart skipper of an
old-time clipper ship.

"If that woman ain't holystonin' the deck ev'ry day she thinks we're
wadin' in dirt, boot-laig high," growled Cap'n Amazon.

"Cleanliness is next to godliness!" quoted Louise, who was in the store
at the moment.

"Land sakes!" ejaculated the captain.  "It's next door to a lot of
other things, seems like, too.  I shouldn't say that Bet Gallup was
spillin' over with piety."

Louise, laughing softly, went to the door.  There was a cloud of dust
up the road and ahead of it came a small automobile.  Cap'n Amazon was
singing, in a rather cracked voice:

  "'_The Boundin' Biller, Captain Hanks,
  She was hove flat down on the Western Banks_;------"

With a saucy blast of its horn the automobile flashed past the store.
There were two young women in it, one driving.  Louise felt sure they
were Miss Louder and Miss Noyes, mentioned by Gusty Durgin the day
before, and their frocks and hats were all that their names suggested.

"Them contraptions," Cap'n Amazon broke off in his ditty to say, "go
past so swift that you can't tell rightly whether they got anybody to
the helm or not.  Land sakes, here comes another!  They're getting as
common as sandfleas on Horseneck Bar, and Washy Gallup says that's
a-plenty."

He did not need to come to the door to make this discovery of the
approach of the second machine.  There sounded another blast from an
auto horn and a considerable racket of clashing gears.

"Land sakes!" Cap'n Amazon added.  "Is it going to heave to here?"

Louise had already entered the living-room, bound for her chamber to
see if, by chance, Betty had finished dusting there.  She did not hear
the second automobile stop nor the cheerful voice of its gawky driver
as he said to his fare:

"This is the place, ma'am.  This is Cap'n Abe's."

His was the only car in public service at the Paulmouth railroad
station and Willy Peebles seldom had a fare to Cardhaven.  Noah
Coffin's ark was good enough for most Cardhaven folk if they did not
own equipages of their own.

When Willy reached around and snapped open the door of the covered car
a lady stepped out and, like a Newfoundland after a plunge into the
sea, shook herself.  The car was a cramped vehicle and the ride had
been dusty.  Her clothing was plentifully powdered; but her face was
not.  That was heated, perspiring, and expressed a mixture of
indignation and disapproval.

"Are you sure this is the place, young man?" she demanded.

"This is Cap'n Abe Silt's," repeated Willy.

"Why--it doesn't look------"

"Want your suitcase, ma'am?" asked Willy.

"Wait.  I am not sure.  I--I must see if I----.  I may not stay.
Wait," she repeated, still staring about the neighborhood.

As a usual thing, she was not a person given to uncertainty, in either
manner or speech.  Her somewhat haughty glance, her high-arched nose,
her thin lips, all showed decision and a scorn of other people's
opinions and wishes.  But at this moment she was plainly nonplused.

"There--there doesn't seem to be anybody about," she faltered.

"Oh, go right into the store, ma'am.  Cap'n Abe's somewheres around.
He always is."

Thus encouraged by the driver the woman stalked up the store steps.
She was not a ponderous woman, but she was tall and carried
considerable flesh.  She could carry this well, however, and did.  Her
traveling dress and hat were just fashionable enough to be in the mode,
but in no extreme.  This well-bred, haughty, but perspiring woman
approached the entrance to Cap'n Abe's store in a spirit of frank
disapproval.

On the threshold she halted with an audible gasp, indicating amazement.
Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange
conglomeration of goods for sale--on the shelves the rows of glowingly
labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green
cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows
of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of
hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of
cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there.  It was not so much
a store as it was a warehouse displaying many articles the names and
uses for which the lady did not even know.

The wondrous array of goods in Cap'n Abe's store did not so much
startle the visitor, as the figure that rose from behind the counter,
where he was stooping at some task.

She might be excused her sudden cry, for Cap'n Amazon was an apparition
to shock any nervous person.  The bandana he wore seemed, if possible,
redder than usual this morning; his earrings glistened; his long
mustache seemed blacker and glossier than ever.  As he leaned
characteristically upon the counter, his sleeves rolled to his elbows,
the throat-latch of his shirt open, he did not give one impression of a
peaceful storekeeper, to say the least.

"Mornin', ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon, not at all embarrassed.  "What can
I do for you, ma'am?"

"You--you are not Captain Silt?" the visitor almost whispered in her
agitation.

"Yes, ma'am; I am."

"Captain Abram Silt?"

"No, ma'am; I ain't.  I'm Cap'n Am'zon, his brother.  What can I do for
you?" he repeated.  The explanation of his identity may have been
becoming tedious; at least, Cap'n Amazon gave it grimly.

"Is--is my niece, Louise Grayling, here?" queried the lady, her voice
actually trembling, her gaze glued to the figure behind the counter.

"'Hem!" said the captain, clearing his throat.  "Who did you say you
was, ma'am?"

"I did not say," the visitor answered stiffly enough now.  "I asked you
a question."

"Likely--likely," agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "But you intimated that you was
the a'nt of a party by the name of Grayling.  I happen to be her uncle
myself.  Her mother was my ha'f-sister.  I don't remember--jest _who'd_
you say you was, ma'am?"

"I am her father's own sister," cried the lady in desperation.

"Oh, yes!  I see!" murmured Cap'n Amazon.  "Then you must be her A'nt
'Phemie.  I've heard Louise speak of you.  Tubbesure!"

"I am Mrs. Conroth," said Mrs. Euphemia Conroth haughtily.

"Happy to make your acquaintance," said Cap'n Amazon, bobbing his head
and putting forth his big hand.  Mrs. Conroth scorned the hand, raised
her lorgnette and stared at the old mariner as though he were some
curious specimen from the sea that she had never observed before.
Cap'n Amazon smiled whimsically and looked down at his stained and
toil-worn palm.

"I see you're nigh-sighted, ma'am.  Some of us git that way as we grow
older.  I never have been bothered with short eyesight myself."

"I wish to see my niece at once," Mrs. Conroth said, flushing a little
at his suggestion of her advancing years.

"Come right in," he said, lifting the flap in the counter.

Mrs. Conroth glared around the store through her glass.  "Cannot Louise
come here?" She asked helplessly.

"We live back o' the shop--and overhead," explained Cap'n Amazon.
"Come right in, I'll have Betty Gallup call Louise."

Bristling her indignation like a porcupine its quills, the majestic
woman followed the spry figure of the captain.  Her first glance over
the old-fashioned, homelike room elicited a pronounced sniff.

"Catarrh, ma'am?" suggested the perfectly composed Cap'n Amazon.  "This
strong salt air ought to do it a world of good.  I've known a sea
v'y'ge to cure the hardest cases.  They tell me lots of 'em come down
here to the Cape afflicted that way and go home cured."

Mrs. Conroth stared with growing comprehension at Cap'n Amazon.  It
began to percolate into her brain that possibly this strange-looking
seaman possessed qualities of apprehension for which she had not given
him credit.

"Sit down, ma'am," said Cap'n Amazon hospitably.  "Abe ain't here, but
I cal'late he'd want me to do the honors, and assure you that you are
welcome.  He always figgers on having a spare berth for anybody that
boards us, as well as a seat at the table.

"Betty," he added, turning to the amazed Mrs. Gallup, just then
appearing at the living-room door, "tell Louise her A'nt 'Phemie is
here, will you?"

"Say Mrs. Conroth, woman," corrected the lady tartly.

Betty scowled and went away, muttering: "Who's a 'woman,' I want to
know?  I ain't one no more'n _she_ is," and it can be set down in the
log that the "able seaman" began by being no friend of Aunt Euphemia's.

It was with a sinking at her heart that Louise heard of her aunt's
arrival.  She had written to her Aunt Euphemia before leaving New York
that she had decided to try Cape Cod for the summer and would go to her
mother's relative, Captain Abram Silt.  Again, on reaching the store on
the Shell Road, she had dutifully written a second letter announcing
her arrival.

She had known perfectly well that some time she would have to "pay the
piper."  Aunt Euphemia would never overlook such a thing.  Louise was
sure of that.  But the idea that the Poughkeepsie lady would follow her
to Cardhaven never for a moment entered Louise's thought.

She had put off this reckoning until the fall--until the return of
daddy-professor.  But here Aunt Euphemia had descended upon her as
unexpectedly as the Day of Wrath spoken of in Holy Writ.

As she came down the stairs she heard her uncle's voice in the
living-room.  Something had started him upon a tale of adventure above
and beyond the usual run of his narrative.

"Yes, _ma'am_," he was saying, "them that go down to the sea in ships,
as the Good Book says, sartain sure meet with hair-raisin' experiences.
You jumped then, ma'am, when old Jerry let out a peep.  He was just
tryin' his voice I make no doubt.  Ain't sung for months they say.  I
didn't know why till I--I found out t'other day he was blind---stone
blind.

"Some thinks birds don't know nothing, or ain't much account in this
man-world----But, as I was sayin', I lay another course.  I'll never
forget one v'y'ge I made on the brigantine _Hermione_.  That was 'fore
the day of steam-winches and we carried a big crew--thirty-two men
for'ard and a big after-guard.

"Well, ma'am!  Whilst she was hove down in a blow off the Horn an
albatross came aboard.  You know what they be--the one bird in all the
seven seas that don't us'ally need a dry spot for the sole of his foot.
If Noah had sent out one from the ark he'd never have come back with
any sprig of promise for the land-hungry wanderers shut up in that
craft.

"'Tis bad luck they do say to kill an albatross.  Some sailors claim
ev'ry one o' them is inhabited by a lost soul.  I ain't superstitious
myself.  I'm only telling you what happened.

"Dunno why that bird boarded us.  Mebbe he was hurt some way.  Mebbe
'twas fate.  But he swooped right inboard, his wing brushing the men at
the wheel.  Almost knocked one o' them down.  He was a Portugee man
named Tony Spadello and he had a re'l quick temper.

"Tony had his knife out in a flash and jumped for the creature.  The
other steersman yelled (one man couldn't rightly hold the wheel alone,
the sea was kicking up such a bobberation) but Tony's one slash was
enough.  The albatross tumbled right down on the deck, a great cut in
its throat.  It bled like a dog shark, cluttering up the deck."

"Horrid!" murmured Mrs. Conroth with a shudder of disgust.

"Yes--the poor critter!" agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "I never like to see
innocent, dumb brutes killed.  Cap'n Hicks--he was a young man in them
days, and boastful--cursed the mess it made, yanked off the bird's
head, so's to have the beautiful pink beak of it made into the head of
a walking-stick, and ordered Tony to throw the carcass overboard and
clean up the deck.  I went to the wheel in his stead, with Jim Ledward.
Jim says to me: 'Am'zon, that bird'll foller us.  Can't git rid of it
so easy as _that_.'

"I thought he was crazy," went on Cap'n Amazon, shaking his head.  "I
wasn't projectin' much about superstitions.  No, ma'am!  We had all we
could do--the two of us--handlin' the wheel with them old graybacks
huntin' us.  Them old he waves hunt in droves mostly, and when one did
board us we couldn't scarce get clear of the wash of it before another
would rise right up over our rail and fill the waist, or mebbe sweep
ev'rything clean from starn to bowsprit.

"It was sundown (only we hadn't seen no sun in a week) when that
albatross was killed and hove overboard.  At four bells of the mornin'
watch one o' them big waves come inboard.  It washed everything that
wasn't lashed into the scuppers and took one of our smartest men
overboard with it.  But there, floatin' in the wash it left behind, was
the dead albatross!"

"Oh, how terrible!" murmured Mrs. Conroth, watching Cap'n Amazon much
as a charmed bird is said to watch a snake.

"Yes, ma'am; tough to lose a shipmate like that, I agree.  But that was
only the beginning.  Cap'n Hicks pitched the thing overboard himself.
Couldn't ha' got one of the men, mebbe, to touch it.  Jim Ledward says:
'Skipper, ye make nothin' by that.  It's too late.  Bad luck's boarded
us.'

"And sure 'nough it had," sighed Cap'n Amazon, as though reflecting.
"You never did see such a time as we had in gettin' round the Cape.
And we got it good in the roarin' forties, too--hail, sleet, snow,
rain, and lightnin' all mixed, and the sea a reg'lar hell's broth all
the time."

"I beg of you, sir," breathed the lady, shuddering again.  Cap'n
Amazon, enthralled by his own narrative, steamed ahead without noticing
her shocked expression.

"One hurricane on top of another--that's what we got.  We lost four men
overboard, includin' the third officer, one time and another.  I was
knocked down myself and got a broken arm--had it in a sling nine weeks.
We got fever in a port that hadn't had such an epidemic in six months,
and seven of the crew had to be took ashore.

"Bad luck dogged us and the ship.  Only, it never touched the skipper
or Tony Spadello--the only two that had handled the albatross.  That
is, not as far as I know.  Last time I see Cappy Hicks he was carryin'
his cane with the albatross beak for a handle; and Tony Spadello has
made a barrel of money keeping shop on the Bedford docks.

"But birds have an influence in the world, I take it, like other folks.
You wouldn't think, ma'am, how much store my brother Abe sets by old
Jerry yonder."

Aunt Euphemia jumped up with an exclamation of relief.  "Louise!" she
uttered as she saw the girl, amusement in her eyes, standing in the
doorway.




CHAPTER XIII

WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY

"I do not see how you can endure it, Louise!  He is impossible--quite
impossible!  I never knew your tastes were low!"

Critical to the tips of her trembling fingers, Aunt Euphemia sat stiffly
upright in Louise's bedroom rocking chair and uttered this harsh
reflection upon her niece's good taste.  Louise never remembered having
seen her aunt so angry before.  But she was provoked herself, and her
determination to go her own way and spend her summer as she chose
stiffened under the lash of the lady's criticism.

"What will our friends think of you?" demanded Mrs. Conroth.  "I am
horrified to have them know you ever remained overnight in such a place.
There are the Perritons.  They were on the train with me coming down from
Boston.  They are opening their house here at what they call The
Beaches--one of the most exclusive colonies on the coast, I understand.
They insisted upon my coming there at once, and I have promised to bring
you with me."

"You have promised more than you can perform.  Aunt Euphemia," Louise
replied shortly.  "I will remain here."

"Louise!"

"I will remain here with Cap'n Amazon.  And with Uncle Abram when he
returns.  They are both dear old men----"

"That awful looking pirate!" gasped Mrs. Conroth.

"You do not know him," returned the girl.  "You do not know how worthy
and now kind he is."

"You have only known him a week yourself," remarked Aunt Euphemia.  "What
can a young girl like you know about these awful creatures--fishermen,
sailors, and the like?  How can you judge?"

Louise laughed.  "Why, Auntie, you know I have seen much of the world and
many more people than you have.  And if I have not learned to judge those
I meet by this time I shall never learn, though I grow to be as old
as"--she came near saying "as you are," but substituted instead--"as Mrs.
Methuselah.  I shall remain here.  I would not insult Cap'n Amazon or
Cap'n Abe, by leaving abruptly and going with you to the Perritons'
bungalow."

"But what shall I say to them?" wailed Aunt Euphemia.

"What have you already said?"

"I said I expected you were waiting for me at Cardhaven.  I would not
come over from Paulmouth in their car, but hurried on ahead.  I wished to
save you the disgrace--yes, _disgrace_!--of being found here in
this--this country store.  Ugh!" She shuddered again.

"I am determined that they shall not know your poor, dear father
unfortunately married beneath him."

"Aunt Euphemia!" exclaimed Louise, her gray eyes flashing now.  "Don't
say that.  It offends me.  Daddy-prof never considered my mother or her
people beneath his own station."

"Your father, Louise, is a fool!" was the lady's tart reply.

"As he is your brother as well as my father," Louise told her coldly, "I
presume you feel you have a right to call him what you please.  But I
assure you, Aunt Euphemia, it does not please me to hear you do so."

"You are a very obstinate girl!"

"That attribute of my character I fancy I inherit from daddy-professor's
side of the family," the girl returned bluntly.

"I shall be shamed to death!  I must accept the Perritons' invitation.  I
already have accepted it.  They will think you a very queer girl, to say
the least."

"I am," her niece told her, the gray eyes smiling again, for Louise was
soon over her wrath.  "Even daddy-prof says that."

"Because of his taking you all over the world with him as he did.  I only
wonder he did not insist upon your going on this present horrid cruise.

"No.  I have begun to like my comfort too well," and now Louise laughed
outright.  "A mark of oncoming age, perhaps."

"You are a most unpleasant young woman, Louise."

Louise thought she might return the compliment with the exchange of but a
single word; but she was too respectful to do so.

"I am determined to remain here," she repeated, "so you may as well take
it cheerfully, auntie.  If you intend staying with the Perritons any
length of time, of course I shall see you often, and meet them.  I
haven't come down here to the Cape to play the hermit, I assure you.  But
I am settled here with Cap'n Amazon, and I am comfortable.  So, why
should I make any change?"

"But in this common house!  With that awful looking old sailor!  And the
way he talks!  The rough adventures he has experienced--and the way he
relates them!"

"Why, I think he is charming.  And his stories are jolly fun.  He tells
the most thrilling and interesting things!  I have before heard people
tell about queer corners of the world--and been in some of them myself.
Only the romance seems all squeezed out of such places nowadays.  But
when Cap'n Amazon was young!" she sighed.

"You should hear him tell of having once been wrecked on an island in the
South Seas where there were only women left of the tribe inhabiting it,
the men all having been killed in battle by a neighboring tribe.  The
poor sailors did not know whether those copper-colored Eves would decide
to kill and eat them, or merely marry them."

"Louise!"  Aunt Euphemia rose and fairly glared at her niece.  "You show
distinctly that association with these horrid people down here has
already contaminated your mind.  You are positively vulgar!"

She sailed out of the room, descended the stairs, and "beat up" through
the living-room and store, as Betty Gallup said "with ev'ry stitch of
canvas drawin' and a bone in her teeth."  Louise agreed about the
"bone"--she had given her Aunt Euphemia a hard one to gnaw on.

The girl followed Mrs. Conroth to the automobile and helped her in.
Cap'n Amazon came to the store door as politely as though he were seeing
an honored guest over the ship's side.

"Ask your A'nt 'Phemie to come again.  Too bad she ain't satisfied to
jine us here.  Plenty o' cabin room.  But if she's aimin' to anchor near
by she'll be runnin' in frequent I cal'late.  Good-day to ye, ma'am!"

Aunt Euphemia did not seem even to see him.  She was also afflicted with
sudden deafness.

"Louise!  I shall never forget this--never!" she declared haughtily, as
Willy Peebles started the car and it rumbled on down the Shell Road.

Unable to face Cap'n Amazon just then for several reasons, Louise did not
re-enter the store but strolled down to the sands.  There was a skiff
drawn up above high-water mark and the hoop-backed figure of Washy Gallup
sat in it.  He was mending a net.  He nodded with friendliness to Louise,
his jaw working from side to side like a cow chewing her cud--and for the
same reason.  Washy had no upper teeth left.

"How be you this fine day, miss?" the old fellow asked sociably.  "It's
enough to put new marrer in old bones, this weather.  Cold weather lays
me up same's any old hulk.  An' I been used to work, I have, all my life.
Warn't none of 'em any better'n me in my day."

"You have done your share, I am sure, Mr. Gallup," the girl said, smiling
cheerfully down upon him.  "Yours is the time for rest."

"Rest? How you talk!" exclaimed Washy.  "A man ought to be able to aim
his own pollock and potaters, or else he might's well give up the ship.
I tell 'em if I was only back in my young days where I could do a full
day's work, I'd be satisfied."

Louise had turned up a fiddler with the toe of her boot.  As the creature
scurried for sanctuary, Washy observed:

"Them's curious critters.  All crabs is."

"I think they are curious," Louise agreed.  "Like a cross-eyed man.  Look
one way and run another."

"Surely--surely.   Talk about a curiosity--the curiousest-osity I ever
see was a crab they have in Japanese waters; big around's a clam-bucket
and dangling gre't long laigs to it like a sea-going giraffe."'

Louise was thankful for this opportunity for laughter, for that
"curiousest-osity" was too much for her sense of the ludicrous.

Like almost every other man of any age that Louise had met about
Cardhaven--save Cap'n Abe himself--Washy had spent a good share of his
life in deep-bottomed craft.  But he had never risen higher than petty
officer.

"Some men's born to serve afore the mast--or how'd we git sailors?"
observed the old fellow, with all the philosophy of the unambitious man.
"Others get into the afterguard with one, two, three, and a jump!"  His
trembling fingers knotted the twine dexterously.  "Now, there's your
uncle."

"Uncle Amazon?" asked Louise.

"No, miss.  Cap'n Abe, I mean.  This here Am'zon Silt, 'tis plain to be
seen, has got more salt water than blood in _his_ veins.  Cap'n Abe's a
nice feller--not much again him here where he's lived and kep' store for
twenty-odd year.  'Ceptin' his yarnin' 'bout his brother all the time.
But from the look of Cap'n Am'zon I wouldn't put past him anything that
Cap'n Abe says he's done--and more.

"But Abe himself, now, I'd never believed would trust himself on open
water."

"Yet," cried Louise, "he's shipped on a sailing vessel, Uncle Amazon
says.  He's gone for a voyage."

"Ye-as.  But _has_ he?" Washy retorted, his head on one side and his
rheumy old eyes looking up at her as sly as a ferret's.

"What do you mean?"

"We none of us--none of the neighbors, I mean--seen him go.  As fur's we
know he didn't go away at all.  We're only taking his brother's word for
it."

"Why, Mr. Gallup!  You're quite as bad as Betty.  One would think to hear
you and her talk that Cap'n Amazon was a fratricide."

"Huh?"

"That he had murdered his brother," explained the girl.

"That's fratter side, is it?  Well, I don't take no stock in such
foolishness.  Them's Bet Gallup's notions, Cap'n Am'zon's all right, to
_my_ way o' thinkin'.  I was talkin' about Cap'n Abe."

"I do not understand you at all, then," said the puzzled girl.

"I see you don't just foller me," he replied patiently.  "I ain't casting
no alligators at your Uncle Am'zon.  It's Cap'n Abe.  I doubt his goin'
to sea at all.  I bet he never shipped aboard that craft his brother
tells about."

"Goodness!  Why not?"

"'Cause he ain't a sea-goin' man.  There's a few o' such amongst Cape
Codders.  Us'ally they go away from the sea before they git found out,
though."

"'Found out?'" the girl repeated with exasperation.  "Found out in
_what_?"

"That they're _scare't_ o' blue water," Washy said decidedly.  "Nobody
'round here ever seen Cap'n Abe outside the Haven.  He wouldn't no more
come down here, push this skiff afloat, and row out to deep water than
he'd go put his hand in a wild tiger's mouth--no, ma'am!"

"Why, isn't that very ridiculous?" Louise said, not at all pleased.  "Of
course Cap'n Abe shipped on that boat just as Cap'n Amazon said he was
going to.  Otherwise he would have been back--or we would have heard from
him."

"He did, hey?" responded Washy sharply, springing the surprise he had
been leading up to.  "Then why didn't he take his chist with him?  It's
come back to the Paulmouth depot, so Perry Baker says, it not being
claimed down to Boston."




CHAPTER XIV

A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS

Washy Gallup's gossip should not have made much impression upon Louise
Grayling's mind, but it fretted her.  Perhaps her recent interview with
Aunt Euphemia had rasped the girl's nerves.  She left the old fisherman
with a tart speech and returned to the store.

There were customers being waited upon, so she had no opportunity to
mention the matter of Cap'n Abe's chest to the substitute storekeeper
at once.  Then, when she had taken time to consider it, she decided not
to do so.

It really was no business of hers whether Cap'n Abe had taken his chest
with him when he sailed from Boston or not.  She had never asked Cap'n
Amazon the name of the vessel his brother was supposed to have shipped
on.  Had she known it was the _Curlew_, the very schooner on which
Professor Grayling had sailed, she would, of course, have shown a much
deeper interest.  And had Cap'n Amazon learned from Louise the name of
the craft her father was aboard, he surely would have mentioned the
coincidence.

It stuck in the girl's mind--the puzzle about Cap'n Abe's chest--but it
did not come to her lips.  Looking across the table that evening, after
the store was closed, as they sat together under the hanging lamp, she
wondered that Cap'n Amazon did not speak of it if he knew his brother's
chest had been returned to the Paulmouth express agent.

Without being in the least grim-looking in her eyes, there was an
expression on Cap'n Amazon's face, kept scrupulously shaven, that made
one hesitate to pry into or show curiosity regarding any of his private
affairs.

He might be perfectly willing to tell her anything she wished to know.
He was frank enough in relating his personal experiences up and down
the seas, that was sure!

Cap'n Amazon puffed at his pipe and tried to engage the attention of
Diddimus.  The big tortoise-shell ran from him no longer; but he
utterly refused to be petted.  He now lay on the couch and blinked with
a bored manner at the captain.

If Louise came near him he purred loudly, putting out a hooked claw to
catch her skirt and stop her, and so get his head rubbed.  But if Cap'n
Amazon undertook any familiarities, Diddimus arose in dignified silence
and changed his place or left the room.

"Does beat all," the Captain said reflectively, reaching for his
knitting, "what notions dumb critters get.  We had a black man and a
black dog with us aboard the fo'master _Sally S. Stern_ when I was
master, out o' Baltimore for Chilean ports.  Bill was the blackest
negro, I b'lieve, I ever see.  You couldn't see him in the dark with
his mouth and eyes both shut.  And that Newfoundland of his was just as
black and his coat just as kinky as Bill's wool.  The crew called 'em
the two Snowballs."

"What notion did the dog take, Uncle Amazon?" Louise asked as he
halted.  Sometimes he required a little urging to "get going."  But not
much.

"Why, no matter what Bill did around the deck, or below, or overside,
or what not, the dog never seemed to pay much attention to him.  But
the minute Bill started aloft that dog began to cry--whine and
bark--and try to climb the shrouds after that nigger.  Land sakes, you
never in your life saw such actions!  Got so we had to chain the dog
Snowball whenever it came on to blow, for there's a consarned lot o'
reefin' down and hoistin' sail on one o' them big fo'masters.  The
skipper't keeps his job on a ship like the _Sally S. Stern_ must get
steamboat speed out o' her.

"So, 'twas 'all hands to stations!' sometimes three and four times in a
watch.  Owners ain't overlib'ral in matter of crew nowadays.  Think
because there's a donkey-engine on deck and a riggin' to hoist your big
sails, ye don't re'lly need men for'ard at all.

"That v'y'ge out in pertic'lar I remember that there was two weeks on a
stretch that not a soul aboard had more'n an hour's undisturbed sleep.
And that dog!  Poor brute, I guess he thought Bill was goin' to heaven
and leavin' him behind ev'ry time the nigger started for the masthead.

"I most always," continued Cap'n Amazon, "seen to it myself that the
dog was chained when Bill was likely to go aloft.  I liked that dog.
He was a gentleman, if he was black.  And Bill was a good seaman, and
with a short tongue.  The dog was about the only critter aboard he
seemed to cotton to.  Nothin' was too good for the dog, and the only
way I got Bill to sign on was by agreeing to take the Newfoundland
along.

"Well, we got around the Horn much as us'al.  Windjammers all have
their troubles there.  And then, not far from the western end o' the
Straits we got into a belt of light airs--short, gusty winds that blew
every which way.  It kept the men in the tops most of the time.  Some
of 'em vowed they was goin' to swing their hammocks up there.

"Come one o' those days, with the old _Sally_ just loafin' along,"
pursued Cap'n Amazon, sucking hard on his pipe, "when I spied a flicker
o' wind comin', and the mate he sent the men gallopin' up the shrouds.
I'd forgot the dog.  So had Nigger Bill, I reckon.

"Bill was one o' the best topmen aboard.  He was up there at work
before the dog woke up and started ki-yi-ing.  He bayed Bill like a
beagle hound at the foot of a coon tree.  Then, jumping, he caught the
lower shrouds with his forepaws.

"The new slant of the wind struck us at the same moment.  The old
_Sally S._ heeled to larboard and that Newfoundland was jerked over the
rail."

"The poor thing!" Louise cried.

"You'd ha' thought so.  I wouldn't have felt no worse if one of the men
had gone over.  Owner's business, or not, I sung out to the second to
get his boat out and I kicked off my shoes, grabbed a life-ring, and
jumped myself."

"You!  Uncle Amazon?" gasped his niece.

"Yep.  The mate had the deck and I was the only man free.  There wasn't
much of a sea runnin', anyway.  No pertic'lar danger.  That is, not
commonly.

"But the minute I come up to the surface and rose breast-high, dashin'
the water out o' my eyes so's to look around for the dog, I seen I'd
been a leetle mite too previous, as the feller said.  I hadn't taken
into consideration one pertic'lar chance--like the feller't married one
o' twins an' then couldn't tell which from t'other.

"I see Snowball the dog, all right; but headin' for him like a streak
o' greased lightin' was the triandicular fin of a shark.  I'd forgot
all about those fellers; and we hadn't see one for weeks, anyway.  In
warmer waters than them the _Sally S. Stern_ was then in, the sharks
will come right up and stand with their noses out o' the sea begging
like a dog for scraps.  They'd bark, if they knew how, by gravy!

"Well," went on Cap'n Amazon while Louise listened spellbound, "that
dog Snowball was in a bad fix.  A dog's a dog--almost human as you
might say.  But I wasn't aimin' puttin' myself in a shark's mouth for a
whole kennel full o' dogs.

"Mind you, not minutes but only seconds had passed since the dog shot
outboard.  The ship was not movin' fast.  She heeled over again' and
her spars and flappin' canvas was almost over my head as I glanced up.

"And then I seen a sight--I did, for a fact.  I cal'late you never give
a thought to how high the teetering top of a mast on such a vessel as
the _Sally S. Stern_ is, from the ocean level.  Never did, eh?

"Well," as the enthralled Louise shook her head, "they're taller than a
lot of these tall buildings you see in the city.  'Skyscrapers' they
call 'em.  That's what the old Sally's topmasts looked like gazin' up
at 'em out of the sea.  They looked like they brushed the wind-driven
clouds chasin' overhead.

"And out o' that web of riggin' and small spars, and slattin' canvas,
and other gear, I seen a man's body hurled into the air.  It was
Snowball, the man.  Bill his right name was.

"Flung himself, he did, clean out o' the ship and as she heeled back to
starboard he shot down, feet first, straight as a die, and made a hole
in the sea not ha'f a cable's length from me and nearer the dog than I
was.  And as he came down I seen his open knife flashing in his hand.

"Yes, my dear, that was a mem'rable leap.  Talk about these fellers
jumpin' off that there Brooklyn Bridge!  'Tain't much higher.

"The mate brought the _Sally S. Stern_ up into the wind, the second's
crew got the boat over, and they picked me up in a jiffy.  Then I stood
up and yelled for 'em to pull on, for I could see the man, the dog, and
the shark almost in a bunch together.

"But," concluded Cap'n Amazon, "a nigger ain't often much afraid of a
shark.  When we got to 'em there was a patch of bloody water and foam;
but it wasn't the blood of neither of the Snowballs that was spilled.
They come out of it without a scratch."

"Oh, Cap'n Amazon, what a really wonderful life you have led!" Louise
said earnestly.

Cap'n Amazon's eye brightened, and he looked vastly pleased.  Whenever
he made a serious impression with one of his tales of personal
achievement or peril, he was as frankly delighted as a child.

"Yes, ain't I?" he observed.  "I don't for the life of me see how Abe's
stood it ashore all these years.  An' him keepin' a shop!" and he
sniffed scornfully.

Before Louise could make rejoinder, or bolster up the reputation of the
absent Cap'n Abe in any way, the noise of an automobile stopping before
the store was audible,

"Now, if that's one o' them summer fellers, for gas I shall raise the
price of it--I vow!" ejaculated Cap'n Amazon, but getting up briskly
and laying aside his pipe and knitting.

The summons did not come on the store door.  Somebody opened the gate,
came to the side door and rapped.  Cap'n Amazon shuffled into the hall
and held parley with the caller.

"Why, come right in!  Sure she's here--an' we're both sittin' up for
comp'ny," Louise heard the captain say heartily.

He ushered in Lawford Tapp.  Not the usual Lawford, in rough
fisherman's clothing or boating flannels--or even in the chauffeur's
uniform Louise supposed he sometimes wore.  But in the neat,
well-fitting clothing of what the habit-advertising pages of the
magazines term the "up to date young man."  His sartorial appearance
outclassed that of any longshoreman she had ever imagined.

Louise gave him her hand with just a little apprehension.  She realized
that for a young man to make an evening call upon a girl in a simple
community such as Cardhaven might cause comment which she did not care
to arouse.  But it seemed Lawford Tapp had an errand.

"I do not know, Miss Grayling, whether you care to go out in my _Merry
Andrew_ now that your friends have arrived," he said.  "But if you do,
we might go on Thursday."

"Day after to-morrow?  Why not?" she replied with alacrity.  "Of course
I shall be glad to go--as I already assured you.  My--er--friends'
coming makes no difference."  She thought he referred to Aunt Euphemia
and the Perritons.  "They will not take up so much of my time that I
shall have to desert all my other acquaintances."

Lawford cheered up immensely at this statement.  Cap'n Amazon had gone
into the store at once and now returned with, his box of "private stock
two-fors," one of which choice cigars each of the men took.

"Light up!  Light up!" he said cordially.  "My niece don't mind the
smell of tobacker."  Cap'n Amazon was much more friendly with Lawford
than Louise might have expected him to be.  But, of course, hospitality
was a form of religion with the Silt brothers.  They could neither of
them have treated a guest shabbily.

Indeed, under the influence of the cigar and the presence of another
listener, the captain expanded.  With little urging he related incident
after incident of his varied career--stories of stern trial, of
dangerous adventure, of grim fights with the ravening sea; peril by
shipwreck, by fire, by savages; encounters with whales and sharks, with
Malay pirates; voyaging with a hold full of opium-crazed coolie
laborers, and of actual mutiny on the hermaphrodite brig, _Galatea_,
when Cap'n Amazon alone of all the afterguard was left alive to fight
the treacherous crew and navigate the ship.

Those two hours were memorable--and would remain so in Louise's mind
for weeks.  Lawford Tapp, too, quite gave himself up to the charm of
the old romancer.  To watch Cap'n Amazon's dark intent face and his
glowing eyes, while he told of these wonders of sea and land, would
have thrilled the most sophisticated listener.

"Isn't he a wonder?" murmured Lawford, as Louise accompanied him to the
gate and watched him start the automobile engine.  "I never heard such
a fellow in my life.  And good as gold!"

Louise had made up her mind to be distinctly casual with the young man
hereafter; but his hearty praise of her uncle warmed her manner toward
him.  Besides, she had to confess in secret that Lawford was most
likable.

She mentioned her aunt's arrival in the neighborhood and he asked,
laughing:

"Oh, then shall we have her for our chaperon?"

"Aunt Euphemia?  Mercy, no!  I have chosen Betty Gallup and believe me,
Mr. Tapp, Betty is much to be preferred."

It was odd that Louise had not yet discovered who and what Lawford Tapp
was.  Yet the girl had talked with few of the neighbors likely to
discuss the affairs of the summer residents along The Beaches.  And, of
course, she asked Cap'n Amazon no questions, for he was not likely to
possess the information.

After she had bidden her uncle good-night and retired, thoughts of
Lawford Tapp kept her mind alert.  She could not settle herself to
sleep.  With the lamp burning brightly on the stand at the bedside and
herself propped with pillows, she opened the old scrapbook found in the
storeroom chest and fluttered its pages.

Almost immediately she came upon a story related in the Newport
_Mercury_.  It was the supposedly veracious tale of an ancient sea
captain who had been a whaler in the old days.

There, almost word for word, was printed the story Cap'n Amazon had
told her that evening about the black man and the black dog!




CHAPTER XV

THE UNEXPECTED

The finding of one of Cap'n Amazon's amazing narratives of personal
prowess in the old scrapbook shocked Louise Grayling.  The mystery of
the thing made alert her brain and awoke in the girl vague suspicions
that troubled her for hours.  Indeed, it was long that night before she
could get to sleep.

During these days of acquaintanceship and familiarity with the old sea
captain she had learned to love him so well for his good qualities that
it was easy for her to forgive his faults.  If he "drew the long bow"
in relating his adventures, his niece was prepared to excuse the
failing.

There was, too, an explanation of this matter, and one not at all
improbable.  The reporter of the _Mercury_ claimed to have taken down
the story of the black man who had fought a shark for the life of his
dog just as it fell from the lips of an ancient mariner.  This mariner
might have been Cap'n Amazon Silt himself.  Why not?  The captain might
have been more modest in relating his personal connection with the
incident when talking with the reporter than he had been in relating
the story to his niece.

Still, even with this suggested explanation welcomed to her mind,
Louise Grayling was puzzled.  She went through the entire scrapbook,
skimming the stories there related, to learn if any were familiar.  But
no.  She found nothing to suggest any of the other tales Cap'n Amazon
had related in her hearing.  And it was positive that her uncle had not
read this particular story of the black man and the black dog since
coming to the store on the Shell Road, for Louise had had possession of
the book.

Therefore she was quite as mystified when she fell asleep at dawn as
she had been when first her discovery was made.  She was half
determined to probe for an explanation of the coincidence when she came
downstairs to a late breakfast.  But no good opportunity presented
itself for the broaching of any such inquiry.

She wished to make preparations for the fishing party in the _Merry
Andrew_, and that kept her in the kitchen part of the day.  She baked a
cake and made filling for sandwiches.

Betty Gallup accepted the invitation to accompany Louise on the sloop
without hesitation.  She approved of Lawford Tapp.  Yet she dropped
nothing in speaking of the young man to open Louise's eyes to the fact
that he was the son of a multi-millionaire.

The activities of the moving picture company increased on this day; but
it was not until the following morning, when Louise went shoreward with
the tackle and the smaller lunch basket, that she again saw Mr. Judson
Bane to speak to.  As she sat upon the thwart of the old skiff where
Washy Gallup had mended his net, the handsome leading man of the
picture company strolled by.

Bane certainly made a picturesque fisherman, whether he looked much
like the native breed or not.  An open-air studio had been arranged on
the beach below the Bozewell bungalow, and Louise could see a director
trying to give a number of actors his idea of what a group of fishermen
mending their nets should look like.

"He should engage old Washy Gallup to give color to the group," Louise
said to Bane, laughing.

"Anscomb is having his own troubles with that bunch," sighed the
leading man.  "Some of them never saw a bigger net before than one to
catch minnows.  Do you sail in this sloop I see coming across from the
millionaire's villa, Miss Grayling?"

"Yes," Louise replied.  "Mr. Tapp is kind enough to take us fishing."

"You are, then, one of these fortunate creatures," and Bane's sweeping
gesture indicated that he referred to the occupants of the cottages set
along the bluff above The Beaches, "who toil not, neither do they spin.
I fancied you might be one of us.  Rather, I've heard that down here."

"That surmise gained coinage when I first arrived at Cardhaven," Louise
said, dimpling.  "I did nothing to discourage the mistake, and I
presume Gusty Durgin still believes I pose before the camera."

"Gusty has aspirations that way herself," chuckled Bane.  "She is a
character."

"I wonder what kind of screen actress I would make?"

He smiled down at her rather grimly.  "The kind the directors call the
appealing type, I fancy, Miss Grayling.  Though I have no doubt you
would do much better than most.  Making big eyes at a camera is the
limit of art achieved by many of our feminine screen stars.  I do not
expect to put in a very pleasant summer amid my present surroundings."

"Oh, then you are here for more than one picture."

"Several, if the weather proves propitious.  I shall play the fisherman
hero, or the villain, until my manager has my new play ready in the
fall.  Believe me, Miss Grayling, I am not in love with this picture
drama.  But when one is offered for his resting season half as much
again as he can possibly earn during the run of a legitimate Broadway
production he must not be blamed for accepting the contract.  We all
bow to the power of gold."

Louise, whose gaze was fixed upon the approaching sloop, smiled.  She
was thinking; "All but Lawford Tapp, the philosophic fisherman!"

"I believe," Bane said, with flattery, "that I should delight to play
opposite to you, Miss Grayling, rank amateur though you would be.  This
Anscomb really is a wonderful director and gets surprising results from
material that cannot compare with you.  I'll speak to him if you say
the word.  He'd oblige me, I am sure.  One of the scripts he has told
me about has a part fitted to you."

"Oh, Mr. Bane!" she cried.  "I'd have to think about that, I fear.  And
such a tempting offer!  Now, if you said that to Gusty Durgin----"

At the moment Betty Gallup came into view.  Masculine in appearance at
any time in her man's hat and coat, she was doubly so now.  She frankly
wore overalls, but had drawn a short skirt over them; and she wore gum
boots.  Bane stared at this apparition and gasped:

"Is--is it a man--or what?"

"Why, Mr. Bane!  That is my chaperon."

"Chaperon!  Ye gods and little fishes!  Miss Grayling, no matter where
you go, or with whom, you are perfectly safe with _that_ as a chaperon."

"How rediculous, Mr. Bane!" the girl cried, laughing.  Betty strode
through the sand to the spot where they stood.  "This is Mr. Bane,
Betty," Louise continued, "Mrs. Gallup, Mr. Bane."

The actor swept off his sou'wester with a flourish.  Betty eyed him
with disfavor.

"So you're one o' them play-actors, be you?  Land sakes!  And tryin' to
look like a fisherman, too!  I don't s'pose you know a grommet from the
bight of a hawser."

"Guilty as charged," Bane admitted with a chuckle.  "But we all must
live, Mrs. Gallup."

"Humph!" grunted the old woman.  "Are you sure that's so in ev'ry case?
There's more useless folks on the Cape now than the Recordin' Angel can
well take care on."

"Oh, Betty!" Louise gasped.

But Bane was highly amused.  "I'm not at all sure you're not right,
Mrs. Gallup.  I sometimes feel that if I were a farmer and raised
onions, or a fisherman and caught the denizens of the sea, I might feel
a deeper respect for myself.  As it is, when I work I am only
_playing_."

"Humph!" exploded Betty again.  "'Denizens of the sea,' eh?  New one on
me.  I ain't never heard of _them_ fish afore."

The sail of the sloop slatted and then came down with the rattle of new
canvas.  Having let go the sheet, Lawford ran forward and pitched the
anchor over.  Then he drew in the skiff that trailed the _Merry
Andrew_, stepped in, and sculled himself ashore, beaching the boat,
just as Cap'n Amazon came down from the store with a second basket of
supplies.

"Wish I was goin' with ye," he said heartily.  "Would, too, if I could
shut up shop.  But I promised Abe I'd stay by the ship till he come
home again."

Louise introduced her uncle to Mr. Bane; but during the bustle of
getting into the skiff and pushing off she overlooked the fact that
Lawford and the actor were not introduced.

"Bring us home a mess of tautog," Cap'n Amazon shouted.  "I sartainly
do fancy blackfish when they're cooked right.  Bile 'em, an' serve with
an egg sauce, is my way o' puttin' 'em on the table."

"That was Cap'n Abe's way, too," muttered Betty.

The cloud on Lawford Tapp's countenance did not lift immediately as he
sculled them out to the anchored sloop.  Louise saw quickly that his
ill humor was for Bane.

"I must keep this young man at a distance," she thought, as she waved
her hand to Uncle Amazon and Mr. Bane.  "He takes too much for granted,
I fear.  Perhaps, after all, I should have excused myself from this
adventure."

She eyed Lawford covertly as, with swelling muscles and lithe, swinging
body, he drove his sculling oar.  "But he does look more 'to the manner
born'--much more the man, in fact--than that actor!"

Lawford could not for long forget his duty as host, and he was as
cheerful and obliging as usual by the time the three had scrambled
aboard the _Merry Andrew_.

Immediately Betty Gallup cast aside her skirt and stood forth
untrammeled in the overalls.  "Gimme my way and I'd wear 'em doin'
housework and makin' my garding," she declared.  "Land sakes!  I allus
did despise women's fooleries."

Louise laughed blithely.

"Why, Betty," she said, "lots of city women who do their own housework
don 'knickers' or gymnasium suits to work in.  No excuse is needed."

"Humph!" commented the old woman.  "I had no idee city women had so
much sense.  The ones I see down here on the Cape don't show it."

The morning breeze was light but steady.  The _Merry Andrew_ was a
sweetly sailing boat and Lawford handled her to the open admiration of
Betty Gallup.  The old woman's comment would have put suspicion in
Louise's mind had the girl not been utterly blind to the actual
identity of the sloop's owner.

"Humph! you're the only furiner, Lawford Tapp, I ever see who could
sail a smack proper.  But you got Cape blood in you--that's what 'tis."

"Thank you, Betty," he returned, with the ready smile that crinkled the
corners of his eyes.  "That is a compliment indeed."

The surf only moaned to-day over Gull Rocks, for there was little
ground swell.  The waves heaved in, with an oily, leisurely motion and,
it being full sea, merely broke with a streak of foam marking the ugly
reef below.

A little to the seaward side of the apex of the reef Betty, at a word
from Lawford, cast loose the sheet and then dropped the anchor.

"Mussel beds all about here," explained the young man to his guest.
"That means good feeding for the blackfish.  Can't catch them anywhere
save on a rock bottom, or around old spiles or sunken wrecks.  Better
let me rig your line, Miss Grayling.  You'll need a heavier sinker than
that for outside here--ten ounces at least.  You see, the tug of the
undertow is considerable."

Betty Gallup, looking every whit the "able seaman" now, rigged her own
line quickly and opened the bait can.

"Land sakes!" she exclaimed.  "Where'd you get scallop bait this time
o' year, Lawford?  You must be a houn' dog for smellin' 'em out."

"I am," he laughed.  "I know that tautog will leave mussels for scallop
any time.  And we'll have the eyes of the scallops fried for lunch.
They're all ready in the cabin."

The pulpy, fat bodies of the scallop--a commercial waste--were
difficult to hang upon the short, blunt hooks; but Lawford seemed to
have just the knack of it.  He showed Louise how to lower the line to
the proper depth, advising:

"Remember, you'll only feel a nibble.   The tautog is a shy fish.  He
doesn't swallow hook, line, and sinker like a hungry cod.  You must
snap him quick when he takes the hook, for his mouth is small and you
must get him instantly--or not at all."

Louise found this to be true.  Her hooks were "skinned clean" several
times before she managed to get inboard her first fish.

She learned, too, why the tackle for tautog has to be so strong.  Once
hooked, the fish darts straight down under rocks or into crevasses, and
sulks there.  He comes out of that ambush like a chunk of lead.

The party secured a number of these dainty fish; but to lend variety to
the day's haul they got the anchor up after luncheon and ran down to
the channels there to chum for snappers.  Lawford had brought along
rods; for to catch the young and gamey bluefish one must use an
entirely different rigging from that used for tautog.

Louise admired the rod Lawford himself used.  She knew something about
fancy tackle, and this outfit of the young man, she knew, never cost a
penny less than a hundred dollars.

"And this sloop, which is his property," she thought, "is another
expensive possession.  I can see where his money goes--when he has any
to spend.  He is absolutely improvident.  Too bad."

She had to keep reminding herself, it seemed, of Lawford Tapp's most
glaring faults.  Improvidence and a hopeless leaning toward
extravagance were certainly unforgivable blemishes in the character of
a young man in the position she believed Lawford held.

The sport of chumming for snappers, even if they hooked more of
sluggish fluke than of the gamier fish to tempt which the chopped bait
is devoted, was so exciting that Betty, sailing the sloop, overlooked a
pregnant cloud that streaked up from the horizon almost like a puff of
cannon smoke.

The squall was upon them so suddenly that Louise could not wind in her
line in good season.  Lawford was quicker; but in getting his tackle
inboard he was slow to obey Betty's command:

"Let go that sheet!  Want to swamp us, foolin' with that fancy fish
rod?"

"Aye, aye, skipper!" he sang out, laughing, and jumped to cast off the
line in question just as the sail bulged taut as a drumhead with the
striking squall.

There was a "lubber's loop" in the bight of the sheet and as the young
man loosed it his arm was caught in this trap.  The boom swung
viciously outboard and Lawford went with it.  He was snatched like some
inanimate object over the sloop's rail and, the next instant, plunged
beneath the surface of the suddenly foam-streaked sea.




CHAPTER XVI

A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

Lawford came up as the sloop swept by on her new tack, his smile as
broad as ever.  He blew loudly and then shouted:

"Going---too--fast--for--me!  Whoa!  Back up a little, ladies, and let
me climb aboard."

"Well, of all the crazy critters!" the "able seaman" declared.  "Stand
by with that boathook, Miss Lou, and see if you can harpoon him."

Louise swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to laugh too.  To
tell the truth, the accident to Lawford Tapp had frightened her
dreadfully at the moment it occurred.

Betty Gallup put over the wheel and the _Merry Andrew_, still under
propulsion of the bursting squall, flew about, almost on her heel.
Louise, who was shielding her eyes from the flying spray under the
sharp of her hand and watching the head and shoulders of Lawford as he
plowed through the jumping waves with a great overhand stroke, suddenly
shrieked aloud:

"Oh, Betty!"

"What's the matter?  Land sakes!"

Both saw the peril threatening the swimmer.  The light skiff at the end
of the long painter whipped around when the line tautened.  As Betty
cried out in echo to Louise's wail, the gunnel of the skiff crashed
down upon Lawford's head and shoulders.

"Oh!  Oh!  He's hurt!" cried Louise.

"He's drowned--dead!" ejaculated Betty Gallup.  "Here, Miss Lou, you
take the wheel----"

But the girl had no intention of letting the old woman go overboard.
Betty in her heavy boots would be wellnigh helpless in the choppy sea.
If it were possible to rescue Lawford Tapp she would do it herself.

The human mind is a wonderfully constituted--mechanism, may we call it?
It receives and registers impressions that are seemingly incoordinate;
then of a sudden each cog slips into place and the perfection of a
belief, of an opinion, of a desire, even of a most momentous discovery,
is attained.

Thus instantly Louise Grayling had a startling revelation,  "Handle the
boat yourself, Betty!" she commanded.  "_I am going to get him_."

Her skirt was dropped, even as she spoke.  She wore "sneaks" to-day
instead of high boots, and she kicked them off without unlacing them.
Then, poising on the rail for a moment, she dived overboard on a long
slant.

She swam under the surface for some fathoms and coming up dashed the
water from her eyes to stare about.

The black squall had passed.  The sea dimpled in blue and green streaks
as before.  A few whitecaps only danced about the girl.  Where Lawford
had gone down----

A round, sleek object--like the head of a seal--bobbed in the agitated
water.  It was not ten yards away.  Had she not been so near she must
have overlooked it.  He might have sunk again, going down forever, for
it was plain the blow he had suffered had deprived Lawford of
consciousness.

Louise wasted no breath in shouting, nor moments in looking back at
Betty and the sloop.  All her life she had been confident in the water.
She had learned to ride a surfboard with her father like the natives in
Hawaii.  A comparatively quiet sea like this held no terrors for Louise
Grayling.

She dived in a long curve like a jumping porpoise, and went down after
the sinking man.  In thirty seconds she had him by the hair, and then
beat her way to the surface with her burden.

Lawford's face was dead white; his eyes open and staring.  There was a
cut upon the side of his head from which blood and water dribbled upon
her shoulder as she held him high out of the sea.

There sounded the clash of oars in her ears.  How Betty had lowered the
jib, thrown over the anchor, and manned the skiff so quickly would
always be a mystery to Louise.  But the "able seaman" knew this coast
as well, at least, as Lawford Tapp.  They were just over a shoal, and
there was safe anchorage for a small craft.

"Give him to me.  Land sakes!" gasped Betty over her head.  "I never
see no city gal like you, Miss Lou."

Nor had Louise ever seen a woman with so much muscular strength and the
knowledge of how to apply it as Betty displayed.  She lifted Lawford
out of the girl's arms and into the skiff with the dexterity of one
trained in hauling in halibut, for Betty had spent her younger years on
the Banks with her father.

Louise scrambled into the skiff without assistance.  Betty was already
at the oars and Louise took the injured head of the man in her lap.  He
began to struggle back to life again.

"I--I'm all right," he muttered.   "Sorry made such a--a
fool--of--myself."

"Hush up, _you_!" snapped Betty.  "I'd ought to have seed to this
skiff.  Then you wouldn't have got battered like you did."  A tear ran
frankly down Betty's nose and dripped off its end.  "If anything really
bad had happened to you, Lawford, I'd a-never forgive myself.  I
thought you was a goner for sure."

"Thanks to you, I'm not, I guess, Betty," he said more cheerfully.  He
did not know who had jumped overboard to his rescue.

For some reason the girl was suddenly embarrassed by this fact.

The skiff reached the plunging sloop and Louise got inboard and aided
Betty to get Lawford over the rail.  Then she slipped on her skirt.

Lawford slumped down in the cockpit, saying he was all right but
looking all wrong.

"Going to get him back to Tapp Point just as quick as I can," declared
the "able seaman" to Louise.  "Doctor ought to see that cut."

"Oh, Betty!"

"Now, now, Miss Lou," murmured the old woman with the light of sudden
comprehension in her eyes.  "Don't take on now!  You've been a brave
gal so fur."

"And I will keep my courage," Louise said with tremulous smile.

"Go right over there an' hold his head, Miss Lou.  Pet him up a leetle
bit; 'twon't hurt a mite."

The vivid blush that dyed the girl's cheeks signaled the fact that
Betty had guessed more of the truth than Louise cared to have her or
anybody know.  She shook her head negatively to the keen-eyed old
woman; nevertheless she went forward, found one of Lawford's
handkerchiefs and bound up his head.  The cut did not seem very deep;
yet the shock of the blow he had suffered certainly had dulled the
young man's comprehension.

"Thank you--thank you," he muttered and laid his head down on his arms
again.

Betty rounded the end of the Neck where the lighthouse stood.  One of
the lightkeepers was on the gallery just under the lamp chamber and had
been watching them through his glasses.  He waved a congratulatory hand
as the _Merry Andrew_ shot along, under the "able seaman's" skillful
guidance.

"I'm goin' to put you ashore in the skiff right there by the store,
Miss Lou," Betty said.

"Shouldn't I get a doctor and send him over to the Point?"

"They've got a telephone there," Betty told her.

"I--I hope they'll take good care of him."

"They ought to," sniffed Betty.  "I'll see to it he's all right, Miss
Lou, before I leave him."

"Thank you, Betty," returned the girl, too honest to make any further
attempt to deny her deep interest in the man.

When the sail rattled down and Louise tossed over the anchor, Lawford
roused a bit.  "Sorry the trip turned out so rotten bad, Miss
Grayling," he mumbled.  "I--I don't feel just right yet."

Louise patted his shoulder.  "You poor boy!" she said tenderly.  "Don't
mind about me.  It's you we are worrying about.  But I am sure you
cannot be seriously injured.  Betty will take you directly over to the
Point and the folks there will get a doctor for you.  Next time we'll
have a much nicer fishing trip, Mr. Tapp.  Good-bye."

He muttered his adieu and watched her get into the skiff after Betty
and the baskets.  The "able seaman" rowed quickly to the beach.  The
sharp eyes of Mr. Bane noted their arrival, and he strode over to the
spot where the skiff came in, to help Louise out of the boat and bring
the baskets ashore.

"You need a handy man, I see," the actor observed.  "What a fine catch
you have had--blackfish, snappers, and fluke, eh?  I'll carry the
baskets up to your uncle's store for you.  Fine old man, your uncle,
Miss Grayling.  And what stories he can tell of his adventures--my
word!"

"Come over to-night and tell me how he is, betty, won't you?" the girl
whispered to the "able seaman" and the latter, nodding her
comprehension, pulled back to the sloop.  Neither of them saw that
Lawford was watching the little group on shore and that when Bane and
the girl turned toward the store the young man looked after them with
gloomy visage.

The girl's replies to Bane's observation were most inconsequential.
Her mind was upon Lawford and his condition.  She was personally
uncomfortable, too; for although the sun and wind had dried her hair
and her blouse, beneath the dry skirt her clothing was wet.

As they came to the Shell Road the long, gray roadster Louise had seen
before came down from town.  L'Enfant Terrible was at the wheel while
her two older sisters sat in the narrow seat behind.  Cecile tossed a
saucy word over her shoulder, indicating Louise and Bane, and her older
sisters smiled superciliously upon the two pedestrians.  Louise was too
deeply occupied with thoughts of the injured man to note this by-play.




CHAPTER XVII

THE ODDS AGAINST HIM

"Horrid taste she has, I must say," drawled Marian.  Marian was the
eldest of the Tapp girls.  To tell the truth (but this is strictly in
confidence and must go no further!) she had been christened Mary Ann
after Israel Tapp's commonplace mother.  That, of course, was some time
before I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King, had come into his kingdom
and assumed the robe and scepter of his present financial position.

"Oh!" ejaculated Cecile.  "That's Judson Bane, the Broadway star, she's
walking with.  I'd like to know him myself."

"You coarse little thing!" drawled Marian.

"And you not out yet!" Prue, the second sister, observed cuttingly.
"You're only a child.  I wish you'd learn your place and keep it."

"Oh, fudge!" responded L'Enfant Terrible, not deeply impressed by these
sisterly admonitions.

Marian was twenty-six--two years Lawford's senior.  She was a heavy,
lymphatic girl, fast becoming as matronly of figure as her mother.  She
still bolstered up her belief that she had matrimonial prospects; but
the men who wanted to marry her she would not have while those she
desired to marry would not have her.  Marian Tapp was becoming bored.

Prue was a pretty girl.  She was but nineteen.  However, she had
likewise assumed a bored air after being in society a single season.

"That big actor man will put poor Fordy's nose out of joint with the
film lady," Prue said.  "Look out for that dog, Cis.  It's the
Perritons'.  If you run over him----"

"Nasty little thing!" grumbled Cecile.

"And the apple of Sue Perriton's eye," drawled Marian.  "Be careful
what you are about, Cecile.  It all lies with the Perritons whether we
get into society this season or not."

"And that Mrs. Conroth who is with them," put in Prue.  "_She_ is the
real thing--the link between the best of New York and Albany society.
Old family--away back to the patroons--so old she has to keep moth
balls hung in her family tree.  My! if mother could once become the
familiar friend of miladi Conroth----"

"No such luck," groaned Marian.  "After all's said and done, mother
can't forget the candy kitchen.  She always looks to me, poor dear, as
though she had just been surreptitiously licking her fingers."

"We _do_ have the worst luck!" groaned the second sister.  "There's
that Dot Johnson coming.  Mother says daddy insists, and when I. Tapp
does put down his foot----Well!"

"We'll put her off on Fordy," suggested, the brighter-witted Cecile.
"She rather fancies Ford, I think."

"Dot Johnson!" chorused the older girls, in horror.  "Not really?"
Marian continued.  "The Johnsons are impossible."

"They've got more money than daddy has," said Prue.

"But they have no aspirations--none at all," murmured Marian, in
horror.  "If Lawford married Dot Johnson it would be almost as bad as
his being mixed up with that picture actress."

"For him; not for us," said Prue promptly.  "Of course, as far as the
Johnsons go, they are too respectable for anything.  Poor Fordy!"

"Goodness!" snapped Cecile.  "It's not all settled.  The banns aren't
up."

The girls wheeled into the grounds surrounding the Tapp villa just as
Betty Gallup guided the _Merry Andrew_ to the dock and leaped ashore
with the mooring rope.

Tapp Point consisted of about five acres of bluff and sand.  At great
expense the Taffy King had terraced the bluff and had made to grow
several blades of grass where none at all had been able to gain root
before.

The girls saw the queer-looking Betty Gallup helping their brother out
of the sloop.

"Say! something's happened to Ford, I guess," Cecile cried, stopping
the car short of the porte-cochere.

"Run down and see," commanded Marian languidly.

But Prue hopped out of the roadster and started down the path
immediately.  She and Lawford still had a few things in common.  Mutual
affection was one of them.

"What's happened to him?" she cried.  "You're Mrs. Gallup, aren't you?"

"I'm Bet Gallup--yes.  You run call up Doc Ambrose from over to
Paulmouth.  Your brother's got a bad knock on the head."

"And he's been overboard!" gasped Prue.

"I--I'm all right," stammered Lawford.  "Let me lie down for a little
while.  Don't need a doctor."

"You're as wet as a drowned rat," his sister said.  "Come on up and get
some dry clothes, Ford.  I'm sure you're awful kind, Mrs. Gallup.  I
will telephone for the doctor at once."

"You bet she's kind!  Good old soul!" murmured Lawford.  "I'd have been
six fathoms deep if it hadn't been for Betty."

"She hauled you into the boat, did she?" Prue said in a sympathetic
tone.  "Well, we won't forget _that_."

Betty had stepped aboard the sloop again to reef down and make all
taut.  Her sailor-soul would not allow her to leave the lapstreak in a
frowsy condition.

Meanwhile Cecile came flying down from the garage, and between his two
sisters Lawford was aided up to the house.  Despite the young man's
protests, Dr. Ambrose was called and he rattled over in what the jolly
medical man termed his "one-horse shay."  That rattletrap of a
second-hand car was known in every town and hamlet for miles around.
Sometimes he got stalled, for the engine of the car was one of the
crankiest ever built, and the good physician had to get out and proceed
on foot.  When this happened the man who owned a horse living nearest
to the unredeemed automobile always hitched up and dragged the car
home.  For Dr. Ambrose was beloved as few men save a physician is ever
loved in a country community.

"You got a hard crack and no mistake, young man," the physician said,
plastering his patient's head in a workmanlike manner.  "But you've a
good, solid cranium as I've often told you.  Not much to get hurt above
the ears--mostly bone all the way through.  Not easy to crack, like
some of these eggshell heads."

Lawford felt the effects of the blow, however, for the rest of the
evening.  His father was away and so he had no support against the
organized attack of the women of the family.  Although it is doubtful
if I. Tapp would have sided with his son.

"It really serves you right, Ford, for taking that movie actress
sailing," drawled Marian.

"It is a judgment upon him," sighed their mother, wiping her eyes.
"Oh, Ford, if you only would settle down and not be so wild!"

"'Wild!'  Oh, bluey!" murmured L'Enfant Terrible, who considered her
brother a good deal of a tame cat.

"At least," Marian pursued, "you might carry on your flirtation in a
less public manner."

"'Flirtation!'" ejaculated Lawford, with a spark of anger--and then
settled back on the couch with a groan.

"My goodness me, Ford!" gasped Prue.  "You're surely not in earnest?"

"I should hope _not_," drawled Marian.

"Oh, Ford, my boy----"

"Now, mother, don't turn on the sprinkler again," advised L'Enfant
Terrible.  "It will do you no good.  And, anyway, I guess Ford hasn't
any too bright a chance with the Grayling.  You ought to have seen that
handsome Judson Bane lean over her when they were walking up to Cap'n
Abe's.  I thought he was going to nibble her ear!"

"Cecile!"

"Horrid thing!" Prue exclaimed.  "I don't know where she gets such rude
manners."

"That boarding school last winter completely spoiled her," complained
the mother.  "And I sent her to it because Sue Perriton and Alice
Bozewell go there."

"And I had a fine chance to get chummy with _them_!" snapped Cecile.
"They were both seniors."

"But really," Marian went on, "your entanglement with that movie
actress is sure to make trouble for us, Ford.  You might be a little
more considerate.  Just as we are getting in with the Perritons.  And
their guest, Mrs. Conroth, was really very nice to mother this morning
on the beach.  She has the open sesame to all the society there is on
this side of the Atlantic.  It's really a wonderful chance for us,
Ford."

"And--he's bound--to spoil--it all!" Mrs. Tapp sobbed into an expensive
bit of lace.

"You might be a good sport, Fordy, dear," urged Prue.

"Yes, Fordy; don't crab the game," added the vulgar Cecile.

"You know very well," said the elder sister, "how hard we have tried to
take our rightful place here at The Beaches.  We have the finest home
by far; daddy's got the most money of any of them, and let's us spend
it, too.  And still it's like rolling a barrel up a sand bank.  Just a
little thing will spoil our whole season here."

"Do, do be sensible, Ford!" begged his mother.

"Sacrifice yourself for the family's good," said Prue.

"Dear Ford," began Mrs. Tapp again, "for my sake--for all our
sakes--take thought of what you are doing.  This--this actress person
cannot be a girl you could introduce to your sisters----"

"No more of that, mother!" exclaimed the young man, patience at last
ceasing to be a virtue.  "Criticise me if you wish to; but I will hear
nothing against Miss Grayling."

"Oh, dear!  Now I have offended him again!" sobbed the matron.

"You are too utterly selfish for words!" declared Marian.

"You're a regular _pig_!" added Prue.

"If you get mixed up with an actress, Fordy, I'll have a fine time when
I come out, won't I?" complained Cecile.

"Caesar's ghost!" burst from the lips of the badgered young man.  "I
wish Betty Gallup had let me drown instead of hauling me inboard this
afternoon!"




CHAPTER XVIII

SOMETHING BREAKS

An express wagon, between the shafts of which was a raw-boned gray
horse leaning against one shaft as a prop while he dozed, stood before
Cap'n Abe's store as Louise and Mr. Judson Bane came up from the shore
front.  She thanked the actor as he set the heavy baskets on the porch
step.

"Those blackfish look so good I long for a fish supper," he said,
smiling in open admiration upon her.

Louise was quick to establish a reputation for hospitality.  Perhaps it
was the Silt blood that influenced her to say: "Wait till I speak to
Uncle Amazon, Mr. Bane."

There was a tall gaunt man in overalls and jumper, who, somehow,
possessed a family resemblance to the gray horse, leaning against the
door frame, much as his beast leaned against the wagon shaft.  Perry
Baker and the gray horse had traveled so many years together about
Paulmouth and Cardhaven that it was not surprising they looked alike.

When Louise mounted the porch steps she could not easily pass the
expressman, who was saying, in drawling tones:

"Well, I brought it over, seeing I had a light load.  I didn't know
what else to do with it.  Of course, it was Cap'n Abe give it to me to
ship.  Let's see, I didn't happen to see you here that night you came,
an' I brought the young lady's trunks over, did I?"

"Not as I know on," barked Cap'n Amazon with brevity.

"Funny how we didn't meet then," drawled Perry Baker.

There seemed to be a tenseness to the atmosphere of the old store.
Louise saw the usual idlers gathered about the cold stove--Washy Gallup
on his nail-keg, his jaw wagging eagerly; Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue
side by side with their elbows on the counter; Cap'n Joab Beecher
leaning forward on his stick--all watching Cap'n Amazon, it seemed,
with strained attention.

It was like a scene set for a play--for the taking of a film, perhaps.
The whimsical thought came to Louise that the director had just
shouted: "Get set!" and would immediately add: "Action!  Camera!  Go!"

"Course," Perry Baker drawled, "I sent it to Boston as consigner,
myself; so when the chest warn't called for within a reasonable time
they shipped it back to me, knowin' I was agent.  Funny Cap'n Abe
didn't show up for to claim it."

Cap'n Amazon, grim as a gargoyle, leaned upon the counter and stared
the expressman out of countenance, saying nothing.  Perry shifted
uneasily in the doorway.  The captain's silence and his stare were
becoming irksome to bear.

"Well!" he finally ejaculated, "that's how 'tis.  I'd ha' waited
till--till Cap'n Abe come home--if he ever _does_ come; but my wife,
Huldy, got fidgety.  She reads the papers, and she's got it into her
head there's something wrong 'bout the old chest.  She dreamed 'bout
it.  An' ye know, when a woman gets to dreamin' she'll drag her
anchors, no matter what the bottom is.  She says folks have been
murdered 'fore now and their bodies crammed into a chest----"

"Why, you long-winded sculpin!" exclaimed Cap'n Amazon, at length
goaded to speech.  "Bring that chest in and take a reef in your
jaw-tackle.  I knew a man once't looked nigh enough like you to be your
twin; and he was purt nigh a plumb idiot, too."

Louise had never before heard her uncle's voice so sharp.  It was plain
he had not seen his niece until after Perry Baker turned and clumped
out upon the porch, thus giving the girl free entrance to the store.
She turned, smiling a little whimsically, and said to Bane:

"The moment is not propitious, I fear.  Uncle Amazon seems to be put
out about something."

"Don't bother him now, I beg," urged the actor, lifting his hat.  "I
will call later--if I may."

"Certainly, Mr. Bane," she said with seriousness.  "Uncle Amazon and I
will both be glad to see you."

The expressman came heavily up the steps with a green chest on his
shoulder.  It had handles of tarred rope and had plainly seen much
service; indeed, it was brother to the box in the storeroom which
Louise had found filled with nautical literature.

The girl entered the store ahead of the staggering expressman, but
stepped aside for him to precede her, for she wished to beckon to Amiel
to come out for the baskets of fish.

"Watch out where you're putting your foot, Perry!" Cap'n Joab suddenly
exclaimed.

His warning was too late.  Some youngster, eager to peel his banana,
had flung its treacherous skin upon the floor.  The expressman set his
clumsy boot upon it.

"Whee!  'Ware below!" yelled Amiel Perdue.

To recover his footing Perry let go of the chest.  It fell to the floor
with a mighty crash, landing upon one corner and bursting open.  During
the long years it had stood in Cap'n Abe's storeroom the wood had
suffered dry rot.

"Land o' Liberty an' all han's around!" bawled the irrepressible Milt
Baker.  "There ain't ho corpse in that dust, for a fac'!"

"What kind of a mess d'ye make that out to be, I want to know?" cackled
Washy Gallup.

The hinges had torn away from the rotting wood so that the lid lay wide
open.  Tumbled out upon the floor were several ancient garments,
including a suit of quite unwearable oilskins, and with them at least a
wheelbarrow load of bricks!

"Well, I vum!" drawled the expressman, at length recovering speech.  "I
hope Huldy'll be satisfied."

But Cap'n Joab Beecher was not.  He stood up and pointed his stick at
the heap of rubbish on the floor and his voice quavered as he shrilly
asked:

"Then, _where's Cap'n Abe_?"

They all turned to stare again at Cap'n Amazon.  That hardy mariner
seemed to be quite as self-possessed as usual.  His grim lips opened
and in caustic tone he said:

"You fellers seem to think that I'm Abe Silt's keeper.  I ain't.  Abe's
old enough--and ought to be seaman enough--to look out for Abe Silt.
What tomfoolery he packed into that chest is none o' my consarn.  I
l'arnt years ago that Moses an' them old fellers left the chief
commandment out o' the Scriptures.  That's 'Mind your own business.'
Abe's business ain't mine.  Here, you Amiel! clear up that clutter an'
let's have no more words about it."

The decisive speech of the master mariner closed the lips of even Cap'n
Joab.  The latter did not repeat his query about Cap'n Abe but, with a
baffled expression on his weather-beaten countenance, departed with
Perry Baker.

That a trap had been for Cap'n Amazon, that it had been sprung and
failed to catch the master mariner, seemed quite plain to Louise.
Betty Gallup's oft-expressed suspicions and Washy Gallup's gossip
suddenly impressed the girl.  With these vague thoughts was connected
in her mind the discovery she had made that one of Cap'n Amazon's
thrilling stories was pasted into the old scrapbook.  Why she should
think of that discovery just now mystified her; but it seemed somehow
to dovetail into the enigma.

Cap'n Amazon lifted the flap in the counter for Louise and in his usual
kindly tone said:

"Good fishin', Niece Louise?  Bring home a mess?"

"Yes, indeed," she told him.  "The baskets are outside.  Let Amiel
bring them around to the back."

"Aye, aye!" returned the captain briskly.  "Tautog?  We'll have 'em for
supper," and let her pass as though nothing extraordinary had occurred.

But to Louise's troubled mind the bursting of the old chest was like
the explosion of a bomb in Cap'n Abe's store.

What was the meaning of it all?  Why had the chest been filled with
bricks and useless garments?  And by whom?

If by Cap'n Abe, what was his object in doing such a perfectly
incomprehensible thing?  He had deliberately, it seemed, shipped a
quite useless chest to Boston with no expectation of calling for it at
the express office.  Then, _where had he gone_?

Cap'n Joab's query was the one uppermost in Louise Grayling's thought.
All these incomprehensible things seemed to lead to that most important
question.  Had Cap'n Abe gone to sea, or had he not?  If not, what had
become of him?

And how much more regarding his brother's disappearance did Cap'n
Amazon know than the neighbors or herself?  In her room Louise sat and
faced the problem.  She deliberated upon each incident connected with
Cap'n Abe's departure as she knew them.

From almost the first moment of her arrival at the store on the Shell
Road, the storekeeper had announced the expected arrival of Cap'n
Amazon and his own departure for a sea voyage if his brother would
undertake the conduct of the store.

The incidents of the night of Cap'n Amazon's coming and of Cap'n Abe's
departure seemed reasonable enough.  Here had arisen the opportunity
long desired by the Shell Road storekeeper.  His brother would remain
to look out for his business while he could go seafaring.  Cap'n Amazon
knew just the craft for the storekeeper to sail in, clearing from the
port of Boston within a few hours.

There was not much margin of time for Cap'n Abe to make his
preparations.  Perry Baker was at hand with Louise's trunks, and the
storekeeper had sent off his chest, supposedly filled with an outfit
for use at sea.  Just what he had intended to do with useless clothing
and a hod of bricks it was impossible to understand.

Cap'n Abe had come to her bedroom door to bid Louise good-bye, and she
had seen him depart in the fog just at dawn.  Yet nobody had observed
him at the railroad station and he had not called for the chest at the
Boston express office.

The chest!  That was the apex of the mystery.  Never in this world had
Cap'n Abe intended to take the chest with him to sea--or wherever else
he had it in his mind to go.

Nor was the chest intended to be returned to the store until Cap'n Abe
himself came back from his mysterious journey.  The fact that Perry
Baker had shipped it in his own name instead of that of the owner had
brought about this unexpected incident.

Washy Gallup's gossip--his doubt regarding Cap'n Abe's shipping on a
sea voyage--now came home to Louise with force.  Washy suggested that
the storekeeper was afraid of the sea; that in all his years at
Cardhaven he had never been known to venture out of the quiet waters of
the bay.

To the girl's mind, too, came the remembrance of that talk she had had
with Cap'n Abe on the evening of her arrival at the store.  Was there
something he had said then that explained this mystery?

He had told her of the wreck of the Bravo and the drowning of Captain
Joshua Silt, his father, in sight of his mother's window.  She had been
powerfully affected by that awful tragedy; this could not be doubted.

And the son, Cap'n Abe, a posthumous child, might indeed have come into
the world with that horror of the sea which must have filled his poor
mother's soul.

"It would explain why Uncle Abram never became a sailor--the only Silt
for generations who remained ashore.  Yet, he spoke that night as
though he loved the sea--or the romance of it, at least," Louise
thought.

"Perhaps, too, his own inability to sail to foreign shores and his
terror of the sea made him so worship Cap'n Amazon's prowess.  For they
say he was continually relating stories of his brother's
adventures--even more marvelous tales than Cap'n Amazon himself has
related.

"Such a misfortune as Cap'n Abe's fear of the sea may easily explain
his brother's good-natured scorn of him.  Uncle Amazon doesn't say much
about him; but I can see he looks upon Cap'n Abe as a weakling.

"But," sighed the girl in conclusion, "even this does not explain the
mystery of the chest, or where Cap'n Abe can be hiding.  I wonder if
Uncle Amazon knows?"




CHAPTER XIX

MUCH ADO

As on previous occasions, Louise Grayling was deterred from putting a
searching question to Cap'n Amazon because of his look and manner.  The
little she had seen of Cap'n Abe assured her that she would have felt
no hesitancy in approaching the mild-mannered storekeeper upon any
subject.

But the master mariner seemed to be an entirely different personality.
The way he had overawed the idlers in the store that afternoon when the
old chest was broken open, and his refusal to make any further
explanation of Cap'n Abe's absence, pinched out Louise's courage as one
might pinch out a candle wick.

That suspicion was rife in the community, and that the story of the
strange contents of Cap'n Abe's chest had spread like a prairie fire,
Louise was sure.  Yet at supper time Cap'n Amazon was as calm and
cheerful as usual and completely ignored the accident of the afternoon.

"Hi-mighty likely mess of tautog you caught, Louise," he said, ladling
the thick white gravy dotted with crumbly yellow egg yolk upon her
plate with lavish hand.  "That Lawford Tapp knows where the critters
school, if he doesn't know much else."

"Oh, Uncle Amazon!  I think he is a very intelligent young man.  Only
he wastes his time so!"

"He knows enough book l'arnin', I do allow," agreed Cap'n Amazon.  "But
fritters away his time as you say.  They all do that over to Tapp
P'int, I cal'late."

"I wonder how it came to be called Tapp Point?" Louise asked, with a
suddenly sharpened curiosity.

"'Cause it's belonged to the Tapps since away back,--or, so Cap'n Joab
says.  That sand heap never was wuth a punched nickel a ton till these
city folks began to build along The Beaches."

Louise, in her own mind, immediately constructed another theory about
Lawford Tapp, "the fisherman's son."  The sandy point had been sold to
the builder of the very ornate villa now crowning it, and the proceeds
of that sale had paid for the _Merry Andrew_ sloop and the expensive
fishing rod and the clothes of superquality which the young man wore.

She shrank, however, from commenting upon this extravagant and
spendthrift trait in his character, even to Uncle Amazon.  Nor would
she have spoken to anybody else upon the subject.

Something had happened to Louise Grayling on this adventurous
afternoon--something of which she scarcely dared think, let alone talk!

The grip of fear at her heart when she thought Lawford was drowning had
startled her as much as the accident itself.  She had seen men in peril
before--in deadly peril--without feeling any personal terror for their
fate.

In that moment when Lawford was sinking and she was preparing to leap
to his aid, Louise had realized this fact.  And in her inmost soul she
admitted--with a thrill that shook her physically as well as
spiritually--that her interest in this Cape Cod fisherman's son was an
interest rooted in her inmost being.

The incident of the wrecked sea chest held her attention in only a
secondary degree.  All through supper she was listening for Betty
Gallup's heavy step.  She knew she could not sleep that night without
knowing how Lawford was.

For the very reason that she felt so deeply regarding it, she shrank
from talking with Cap'n Amazon of the accident that had happened to
Lawford.  She was glad the substitute storekeeper had "gone for'ard"
again to attend to customers when Betty came clumping up the back steps.

"He's all right, Miss Lou," said the kindly woman, patting the girl's
hand.  "I waited to see Doc Ambrose when he come back from the P'int.
He says there ain't a thing the matter with him that vinegar an' brown
paper won't cure.

"But land sakes!  Miss Lou, ain't this an awful thing 'bout your Uncle
Abe's chest?  That old pirate knows more'n he'd ought to 'bout what's
come o' Cap'n Abe, even if they ain't brought it home to him yit."

"Now, Betty, I wish you wouldn't," begged the girl.  "Why should you
give currency to such foolish gossip?"

"What foolish gossip?" snapped the woman.

"Why, about my Uncle Amazon."

"How d'ye _know_ he's your uncle at all?" demanded Betty.  "You never
seen him before he come here.  You never knowed nothin' 'bout him, so
you said, 'fore you come here to Cardhaven."

"But, Betty----"

"Ain't no 'buts' about it!" fiercely declared the "able seaman."
"Cap'n Abe's gone--disappeared.  We don't know what's become of him.
Course, Huldy Baker was a silly to think Cap'n Abe had been murdered
and cut up like shark bait and shipped away in that old chest."

"Oh!"

"Yes.  'Cause Perry seen Cap'n Abe himself that night when he took the
chest away.  That was ridic'lous.  But then, Huldy Baker ain't got
right good sense, nor never had.

"But it stands to reason Cap'n Abe had no intent of shipping aboard any
craft with sich dunnage in his chest as they say was in it."

"No-o.  I suppose that is so," admitted Louise.

"Then, what's become of the poor man?" Betty ejaculated.

"Why, nobody seems to know.  Not even Uncle Amazon."

"Have you axed him?" demanded the other bluntly.

"No.  I haven't done that."

"Humph!" was the rejoinder.  "You're just as much afeared on him as the
rest on us.  You take it from me, Miss Lou, he's been a hard man on his
own quarter-deck.  He ain't no more like Cap'n Abe than buttermilk's
like tartaric acid.

"Cap'n Abe warn't no seafarin' man," pursued Betty, "though he had the
lingo on his tongue and 'peared as salt as a dried pollock.  It's in my
mind that he wouldn't never re'lly go to sea--'nless he was egged on to
it."

Here it was again!  That same doubt as expressed by Washy Gallup--the
suggestion that Cap'n Abe Silt possessed an inborn fear of the sea that
he had never openly confessed.

"Why do you say that, Betty?" Louise hesitatingly asked the old woman.

"'Cause I've knowed Cap'n Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that
endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler.  With all his
bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't a seafarin'
man."

"But what has Uncle Amazon to do with the mystery of his brother's
absence?" demanded Louise.

"Humph!  If he _is_ Cap'n Abe's brother.  Now, now, you don't know no
more about this old pirate than I do, Miss Lou.  He influenced Cap'n
Abe somehow, or someway, so't he cut his hawser and drifted out o'
soundings--that's sure!  Here this feller callin' himself Am'zon Silt
has got the store an' all it holds, an' Cap'n Abe's money, and
ev'rything."

"Oh, Betty, how foolishly you talk," sighed the girl.

"Humph!  Mebbe.  And then again, mebbe it ain't foolish.  Them men
to-day thought they could scare that old pirate into admittin'
something if they sprung Cap'n Abe's chest on him.  Oh, I knowed they
was goin' to do it," admitted Betty.

"Course, they had no idee what was in the chest.  Bustin' it open was
an accident.  Perry Baker's as clumsy as a cow.  But you see, Miss Lou,
just how cool that ol' pirate took it all.  Washy was tellin' me.  He
just browbeat 'em an' left 'em with all their canvas slattin'.

"Oh, you can't tell me!  That old pirate's handled a crew without no
tongs, you may lay to that!  And what he's done to poor old Cap'n
Abe----"

She went away shaking a sorrowful head and without finishing her
sentence.  Louise was unable to shake off the burden of doubt of Cap'n
Amazon's character and good intentions.  She felt that she could not
spend the long evening in his company, and bidding him good-night
through the open store door she retired to the upper floor.

She felt that sleep was far from her eyelids on this night; therefore
she lit a candle and went into the storeroom to get something to read.
She selected a much battered volume, printed in an early year of the
nineteenth century, its title being:

  LANDSMEN'S TALES:
  Seafaring Yarns of a Lubber.

Louise became enthralled by the narratives of perilous adventure and
odd happenings on shipboard which the author claimed to have himself
observed.  She read for an hour or more, while the sounds in the store
below gradually ceased and she heard Cap'n Amazon close and lock the
front door for the night.

Silence below.  Outside the lap, lap, lap of the waves on the strand
and the rising moan of the surf over Gulf Rocks.

Louise turned a page.  She plunged into another yarn.  Breathlessly
and, almost fearfully she read it to the end--the very story of the
murdered albatross and the sailors' superstitious belief in the bird's
bad influence, as she had heard Cap'n Amazon relate it to Aunt Euphemia
Conroth.

She laid down the book at last in amazement and confusion.  There was
no doubt now of Cap'n Amazon's mendacity.  This book of nautical tales
had been written and printed _long before Amazon Silt was born_!

And if the falseness of his wild narratives was established, was it a
far cry to Betty Gallup's suspicions and accusations?  What and who was
this man, who called himself Amazon Silt who had taken Cap'n Abe's
place in the store on the Shell Road?

Louise lay with wide-open eyes for a long time.  Then she crept out of
bed and turned the key in the lock of her door--the first time she had
thought to do such a thing since her arrival at Cardhaven.




CHAPTER XX

THE SUN WORSHIPERS

"Them movin' picture people are hoppin' about The Beaches like
sandpipers," observed Cap'n Amazon at the breakfast table.  "And I
opine they air pretty average useless, too.  They were hurrahin' around
all day yest'day while you was out fishin'.  Want to take a picture of
Abe's old store here.  Dunno what to do about it."

Louise was too much disturbed by her discoveries of overnight to give
much attention to this subject.

"It's Abe's store, you see," went on Cap'n Amazon.  "Dunno how he'd
feel 'bout havin' it took in a picture and showed all over the country.
It needs a coat o' paint hi-mighty bad.  Ought to be fixed up some
'fore havin' its picture took--don't ye think so, Niece Louise?"

The girl awoke to the matter sufficiently to advise him:

"The lack of paint will not show in the picture, Uncle Amazon.  And I
suppose they want the store for a location just because it is
weather-beaten and old-fashioned."

"I want to know!  Well, now, if I was in the photograftin' business,
seems t' me I'd pick out the nice-lookin' places to make pictures of.
I knowed a feller once that made a business of takin' photografts in
furin' parts.  He sailed with me when I was master of the _Blue
Sparrow_--clipper built she was, an' a spankin' fine craft.  We----"

"Oh, Uncle Amazon!" Louise cried, rising from, the table suddenly,
"you'll have to excuse me.  I--I forgot something upstairs.  Yes--I've
finished my breakfast.  Betty can clear off."

She fairly ran away from the table.  It seemed to her as though she
could not sit and listen to another of his preposterous stories.  It
would be on the tip of her tongue to declare her disbelief in his
accuracy.  How and where he had gained access to Cap'n Abe's store of
nautical romances she could not imagine; but she was convinced that
many, if not all, of his supposedly personal adventures were entirely
fictitious in so far as his own part in them was concerned.

She put on her hat and went out of the back door in order to escape
further intercourse with Cap'n Amazon for the present.  On the shore
she found the spot below the Bozewell bungalow a busy scene.  This was
a perfect day for "the sun worshipers," as somebody has dubbed motion
picture people.  Director Anscomb was evidently planning to secure
several scenes and the entire company was on hand.

Louise saw that there were a number of spectators besides herself--some
from the town, but mostly young folk from the cottages along The
Beaches.

Lawford Tapp was present, and she waved her hand to him, yet preserving
an air of merely good comradeship.  She was glad that he did not know
that it was she who had leaped to his rescue the day before.
Considering the nature of the feeling she had for him, into the
knowledge of which his peril had surprised her, the girl could not
endure any intimate conversation with Lawford.  Not just then, at least.

Tapp was in the midst of a group of girls, and she remarked his ease of
manner.  She did not wonder at it, for he was a gentleman by instinct
no matter what his social level might be.  Three of the girls were
those Louise Grayling believed to be daughters of Lawford's employer.

She saw that he was breaking away from the group with the intention of
coming to her.  L'Enfant Terrible said something to him and laughed
shrilly.  She saw Lawford's cheek redden.

So Louise welcomed the approach of Mr. Bane, who chanced at the moment
to be idle.

"Now you will see us grinding them out, Miss Grayling," the actor said.

Louise broke into a series of questions regarding the taking of the
pictures.  Her evident interest in the big leading man halted Lawford's
approach.  Besides, Miss Louder, who had evidently been introduced to
the Taffy King's son, attached herself to him.

She was a pretty girl despite the layers of grease paint necessary to
accentuate the lights and shadows of her piquant face.  Her manner with
men was free without being bold.  With a big parasol over her shoulder,
she adapted her step to Lawford's and they strolled nearer.

Bane was speaking of the script he had previously mentioned as
containing a part eminently fitted for Louise.  As Lawford and Miss
Louder passed he said:

"I am sure you can do well in that part, Miss Grayling.  It is exactly
your style."

Had Lawford any previous reason for doubting Louise Grayling's
connection with the moving picture industry this overheard remark would
have lulled such a doubt to sleep.

The young man realized well enough that Louise was a very different
girl from the blithe young woman at his side.  But how could he make I.
Tapp see it?

Money was not everything in the world; Lawford Tapp was far from
thinking it was.  He had always considered it of much less importance
than the things one could exchange it for.

However, never having felt the necessity for working for mere pelf, and
being untrained for any form of industry whatsoever, his father's
threat of disowning him loomed a serious menace to the young man.

Not for himself did Lawford fear.  He felt warm blood in his veins,
vigor in his muscles, a keen edge to his nerves.  He could
work--preferably with his hands.  He realized quite fully his
limitation of brain power.

But what right had he to ask any girl to share his lot--especially a
girl like Louise Grayling, who he supposed won a sufficient livelihood
in a profession the emoluments of which must be far greater than those
of any trade he might seek to follow?

He saw now that after his somewhat desultory college course, his months
of loafing about on sea and shore had actually unfitted him for
concentration upon any ordinary work.  And he was not sanguine enough
to expect an extraordinary situation to come his way.

Then, too, the young man realized that Louise Grayling had not given
him the least encouragement to lead him to believe that she thought of
him at all.  At this moment her preference for Bane's society seemed
marked.  Already Cecile had rasped Lawford regarding the leading man's
attentions to Louise.

Lawford could not face the taunting glances of Marian and Prue.  They
had come down to the beach on this particular morning he felt sure to
comment--and not kindly--upon Louise Grayling.  He hoped that she was
not included in the director's plans for the day, and he was glad to
see that she had no make-up on, as had these other young women.

So he strolled on grimly with Miss Louder, who would not be called for
work for an hour.  But the young man heard little of her chatter.

The tide was at the ebb and the two walked on at the edge of the
splashing surf, where the strand was almost as firm as a cement walk.
The curve of the beach took them toward the lighthouse and here,
approaching with bucket and clam hoe along the flats, was the very
lightkeeper who had watched the _Merry Andrew_ and her crew the day,
before when Lawford met with his accident.

"There ye be, Mr. Lawford," crowed the man, "as chipper as a sandpiper.
But I swanny, I didn't ever expect t' hail ye again this side o'
Jordan, one spell yest'day."

"You had your glass on us, did you?" Lawford said languidly.

"I did, young man--I did.  An' when that bobbin' skiff walloped ye on
the side of the head I never 'spected t' see you come up again.  If it
hadn't been for this little lady who------Shucks, now!  This ain't her
'tall, is it?"

"Oh, Mr. Tapp, were you in a boating accident yesterday?" cried Miss
Louder.

"I was overboard--yes," responded Lawford, but rather blankly, for he
was startled by the lightkeeper's statement.  "What do you mean,
Jonas?" to the lightkeeper.  "Didn't Betty Gallup haul me inboard?"

"Bet Gallup--nawthin'!" exploded Jonas with disgust.  "She handled that
sloop o' yourn all right.  I give her credit for that.  But 'twas that
there gal stayin' at Cap'n Abe's.  Ye had her out with ye, eh?"

"Miss Grayling?  Certainly."

"She's some gal, even if she is city bred," was the lightkeeper's
enthusiastic observation.  "An' quick!  My soul!  Ye'd ought to seen
her kick off her skirt an' shoes an' dive after ye!  I swanny, she was
a sight!"

"I should think she would have been!" gasped Miss Louder with some
scorn.  "Goodness me, she must be a regular stunt actress!" and she
laughed shrilly.

But Lawford gave her small attention.  "Jonas, do you mean that?" he
asked.  "I thought it was Betty who saved me.  Why, dad said this
morning he was going to send the old woman a check.  He doesn't much
approve of me," and the heir of the Taffy King smiled rather grimly,
"but as I'm the last Tapp----"

"He's glad ye didn't git done for _com_-pletely, heh?" suggested Jonas,
and giggled.  "I wouldn't for a minute stand in the way of Bet Gallup's
gittin' what's due her.  She did pick ye both up, Lawford.  But, land
sakes! ye'd been six fathoms down, all right, if it hadn't been for
that gal at Cap'n Abe's."

"I--I had no idea of it.  I never even thanked her," muttered Lawford.
"What can she think of me?"

But not even Miss Louder heard this.  She realized, however, that the
young man who she had been told was "the greatest catch at The Beaches"
was much distrait and that her conversation seemed not to interest him
at all.

They went back toward the scene of the film activities.  It was the
hour of the usual promenade on the sands.  Everybody in the summer
colony appeared on the beach while the walking along the water's edge
was fine.  This promenade hour was even more popular than the bathing
hour which was, of, course, at high tide.

Groups of women, young and old, strolled under gay parasols, or camped
on the sands to chat.  Brilliantly striped marquees were set up below
some of the cottages, in which tea and other refreshments were served.
The younger people fluttered about, talking and laughing, much like a
flock of Mother Carey's chickens before a storm.

There were several wagons over from the Haven, in which the small-fry
summer visitors arrived and joined their more aristocratic neighbors.
The wagons stopped upon the Shell Road and the passengers climbed down
to the beach between two of the larger cottages.

The people at The Beaches had tried on several occasions to inclose the
stretch of shore below their summer homes, and to make it a private
beach.  But even the most acquisitive of the town councilmen (and there
were several of the fraternity of the Itching Palm in the council)
dared not establish such a precedent.  The right of the public to the
shore at tide-water could not safely be ignored in a community of
fishermen and clam diggers.

So the shore on this morning had become a gay scene, with the interest
centering on the open air studio of the film company.  Lawford saw
Louise walking on alone along the edge of the water.  Bane had been
called into conference by the director.

Lawford could not well hasten his steps and desert Miss Louder, but he
desired strongly to do so.  And ere the film actress lingeringly left
him to rejoin her company, Louise was some distance in advance.

His sisters were near her.  Lawford could see them look at her most
superciliously, and the saucy Cecile said something that made Prue
laugh aloud.

Just beyond the Tapp girls was approaching a group of women and men.
Lawford recognized them as the Perritons and their friends.  Lawford
had no particular interest in the summer crowd himself; but he knew the
Perritons were influential people in the social world.

With them was a majestic person the young man had never seen before.
Undoubtedly the "Lady from Poughkeepsie."  Her pink countenance and
beautifully dressed gray hair showed to excellent advantage under the
black and white parasol she carried.

She stepped eagerly before the party, calling:

"Louise!"

Louise Grayling raised her head and waved a welcoming hand.

"What brings you forth so early in the morning, auntie?" she asked, her
voice ringing clearly across the sands.

There were at least four dumfounded spectators of this meeting, and
they were all named Tapp.

Lawford stood rooted to the sands, feeling quite as though the universe
had fallen into chaos.  It was only L'Enfant Terrible who found speech.

"Oh, my!" she cried.  "What a mistake!  The movie queen turns out to be
some pumpkins!"




CHAPTER XXI

DISCOVERIES

Louise, knowing Aunt Euphemia so well, was immediately aware that the
haughty lady had something more than ordinarily unpleasant to
communicate.  It was nothing about Uncle Amazon and the Shell Road
store; some other wind of mischance had ruffled her soul.

But the girl ignored Aunt Euphemia's signals for several minutes; until
she made herself, indeed, more familiar with the manner and personal
attributes of these new acquaintances.  There was a Miss Perriton of
about her own age whom she liked at first sight.  Two or three men of
the party were clean-cut and attractive fellows.  Despite the fact that
their cottage had been so recently opened for the season, the Perritons
had already assembled a considerable house party.

"Louise, I wish to talk to you," at last said Mrs. Conroth grimly.

"True," sighed her niece.  "And how extremely exact you always are in
your use of the language, auntie.  You never wish to talk _with_ me.
_You_ will do all the talking as usual, I fear."

"You are inclined to be saucy," bruskly rejoined Aunt Euphemia.  "As
your father is away I feel more deeply my responsibility in this
matter.  You are a wayward girl--you always have been."

"You don't expect me to agree with you on that point, do you, auntie?"
Louise asked sweetly.

Mrs. Conroth ignored the retort, continuing: "I am not amazed, after
seeing your surroundings at the Silt place, that you should become
familiar with these common longshore characters.  But this that I have
just learned--only this forenoon in fact--astonishes me beyond measure;
it does, indeed!"

"Let me be astonished, too, auntie.  I love a surprise," drawled her
niece.

"Where were you yesterday?" demanded Aunt Euphemia sharply.

Louise at once thought she knew what was coming.  She smiled as she
replied: "Out fishing."

"And with whom, may I ask?"

"With Betty Gallup, Uncle Abram's housekeeper."

"But the man?"

"Oh!  Mr. Tapp, you mean? A very pleasant young man, auntie."

"That is what I was told, Louise," her aunt said mournfully.  "With
young Tapp.  And you have been seen with him frequently.  It is being
remarked by the whole colony.  Of course, you can mean nothing by this
intimacy.  It arises from your thoughtlessness, I presume.  You must
understand that he is not--er----Well, the Tapps are not of our set,
Louise."

"My goodness, no!" laughed the girl cheerfully.  "The Tapps are real
Cape Codders, I believe."

Aunt Euphemia raised her eyebrows and her lorgnette together.  "I do
not understand you, I fear.  What the Tapps are by blood, I do not
know.  But they are not in society at all--not at all!"

"Not in society?" repeated Louise, puzzled indeed.

"Scarcely.  Of course, as Mrs. Perriton says, the way the cottagers are
situated here at The Beaches, the Tapps _must_ be treated with a
certain friendliness.  That quite impossible 'I. Tapp,' as he
advertises himself, owns all the Point and might easily make it very
disagreeable for the rest of the colony if he so chose."

She stopped because of the expression on her niece's countenance.

"What _do_ you mean?" Louise asked.  "Who--who are these Tapps?"

"My dear child!  Didn't you know?  Was I blaming you for a fault of
which you were not intentionally guilty?  See how wrong you are to go
unwarned and unaccompanied to strange places and into strange company.
I thought you were merely having a mild flirtation with that young man
in the full light of understanding."

Louise controlled her voice and her countenance with an effort.  "Tell
me, Aunt Euphemia," she repeated, "just who Lawford Tapp is?"

"His father is a manufacturer of cheap candies.  He is advertised far
and wide as 'I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy King.'  Fancy!  I presume
you are quite right; they probably were nothing more than clam diggers
originally.  The wife and daughters are extremely raw; no other word
expresses it.  And that house!  Have you seen it close to?  There was
never anything quite so awful built outside an architect's nightmare."

"They own Tapp Point?  _That_ is Lawford's home?  Those girls are his
sisters?" Louise murmured almost breathlessly.

"Whom _did_ you take that young man to be, Louise?"

"A fisherman's son," confessed her niece, in a very small voice.  And
at that Aunt Euphemia all but fainted.

But Louise would say nothing more--just then.  On the approach of some
of her friends, Mrs. Conroth was forced to put a cap upon her vexation,
and bid her niece good-day as sweetly as though she had never dreamed
of boxing her ears.

Louise climbed the nearest stairs to the summit of the bluff.  She felt
she could not meet Lawford at this time, and he was between her and the
moving picture actors.

Within the past few hours several things that had seemed stable in
Louise Grayling's life had been shaken.

She had accepted in the very first of her acquaintanceship with Lawford
Tapp the supposition that his social position was quite inferior to her
own.  She was too broadly democratic to hold that as an insurmountable
barrier between them.

Her disapproval of the young man grew out of her belief in his identity
as a mere "hired man" of the wealthy owner of the villa on the Point.
She had considered that a man who was so intelligent and well educated
and at the same time so unambitious was lacking in those attributes of
character necessary to make him a success in life.

His love for the open--for the sea and shore and all that pertained to
them--coincided exactly with Louise's own aspirations.  She considered
it all right that her father and herself spent much of their time as
Lawford spent his.  Only, daddy-prof often added to the sum-total of
human knowledge by his investigations, and sometimes added to their
financial investments through his work as well.

Until now she had considered Lawford Tapp's tendencies toward living
such an irresponsible existence as all wrong--for him.  The rather
exciting information she had just gained changed her mental attitude
toward the young man entirely.

Louise gave no consideration whatsoever to Aunt Euphemia's snobbish
stand in the matter of Lawford's social position.  Professor Grayling
had laughingly said that Euphemia chose to ignore the family's small
beginnings in America.  True, the English Graylings possessed a crest
and a pedigree as long as the moral law.  But in America the family had
begun by being small tradespeople and farmers.

Of course, Louise considered, Aunt Euphemia would be very unpleasant
and bothersome about this matter.  Louise had hoped to escape all that
for the summer by fleeing to Cap'n Abe's store at Cardhaven.

However (and the girl's lips set firmly) she was determined to take her
own gait--to stand upon her own opinion--to refuse to be swerved from
her chosen course by any consideration.  Lawford Tapp was in a
financial situation to spend his time in the improvement of his body
and mind without regard to money considerations.  Louise foresaw that
they were going to have a delightful time together along the shore
here, until daddy-prof came home in the fall.  And then----

She saw no such cloud upon the horizon as Lawford saw.  Louise
acknowledged the existence of nothing--not even Aunt Euphemia's
opposition--which could abate the happiness she believed within her
grasp.

She admitted that her interest in Lawford had risen far above the mark
of mere friendly feeling.  When she had seen him sinking the day
before, and in peril of his life, she knew beyond peradventure that his
well-being and safety meant more to her than anything else in the world.

Now she was only anxious to have him learn that she instead of Betty
had leaped into the sea after him.  She would avoid him no more.  Only
she did not wish to meet him there on the beach before all those
idlers.  Louise feared that if she did so, she would betray her
happiness.  She thrilled with it--she was obsessed with the thought
that there was nothing, after all, to separate Lawford and herself!

Yet the day passed without his coming to the store on the Shell Road.
Louise still felt some disturbance of mind regarding Cap'n Amazon.  She
kept away from him as much as possible, for she feared that she might
be tempted to blurt out just what she thought of his ridiculous stories.

She did not like to hear Betty Gallup utter her diatribes against the
master mariner; although in secret she was inclined to accept as true
many of the "able seaman's" strictures upon Cap'n Amazon's character.

It was really hard when she was in his presence to think of him as an
audacious prevaricator--and perhaps worse.  He was so kindly in his
manner and speech to her.  His brisk consideration for her comfort at
all times--his wistful glances for Jerry, the ancient canary, and the
tenderness he showed the bird--even his desire to placate Diddimus, the
tortoise-shell cat--all these things withstood the growing ill-opinion
being fostered in Louise Grayling's mind.  Who and what was this
mysterious person calling himself Cap'n Amazon Silt?

She had, too, a desire to know just how many of those weird stories he
told were filched from Cap'n Abe's accumulation of nautical literature.
When Cap'n Amazon had gained access to the chest of books Louise could
not imagine; but the fact remained that he had at least two of the
stories pat.

Louise had promised to spend the evening at the Perritons, and did so;
but she returned to Cap'n Abe's store early and did not invite her
escort in, although he was a youth eager to taste the novelty of being
intimate with "one of these old Cape Codders," as he expressed it.

"No," she told young Malcolm Standish firmly.  "Uncle Amazon is not to
be made a peepshow of by the idle rich of The Beaches.  Besides, from
your own name, you should be a descendant of Miles Standish, and blood
relation to these Cape Codders yourself.  And Uncle Amazon and Uncle
Abram are fine old gentlemen."  She said it boldly, whether she could
believe it about Cap'n Amazon or not.  "I will not play showman."

"Oh, say!  Ford Tapp comes here.  I saw his car standing outside the
other evening."

"Mr. Tapp," Louise explained calmly, "comes in the right spirit.  He is
a friend of the--ahem--family.  He is well known to Cap'n Abe who owns
the store and has made himself acquainted with Cap'n Amazon over the
counter."

"And how has he made himself so solid with you, Miss Grayling?"
Standish asked impudently.

"By his gentlemanly behavior, and because he knows a deal more about
boat-sailing and the shores than I know," she retorted demurely.

"Leave it to me!" exclaimed Malcolm Standish.  "I am going to learn
navigation and fishology at once."

"But--don't you think you may be too late?" she asked him, running up
the steps.  "Good-night, Mr. Standish!"

Upon going indoors she did not find Cap'n Amazon.  The lamp was burning
in the living-room, but he was not there and the store was dark.
Louise mounted the stairs, rather glad of his absence; but when she
came to the top of the flight she saw the lamplight streaming through
the open door of her uncle's bedroom.  Diddimus, with waving tail, was
just advancing into the "cabin," as Cap'n Amazon called the chamber he
occupied.

Knowing that he particularly objected to having any of his possessions
disturbed, and fearing that Diddimus might do some mischief there,
Louise followed the tortoise-shell, calling to him:

"Come out of there!  Come out instantly, Diddimus!  What do you mean by
venturing in where we are all forbidden to enter?  Don't you know,
Diddimus, that only fools dare venture where angels fear to tread?
Scat!"

Something on the washstand caught Louise's glance.  In the bottom of
the washbowl was the stain of a dark brown liquid.  Beside it stood a
bottle the label of which she could read from the doorway.

She caught her breath, standing for half a minute as though entranced.
Diddimus, hearing a distant footstep, and evidently suspecting it,
whisked past Louise out of the room.

There were other articles on the washstand that claimed the girl's
notice; but it was to the bottle labeled "Walnut Stain" that her gaze
returned.  She crept away to her own room, lit her lamp, and did not
even see Cap'n Amazon Silt again that night.




CHAPTER XXII

SHOCKING NEWS

"Ford Tapp was here last night," Cap'n Amazon told Louise at the
breakfast table.  "I cal'late he was lookin' for you, though he didn't
just up an' say so.  Seemed worried like for fear't you wouldn't have a
good opinion of him."

"Mercy! what has he done?" cried the girl laughing, for even the sound
of Lawford's name made her glad.

"Seems it's what he ain't done.  What's all this 'bout your jumpin'
overboard t'other day and savin' him from drownin'?" and the mariner
fairly beamed upon her.

"Oh, uncle, you mustn't believe everything you hear!"

"No?  But Bet Gallup says 'tis so.  You air a hi-mighty plucky girl, I
guess.  I allus have thought so--and so did Abe.  But I kind of feel as
though I'm sort o' responsible for your safety an' well-bein' while you
air here, and I can't countenance no such actions."

"Now, uncle!"

"Fellers like Ford Tapp air as plenty as horse-briers in a sand lot;
but girls like you ain't made often, I cal'late.  Next time that feller
has to be rescued, you let Bet Gallup do it."

She knew Cap'n Amazon well enough now to see that his roughness was
assumed.  His eyes were moist as his gaze rested on her face, and he
blew his nose noisily at the end of his speech.

"You take keer o' yourself, Louise," he added huskily.  "If anything
should happen to you, what--what would Abe say?"

The depth of his feeling for her--so plainly and so unexpectedly
displayed--halted Louise in her already formed intention.  She had
arisen on this morning, determined to "have it out" with Cap'n Amazon
Silt.  On several points she wished to be enlightened--felt that she
had a right to demand an explanation.

For she was quite positive that Cap'n Amazon was not at all what he
claimed to be.  His actual personality was as yet a mystery to her; but
she was positive on this point: He was _not_ Captain Amazon Silt,
master mariner and rover of the seas.  He was an entirely different
person, and Louise desired to know what he meant by this masquerade.

His seamanship, his speech, his masterful manner, were assumed.  And in
the matter of his related adventures the girl was confident that they
were mere repetitions of what he had read.

Now Louise suddenly remembered how Cap'n Abe had welcomed her here at
the old store, and how cheerfully and tenderly this piratical looking
substitute for the storekeeper had assumed her care.  No relative or
friend could have been kinder to her than Cap'n Amazon.

How could she, then, stand before him and say: "Cap'n Amazon, you are
an impostor.  You have assumed a character that is not your own.  You
tell awful stories about adventures that never befell you.  What do you
mean by it all?  And, in conclusion and above all, _Where is Cap'n
Abe_?"

This had been Louise's intention when she came downstairs on this
morning.  The nagging of Betty Gallup, the gossip of the other
neighbors, the wild suspicions whispered from lip to lip did not
influence her so much.  It was what she had herself discovered the
evening before in the captain's "cabin" that urged her on.

Now Cap'n Amazon's display of tenderness "took all the wind out of her
sails," as Betty Gallup would have said.

Louise watched him stirring about the living-room, chirruping to old
Jerry and thrusting his finger into the cage for the bird to hop upon
it, and finally shuffling off into the store.  She hesitatingly
followed him.  She desired to speak, but could not easily do so.  And
now Cap'n Joab Beecher was before her.

Amiel Perdue had been uptown and brought down the early mail, of which
the most important piece was always the Boston morning paper.  Cap'n
Joab had helped himself to this and was already unfolding it.

"What's in the _Globe_ paper, Joab?" asked Cap'n Amazon.  "You
millionaires 'round here git more time to read it than ever _I_ do, I
vum!"

"It don't cost you nothin' to have us read it," said Cap'n Joab easily.
"The news is all here arter we git through."

"Uh-huh!  I s'pose so.  I'd ought to thank ye, I don't dispute, for
keepin' the paper from feelin' lonesome.

"I dunno why Abe takes it, anyway, 'cept to foller the sailin's and
arrivals at the port o' Boston--'nless he finds more time to read than
ever I do.  I ain't ever been so busy in my life as I be in this
store--'nless it was when I shipped a menagerie for a feller at a Dutch
Guinea port and his monkeys broke out o' their cages when we was two
days at sea and they tried to run the ship.

"That was some v'y'ge, as the feller said," continued Cap'n Amazon,
getting well under way as he lit his after-breakfast pipe.  "Them
monkeys kep' all the crew on the jump and the afterguard scurcely got a
meal in peace, I was----"

"Belay there!" advised Cap'n Joab, with disgust.  "Save that yarn for
the dog watch.  What was it ye said that craft was named Cap'n Abe
sailed in?"

Cap'n Amazon stopped in his story-telling and was silent for an
instant.  Louise, who had stood at the inner doorway listening, turned
to go, when she heard the substitute storekeeper finally say:

"_Curlew_, out o' Boston."

The name caught the girl's instant attention and she felt suddenly
apprehensive.

"Here's news o' her," Cap'n Joab said in a hushed voice.  "And it ain't
good news, Cap'n Silt."

"What d'ye mean?" asked the latter.

"Report from Fayal.  A Portugee fisherman's picked up and brought in a
boat with 'Curlew' painted on her stern, and he saw spars and wreckage
driftin' near the empty boat.  There's been a hurricane out there.
It--it looks bad, Cap'n Silt."

Before the latter could speak again Louise was at his side and had
seized his tattooed arm.

"Uncle Amazon!" she gasped.  "Not the _Curlew_?  Didn't I tell you
before?  That is the schooner daddy-prof's party sailed upon.  Can
there be two Curlews?"

"My soul and body!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab.

It was Cap'n Amazon who kept his head.

"Not likely to be two craft of the same name and register--no, my
dear," he said, patting her hand.  "But don't take this so much to
heart.  It's only rumor.  A dozen things might have happened to set
that boat adrift.  Ain't that so, Cap'n Joab?"

Cap'n Joab swallowed hard and nodded; but his wind-bitten face
displayed much distress.  "I had no idee the gal's father was aboard
that schooner with Cap'n Abe."

"Why, sure!  I forgot it for a minute," Cap'n Amazon said cheerfully.
"There, there, my dear.  Don't take on so.  Abe's with your father, if
so be anything has happened the _Curlew_; and Abe'll take keer o' him.
Sure he will!  Ain't he a Silt?  And lemme tell you a Silt never backed
down when trouble riz up to face him.  No, sir!"

"But if they have been wrecked?" groaned Louise.  "Both father and
Uncle Abram.  What shall we do about it, Uncle Amazon?"

In this moment of trouble she clung to the master mariner as her single
recourse.  And impostor or no, he who called himself Amazon Silt did
not fail her.

"There ain't nothing much we can rightly do at this minute, Niece
Louise," he told her firmly, still patting her morsel of a hand in his
huge one.  "We'll watch the noospapers and I'll send a telegraph
dispatch to the ship news office in N'York and git just the latest word
there is 'bout the _Curlew_.

"You be brave, girl--you be brave.  Abe an' Professor Grayling being
together, o' course they'll get along all right.  One'll help t'other.
Two pullin' on the sheet can allus h'ist the sail quicker than one.
Keep your heart up, Louise."

She looked at him strangely for a moment.  The tears frankly standing
in his eyes, the quivering muscles of his face, his expression of keen
sorrow for her fears--all impressed her.  She suddenly kissed him in
gratitude, impostor though she knew him to be, and then ran away.
Cap'n Joab hissed across the counter:

"Ye don't _know_ that Cap'n Abe's on that there craft, Am'zon Silt!"

"Well, if I don't--an' if you don't--don't lemme hear you makin' any
cracks about it 'round this store so't she'll hear ye," growled Cap'n
Amazon, boring into the very soul of the flustered Joab with his fierce
gaze.

Louise did not hear the expression of these doubts; but she suffered
uncertainties in her own mind.  She longed to talk with somebody to
whom she could tell all that was in her thoughts.  Aunt Euphemia was
out of the question, of course; although she must reveal to her the
possible peril menacing Professor Grayling.  Betty Gallup could not be
trusted, Louise knew.  And the day dragged by its limping hours without
Lawford Tapp's coming near the store on the Shell Road.

This last Louise could not understand.  But there was good reason for
Lawford's effacing himself at this time.  In the empire of the Taffy
King there was revolution, and this trouble dated from the hour on the
previous morning when Louise had met and greeted Aunt Euphemia on the
beach.

The Tapp sisters may have been purse-proud and a little vulgar--from
Aunt Euphemia's point of view, at least--but they did not lack acumen.
They had seen and heard the greeting of Louise by the Ferritons and the
extremely haughty Lady from Poughkeepsie, and knew that Louise must be
"a somebody."

Cecile, young and bold enough to be direct, was not long in making
discoveries.  With a rather blank expression of countenance L'Enfant
Terrible, for once almost speechless, beckoned her sisters to one side.

"Pestiferous infant," drawled Marian, "tell us who she is?"

"Is she a Broadway star?" asked Prue.

"Oh, she's a star all right," Cecile said, with disgust in her tone.
"We've been a trio of sillies, ignoring _her_.  Fordy's fallen on both
feet--only he's too dense to know it, I s'pose."

"Tell us!" commanded Prue.  "Who is she?"

"She's no screen actress," answered the gloomy Cecile.

"Who is she, then?" gasped Marian.

"Sue Perriton says she is Mrs. Conroth's niece, and Mrs. Conroth is all
the Society with a capital letter there _is_.  Now, figure it out,"
said Cecile tartly.  "If you smarties had taken her up right at the
start----"

"But we didn't kno-o-ow!" wailed Marian.

"Go on!" commanded Prue grimly.

"Why, Miss Grayling's father is a big scientist, or something, at
Washington.  Her mother happened to be born here on the Cape; she was a
Card.  This girl is just stopping over there with that old fellow who
keeps the store--her half-uncle--for a lark.  What do you know about
_that_?"

"My word!" murmured Marian.

"And Ford------"

"He's mamma's precious white-haired boy _this_ time," declared the
slangy Cecile.

"Do--do you suppose he knew it all the time?" questioned Marian.

"Never!  Just like old Doc Ambrose says, there isn't much above Fordy's
ears but solid bone," scoffed L'Enfant Terrible.

"Wait till ma hears of this," murmured Prue, and they proceeded to beat
a retreat for home that their mother might be informed of the wonder.
Lawford was already out of sight.

"How really fortunate Fordy is," murmured Mrs. Tapp, having received
the shocking news and been revived after it.  "Fancy!  Mrs. Conroth's
own niece!"

"It's going to put us in just _right_ with the best of the crowd at The
Beaches," Prue announced.  "We've only been tolerated so far."

"Oh, Prudence!" admonished Mrs. Tapp.

"That's the truth," her second daughter repeated bluntly.  "We might as
well admit it.  Now, if Fordy only puts this over with this Miss
Grayling, they'll _have_ to take us up; for it's plain to be seen they
won't drop Miss Grayling, no matter whom she marries."

"If Fordy doesn't miss the chance," muttered Cecile.

"He can't!"

"He mustn't!"

"He wouldn't be mean enough to drop her just to spite us!" wailed
Marian.

"No," said Prue.  "He won't do that.  Ford isn't a butterfly.  You must
admit that he's as steadfast as a rock in his likes and dislikes.  Once
he gets a thing in that head of his------Well!  I'm sure he's fond of
Miss Grayling."

"But that big actor?" suggested Cecile.

"Surely," gasped Mrs. Tapp, "the girl cannot fancy such a person as
_that_?"

"My! you should just see Judson Bane," sighed Cecile.

"He's the matinee girl's delight," drawled Marian.  "Ford has the
advantage, however, if he will take it.  He's too modest."

Mrs. Tapp's face suddenly paled and she clasped a plump hand to her
bosom.  "Oh, girls!" she gasped.

"_Now_ what, mother?" begged Prue.

"What will I. Tapp say?"

"Oh, bother father!" scoffed L'Enfant Terrible.

"He doesn't care what Ford does," Prue said.

"Does he ever really care what any of us does?" observed Marian, yet
looking doubtfully at her mother.

"You don't understand, girls!" wailed Mrs. Tapp, wringing her hands.
"You know he made me write and invite that Johnson girl here."

"Oh, Dot Johnson!" said Prue.  "Well, she is harmless."

"She's _not_ harmless," declared Mrs. Tapp.  "I. Tapp ordered me to get
her here because, he wants Ford to marry her."

"Marry Dot Johnson?" gasped Prue.

"Oh, bluey!" ejaculated the slangy Cecile.

"But of course Ford won't do it," drawled Marian.

"Then he means to disinherit poor Ford!  Oh, yes, he will!" sobbed the
lady.  "They've had words about it already.  You know very well that
when once I. Tapp makes up his mind to do a thing, he does it."  And
there she broke down utterly, with the girls looking at each other in
silent horror.




CHAPTER XXIII

BETWEEN THE FIRES

The discovery of Louise's identity was but a mild shock to Lawford
after all.  His preconceived prejudice against the ordinary feminine
member of "The Profession" had, during his intercourse with Cap'n Abe's
niece, been lulled to sleep.  Miss Louder and Miss Noyes more nearly
embodied his conception of actresses--nice enough young women, perhaps,
but entirely different from Louise Grayling.

Lawford forgave the latter for befooling him in the matter of her
condition in life; indeed, he realized that he had deceived himself.
He had accepted the gossip of the natives--Milt Baker was its
originator, he remembered--as true, and so had believed Louise Grayling
was connected with the moving picture company.

Her social position made no difference to him.  At first sight Lawford
Tapp had told himself she was the most charming woman he had ever seen.

For a college graduate of twenty-four he was, though unaware of the
fact, rather unsophisticated regarding women.

He had given but slight attention to girls.  Perhaps they interested
him so little because of his three sisters.

He remembered now that he and Dot Johnson had been pretty good "pals"
before he had gone to college, and while Dot was still in middy blouse
and wore her hair in plaits.

Now, as he walked along the beach and thought of the daughter of his
father's partner, he groaned.  He, as well as the women of the family,
knew well the Taffy King's obstinacy.

His streak of determination had enabled I. Tapp to reach the pinnacle
of business wealth and influence.  When he wanted a thing he went after
it, and he got it!

If his father was really determined that Lawford should marry Dot
Johnson, and her parents were willing, the young man had an almost
uncanny feeling that the candy manufacturer's purpose would be
accomplished.

And yet Lawford knew that such was a coward-nature feeling.  Why should
he give up the only thing he had ever really wanted in life--so it
seemed to him now--because of any third person's obstinacy?

"Of course, she won't have me anyway," an inner voice told him.  And,
after a time, Lawford realized that that, too, was his coward-nature
speaking.

On the other hand: "Why should I give her up?  Further, why should I
marry Dot Johnson against my will, whether I can get Louise Grayling or
not?"

This thought electrified him.  His easy-going, placid disposition had
made a coward of him.  In his heart and soul he was now ready to fight
for what he desired.  It was now not merely the question of winning
Louise's love.  Whether he could win her or not his determination grew
to refuse to obey his father's command.  He revolted, right then and
there.  Let his father keep his money.  He, Lawford Tapp, would go to
work in any case and would support himself.

This was no small resolve on the part of the millionaire's son.  He
could not remember of ever having put his hand into an empty pocket.
His demands on the paternal purse had been more reasonable than most
young men of his class perhaps, because of his naturally simple tastes
and the life he had led outside the classroom.  Without having "gone
in" for athletics at Cambridge he was essentially an out-of-door man.

Nevertheless, to stand in open revolt against I. Tapp's command was a
very serious thing to do.  Lawford appreciated his own shortcomings in
the matter of intellect.  He knew he was not brilliant enough to make
his wit entirely serve him for daily bread--let alone cake and other
luxuries.  If his father disinherited him he must verily expect to earn
his bread by the sweat of his brow.

It was that evening, after his fruitless call at Cap'n Abe's store,
that the young man met his father and had it out.  Lawford came back to
Tapp Point in the motor boat.  As he walked up from the dock there was
a sudden eruption of voices from the house, a door banged, and the
Taffy King began exploding verbal fireworks as he crunched the gravel
under foot.

"I'll show him!  Young upstart!  Settin' the women on me!  Ha!  Thinks
he can do as he pleases forever and ever, amen!  I'll show him!"

Just then he came face to face with "the young upstart."  I. Tapp
seized his son's arm with a vicious if puny grasp and yelled:

"What d'you mean by it?"

"Mean by what, dad?" asked the boy with that calmness that always
irritated I. Tapp.

"Settin' your ma and the girls on me?  They all lit on me at once.  All
crying together some foolishness about your marrying this Grayling girl
and putting the family into society."

"Into society?" murmured Lawford.  "I--I don't get you."

"You know what they're after," cried the candy manufacturer.  "If a
dynamite bomb would blow in the walls of that exclusive Back Bay set,
they'd use one.  And now it turns out this girl's right in the
swim------I thought you said she was a picture actress?"

"I thought she was," stammered Lawford.

"Bah!  You thought?  You never thought a thing in your life of any
consequence."

The young man was silent at this thrust.  His silence made I. Tapp even
angrier.

"But it makes no difference--no difference at all, I tell you.  If she
was the queen of Sheba I'd say the same," went on the candy
manufacturer wildly.  "I've said you shall marry Dorothy Johnson--I've
always meant you should; and marry her you shall!"

"No, dad, I'm not going to do any such thing."

Suddenly the Taffy King quieted down.  He struggled to control his
voice and his shaking hands.  A deadly calm mantled his excitement and
his eyes glittered as he gazed up at his tall son.

"Is this a straight answer, Lawford?  Or are you just talking to hear
yourself talk?" he asked coldly.

"I am determined not to marry Dot."

"And you'll marry that other girl?"

"If she'll have me.  But whether or no I won't be forced into marriage
with a girl I do not love."

"Love!" exploded the Taffy King.  Then in a moment he was calm again,
only for that inward glow of rage.  "People don't really love each
other until after marriage.  Love is born of propinquity and thrives on
usage and custom.  You only _think_ you love this girl.  It's after two
people have been through a good deal together that they learn what love
means."

Lawford was somewhat startled by this philosophy; but he was by no
means convinced.

"Whether or no," he repeated, "I think I should have the same right
that you had of choosing a wife."

His father brushed this aside without comment.  "Do you understand what
this means--if you are determined to disobey me?" he snarled.

"I suppose you won't begrudge me a bite and sup till I find a job,
dad?" the son said with just a little tremor in his voice.  "I know I
haven't really anything of my own.  You have done everything for me.
Your money bought the very clothes I stand in.  You gave me the means
to buy the _Merry Andrew_.  I realize that nothing I have called my own
actually belongs to me because I did not earn it----"

"As long as you are amenable to discipline," put in his father
gloomily, "you need not feel this way."

"But I do feel it now," said Lawford simply.  "You have made me.  And,
as I say, I'll need to live, I suppose, till I get going for myself."

His father winced again.  Then suddenly burst out:

"D'you think for a minute that that society girl will stand for your
getting a job and trying to support her on your wages?"

"She will if she loves me."

"You poor ninny!" burst out I. Tapp.  "You've got about as much idea of
women as you have of business.  And where are you going to work?"

"Well," and Lawford smiled a little whimsically, serious though the
discussion was, "I've always felt a leaning toward the candy business.
I believe I have a natural adaptability for that.  Couldn't I find a
job in one of your factories, dad?"

"You'll get no leg-up from me, unless you show you're worthy of it."

"But you'll give me a job?"

"I won't interfere if the superintendent of any of the factories takes
you on," growled I. Tapp.  "But mind you, he'll hire you on his own
responsibility--he'll understand that from me.  But I tell you right
now this is no time to apply for a job in a candy factory.  We're
discharging men--not hiring them."

"I will apply for the first opening," announced the son.

I. Tapp stamped away along the graveled walk, leaving the young man
alone.  Lawford's calmness was as irritating to him as sea water to a
raw wound.




CHAPTER XXIV

GRAY DAYS

Those days were dark for Louise Grayling; on her shoulders she bore
double trouble.  Anxiety for her father's safety made her sufficiently
unhappy; but in addition her mind must cope with the mystery of Cap'n
Amazon's identity and Cap'n Abe's whereabouts.

For she was not at all satisfied in her heart that the storekeeper had
sailed from the port of Boston on the _Curlew_; and the status of the
piratical looking Amazon Silt was by no means decided to her
satisfaction.  Her discoveries in his bedroom had quite convinced the
young woman that Cap'n Amazon was in masquerade.

His comforting words and his thoughtfulness touched her so deeply,
however, that she could not quarrel with the old man; and his
insistence that Cap'n Abe had sailed on the Curlew and would be at hand
to assist Professor Grayling if the schooner had been wrecked was
kindly meant, she knew.  He scoffed at the return of Cap'n Abe's chest
as being of moment; he refused to discuss his brother's reason for
stuffing the old chest with such useless lumber as it contained.

"Leave Abe for knowing his own business, Niece Louise.  'Tain't any of
our consarn," was the most he would say about that puzzling
circumstance.

Louise watched the piratical figure of Cap'n Amazon shuffling around
the store or puttering about certain duties of housekeeping that he
insisted upon doing himself, with a wonder that never waned.

His household habits were those which she supposed Cap'n Abe to have
had.  She wondered if all sailors were as neat and as fussy as he.  He
still insisted upon doing much of the cooking; it was true that he had
good reason to doubt Betty Gallup's ability to cook.

When there were no customers in the store Louise often sat there with
Cap'n Amazon, with either a book or her sewing in her hand.  Sometimes
they would not speak for an hour, while the substitute storekeeper
"made up the books," which was a serious task for him.

He seemed normally dexterous in everything else, but he wrote with his
left hand--an angular, upright chirography which, Louise thought,
showed unmistakably that he was unfamiliar with the use of the pen.
"Writing up the log" he called this clerkly task, and his awkward
looking characters in the ledger were in great contrast to Cap'n Abe's
round, flowing hand.

For several days following the discovery in the "_Globe_ paper" of the
notice about the _Curlew_, Louise Grayling and Cap'n Amazon lived a
most intimate existence.  She would not allow Betty Gallup to criticise
the captain even slightly within her hearing.

They received news from New York which was no news at all.  The Boston
Chamber of Commerce had heard no further word of the schooner.  Louise
and the captain could only hope.

The world of seafaring is so filled with mysteries like this of the
_Curlew_, that Louise knew well that no further word might ever be
received of the vessel.

Cap'n Amazon rang the changes daily--almost hourly--upon sea escapes
and rescues.  He related dozens of tales (of course with the personal
note in most), showing how ships' companies had escaped the threat of
disaster in marvelous and almost unbelievable ways.

Louise had not the heart now to stop this flow of narrative by telling
him bluntly that she doubted the authenticity of his tales.  Nor would
she look into the old books again to search out the originals of the
stories which flowed so glibly from his lips.

Who and what he could really be puzzled Louise quite as much as before;
yet she had not the heart to probe the mystery with either question or
personal scrutiny.  The uncertainty regarding the _Curlew_ and those on
board filled so much of the girl's thought that little else disturbed
her.

Save one thing.  She desired to see Lawford Tapp and talk with him.
But Lawford did not appear at the store on the Shell Road.

Mr. Bane came frequently to call.  He was an eager listener to Cap'n
Amazon's stories and evidently enjoyed the master mariner hugely.
Several of the young people from the cottages along The Beaches called
on Louise; but if the girl desired to see Aunt Euphemia she had to go
to the Perritons, or meet the Lady from Poughkeepsie in her walks along
the sands.  Aunt Euphemia could not countenance Cap'n Amazon in the
smallest particular.

"It is a mystery to me, Louise--a perfect mystery--how you are able to
endure that awful creature and his coarse stories.  That dreadful tale
of the albatross sticks in my mind--I cannot forget it," she
complained.  "And his appearance!  No more savage looking man did I
ever behold.  I wonder you are not afraid to live in the same house
with him."

Louise would not acknowledge that she had ever been fearful of Cap'n
Amazon.  Her own qualms of terror had almost immediately subsided.  The
news from the _Curlew_, indeed, seemed to have smothered the
neighborhood criticism of the captain, if all suspicions had not
actually been lulled to rest.

Cap'n Amazon spoke no more of his brother, save in connection with
Professor Grayling's peril, than he had before.  He seemed to have no
fears for Cap'n Abe.  "Abe can look out for himself," was a frequent
expression with him.  But Cap'n Amazon never spoke as though he held
the danger of Louise's father in light regard.

"I'll give 'em a fortnight to be heard from," Cap'n Joab Beecher said
confidently.  "Then if ye don't hear from Cap'n Abe, or the noospapers
don't print nothin' more about the schooner, I shall write her down in
the log as lost with all hands."

"Don't you be too sartain sure 'bout it," growled Cap'n Amazon.
"There's many a wonder of the sea, as you an' I know, Joab Beecher.
Look at what happened the crew of the _Mailfast_, clipper built, out o'
Baltimore--an' that was when you an' I, Cap'n Joab, was sharpenin' our
milk teeth on salt hoss."

"What happened her, Cap'n Am'zon?" queried Milt Baker, reaching for a
fresh piece of Brown Mule, and with a wink at the other idlers.  "Did
she go down, or did she go up?"

"Both," replied Cap'n Amazon unruffled.  "She went up in smoke _an'_
flame, an' finally sunk when she'd burned to the Plimsol mark.

"Every man of the crew and afterguard got safely into two boats.  This
wasn't far to the westward of Fayal--in mebbe somewhere near the same
spot where that Portugee fisherman reports pickin' up the _Curlew's_
boat.

"When the _Mailfast_ burned the sea was calm; but in six hours a sudden
gale came up and drove the two boats into the southwest.  They wasn't
provisioned or watered for a long v'y'ge, and they had to run for it a
full week, ev'ry mile reeled off takin' them further an' further from
the islands, and further and further off the reg'lar course of
shipping."

"Where'd they wind up at, Cap'n Am'zon?" asked Milt.

"Couldn't hit nothin' nearer'n the Guineas on that course," growled
Cap'n Joab.

"There you're wrong," the substitute storekeeper said.  "They struck
seaweed--acres an' acres of it--square miles of it--everlastin'
seaweed!"

"Sargasso Sea!" exploded Washy Gallup, wagging his toothless jaw.  "I
swanny!"

"I've heard about that place, but never seen it," said Cap'n Joab.

"And you don't want to," declared the narrator of the incident.  "It
ain't a place into which no sailorman wants to venture.  The
_Mailfast's_ comp'ny--so 'tis said--was driven far into the pulpy,
grassy sea.  The miles of weed wrapped 'em around like a blanket.  They
couldn't row because the weed fouled the oars; and they couldn't sail
'cause the weed was so heavy.  But there's a drift they say, or a
suction, or something that gradually draws a boat toward the middle of
the field."

"Then, by golly!" exclaimed Milt Baker, "how in tarnation did they git
aout?  I sh'd think anybody that every drifted into the Sargasso Sea
would be there yit."

"P'r'aps many a ship an' many a ship's company _have_ found their grave
there," said Cap'n Amazon solemnly.  "'Tis called the graveyard of
derelicts.  But there's the chance of counter-storms.  Before the two
boats from the _Mailfast_ were sucked down, and 'fore the crew was fair
starved, a sudden shift of wind broke up the seaweed field and they
escaped and were picked up.

"The danger of the Sargasso threatens all sailin' ships in them seas.
Steam vessels have a better chance; but many a craft that's turned up
missin' has undoubtedly been swallowed by the Sargasso."

Louise, who heard this discussion from the doorway of the store, could
not fail to be impressed by it.  Could the _Curlew_, with her father
and Cap'n Abe aboard, have suffered such a fate?  There was an element
of probability in this tale of Cap'n Amazon's that entangled the girl's
fancy.  However, the idea colored the old man's further imagination in
another way.

"Sargasso Sea," he said reflectively, between puffs of his pipe, after
the idlers had left the store.  "Yes, 'tis a fact, Niece Louise.
That's what Abe drifted in for years--a mort of seaweed and pulp."

"What _do_ you mean, Uncle Amazon?" gasped the girl, shocked by his
words.

"This," the master mariner said, with a wide sweep of his arm taking in
the cluttered store.  "This was Abe's Sargasso Sea--and it come nigh to
smotherin' him and bearin' him down by the head."

"Oh! you mean his life was so confined here?"

Cap'n Amazon nodded, "I wonder he bore it so long."

"I am afraid Uncle Abram is getting all he wants of adventure now,"
Louise said doubtfully.

Cap'n Amazon stared at her unwinkingly for a minute.  Then all he said
was:

"I wonder?"




CHAPTER XXV

AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT

Lawford Tapp did not appear at the store and Louise continued to wonder
about it; but she shrank from asking Betty Gallup, who might have been
able to inform her why the young man did not come again.  However, on
one bright morning the gray roadster stopped before the door and
Louise, from her window, saw that the three Tapp girls were in the car.

She thought they had come to make purchases, for the store on the Shell
Road was often a port of call for the automobiles of the summer
colonists.  Suddenly, however, she realized that L'Enfant Terrible was
standing up in the driver's seat and beckoning to her.

"Oh, Miss Grayling!" shrilled Cecile.  "May I come up?  I want to speak
to you."

"No," commanded Prue firmly, preparing to step out of the car.  "I will
speak to Miss Grayling myself."

"I don't see why she can't come down," drawled Marian, the languid.
"_I_ have a message for her."

"Why!" ejaculated the surprised Louise, "if you all wish to see me I'd
better come down, hadn't I?" and she left the window at once.

She had remarked on the few occasions during the last few days that she
had met the Tapp sisters on the beach, that they had seemed desirous of
being polite to her--very different from their original attitude; but
so greatly taken up had Louise's mind been with more important matters
that she had really considered this change but little.

Therefore it was with some curiosity that she descended the stairs and
went around by the yard gate to the side of the automobile.

"Dear Miss Grayling," drawled Marian, putting out a gloved hand.
"Pardon the informality.  But mother wants to know if you will help us
pour tea at our lawn fete and dance Friday week?  It would be so nice
of you."

Louise smiled quietly.  But she was not a stickler for social
proprieties; so, although she knew the invitation savored of that
"rawness" of which her aunt had remarked, she was inclined to meet
Lawford's family halfway.  She said:

"If you really want me I shall be glad to do what I can to make your
affair a success.  Tell your mother I will come--and thank you."

"So kind of you," drawled Marian.

But Cecile was not minded to let the interview end so tamely--or so
suddenly.

"Say!" she exclaimed, "did Ford see you, Miss Grayling, before he went
away?"

"He has gone away, then?" Louise repeated, and she could not keep the
color from flooding into her cheeks.

"He wanted to see you, I'm sure," Cecile said bluntly.  "But he started
off in a hurry.  Had a dickens of a row with dad."

"Cecile!" admonished Prue.  "That sounds worse than it is."

Louise looked at her curiously, though she did not ask a question.

"Well, they did have a shindy," repeated L'Enfant Terrible.  "When
daddy gets on his high horse------"

"Ford wished to see you before he went away, Miss Grayling," broke in
Prue, with an admonitory glare at her young sister.  "He told us he was
so confused that day he fell overboard from the _Merry Andrew_ that he
did not even thank you for fishing him out of the sea.  It was awfully
brave of you."

"Bully, _I_ say!" cried Cecile.

"Really heroic," added Marian.  "Mother will never get over talking
about it."

"Oh!  I wish you wouldn't," murmured Louise.  "I'm glad Betty and I
saved him.  Mrs. Gallup did quite as much as I----"

"We know all that," Prue broke in quickly.  "And daddy's made it up to
_her_."

"Yes.  I know.  He was very liberal," Louise agreed.

"But mercy!" cried Prue.  "He can't send _you_ a check, Miss Grayling.
And we all do feel deeply grateful to you.  Ford is an awfully good
sort of a chap--for a brother."

Louise laughed outright at that.  "I suppose, though never having had a
brother, I can appreciate his good qualities fully as much as you
girls," she said.  "Will he be long away?"

"That we don't know," Marian said slowly.  Louise had asked the
question so lightly that Miss Tapp could not be sure there was any real
interest behind it.  But Cecile, who had alighted to crank up,
whispered to Louise:

"You know what he's gone away for?  No?  To get a job!  He and father
have disagreed dreadfully."

"Oh!  I am so sorry," murmured Louise.  She would not ask any further
questions.  She was troubled, however, by this information, for
L'Enfant Terrible seemed to have said it significantly.  Louise
wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his
father.

She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete
to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain.  She was introduced
at that time to the Taffy King.  Louise thought him rather a funny
little man, and his excitability vastly amused her.

She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her
direct way, she asked him what he meant by it.

"Don't you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?" she asked, presenting him
with a cup of tea that he did not want.

"Ha!  Beg pardon!" ejaculated the candy manufacturer.  "Did you think I
was watching you?"

"I _know_ you were," she rejoined.  "And your disapproval is marked.
Tell me my faults.  Of course, I sha'n't like you if you do; but I am
curious."

"Huh!  I'd like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss
Grayling," he blurted out.

"Does he see anything particular in me?" Louise queried, her color
rising, but with a twinkle in her eye.

"He's crazy about you," said I. Tapp.

"Oh!  Is _that_ why you and he disagreed?"

"It's going to cost him his home and his patrimony," the candy
manufacturer declared fiercely.  "I won't have it, I tell you!  I've
other plans for him.  He's got to do as I say, or----"

Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of
his tirades.  Positively she was laughing at him?

"Is _that_ the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked
gently.  "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become
self-supporting?"

"I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp.

"Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no
doubt.  It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning.
Responsibility will make a man of him."

"Ha!" snarled I. Tapp.  "How about _you_?  Will you marry a poor man--a
chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be
doing mighty well?"

"Oh!  This is so--so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling.
"You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?"

"Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild
gesture.  "I forbid it!  Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away
from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the
afternoon.

Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's elbow.

"Oh, dear, Miss Grayling!  What _did_ he say?  He is so excitable."
She almost wept.  "I hope he has said nothing to offend you?"

Louise looked at her with a rather pitying smile.

"Don't be worried, Mrs. Tapp," she assured her.  "Really, I think your
husband is awfully amusing."

Naturally disapproval was plainly enthroned upon Aunt Euphemia's
countenance when she saw her niece aiding in the entertainment of the
guests at the Tapp lawn fete.  The Lady from Poughkeepsie had come with
the Perritons because, as she admitted, the candy manufacturer's family
must be placated to a degree.

"But you go too far, Louise.  Even good nature cannot excuse this.  I
am only thankful that young man is not at home.  Surely you cannot be
really interested in Lawford Tapp?"

"Do spare my blushes," begged Louise, her palms upon her cheeks but her
eyes dancing.  "Really, I haven't seen Lawford for days."

"Really, Louise?"

"Surely I would not deceive you, auntie," she said.  "He may have lost
all his interest in me, too.  He went away without bidding me good-bye."

"Well, I am glad of that!" sighed Aunt Euphemia.  "I feared it was
different.  Indeed, I heard something said------Oh, well, people will
gossip so!  Never mind.  But these Tapps are so pushing."

"I think Mrs. Tapp is a very pleasant woman; and the girls are quite
nice," Louise said demurely.

"You need not have displayed your liking for them in quite this way,"
objected Aunt Euphemia.  "You could easily have excused yourself--the
uncertainty about your poor father would have been reason enough.  I
don't know--I am not sure, indeed, but that we should go into mourning.
Of course, it would spoil the summer----"

"Oh!  Aunt Euphemia!"

"Yes.  Well, I only mentioned it.  For my own part I look extremely
well in crepe."

Louise was shocked by this speech; yet she knew that its apparent
heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind.  It
was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and of her utterly
self-centered existence.

That evening, long after supper and after the store lights were out,
and while Cap'n Amazon and Louise were sitting as usual in the room
behind the store, a hasty step on the porch and a rat-tat-tat upon the
side door announced a caller than whom none could have been more
unexpected.

"Aunt Euphemia!" cried Louise, when the master mariner ushered the lady
in.  "What has happened?"

"Haven't you heard?  Did you not get a letter?" demanded Mrs. Conroth.
But she kept a suspicious eye on the captain.

"From daddy-prof?" exclaimed Louise, jumping up.

"Yes.  Mailed at Gibraltar.  Nothing has happened to that vessel he is
on.   That was all a ridiculous story.  But there is something else,
Louise."

"Sit down, ma'am," Cap'n Amazon was saying politely.  "Do sit down,
ma'am."

"Not in this house," declared the lady, with finality.  "I do not feel
safe here.  And it's not safe for you to be here, Louise, with
this--this man.  You don't know who he is; nobody knows who he is.  I
have just heard all about it from one of the--er--natives.  Mr. Abram
Silt never had a brother that anybody in Cardhaven ever saw.  There is
no Captain Amazon Silt--and never was!"

"Oh!" gasped Louise.

"Nor does your father say a word in his letter to me about Abram Silt
being with him aboard that vessel, the _Curlew_.  Nobody knows what has
become of your uncle--the man who really owns this store.  How do we
know but that this--this creature," concluded Aunt Euphemia, with
dramatic gesture, "has made away with Mr. Silt and taken over his
property?"

"It 'ud be jest like the old pirate!" croaked a harsh voice from the
kitchen doorway, and Betty Gallup appeared, apparently ready to back up
Mrs. Conroth physically, as well as otherwise.




CHAPTER XXVI

AT LAST

That hour in the old-fashioned living-room behind Cap'n Abe's store was
destined to be marked indelibly upon Louise Grayling's memory.  Aunt
Euphemia and Betty Gallup had both come armed for the fray.  They
literally swept Louise off her feet by their vehemence.

The effect of the challenge on Cap'n Amazon was most puzzling.  As Mrs.
Conroth refused to sit down--she could talk better standing, becoming
quite oracular, in fact--the captain could not, in politeness, take his
customary chair.  And he had discarded his pipe upon going to the door
to let the visitor in.

Therefore, it seemed to Louise, the doughty captain seemed rather lost.
It was not that he displayed either surprise or fear because of Aunt
Euphemia's accusation.  Merely he did not know what to do with himself
during her exhortation.

The fact that he was taxed with a crime--a double crime, indeed--did
not seem to bother him at all.  But the clatter of the women's tongues
seemed to annoy him.

His silence and his calmness affected Mrs. Conroth and Betty Gallup
much as the store idlers had been affected when they tried to bait
him--their exasperation increased.  Cap'n Amazon's utter disregard of
what they said (for Betty did her share of the talking, relieving the
Lady from Poughkeepsie when she was breathless) continued unabated.  It
was a situation that, at another time, would have vastly amused Louise.

But it was really a serious matter.  Mrs. Conroth was quite as excited
as Betty.  Both became vociferous in acclaiming the captain's
irresponsibility, and both accused him of having caused Cap'n Abe's
disappearance.

"Mark my word," declared Aunt Euphemia, with her most indignant air,
"that creature is guilty--guilty of an awful crime!"

"The old pirate!  That he is!" reiterated Betty.

"Louise, my child, come away from here at once.  This is no place for a
young woman--or for any self-respecting person.  Come."

For the first time since the opening of this scene Cap'n Amazon
displayed trouble.  He turned to look at Louise, and she thought his
countenance expressed apprehension--as though he feared she might go.

"Come!" commanded Mrs. Conroth again.  "This is no fit place for you;
it never _has_ been fit!"

"Avast, there, ma'am!" growled the captain, at last stung to retort.

"You are an old villain!" declared Aunt Euphemia.

"He's an old pirate!" concluded Betty Gallup.  Here Louise found her
voice--and she spoke with decision.

"I shall stay just the same, aunt.  I am satisfied that you all
misjudge Captain Amazon."  His face--the sudden flash of gratitude in
it--thanked her.

"Louise!" cried her aunt.

"You better come away, Miss Lou," said Betty.  "The constable'll git
that old pirate; that's what'll happen to him."

"Stop!" exclaimed Louise.  "I'll listen to no more.  I do not believe
these things you say.  And neither of you can prove them.  I'm going to
bed.  Good-night, Aunt Euphemia," and she marched out of the room.

That closed the discussion.  Cap'n Amazon bowed Mrs. Conroth politely
out of the door and Betty went with her.  Louise did not get to sleep
in her chamber overhead for hours; nor did she hear the captain come
upstairs at all.

In the morning's post there was a letter for Louise from her father--a
letter that had been delayed.  It had been mailed at the same time the
one to Aunt Euphemia was sent.  The _Curlew_ would soon turn her bows
Bostonward, the voyage having been successful from a scientific point
of view.  Professor Grayling even mentioned the loss of a small boat in
a squall, when it had been cast adrift from the taffrail by accident.

Betty, with face like a thundercloud, had brought the letter up to
Louise.  When the girl had hastily read it through she ran down to show
it to Cap'n Amazon.  She found him reading an epistle of his own, while
Cap'n Joab, Milt Baker, Washy Gallup, and several other neighbors
hovered near.

"Yep.  I got one myself," announced Cap'n Amazon.

"Oh, captain!"

"Yep.  From Abe.  Good reason why your father didn't speak of Abe in
his letter to your a'nt.  Didn't in yours, did he?"

Louise shook her head.

"No?  Listen here," Cap'n Amazon said.  "'I haven't spoke to Professor
Grayling.  He don't know Abe Silt from the jib-boom.  Why should he?  I
am a foremast hand and he lives abaft.  But he is a fine man.
Everybody says so.  We've had some squally weather----'

"Well! that's nothin'.  Ahem!"

He went on, reading bits to the interested listeners now and then, and
finally handed the letter to Cap'n Joab Beecher.  The latter, looking
mighty queer indeed, adjusted his spectacles and spread out the sheet.

"Ye-as," he admitted cautiously.  "That 'pears to be Cap'n Abe's
handwritin', sure 'nough."

"Course 'tis!" squealed Washy Gallup.  "As plain, as plain!"

"Read it out," urged Milt while the captain went to wait upon a
customer.

Louise listened with something besides curiosity.  The letter was a
rambling account of the voyage of the _Curlew_, telling little directly
or exactly about the daily occurrences; but nothing in it conflicted
with what Professor Grayling had written Louise--save one thing.

The girl realized that the arrival of this letter from Cap'n Abe had
finally punctured that bubble of suspicion against the captain that had
been blown overnight.  It seemed certain and unshakable proof that the
substitute storekeeper was just whom he claimed to be, and it once and
for all put to death the idea that Cap'n Abe had not gone to sea in the
_Curlew_.

Yet Louise had never been more puzzled since first suspicion had been
roused against Cap'n Amazon.  A single sentence in her father's letter
could not be made to jibe with Cap'n Abe's epistle, and therefore she
folded up her own letter and thrust it into her pocket.  In speaking of
his companions on shipboard, the professor had written:


"I am by far the oldest person aboard the _Curlew_, skipper included.
They are all young fellows, both for'ard and in the afterguard.  Yet
they treat me like one of themselves and I am having a most enjoyable
time."


Cap'n Abe was surely much older than her daddy-prof!  It puzzled her.
It troubled her.  There was not a moment of that day when it was not
the uppermost thought in her mind.

People came in from all around to read Cap'n Abe's letter and to
congratulate Cap'n Amazon and Louise that the _Curlew_ was safe.  The
captain took the matter as coolly as he did everything else.

Louise watched him, trying to fathom his manner and the mystery about
him.  Yet, when the solution of the problem was developed, she was most
amazed by the manner in which her eyes were opened.

Supper time was approaching, and the cooler evening breeze blew in
through the living-room windows.  Relieved for the moment from his
store tasks, Cap'n Amazon appeared, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and
briskly approached old Jerry's cage as he chirruped to the bird.

"Well! well!  And how's old Jerry been to-day?" Louise heard him say.
Then: "Hi-mighty!  What's this?"

Louise glanced in from the kitchen.  She saw him standing before the
cage, his chin sunk on his breast, the tears trickling down his
mahogany face.

That hard, stern visage, with its sweeping piratical mustache and the
red bandana above it, was a most amazing picture of grief.

"Oh!  What is it?" cried the girl, springing to his side.

He pointed with shaking index finger to the bird within the cage.

"Dead!" he said brokenly, "Dead, Niece Louise!  Poor old Jerry's
dead--and him and me shipmates for so many, many years."

"Oh!" screamed the girl, grasping his arm.  "_You are Cap'n Abe_!"




CHAPTER XXVII

SARGASSO

After all, when she considered it later, Louise wondered only that she
had not seen through the masquerade long before.

From the beginning--the very first night of her occupancy of the
pleasant chamber over the store on the Shell Road--she should have
understood the mystery that had had the whole neighborhood by the ears
during the summer.

She, more than anybody else, should have seen through Cap'n Abe's
masquerade.  Louise had been in a position, she now realized, to have
appreciated the truth.

"You are Cap'n Abe," she told him, and he did not deny it.  Sadly he
looked at the dead canary in the bottom of the cage, and wiped his eyes.

"Poor Jerry!" her uncle said, and in that single phrase all the outer
husk of the rough and ready seaman--the character he had assumed in
playing his part for so many weeks--sloughed away.  He was the simple,
tender-hearted, almost childish Cap'n Abe that she had met upon first
coming to Cardhaven.

Swiftly through her mind the incidents of that first night and morning
flashed.  She remembered that he had prepared her--as he had prepared
his neighbors--for the coming of this wonderful Cap'n Amazon, whose
adventures he had related and whose praises he had sung for so many
years.

Cap'n Abe had taken advantage of Perry Baker's coming with Louise's
trunk to send off his own chest, supposedly filled with the clothes he
would need on a sea voyage.

Then, the house clear of the expressman and Louise safe in bed, the
storekeeper had proceeded to disguise himself as he had long planned to
do.

Not content with the shaving of his beard only, he had dyed his hair
and the sweeping piratical mustache left him.  Walnut juice applied to
his face and body had given him the stain of a tropical sun.  Of
course, this stain and the dye had to be occasionally renewed.

The addition of gold rings in his ears (long before pierced for the
purpose, of course) and the wearing of the colored handkerchief to
cover his bald crown completed a disguise that his own mother would
have found hard to penetrate.

Cap'n Abe was gone; Cap'n Amazon stood in his place.

To befool his niece was a small matter.  At daybreak he had come to her
door and bidden Louise good-bye.  But she had not seen him--only his
figure as he walked up the road in the fog.  Cap'n Abe had, of course,
quickly made a circuit and come back to re-enter the house by the rear
door.

From that time--or from the moment Lawford Tapp had first seen him on
the store porch that morning--the storekeeper had played a huge game of
bluff.  And what a game it had been!

In his character of Cap'n Amazon he had commanded the respect--even the
fear--of men who for years had considered Cap'n Abe a butt for their
poor jests.  It was marvelous, Louise thought, when one came to think
of it.

And yet, not so marvelous after all, when she learned all that lay
behind the masquerade.  There had always been, lying dormant in Cap'n
Abe's nature, characteristics that had never before found expression.

Much she learned on this evening at supper, and afterward when the
store had been closed and they were alone in the living-room.
Diddimus, who still had his doubts of the piratical looking captain,
lay in Louise's lap and purred loudly under the ministration of her
gentle hand, while Cap'n Abe talked.

It was a story that brought to the eyes of the sympathetic girl the
sting of tears as well as bubbling laughter to her lips.  And in it all
she found something almost heroic as well as ridiculous.

"My mother marked me," said Cap'n Abe.  "Poor mother!  I was born with
her awful horror of the ravenin' sea as she saw the Bravo an' Cap'n
Josh go down.  I knew it soon--when I was only a little child.  I knew
I was set apart from other Silts, who had all been seafarin' men since
the beginnin' of time.

"And yet I loved the sea, Niece Louise.  The magic of it, its mystery,
its romance and its wonders; all phases of the sea and seafarin'
charmed me.  But I could not step foot in a boat without almost
swoonin' with fright, and the sight of the sea in its might filled me
with terror.

"Ah, me!  You can have no idea what pains I suffered as a boy because
of this fear," said Cap'n Abe.  "I dreamed of voyagin' into unknown
seas--of seein' the islands of the West and of the East--of visitin'
all the wonderful corners of the world--of facin' all the perils and
experiencin' all the adventures of a free rover.  And what was my fate?

"The tamest sort of a life," he said, answering his own question.  "The
flattest existence ever man could imagine.  Hi-mighty!  Instead of a
sea rover--a storekeeper!  Instead of romance--Sargasso!" and he
gestured with his pipe in his hand.  "You understand, Louise?  That's
what I meant when I spoke of the Sargasso Sea t'other day.  It was my
doom to live in the tideless and almost motionless Sea of Sargasso.

"But my mind didn't stay tame ashore," pursued Cap'n Abe.  "As a boy I
fed it upon all the romances of the sea I could gather.  Ye-as.  I
suppose I am greatly to be blamed.  I have been a hi-mighty liar,
Louise!

"It began because I heard so many other men tellin' of their
adventoors, an' I couldn't tell of none.  My store at Rocky Head where
I lived all my life till I come here (mother came over to Cardhaven
with her second husband; but I stayed on there till twenty-odd year
ago)--my store there was like this one.  There's allus a lot of old
barnacles like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup clingin' to such reefs as
this.

"So I heard unendin' experiences of men who had gone to sea.  And at
night I read everything I could get touchin' on, an' appertainin' to,
sea-farin'.  In my mind I've sailed the seven seas, charted unknown
waters, went through all the perils I tell 'bout.  Yes, sir, I don't
dispute I'm a hi-mighty liar," he repeated, sighing and shaking his
head.

"But when I come here to the Shell Road, where there warn't nobody
knowed me, it struck me forcible," pursued Cap'n Abe, "that my fambly
bein' so little known I could achieve a sort of vicarious repertation
as a seagoin' man.

"Ye see what I mean?  I cal'lated if I'd had a brother--a brother who
warn't marked with a fear of the ocean--_he_ would ha' been a sailor.
Course he would!  All us Silts was seafarin' men!

"An' I thought so much 'bout this brother that I _might_ ha' had, and
what he would ha' done sailin' up an' down the world, learnin' to be a
master mariner, an' finally pacin' his own quarter-deck, that he grew
like he was real to me, Niece Louise--he re'lly did.  I give him a
name.  'Am'zon' has been a name in our fambly since Cap'n Reba Silt
first put the nose of his old _Tigris_ to the tidal wave of the Am'zon
River--back in seventeen-forty.  He come home to New Bedford and named
his first boy, that was waitin' to be christened, 'Am'zon Silt.'

"So I called this--this dream brother of mine--'Am'zon.'  These
Cardhaven folks warn't likely to know whether I had a brother or not.
And I made up he went to sea when he was twelve--like I told ye, my
dear.  Ye-as.  I did hate to lie to ye, an' you just new-come here.
But I'd laid my plans for a long while back just to walk out, as it
were, an' let these fellers 'round here have a taste o' Cap'n Am'zon
Silt that they'd begun to doubt was ever comin' to Cardhaven.  An'
hi-mighty!" exploded Cap'n Abe, with a great laugh, "I _have_ give 'em
a taste of him, I vum!"

"Oh, you have, Uncle Abram!  You have!" agreed Louise, and burst, into
laughter herself.  "It is wonderful how you did it!  It is marvelous!
How _could_ you?"

"Nothin' easier, when you come to think on't," replied Cap'n Abe.  "I'd
talked so much 'bout Cap'n Am'zon that he was a fixed idea in people's
minds.  I said when he come I'd go off on a v'y'ge.  I'd fixed
ev'rything proper for the exchange when you lit down on me, Niece
Louise.  Hi-mighty!" grinned Cap'n Abe, "at first I thought sure you'd
spilled the beans."

Louise rippled another appreciative laugh.  "Oh, dear!" she cried,
clapping her hands together.  "It's too funny for anything!  How you
startled Betty!  Why, even Lawford Tapp was amazed at your appearance.
You--you do look like an old pirate, Uncle Abram."

"Don't I?" responded Cap'n Abe, childishly delighted.

"That awful scar along your jaw--and you so brown," said the girl.
"How did you get that scar, Uncle Abram?"

"Fallin' down the cellar steps when I was a kid," said the storekeeper.
"But these fellers think I must ha' got it through a cutlass stroke, or
somethin'.  Oh, I guess I've showed 'em what a real Silt should look
like.  Yes, sir!  I cal'late I look the part of a feller that's roved
the sea for sixty year or so, Niece Louise."

"You do, indeed.  That red bandana--and the earrings--and the
mustache--and stain.    Why, uncle! even to that tattooing----"

He looked down at his bared arm and nodded proudly.

"Ye-as.  That time I went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the
store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in
the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for
twenty-five dollars.  Course, I didn't dare show it none here--kep' my
sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers.  But
now------"

He laughed again, full-throated and joyous like a boy.  Then, suddenly,
he grew grave.

"Niece Louise, I wonder if you can have any idea what this here
dead-and-alive life all these years has meant to me?  Lashed hard and
fast to this here store, and to a stay-ashore life, when my heart an'
soul was longin' to set a course for 'way across't the world?
Sargasso--that's it.  This was my Sargasso Sea--and I was smothered in
it!"

"I think I understand, Cap'n Abe," the girl said softly, laying her
hand in his big palm.

"An' now, Louise, that I've got a taste of romance, I don't want to
come back to humdrum things--no, sir!  I want to keep right on bein'
Cap'n Am'zon, and havin' even them old hardshells like Cap'n Joab and
Washy Gallup look on me as a feller-salt."

"But how------?"

"They never really respected Cap'n Abe," her uncle hurried on to say.
"I find my neighbors _did_ love him, an' I thank God for that!  But
they knew he warn't no seaman, and a man without salt water in his
blood don't make good with Cardhaven folks.

"But Cap'n Am'zon--he's another critter entirely.  They mebbe think
he's an old pirate or the like," and he chuckled again, "but they
sartin sure respect him.  Even Bet Gallup fears Cap'n Am'zon; but, to
tell ye the truth, Niece Louise, she used to earwig Cap'n Abe!"

"But when the _Curlew_ arrives home?" queried the girl suddenly.

"Hi-mighty, ye-as!  I see _that_," he groaned.  "Looks to me as though
somethin'll have to happen to Abe Silt 'twixt Boston and this port.
And you'll have to stop your father's mouth, Louise.  I depend upon you
to help me.  Otherwise I shall be undone--completely undone."

"Goodness!" cried the girl, choked with laughter again.  "Do you mean
to do away with Cap'n Abe?  I fear you are quite as wicked as Betty
Gallup believes you to be--and Aunt Euphemia."

He grinned broadly once more.  "I got Cap'n Abe's will filed away
already--if somethin' should happen," said the old intriguer.
"Everything's fixed, Niece Louise."

"I'll help you," she declared, and gave him her hand a second time.




CHAPTER XXVIII

STORM CLOUDS THREATEN

The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress.  She
had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally
the leading man obtained Mr. Anscomb's permission to work the buxom
waitress into a picture.

"But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged.  "Land sakes!  It's the
easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin'
down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard
pie.  I don't want folks to laugh at my fat.  I want 'em to forget that
I _am_ fat."

"Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise,
"_that_ is art.  Gusty has the right idea.  Many a floweret is born to
blush unseen, the poet says.  But can it be we have found in Gusty
Durgin a screen artist in embryo?"

Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in
a moving picture part.

"A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise.  "I got
to make up like a mother--old, you know, and real wrinkled.  And when
my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father
because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it.  It's
awful touchin'.  I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr.
Anscomb told me what I'd have to do in the picture.

"Land sakes!  I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em--you see if I
can't, Miss Grayling.  You ought to be a movie actress yourself.  It
don't seem just right that you ain't."

"But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said.

"No.  Mebbe not.  That's a gift, I guess," Gusty agreed.  "There!  I
got to go now.  He's callin' me.  The boss's sister will have to wait
on all the boarders for dinner to-day.  An' my! ain't she sore!  But if
I'm a success in these pictures you can just believe the Cardhaven Inn
won't see _me_ passin' biscuits and clam chowder for long."

In the midst of the rehearsal Louise saw a figure striding along the
shore from the direction of Tapp Point, and her heart leaped.  Already
there seemed to be a change in the appearance of Lawford.

His sisters, who came frequently to see Louise at Cap'n Abe's, had told
her their brother, was actually working in one of his father's
factories.  He had not even obtained a position in the office, but in
the factory itself.  He ran one of the taffy cutting machines, for one
thing, and wore overalls!

"Poor Ford!" Cecile said, shaking her head.  "He's up against it.  I'm
going to save up part of my pocket money for him--if he'll take it.  I
think daddy's real mean, and I've told him so.  And when Dot Johnson
comes I'm not going to treat her nice at all."

Lawford, however, did not look the part of the abused and disowned
heir.  He seemed brisker than Louise remembered his being before and
his smile was as winning as ever.

"Miss Grayling!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.

"Lawford!  I am _so_ glad to see you," she rejoined frankly.  And then
she had to pull her hands away quickly and raise an admonitory finger.
"Walk beside me--and be good," she commanded.  "Do you realize that two
worlds are watching us--the world of The Beaches and the movie world as
well?"

"Hang 'em!" announced Lawford with emphasis, his eyes shining.  "Think!
I've never even thanked you for what you did for me that day.  I
thought Betty Gallup hauled me out of the sea till Jonas Crabbe at the
lighthouse put me wise."

"Never mind that," she said.  "Tell me, how do you like your work?  And
why are you at home again?"

"I'm down here for the week-end---to get some more of my duds, to tell
the truth.  I'm going to be a fixture at the Egypt factory--much to
dad's surprise, I fancy."

"Do you like it?" she asked him, watching his face covertly.

"I hate it!  But I can stick, just the same.  I have a scheme for
improving the taffy cutting machines, too.  I think I've a streak in me
for mechanics.  I have always taken to engines and motors and other
machinery."

"An inventor!"

"Yes.  Why not?" he asked soberly, "Oh!  I'm not going to be one of
those inventors who let sharp business men cheat them out of their
eye-teeth.  If I improve that candy cutter it will cost I. Tapp real
money, believe me!"

Louise's eyes danced at him in admiration and she dimpled.  "I think
you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured.

It was a mean advantage to take of a young man.  They were on the open
beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching
them.  Lawford groaned deeply--and looked it.

"Don't," she said.  "I know it's because of me you have been driven to
work."

"You know that, Miss Grayling?  Louise!"

"Yes.  I had a little talk with your father.  He's _such_ a funny man!"

"If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood
you are a wonder!" he exclaimed.  "Oh, Louise!"  He could not keep his
hungry gaze off her face.

"You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding.  "I liked you a
lot from the very first.  Now I admire you."

"Oh, Louise!"

"Don't look like that at me," she commanded.  "They'll see you.
And--and I feel as though I were about to be eaten."

"You will be," he said significantly.  "I am coming to the store
to-night.  Or shall I go to see your aunt first?"

"You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied,
laughing gayly.  "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home.  See him."

"And you really love me?  Do you?  Please . . . dear!"

She nodded, pursing her lips.

"But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford.  "I think the super
would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad."

"Never mind," she told him, almost gayly.  "Maybe the invention will
make our fortune."

At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and
visibly increased.  Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a
thorough knowledge of her own heart.  Having made up her mind that
Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would
approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man
know his good fortune.

Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind.  Cap'n Abe said:

"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a
feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise?  I thought you was a girl with too
much sense for that!"

"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.

"Hi-mighty!  I s'pect that's so.  An', anyway, he does seem to improve.
He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy
factories."

"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed
Louise.  "We could have so much better times if he and I could play
along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money."

"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken
irreverently about sacred things.  "Money ain't never hateful, Niece
Louise."

On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth.
Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp
came in to call on Louise.  The good woman hugged the girl and wept on
her bosom.

"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she
said.  "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I
look at him.  And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry
for him, too."

Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state
most of the time.

"But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done.  Only there's no use
expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change.  If Fordy won't marry
Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him.  I don't know what I shall
say to her when she does come."

"Maybe she will not appear at all," Louise suggested comfortingly.

"I don't know.  I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off
till later.  But it can't be put off forever.  Anyhow, when she comes
Lawford says he won't be at home.  I hope the girls will act nice to
her."

"_I_ will," Louise assured her.  "And I'll make Mr. Tapp like me yet;
you see if I don't."

"Oh, I can't hope for that much, my dear," sighed the lachrymose lady,
shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again.

Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday
morning as L'Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to
catch the milk train.  All the girls were proud of their brother
because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be "such a perfectly
good sport after all."  And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for
the pluck he was showing.

They corresponded after that--Louise and Lawford.  As she could not
hope to hear from the _Curlew_ again until the schooner made the port
of Boston, Lawford's letters were the limit of her correspondence.
Louise had always failed to make many close friends among women.

Her interests aside from those at the store and with the movie people
were limited, too.  The butterfly society of The Beaches did not much
attract Louise Grayling.

Aunt Euphemia manifestly disapproved of her niece at every turn.  The
Lady from Poughkeepsie had remained on the Cape for the full season in
the hope of breaking up the intimacy between Louise and Lawford Tapp.
His absence, which she had believed so fortunate, soon proved to be
merely provocative of her niece's interest in the heir of the Taffy
King.

Nor could she wean Louise from association with the piratical looking
mariner at Cap'n Abe's store.  The girl utterly refused to be guided by
the older woman in either of these particulars.

"You are a reckless, abandoned girl!" Aunt Euphemia declared.  "I am
sure, no matter what others may say, that awful sailor is no fit
companion for you.

"And as, for Lawford Tapp----Why, his people are impossible, Louise.
Wherever you have your establishment, if you marry him, his people,
when they visit you will have to be apologized for," the indignant
woman continued.

"Let--me--see," murmured Louise.  "How large an 'establishment' should
you think, auntie, we could keep up on eighteen dollars a week?"

"Eighteen dollars a week!" exclaimed Aunt Euphemia, aghast.

"Yes.  That is Lawford's present salary.  Wages, I think they call it
at the factory.  He gets it in cash--in a pay envelope."

"Mercy, Louise!  You are not in earnest?"

"Certainly.  My young man is going to earn our living.  If he marries
me his father will cut him off with the proverbial shilling.  I. Tapp
has other matrimonial plans for Lawford."

"What?" gasped the horrified Mrs. Conroth.  "He does not approve of
you?"

"Too true, auntie.  I have driven poor Lawford to work in a candy
factory."

"That--that upstart!" exploded the lady.  But she did not refer to
Lawford.

It was evident that Aunt Euphemia saw nothing but the threat of storm
clouds for her niece in the offing.  Trouble, deep and black, seemed,
to her mind to be hovering upon the horizon of the future,

As it chanced, the weather about this time seemed to reflect Aunt
Euphemia's mood.  The summer had passed with but few brief tempests.
Seldom had Louise seen any phase of the sea in its wrath.

September, however, is an uncertain month at best.  For several days a
threatening haze shrouded the distant sea line.  The kildees, fluttered
and shrieked over the booming surf.

Washy Gallup, meeting Louise as she strolled on the beach,
prognosticated:

"Shouldn't be surprised none, Miss Lou, if we had a spell of weather.
Mebbe we'll have an airly equinoctooral.  We sometimes do.

"Then ye'll hear the sea sing psalms, as the feller said, an' no
mistake.  Them there picture folks'll mebbe git a show at a re'l storm.
That's what they been wishin' for--an' a wreck off shore.  Land sakes!
if they'd ever _seed_ a ship go to pieces afore their very eyes they
wouldn't ask for a second helpin'--no, ma'am!"

That evening threatening clouds rolled up from seaward and mantled the
arch of the sky.  The fishing boats ran to cover in the harbor before
dark.  The surf rumbled louder and louder along the shore.

And all night the sea mourned its dead over Gull Rocks.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE SCAR

Another fishfly (or was it the same that had droned accompaniment to
Cap'n' Abe's story-telling upon a former occasion?) boomed against the
dusty panes of the window while the fretful, sand-laden wind swept
searchingly about the store on the Shell Road.

It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and
land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset.  In the silence
punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharp _swish, swish_ of the
sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly.

"We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the
last to enter and bang the store door.  "She's pullin' 'round into the
no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her
mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while.  Won't be no clams
shipped from _these_ flats to-morrow."

"High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper.  "How _dry_ ye'll be,
Milt, remains to be seen."

"_In_-side, or _aout_?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for

Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel.

Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner.  "This
wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said.  "They was makin'
some fillums over there on the wreck of the _Goldrock_, that's laid out
four year or so in Ham Cove------"

"Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts.

"You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup.

"Well," said Amiel, "four _or_ five.  The heave of her made ha'f of 'em
sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an'
'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned.  I
cal'late _he's_ got enough."

"The gale that brought the _Goldrock_ ashore had just such another
beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively.  "But she'd never
been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right.  They
mutineed, you know."

"The sculpins!" ejaculated the storekeeper briskly.  "Can't excuse
that.  Anything but a crew that'll turn on the afterguard that they've
signed on for to obey!"

"That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab.  "Ye say a true word."

"An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper.  "I've had
experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down
the old scar upon his jaw.

"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt
Baker encouragingly.  "Did you get it in a mutiny?"

"Yep."

"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt.  "Bet Gallup,
she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."

"So I did," declared the captain boldly.  "This crew o' mutineers I
speak of turned pirates, and they held me--the only one of the
afterguard left alive--to navigate the ship.

"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the
_Galatea_?" went on the narrator unblushingly.

His fellow skipper nodded.  "I've heard of it--yes.  But you don't mean
to say you sailed on _her_, Am'zon?"

"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared.  "I was third aboard her--she
carried a full crew.  She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home
by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn--a hermaphrodite brig she
was; and--she--could--sail!

"But she warn't well found.  The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin'
smack's.  Weevilly bread and rusty beef.  The crew had a sayin' that
the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.

"They was a hard crew I allow--them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the
like.  Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew.  And
the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em.  In the South Atlantic we
got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might
say.

"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the
storekeeper.  "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin'
aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast.  _They_ lived
well.  The second was in his berth and I had the deck.

"I got knocked out first thing--there's the scar of it," and the
captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was
a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child.
"Belayin' pin.  Knocked me inside out for Sunday.  But I cal'late they
didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin'
down from N'York.

"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard,
they begun to see they needed me to navigate the _Galatea_.  They give
me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator--the
bloody crew o' pirates!"

"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.

"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in
my gizzard.  We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas
for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee
traders an' smugglers.  Then we h'isted the black flag and took our
first prize--an English barque goin' down to Rio.  It was me saved her
crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat.  They made Para
all right, I heard afterward.

"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we
looted her of everything wuth while.  Then----"

The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it.  A lanky,
half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:

"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"

"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.

"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news
vender.  "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say.  She's goin'
spang onto the reef.  Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are
comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."

"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for
the door.

The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute.  He went out
on the porch.  Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all
directions were the neighbors--both men and women.  The possibility of
a wreck--the great tragedy of long-shore existence--would bring
everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.

He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across
her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already
halfway to the shore.  From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches
the summer visitors were trailing down.  Below Bozewell's bungalow the
motion picture company were running excitedly about.

"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper.  "Crazy critters.  Wonder
where that schooner is."

He hesitated to leave the premises.  Cap'n Abe had never been known to
follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the
offing.  Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he
could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers
high upon the strand.

But suddenly the man remembered that he was _not_ Cap'n Abe!  He stood
here in an entirely different character.  Cap'n Amazon, the rough and
ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had
tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years.

What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from
the scene of excitement at such a time?  He turned back into the store
for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door.  Then he
shuffled down the road.

At first he closed his eyes--squeezing the lids tight so as not to see
the gale-ridden sea.  But finally, stumbling, he opened them.  Far away
where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the
greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves
charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses,
their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale.  Black was
the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.

Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks.  A curtain of
spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of
those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.

The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road.  Scattered
in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees
brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril.  Here a group
of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened
down upon their heads.  Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty
summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the
possibility of making a film of the scene.  Farther away huddled a
party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and
children at their skirts.  Beyond them the people from the cottages on
the bluff were hurrying to the spot--women in silk attire and men in
the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear.

The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this.  He stood squarely up to
the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the
rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand.  With his other hand he
stroked the scar along his jaw.  He had a feeling that he had been
cheated.  That story of the mutiny of the _Galatea_ was destined to be
one of his very best narratives.

He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe.  He had
heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his
achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own.  He
could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it.

And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a
narrative.  Cap'n Abe did not like it.

His keen vision swept the outlook once more.  How darkly the clouds
lowered!  And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut
shrewdly.  It would be a wild night.  Casually he thought of his
cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus
purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all.

"Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered.  "Lucky you ain't
at sea in a blow like this."

It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing.  Her
poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n
Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging.

She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that
rolled in from the horizon line.  Now and then a curling wave-crest hid
even her topmasts.  Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks
shrouded her.

For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks.  Unless the
wind shifted--and that soon--she must batter her hull to bits upon the
reef.

The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so
well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation.  When
the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion,
it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four
hours' duration.

"She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly.

The might of the sea made him tremble.  The thought of what was about
to happen to the schooner--a fate that naught could avert--sickened
him.  Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers,
the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred.




CHAPTER XXX

WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT

It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches.
Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening--was leaving
lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with
her.  But on that point Louise had been firm.

"No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said.  "I shall wait for daddy-prof and
the _Curlew_ to arrive at Boston.  Then I shall either go there to meet
him, or he will come here.  I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly
as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married."

"Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror.  "How can you say such a
thing!"

"I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips.

"You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie
declared.  "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for
those Tapps.  They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push
themselves into the society of their betters."

"Perhaps," sighed Louise.  "But consider, auntie.  This is a free and
more or less independent republic.  After all, money is the only
recognized mark of aristocracy."

"Money!"

"Yes.  How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them--or the
Standishes'--or the Graylings'--without money?  And consider our own
small beginnings.  Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of
the yardstick and sold molasses by the quart."

"You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her
ears.  "I will not listen to you.  It is sacrilegious."

"It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from molasses to taffy.  And
it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other."

So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out
to face the gale.  Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise,
too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of
the bluff.

This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the
week-end.  It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms
she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank
into the full sweep of the gale.

"Oh, Mr. Tapp!  Why is everybody running so?  What has happened?"

The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face.  He glared
at her as though he did not hear what she said.  In his hand he
clutched an envelope.

"Ha!  That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled.  "Seen Ford?"

"No.  Is he at home?"

"He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder.  "I
supposed he'd come over to see you."

"Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly.  "He is a very faithful
knight."

"He's a perfect ninny, if _that's_ what you mean," snapped the Taffy
King.  "He's made a fool of me, too.  I shouldn't wonder if he knew
this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled.

"You arouse my curiosity," Louise said.  "I hope Lawford has done
nothing more to cause you vexation."

"I don't know whether he has or not.  The young upstart!  I feel like
punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat
to him, Miss Grayling.  D'you know what he's done?"

"Something really fine, I hope.  I do not think you wholly appreciate
Lawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly.

"Ha!  No.  I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be
appreciated," he snarled.

But at that Louise merely laughed.  "You don't tell me what he has
done," she urged.

"Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled
us candy makers for years.  I'm having a new cutting machine built
after his suggestions."

"I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she
interrupted.  "You know, he and I are going to need the money."

"Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again.  "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes
to a contract.  He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement
and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will."

"I'm so glad!" cried Louise.

"You are, eh?  What for?"

"Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him.

I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her.

"So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right in my very teeth?"

"I--I hope you won't be _very_ angry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly.
"You see--we love each other."

"Love!" began I. Tapp.  Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over
and over in his hand.  "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh.  "Perhaps
there is something in that.  Seems to be.  I set my heart on having my
fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson--and see what's
come of it."

He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand.

"Look at that!"

With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope
and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure.  Before she
could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention.

"What can it be?" Louise cried.  "The lifesavers!"

"And their gear--lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed.  "Must be a
wreck----"

His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm.  "There!  Don't you
see her?  A vessel in distress sure enough.  She's drifting in upon
Gull Rocks.  Bad business, Miss Grayling."

"Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise.  "He's with the surfmen!"

Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's
two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf.  The
bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and
the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water.

Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his
father.  The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing
the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.

"I give up!  I give up!" he exclaimed.  "I said I'd disown him if he
refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter.  But 'tain't
really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him.  It seems she
had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got
this invitation to her wedding."

Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance.  "Of course, I knew you
would see it in the right light in time.  But it really has been the
making of Lawford," she said calmly.

"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King.  "I wonder what good
it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted?  I'm not
sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you
live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."

"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him
softly.

They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat.  The patrol had
come in good season.  It was not probable that the schooner would hold
together long after she struck the reef.

Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the
wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident
really meant.  A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts,
whimpered.  The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.

Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out
at the distant, laboring craft.  Death rode on the gale, and lurked
where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks.  The schooner was
doomed.

That might be the _Curlew_ out there--the schooner her father was
aboard--instead of this imperiled vessel.  Only the night before she
and her uncle had figured out the _Curlew's_ course homeward-bound from
her last port of call.  She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and
the lighthouse any day now.

The thought sobered Louise.  Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer
to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat.

The sea beyond the line of surf--between the strand and the reef--was
foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water.  The
captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into
that wild waste.

If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner
struck, a breeches buoy could be rigged with less danger and, perhaps,
with a better chance of bringing the ship's company safely ashore.

"'Tis a woeful pickle of water," Washy Gallup shrieked in Louise's ear.
"And the wind a-risin'.  'Tis only allowed by law to shoot a sartain
charge o' powder in the pottery little gun.  Beyond that, is like to
burst her.  But mebbe they can make it.  Cap'n Jim Trainor knows his
work; and 'tis cut out for him this day."

Gradually the seriousness of the situation began to affect all the
lighter-minded spectators.  Louise saw the group of moving picture
actors at one side.  The men dropped their cigarettes and strained
forward as they watched the schooner drive in to certain destruction.

It was like a play.  The schooner, rearing on each succeeding wave,
drew nearer and nearer.  A hawser parted and they saw her bows swing
viciously shoreward, the jib-boom thrusting itself seemingly into the
very sky as she topped a huge breaker.

The crew had to slip the cable of the second anchor.  The foremast came
crashing down before she struck.  Then, with a grinding thud those on
the shore could not hear, but could keenly sense, the fated craft
rebounded on the reef.

A gasping cry--the intake of a chorused breath--arose from the throng
of spectators.  The fishermen and sailors recoiled from the cart and
left an open space in which the life-saving crew could handle their
gear.

Cap'n Trainor, the grizzled veteran of the crew, had already loaded the
gun and now aimed it.  The shot to which was attached the line was
slipped into the muzzle.

"Back!" the old man ordered, and waved his hand.  Then he pulled the
lanyard.

The line fled out of the box with a speed that made it smoke.  But the
shot fell short.

"'Tis too much wind, skipper," squealed Washy Gallup.  "You be
a-shootin' into the wind's eye.  An' she's risin' ev'ry minute."

His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor.  The latter loaded
the gun again, and yet again.  The last time he waited for every one to
get well back before he fired the cannon.  When she went off she did
not burst as they half expected--she turned a double back somersault.

"'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands
together.  "We must try the boat.  But that's a hell's broth out there,
and no two ways about it."

The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying
spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef.  They could see
men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging.  Louise, between
bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures.

"It may be the _Curlew_!" she cried to the Taffy King.  "Father told me
in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft.  He
may be out there!" and the girl shuddered.

"No, no," said I. Tapp.  "Not possible.  Don't think of such a thing,
my girl.  But whoever they are, they are to be pitied."

There rose a shout at the edge of the surf.  The fringe of fishermen
had rushed in to aid in launching the boat.  Anscomb and his camera man
had taken up a good position with the machine.  The director was going
to get some "real stuff."

Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers.  The
lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their
places in the boat.  Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his
steering oar.  On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf.

"Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director.  "Action!  Camera!
Go!"

There was something unreal about it--it was like a play.  And yet out
there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of
the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was
run through the bursting surf.

The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea.  Then
the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen
pulled out.

Lawford and his mates staggered back with the gear.  The lifeboat
lifted to meet the onrolling breakers.  The men tugged at the oars.

Somebody screamed.  Those ashore saw the white gash of a split oar.
The man in the bow went overboard, not being strapped to the seat.  His
mate reached for him and the banging broken oar handle hit him on the
head.

The boat swung broadside and the next instant was rolling over and over
in the surf, the crew half smothered.

The spectators ran together in a crowd.  But Lawford and some of the
men who had helped to launch the boat rushed into the surf and dragged
the overturned craft and her crew out upon the beach.

"One of the crew with a broken arm; another knocked out complete with
that crack on the head," sputtered Cap'n Jim Trainor.  "Two of my very
best men.  Come on, boys!  Who'll take their places?"

Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one
of the injured surfmen.  The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about,
shouted:

"Ford!  Ford!  Don't dare do that!  I forbid you!"

Lawford turned a grim face upon his father.  "I earn eighteen a week,
dad.  I am my own boss."

A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply.
Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:

"Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp.  Don't say another word to him.  My--my
heart is breaking; but I am glad--oh, I am so glad!--that he is a real
man."

Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him.
After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"--weaklings like
Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy
Gallup.

Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the
crowd--one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments,
but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was
happening.

"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the
lifeboat crew.  "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon.  We need
you."




CHAPTER XXXI

AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL

The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the
thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon.  His only
ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.

He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the
Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar
land-locked water.

His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds
of the wrecked schooner.  And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast
Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the
wreck.

But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea,
and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into
that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.

Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners
had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of
the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness
of this present catastrophe.

Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt
spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of
spectators on the sands.  So enthralled were his neighbors by what was
going forward that they did not notice his appearance.

And well they did not.  This character of the bluff and ready master
mariner that Cap'n Abe had builded--a new order of Frankenstein--and
with which he had deceived the community for these many weeks, came
near to being wrecked right here and now.

He all but screamed aloud in fear when the lifeboat was overturned.
Pallid, shaking, panting for every breath he drew, he was slipping out
of the unnoticing crowd when Cap'n Jim Trainor of the lifeboat crew
called to him.

"You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon.  We need you."

For the space of a breath the storekeeper "hung in the wind."  He had
been poised for flight and the shock of the lifeboat captain's call
almost startled him into running full speed up the beach.

Then the thought smote upon his harassed mind that Cap'n Trainor was
not speaking to Cap'n Abe, storekeeper.  The call for aid was addressed
to Cap'n Amazon Silt.

It was to Cap'n Amazon, the man who had been through all manner of
perils by sea and land, who had suffered stress of storm and shipwreck
himself, whose reputation for courage the Shell Road storekeeper had
builded so long.

Should all this fall in a moment?  Should he show the coward's side of
the shield after all his effort toward vicarious heroism?  Another
moment of hesitancy and as Cap'n Amazon Silt he would never be able to
hold up his head in the company of Cardhaven folk again.

Cursed by the horror his mother had felt for the cruel sea that had
taken her husband before her very eyes, Cap'n Abe had ever shrunk from
any actual venture upon deep water.  But Cap'n Amazon must be true to
his manhood--must uphold by his actions the character the storekeeper
had builded for him.

He buttoned his coat tightly across his chest and pushed through the
group.  Men and women alike made way for him, and in his ringing ears
he heard such phrases as:

"_He's_ the man to do it!"

"That's Cap'n Am'zon for ye!"

"There's _one_ Silt ain't afraid of salt water, whatever Cap'n Abe may
be!"

"Will you come, Cap'n Am'zon?" called the skipper of the life-saving
crew.

"I'm coming," mumbled the storekeeper, and held up his arms that Milt
Baker might fasten the belt about his body.

Afterward Milt was fond of declaring that the look on Cap'n Amazon's
face at that moment prophesied the tragedy that was to follow.  "He
seen death facin' him--an' he warn't afraid," Milt said reverently.

"In with you, boys!" shouted the skipper.  "And hook your belts--every
man of you!  If she overturns again I want to be able to count noses
when we come right side up.  Now!"

A shuddering cry from the women, in which Louise found herself joining;
a "Yo! heave-ho!" from the men who launched the craft.  Then the
lifeboat was in the surf again, her crew laboring like the sons of
Hercules they were to keep her head to the wind and to the breakers.

The storekeeper was no weakling; rowing was an accomplishment he had
excelled in from childhood.  It was the single activity in any way
connected with the sea that he had learned and maintained.

At first he kept his eyes shut--tight shut.  A strange thrill went
through him, however.  All these years he had shrunk from an unknown,
an unexperienced, peril.  Was it that Cap'n Abe had been frightened by
a bogey, after all?

He opened his eyes, pulling rhythmically with the oar--never missing a
stroke.  His gaze rested on the face of that old sea-dog, Cap'n Jim
Trainor.  The fierce light of determination dwelt there.  The skipper
meant to get to the wrecked schooner.  He had no doubt of accomplishing
this, and Cap'n Abe caught fire of courage from the skipper's
transfigured countenance.

As for Lawford Tapp, no member of Cap'n Trainor's crew pulled a better
oar than he.  With the bow ash he drove on like a young giant.  Fear
did not enter into _his_ emotions.

There was nobody to notice the pallor of the storekeeper's visage.
Every man's attention was centered on his own oar, while the skipper
gazed ahead at the wave-beaten schooner grounded hard and fast upon the
reef.

There was no lull in the gale.  Indeed, it seemed as though the
strength of the wind steadily rose.  The lifeboat only crept from the
shore on its course to Gull Rocks.  Each yard must be fought for by the
earnest crew.

Occasionally Cap'n Trainor called an encouraging sentence at them.  For
the most part, however, only the ravening sea roared malice in their
ears.

Around them the hungry waves leaped and fought for their lives; but the
buoyant boat, held true to her course by the skipper, bore up nobly
under the strain.  They won on, foot by foot.

The thunder of the breakers over the reef finally deafened them.  The
rocking schooner, buffeted by waves that could not drive her completely
over the reef, towered finally above the heads of the men in the
lifeboat.

Cap'n Trainor's straining eyes deciphered her name painted on the bow.
He threw a hand upward in a surprised gesture, still clinging to the
steering oar with his other hand, and shrieked aloud:

"The _Curlew_!  By mighty! who'd ha' thought it?  'Tis the _Curlew_."
He, too, knew of Cap'n Abe's supposed voyage on the seaweed ship.

The oarsmen read the word upon the skipper's lips rather than heard his
voice.  Two, at least, were shocked by the announcement--Lawford and
the storekeeper.  There was no opportunity for comment upon this wonder.

Skillfully the lifeboat was brought around under the lee of the wreck.
Already most of her crew had crept down to the rail and were waiting,
half submerged, to drop into the lifeboat.  But one figure was still
visible high up in the shrouds.

When the waves sucked out from under her the keel of the lifeboat
almost scratched the reef.  Then it rose on a swell to the very rail of
the wreck, wedged so tightly on the rock.

The castaways came inboard rapidly, bringing their injured skipper with
them.  The lifeboat was quickly overburdened with human freight.

"No more!  No more!" shouted Cap'n Trainor.  "We'll have to make
another trip."

"Where's the professor?  Bring down the professor!  There he is!"
yelled the mate of the _Curlew_, who had given his attention to the
injured master of the wrecked craft.  "Who lashed him fast up there?"

There was a movement forward.  The storekeeper had got up and pulled a
stout-armed member of the _Curlew's_ crew into his place.

"Take my oar!" commanded Cap'n Abe.  "I got a niece--he's her father.
Hi-mighty!  I just got to get him aboard!"

With an agility that belied his years he leaped for the schooner's rail
as the next surge rose.  He swarmed inboard and started up the shrouds.
Those below remained silent while he climbed.

He reached the helpless man, whipped out his knife, cut the lashings.
Slight as the storekeeper seemed, his muscles were of steel.  As though
the half-conscious professor were a child, he lowered him to the
slanting deck.

"Only room for one o' you!" roared Cap'n Trainor.  "Only one!  We're
overloaded as 'tis.  Better wait."

"You'll take _him_!" shouted Cap'n Abe, and dropped his burden at
Lawford Tapp's feet.

The next moment the lifeboat shot away from the side of the wreck,
leaving the Man Who Was Afraid marooned upon her deck.

That was a perilous journey for the overladen boat.  Only the good
management of Cap'n Trainor could have brought her safely to shore.
And when she banged upon the beach it was almost a miracle that she did
not start all her bottom boards.

Many willing hands hauled the heavy boat up upon the sands.  The
rescued crew of the schooner tumbled out and lifted their injured
captain ashore.  But it was Lawford who brought in Professor Grayling.
Louise had watched with the Taffy King all through the battle of the
lifeboat with the sea, suffering pangs of terror for Lawford's safety,
yet feeling, too, unbounded pride in his achievement.

Now she pressed down to meet him at the edge of the sea and found that
the drenched, dazed man Lawford bore up in his arms was her own father!

The meeting served to rouse the professor.  He stared searchingly over
the group of rescued men.

"Where's the man who cut my lashings and helped me down to the deck?  I
don't see him," he said.  "Louise, my dear, this is a very, very
strange homecoming.  And all my summer's work gone for nothing!  But
that man----"

"Cap'n Amazon Silt," said Lawford.  "He stayed behind.  There wasn't
room in the boat."

"Cap'n Am'zon!" exclaimed several excited voices.  But only one--and
that Louise Grayling's--uttered another name:

"Cap'n Abe!  Isn't _he_ with you?  Didn't you bring him ashore?"

"By heaven! that's so, Louise!" groaned Lawford.  "They must both be
out there.  The two brothers are marooned on that rotten wreck!"

Already the kindly neighbors were hurrying the castaways in groups of
twos and threes to the nearer dwellings.  Anscomb was getting foot
after foot of "the real stuff."  The moving picture actors and the
cottagers hung on the outskirts of the throng of natives, wide-eyed and
marveling.  They had all, on this day, gained a taste of the stern
realities of life as it is along the shore.

Louise was desirous of getting her father to the store, for he was
exhausted.  Lawford turned back toward the group of life-saving men
standing about the beached boat.

"If they can get her launched again they'll need me," he shouted back
over his shoulder.  "Poor Cap'n Abe and Cap'n Amazon------"

"You've done enough, boy," his father declared, clinging to the sleeve
of Lawford's guernsey.  "Don't risk your life again."

"Don't worry, dad.  A fellow has to do his bit, you know."

Betty Gallup came to the assistance of Louise and helped support the
professor.  The woman's countenance was all wrinkled with trouble.

"He must be out there, too," she murmured to Louise.  "Ain't none o'
these chaps off the _Curlew_ jest right yet--scar't blue, or suthin'.
They don't seem to rightly sense that Cap'n Abe was with 'em all the
time aboard that schooner."

"Poor Cap'n Abe!" groaned Louise again.

"And that old pirate's with him," said Betty.  But her tone lacked its
usual venom in speaking of Cap'n Amazon.  "Who'd ha' thought it?  I
reckoned he was nothing but a bag o' wind, with all his yarns of bloody
murder an' the like.  But he is a Silt; no gettin' around that.  And
Cap'n Abe allus did say the Silts were proper seamen."

"Poor, poor Cap'n Abe!" sobbed Louise.

"Now, now!" soothed Betty.  "Don't take on so, deary.  They'll get 'em
both.  Never fear."

But the rising gale forbade another launching of the lifeboat for
hours.  The night shut down over the wind-ridden sea and shore, and by
the pallid light fitfully playing over the tumbling waters the watchers
along the sands saw the stricken _Curlew_ being slowly wrenched to
pieces by the waves that wolfed about and over her.




CHAPTER XXXII

ON THE ROLL OF HONOR

Stretched upon the couch in the living-room behind the store, with
Diddimus purring beside him, Professor Grayling heard that evening the
story of Cap'n Abe's masquerade.  Betty Gallup had gone back to the
beach and Louise could talk freely to her father.

"And he saved me, for your sake!" murmured the professor.  "He gave me
his place in the lifeboat!  Ah, my dear Lou! there is something besides
physical courage in this world.  And I don't see but that your uncle
has plenty of both kinds of bravery.  Really, he is a wonderful man."

"He _was_ a wonderful man," said Louise brokenly.

"I do not give up hope of his ultimate safety, my dear.  The gale will
blow itself out by morning.  Captain Ripley is so badly hurt that he is
being taken to Boston to-night, and the crew go with him.  But if there
is interest to be roused in the fate of the last man left upon the
wreck----"

"Oh, I am sure the neighbors will do everything in their power.  And
Lawford, too!" she cried.

"The schooner is not likely to break up before morning.  The departure
of her crew to-night will make it all the easier for Mr. Abram Silt's
secret to be kept," the professor reminded her.

"Yes.  We will keep his secret," sighed Louise.  "Poor Uncle Abram!
After all, he can gain a reputation for courage only vicariously.  It
will be Cap'n Amazon Silt who will go down in the annals of Cardhaven
as the brave man who risked his life for another, daddy-prof."

Aunt Euphemia did not leave The Beaches on this evening, as she had
intended.  Even she was shaken out of her usual marble demeanor by the
wreck and the incidents connected with it.  She came to the store after
dinner and welcomed her brother with a most subdued and chastened
spirit.

"You have been mercifully preserved, Ernest," she said, wiping her
eyes.  "I saw young Lawford Tapp bring you ashore.  A really remarkable
young man, and so I told Mrs. Perriton just now.  So brave of him to
venture out in the lifeboat as a volunteer.

"I have just been talking to his father.  Quite a remarkable man--I.
Tapp.  One of these rough diamonds, you know, Ernest.  And he is so
enthusiastic about Louise.  He has just pointed out to me the spot on
the bluff where he intends to build a cottage for Lawford and Louise."

"What's this?" demanded Professor Grayling, sitting up so suddenly on
the couch that Diddimus spat and jumped off in haste and anger.

"I--I was just going to tell you about Lawford," Louise said in a small
voice.

"Oh, yes!  A little thing like your having a lover slipped your mind, I
suppose?" demanded her father.

"And a young man of most excellent character," put in the surprising
Mrs. Conroth.  "Perhaps his family is not all that might be desired;
but I. Tapp is e-_nor_-mously wealthy and I understand he will settle a
good income upon Ford.  Besides, the young man has some sort of
interest in the manufacturing of candies."

Trust the Lady from Poughkeepsie to put the best foot forward when it
became necessary to do so.  The professor was gazing quizzically at the
flushed face of his daughter.

"So that is what you have been doing this summer, is it?" he said.

"That--and looking after Cap'n Abe," confessed Louise.

"I'll have to look into this further."

"Isn't it terrible?" interrupted Mrs. Conroth.  "They say the two
brothers are out on that wreck and they cannot be reached until the
gale subsides.  And then it will be too late to save them.  Well,
Louise, that old sailor was certainly a brave man.  I am really sorry I
spoke so harshly about him.  They tell me it was he who put your father
in the boat.  I hope there is some way you can fittingly show your
appreciation, Ernest."

"I hope so," said Professor Grayling grimly.

Lawford came to the store before bedtime--very white and
serious-looking.  He had tried with the patrol crew to launch the boat
again and go to the rescue of the two old men supposed to be upon the
wreck.  But the effort had been fruitless.  Until the gale fell and the
tide turned they could not possibly get out to Gull Rocks.

"A brave man is Cap'n Amazon," Lawford Tapp said.  "And if Cap'n Abe
was in the schooner's crew----Why, Professor Grayling! surely you must
remember him?  Not a big man, but with heavy gray beard and
mustache--and very bald.  Mild blue eyes and very gentle-spoken.  Don't
you remember him in the crew of the _Curlew_?"

"It would seem quite probable that he was aboard," Professor Grayling
returned, "minding his p's and q's," as Louise had warned him.  "But
you see, Mr. Tapp, being only a passenger, I had really little
association with the men forward.  You know how it is aboard
ship--strict discipline, and all that."

"Yes, sir; I see.  And, after all, Cap'n Abe was a man that could
easily be overlooked.  Not assertive at all.  Not like Cap'n Amazon.
Quite timid and retiring by nature.  Don't you say so, Louise?"

"Oh, absolutely!" agreed the girl.  "And yet, when you come to think of
it, Uncle Abram is a wonderful man."

"I don't see how you can say so," the young man said.  "It's Cap'n
Amazon who is wonderful.  There were other men down on the beach better
able to handle an oar than he.  But he took the empty seat in the
lifeboat when he was called without saying 'yes or no'!  And he pulled
with the best of us."

"He is no coward, of that I am sure," said Professor Grayling.  "He
gave me his place in the boat.  We can but pray that the lifeboat will
get to him in the morning."

That hope was universal.  All night driftwood fires burned on the sands
and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the
schooner on the reef.

The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear
and deck lumber.  Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of
the wreck held together.

It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that
the lifeboat could be launched again.  Wellriver station owned no
motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap'n Jim Trainor and his men would
have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale.

It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of
the battered schooner.  Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring
her to the reef.  Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her.

One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered
aboard.  Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed
aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle.

"Here's one of 'em, sure 'nough!" he sang out.

Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a
minute the spot where the unfortunate lay.  The man had washed back and
forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled.  The
rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash.

He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his
cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache.

"Why, by golly!" yelled the surfman.  "This here's Cap'n Abe Silt!"

"Ain't his brother Am'zon there?"

"No, I don't see his brother nowhere."

"Take a good look."

"Trust me to do that," answered the surfman.

But the search was useless.  Nobody ever saw Cap'n Amazon again.  He
had gone, as he had come--suddenly and in a way to shock the placid
thoughts of Cardhaven people.  A stone in the First Church graveyard is
all the visible reminder there remains of Cap'n Amazon Silt, who for
one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road.

The life-savers brought Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the
wreck, the last survivor of the _Curlew's_ crew.  He was in rather bad
shape, for his night's experience on the wreck had been serious indeed.

They put him to bed, and Louise and Betty Gallup took turns in nursing
him, while Cap'n Joab Beecher puttered about the store, trying to wait
on customers and keep things straight.

At first, as he lay in his "cabin," Cap'n Abe did not have much to
say--not even to Louise.  But after a couple of days, on an occasion
when she was feeding him broth, he suddenly sputtered and put away the
spoon with a vexed gesture.

"What's the matter, Uncle Abram?" she asked him.  "Isn't it good?"

"The soup's all right, Niece Louise.  'Tain't so fillin' as chowder, I
cal'late, but it'll keep a feller on deck for a spell.  That ain't it.
I was just a-thinkin'."

"Of what?"

"Hi-mighty!  It's all over, ain't it?" he said in desperation.  "Can't
never bring forward Cap'n Am'zon again, can I?  I _got_ to be Cap'n Abe
hereafter, whether I want to be or not.  It's a turrible dis'pointment,
Louise--turrible!

"I ain't sorry I went out there in that boat.  No.  For I got your
father off, an' he'd been carried overboard if he'd been let stay in
them shrouds.

"But land sakes!  I _did_ fancy bein' Cap'n Am'zon 'stead o' myself.
And the worst of it is, Niece Louise, I can't have nothin' new to tell
'bout Cap'n Am'zon's adventures.  He's drowned, an' he can't never go
rovin' no more."

"But think of what you've done, Cap'n Abe," Louise urged.  "You feared
the sea--and you overcame that fear.  All your life you shrank from
venturing on the water; yet you went out in that lifeboat and played
the hero.  Oh, I think it is fine, Cap'n Abe!  It's wonderful!"

"Wonderful?" repeated Cap'n Abe.  "P'r'aps 'tis.  Mebbe I've been too
timid all my life.  P'r'aps I could ha' been a sailor and cruised in
foreign seas if I'd just _had_ to.

"But mother allus was opposed.  She kept talkin' against it when I was
a boy--and later, too.  She told how scar't she was when Cap'n Josh and
the _Bravo_ went down in sight of her windows.  And mebbe I ketched it
more from her talkin' than aught else.

"But I never realized that stress of circumstances could push me into
it an' make a man of me.  I had a feelin' that I'd swoon away an' fall
right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was
t'other day.

"And see!  Nothing of the kind happened!  I knew I'd got to make good
Cap'n Am'zon's character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again.  I
don't dispute I've been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise.  But--but it's
sort o' made a man o' me for once, don't ye think?

"I dunno.  Good comes out o' bad sometimes.  Bitter from the sweet as
well.  And when a man's got a repertation to maintain----There was that
feller Hanks, on the _Lunette_, out o' Nantucket.  I've heard Cap'n
Am'zon tell it----"

"Cap'n Abe!" gasped Louise.

"Hi-mighty!  There I go again," said the storekeeper mournfully.  "You
can't teach an old dog new tricks--nor break him of them he's l'arned!"

Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until
Cap'n Abe was up and about again.  Then they could safely leave him to
the ministrations of Betty Gallup.

"Somehow," confessed that able seaman, "he don't seem just like he used
to.  He speaks quicker and sharper--more like that old pirate, Am'zon
Silt, though I shouldn't be sayin' nothin' harsh of the dead, I s'pose.
I don't dispute that Cap'n Am'zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to
think on't.

"But Cap'n Abe's more to my taste.  Now the place seems right again
with him in the house.  Cap'n Abe's as easy as an old shoe.  And, land
sakes!  I ain't locked out o' _his_ bedroom when I want to clean!

"One thing puzzles me, Miss Lou.  I thought Cap'n Abe would take on
c'nsiderable about Jerry.  But when I told him the canary was dead he
up and said that mebbe 'twas better so, seem' the old bird couldn't see
no more.  Now, who would ha' told him Jerry was blind?"

There were a few other things about the returned Cap'n Abe that might
have amazed his neighbors.  He seemed to possess an almost uncanny
knowledge of what had happened during the summer.  Besides, he seemed
to have achieved Cap'n Amazon's manner of "looking down" a too
inquisitive inquirer into personal affairs and refusing to answer.

Because of this, perhaps, nobody was ever known to ask the storekeeper
why he had filled his sea chest with bricks and useless dunnage when he
shipped it to Boston.  That mystery was never explained.

Before Louise and her father were ready to leave Cardhaven most of the
summer residents along The Beaches, including Aunt Euphemia, had gone.
And the moving picture company had also flown.

With the latter went Gusty Durgin, bravely refusing to have her
artistic soul trammeled any longer by the claims of hungry boarders at
the Cardhaven Inn.

"I don't never expect to be one of these stars on the screen," she
confided to Louise.  "But I can make a good livin', an' ma's childern
by her second husband, Mr. Vleet, has got to be eddicated.

"I'm goin' to make me up a fancy name and make a repertation.  They
ain't goin' to call me 'Dusty Gudgeon' no more.  Miss Louder tells me I
can 'bant'--whatever that is--to take down my flesh, and mebbe you'll
see me some day, Miss Lou, in a re'l ladylike part.  An' I can always
cry.  Even Mr. Bane says I'm wuth my wages when it comes to the tearful
parts."

The Tapps were flitting to Boston, Mrs. Tapp and the girls sure of
"getting in" with the proper set at last.  Their summer's campaign,
thanks to Louise, had been successful to that end.

Louise and Lawford walked along the strand below the cottages.  The
candy cutting machine had proved a success and Lawford was giving his
attention to a new "mechanical wrapper" for salt water taffy that would
do away with much hand labor.

On the most prominent outlook of Tapp Point were piles of building
material and men at work.  The pudgy figure of I. Tapp was visible
walking about, importantly directing the workmen.

"It's going to be a most, wonderful house, Louise dear," sighed
Lawford.  "Do you suppose you can stand it?  The front elevation looks
like a French chateau of the Middle Ages, and there ought to be a moat
and a portcullis to make it look right."

"Never mind," she responded cheerfully.  "We won't have to live in
it--much.  See.  We have all this to live in," with a wide gesture.
"The sea and the shore.  Cape Cod forever!  I shall never be
discontented here, Lawford."

They wandered back to the store on the Shell Road.  There was a chill
in the fall air and Cap'n Abe had built a small fire in the rusty
stove.  About it were gathered the usual idlers.  A huge fishfly droned
on the window pane.

"It's been breedin' a change of weather for a week," said Cap'n Joab.

"Right ye air, sir," agreed Washy Gallup, wagging his head.

"I 'member hearin' Cap'n Am'zon tell 'bout a dry spell like this,"
began Cap'n Abe, leaning his hairy fists upon the counter.  "Twas when
he was ashore once at Teneriffe----"

"Don't I hear Mandy a-callin' me?" Milt Baker suddenly demanded, making
for the door.

"I gotter git over home myself," said Cap'n Joab apologetically.

"Me, too," said Washy, rising.  "'Tis chore time."

Cap'n Abe clamped his jaws shut for a minute and his eyes blazed.  Only
the mild and inoffensive Amiel was left of his audience.

"Huh!" he growled.  "Ain't goin' to waste my breath on _you_, Amiel
Perdue.  Go git me a scuttle of coal."

Then, when the young fellow had departed, the storekeeper grinned
ruefully and whispered in his niece's ear:

"Hi-mighty!  Cap'n Amazon's cut the sand out from under my feet.  They
think he told them yarns so much better'n I do that they won't even
stay to hear me.  Hard lines.  Niece Louise, hard lines.  But mebbe I
deserve it!"